THE LANDON CHRONICLES SYNOPSIS - Wheaton College

THE LANDON CHRONICLES SYNOPSIS 

by Kenneth Perry Landon, Jr. 

1995 

A Complete Synopsis 

of 

7KH /DQGRQ &KURQLFOHV 

(an oral history of 

Margaret Dorothea Mortenson Landon 

and 

Kenneth Perry Landon, 

recorded by their son, 

Kenneth Perry Landon, Jr. 

from 1976 to 1989) 

Dedicated to the memory of my mother and father 

©1996 Kenneth Landon, Jr 

1

INTRODUCTION #1 

(The personal introduction) 

In June, 1976, my parents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, and the whole family travelled 

from around the country to Dousman, Wisconsin, for the celebration. As my special tribute to Mother 

and Dad, I wrote an eighteen-minute song and narrative about them, throwing in references to every 

story and every aspect of their lives that I could think of. Their lives spanned the century and were full 

of personal and professional accomplishment. From infancy, I had listened to the two of them telling 

dramatic stories from the various periods of their lives, and as my wife Nona Beth and I drove out with 

Margaret and Kenneth to Dousman, I queried them about this story or that event. They would fill in 

the details, and I would add bits and pieces to my song. I realized there was much I did not know 

about these people I was so close to. 

The week in Dousman was a rich celebration of family, and my song-narrative was a personal 

triumph. 

When we returned home to Washington, I kept thinking about the experience. All those 

incredible stories. And as I thought about it, a veritable longing welled up in me to record them. I 

needed those stories. I did not want them to be lost, as inevitably they would be unless someone 

recorded them. They were a part of me, as I knew they were a part of my brother and sisters. And 

who else could record them but me? I was the only member of the family who lived in Washington. I 

had a good tape recorder and two good microphones. So I decided to propose it the next time I visited 

at 4711 Fulton Street. 

Both Margaret and Kenneth were immediately negative when I told them what I had in mind, 

but for different reasons. Margaret feared what would happen if the recordings became public. She 

imagined that if the wrong people heard them, there could be offense taken, threats, lawsuits, and 

perhaps even greater dangers. Kenneth feared what would happen with Margaret involved in the 

project. She would want everything to be done just so. This was a source of conflict all their lives. 

Kenneth was a born raconteur. Life was full of adventures, and he turned its events into a seemingly 

endless series of riproaring tales in which, one way or the other, he was usually the hero. He would 

tell his tales for dramatic effect, flinging facts hither and yon with abandon. And so, through the years, 

his stories had a way of "improving," which meant that different events were combined, facts changed 

or lost. And this maddened Margaret. She was, as Kenneth was proud of saying, a natural historian. 

She was forever making runs to the dictionary to check a word, or to this or that source or reference 

work or document to check a name, a date, an event, to make sure we had it right. She would interrupt 

Kenneth regularly as he told a story, spoiling the timing of it, to question or correct something he was 

saying. "Are you about to ruin another of my stories?" he would say, and we would all laugh. 

Naturally, he was reluctant to commit himself to a longterm project which he knew his wife might turn 

into an ordeal. He was only willing to record if it was spontaneous, and fun. 

Margaret's fears were unrealistic, but Kenneth's were not. 

Be that as it may, Kenneth agreed to record, but "with fear and trembling." 

Margaret agreed to record also but on the condition that the recordings be for me alone. No 

one else must ever hear them. Indeed, while I would purchase the tapes, she would keep them hidden 

in a cupboard in her office. And so she did, through all the years of the recording. As time passed, the 

restriction she had put on the tapes eased. They were to be kept within the family, she said, meaning 

me and my brother and sisters. But that was it. As more time passed, she gradually forgot the 

restriction she had put on the tapes, as she forgot so much else. In the end, it didn't concern her any 

ii

more. 

When we began recording, July 20, 1976, it was Kenneth's life at first, and so the first few 

sessions went about as I had hoped. I would ask him about this or that, and he would talk off the top of 

his head, which would bring something else to mind, and as he got into it, he would have fun. Then 

we began on Margaret, and what Kenneth had feared began to happen. Almost before we knew it, she 

was going through letters and records and memorabilia from the past, and we were doing a sort of 

research project. The taping had captured her interest. And then, as the story of their two lives 

intersected, Margaret began instructing Kenneth to do as she was doing. He must go through his 

letters from the past too. And so there we would sit, the three of us, Margaret with her stack of letters, 

and Kenneth with his, as they alternately read from them. Most of the sense of spontaneity that 

Kenneth thrived on was lost, and he grumbled continually. 

There was little that could be done. These were two very strong-willed people. I knew that if 

we tried to change what Margaret was doing, she would walk away from the project altogether as not 

being "up to my standards." And I knew Kenneth would not continue without her. So I held my 

breath as we ground slowly forward week after week. It was amazing that Kenneth hung in there as 

long as he did, nearly two years. I remember the time Dad and I speculated on how many years it 

would take us to finish the job at this rate. We guessed ten to fifteen. Maybe twenty! 

In June, 1978, Kenneth finally reached his limit and called the whole thing off. We did no 

recording for four years, until I felt enough time had passed that I could raise the subject of recording 

again. In June, 1982, the time came; I raised it; and Kenneth cautiously agreed. But almost 

immediately, Margaret insisted on working with the letters again. And after a few months, Kenneth 

angrily called a halt once more. This time I thought the project might truly be dead. 

Five and a half years passed before I felt I could raise the subject again, and what made it 

possible was rather sad. In those five years, speech, memory, thought, and planning had become 

increasingly difficult for Margaret. She had aged to the point that she was no longer physically 

capable of controlling the recording as she had done before. When I raised the subject, I gently 

indicated this to Kenneth. What had happened before could not happen now, and he knew I was right. 

So once again, in 1988, we resumed, and from then on, recording proceeded without difficulty until its 

conclusion in March, 1989. 

We had begun doing it Margaret's way. We ended up doing it Kenneth's way. 

Needless to say, the record differs in character from period to period. It is fairly detailed up to 

the end of Margaret and Kenneth's first term as missionaries in Siam, in 1931 (that is, hour #57). After 

that, much is lost. One whole year was missed, 1937-1938. Most of the story of the writing of 

Margaret's two books was lost. Indeed, much of her life from the 1950's on is a blank. And there are 

large gaps in Kenneth's story. We dealt with what I knew of and could ask about, and of course with 

whatever came to his or her mind as he or she spoke, but there was much more. 

I am saddened to think of all that was lost. And yet it is remarkable that we got as much as we 

did. If I had been working with one or the other alone, the result would have been very different. But 

with the two of them together, we did about as well as could be done. 

Whatever its failings, I am deeply grateful for the result. I continue learning from it. I hope 

that it will have meaning for you as well. 

Kip Landon 

December 7, 1995 

iii

POSTSCRIPT 

A few weeks after completing all work on The Landon Chronicles—or so I believed—I came 

across two old reel-to-reel tapes that my father made in 1962 and 1963. These had come into my 

possession when the family broke up the Landon home in 1991, but I had never really examined them. 

When I listened to the tapes, I soon realized that I should add them as an addendum to The 

Landon Chronicles. 

The first tape, which runs three and a half hours, is actually a series of recordings Dad made in 

June and July, 1962, during the first session of the Country Team Seminar, which he had created and 

was running under a presidential directive. This was one of the high points of his professional life, and 

he knew it at the time. The second tape, which ran an hour and a half, was made in February and 

March, 1963, after Dad's year with the Seminar had ended, and it was by way of a postmortem. 

The character of the recording is very different from that of the Chronicles. Here, Dad is 

alone. He has no audience—and particularly no audience to entertain. He is making a taped record for 

himself alone, one which nobody will listen to for thirty-two years. Furthermore, he is making his 

taped record as the events unfold, or immediately afterward, and not from the perspective of twentyseven 

years, as in the Chronicles. The Kenneth Landon of the Chronicles is a man long retired, near 

the end of life. The Kenneth Landon of these tapes is at the height of his career, and the nuts and bolts 

and triumphs and tragedies of life in a bureaucratic world are raw and immediate. The contrast is of 

interest for a number of reasons, one having to do with the way Dad's stories "improved" through the 

years. Here is his description of taking the members of the Country Team Seminar to meet President 

Kennedy as he recalled it the night of the great event. Compare that to his dramatic account in The 

Landon Chronicles, in which a number of the key characters have vanished and Dad moves on the 

stage alone except for the President and the anonymous course members! 

The quality of the tape is poor, of course. The tape itself has deteriorated over the decades, and 

some of the signal has been lost. The sound comes through only on the left channel because the 

original tape recorder was monaural. But Dad's voice is loud and clear. 

As with the Chronicles, I have written a fairly thorough synopsis of the five hours, the 

"Addendum to The Landon Chronicles." I have inserted a few of the prominent names into the 

index, but for the most part one would have to go to the Addendum itself to learn who figures in the 

story. 

KPL Jr 

February 8, 1996 

iv

LANDON CHRONICLES &217(176 

CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION #1 (7KH SHUVRQDO LQWUR) ii 

CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . v 

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix 

FAVORITE STORIES 7KH IDYRULWH VWRULHV RI 

0DUJDUHW DQG .HQQHWK /DQGRQ . . . xliii 

INTRODUCTION #2 (The "technical" intro) xlvii 

HOUR #1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 

HOUR #2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 

HOUR #3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 

HOUR #4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 

HOUR #5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 

HOUR #6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 

HOUR #7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 

HOUR #8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 

HOUR #9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 

HOUR #10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 

HOUR #11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 

HOUR #12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 

HOUR #13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 

HOUR #14 . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 

HOUR #15 . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 

HOUR #16 . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 

HOUR #17 . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 

HOUR #18 . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 

HOUR #19 . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 

HOUR #20 . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 

HOUR #21 . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 

HOUR #22 . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 

HOUR #23 . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 

HOUR #24 . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 

HOUR #25 . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 

HOUR #26 . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 

HOUR #27 . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 

HOUR #28 . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 

HOUR #29 . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 

HOUR #30 . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 

HOUR #31 . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 

HOUR #32 . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 

HOUR #33 . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 

HOUR #34 . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 

HOUR #35 . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 

HOUR #36 . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 

HOUR #37 . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 

HOUR #38 . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 

HOUR #39 . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 

HOUR #40 . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 

HOUR #41 . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 

v 

HOUR #42 . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 

HOUR #43 . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 

HOUR #44 . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 

HOUR #45 . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 

HOUR #46 . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 

HOUR #47 . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 

HOUR #48 . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 

HOUR #49 . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 

HOUR #50 . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 

HOUR #51 . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 

HOUR #52 . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 

HOUR #53 . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 

HOUR #54 . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 

HOUR #55 . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 

HOUR #56 . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 

HOUR #57 . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 

HOUR #58 . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 

HOUR #59 . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 

HOUR #60 . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 

HOUR #61 . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 

HOUR #62 . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 

HOUR #63 . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 

HOUR #64 . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 

HOUR #65 . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 

HOUR #66 . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 

HOUR #67 . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 

HOUR #68 . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 

HOUR #69 . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 

HOUR #70 . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 

HOUR #71 . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 

HOUR #72 . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 

HOUR #73 . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 

HOUR #74 . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 

HOUR #75 . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 

HOUR #76 . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 

HOUR #77 . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 

HOUR #78 . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 

HOUR #79 . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 

HOUR #80 . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 

HOUR #81 . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 

HOUR #82 . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 

HOUR #83 . . . . . . . . . . . . 534 

HOUR #84 . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 

HOUR #85 . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 

HOUR #86 . . . . . . . . . . . . 554 

HOUR #87 . . . . . . . . . . . . 561 

HOUR #88 . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 

HOUR #89 . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 

ADDENDUM 

HOUR 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 

HOUR 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 

HOUR 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . 592 

HOUR 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 600 

HOUR 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . 609


HOUR #1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 

Kenneth begins his story. His birth in 1903. His parents. Family celebrations. His Irish nurse 

and the ten drops of Irish whiskey in his milk. Careening down the hill in his baby buggy. 

Sledding down the hill with the college kids. Running away at age four. The great propeller 

escapade. 

HOUR #2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 

Kenneth continues on his childhood. Meadville, Pennsylvania. His brother, Bradley. 710 

Walnut Street. His father's ATV Cleanco business, which Kenneth ran. The houses he lived in 

growing up. Dressing in Babe Jenkins' dress and hat and playing baseball. Learning to fight. 

The treehouse he and his brother built. The social strata of the town. The great stout story. Fig 

newtons at Niagara Falls. 

HOUR #3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 

Kenneth's father Brad's fascination with constipation. Kenneth and his brother, Bradley. 

Kenneth's travels to Brooklyn alone on the train. Working in the railroad shop. His short career 

in Beaver Patrol #3 of the Boy Scouts. How Brad treated his family. Kenneth's first bike and 

first flute. Musical instruments he played. Visiting Uncle Henry Landon in North Carolina, and 

visiting Washington, DC, on the way. Visiting the Landons in North Wilkesboro many years 

later. 

HOUR #4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 

Kenneth hangs around the pool hall in Meadville. Kenneth's father Brad's puritanism. 

Kenneth begins buying his own clothes. Smoking cigars. Buys a pipe. Boxing in boxing 

matches. His parents' fighting. Kenneth buys clothes for his mother. Begins dating. Memories 

of derring-do when a child. His love of Necco wafers. Brad's way of taking his sons' money. 

HOUR #5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 

Kenneth's dog Jimmy. His father Brad's work described. The way Brad treated people. His 

personal history. Uncle Ed Landon. Uncle Henry and his railroad. 

HOUR #6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 

More on Kenneth's father. His work habits. His relations with women. On Bradley, 

Kenneth's brother. Bradley's fiancée, Kathryn, and Kenneth's trip to evaluate her. On the ATV 

Cleanco business. Bradley's sudden death from appendicitis. Kenneth's year at Cincinnati 

University, studying engineering. Mrs. Heintzman and her seances. The Gull Lake Bible 

Conference, where Kenneth met Charles Blanchard of Wheaton College. Kenneth's first day at 

Wheaton College, meeting Margaret Mortenson. 

HOUR #7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 

Kenneth's sermon in the Meadville church after his ordination. More on relations between 

Kenneth and his father. Brad's disastrous visits to Kenneth and Margaret and the family. The 

day he died in Florida. Kenneth's mother's strict upbringing. Games Kenneth and Margaret 

played as children. The day Kenneth's father made pancakes. How Kenneth learned to swim. 

The sequel to the great stout story, when the ladies of the church came to the house. 

vi


HOUR #8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 

Kenneth's mother Mae's health problems. The day she died, when Kenneth knew it on the 

other side of the world. Kenneth and Charlotte Johns. French Creek. Kenneth's work in the Erie 

Railroad shop. The day the boys caught a black snake. 

HOUR #9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 

Margaret begins her story. She tells of her grandfather Laurids Mortenson, who emigrated 

from Denmark. An inventor, and a rigid man. Her grandmother Dorthea Bergerson, who 

emigrated from Norway. The great Chicago fire. Margaret's father Annenus Duabus Mortenson. 

Then Margaret tells of her mother Adelle's parents, Michael Estburg and Julie Marie Larsen, 

from Norway. Adelle lives on a farm as a girl; then in Somers, Wisconsin, where her father has 

a shop. 

HOUR #10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 

Margaret's mother Adelle's brief business education. Her singing. Meeting A.D. through the 

church. Margaret describes her Uncle Chris. Her great aunt Patrine Christina Mortenson. 

Laurids' using Patrine's money in his store and then refusing to return it. Her despair. Adelle 

and A.D.'s engagement. 

HOUR #11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 

Adelle and A.D.'s wedding in Somers, Wisconsin. Margaret's birth there. Kenneth recalls his 

first significant experience with a dentist. The Mortenson family moves to Racine. A.D.'s job 

with Reid Murdoch and Co. in Chicago, and the move to Evanston, Illinois. Margaret's first 

memories. Her teddy bear. Reading Peter Rabbit. Scarlet fever. 

HOUR #12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 

The day Margaret realized her parents loved her sister Evangeline more than her. Her close 

relationship with Evangeline. Betty's birth. Margaret's love of desserts. An early memory of 

Grandfather Estburg. His death. Uncle John Lawrence. Margaret falls in love with reading at 

school. The day Evangeline had to spit! Elizabeth throws sand into the flour bin. Margaret's 

father A.D. begins taking her to football games. The time she was mysteriously ill and almost 

died. 

HOUR #13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 

The lovely meal Margaret had when she recovered. Her close friend Mary Peabody. Her year 

in an open-air classroom. Evanston described. Florida Mitchell, the Mortensons' maid, dances 

on the sidewalk after they give a gift for her church. Family visits. 

HOUR #14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 

Margaret's Aunt Julia. Margaret's love of giving gifts. The role of the church in the 

Mortensons' lives. A.D. finds work with the Curtis Publishing Company in Chicago. Margaret's 

love of Christmas, and the time she dragged home the used Christmas tree. Her favorite doll 

Daisy and how she got it. Her sister Evangeline eats mud. Margaret's love of sports. 

HOUR #15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 

The Evanston Music Festival. Elizabeth's cesarean birth. Margaret's mother Adelle's health 

vii


problems begin. Lucy Fitch Perkins, writer of children's books. Evangeline and her gift of style. 

Vacationing in Michigan. A.D.'s stern nature. Adelle's goiter, and her operation at the Mayo 

Clinic. Her heart attacks. Margaret reads from her diary of the time. 

HOUR #16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 

The restrictions Margaret lived under because of her parents' religious convictions. The 

children's activities. The school song. Margaret begins at Evanston Township High School. 

Effie Wambaugh's challenge to her to use her gift with words. Summer camp. Margaret's desire 

to go to Vassar. 

HOUR #17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 

Her parents' decision to send her to Wheaton College. Margaret's first visit there. Williston 

Hall. Meeting Muriel Fuller and Alice Howard. Kenneth tells of the Pittman-Potter Center for 

World Order conference of 1976. Margaret goes to Wheaton. 

HOUR #18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 

Wheaton College described. The boys' serenade. Adelle's hospitality. The beginning of the 

end of A.D.'s life; his first stroke. Kenneth tells of his time at Cincinnati. Mrs. Heintzman, the 

medium, and the night Kenneth and the boys rigged the seance. 

HOUR #19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 

At Gull Lake, Kenneth meets Charles Blanchard, who invites him to Wheaton College. 

Kenneth's first day at the college, meeting Margaret. His attempts to get a date with her. Her 

father's illness. College stories. The four literary societies. Kenneth's relationship with her 

mother. The first important date with Margaret. The morning the co-eds sneaked out to play 

football. 

HOUR #20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 

Continuing on the co-eds playing football. Lillian Norris. Margaret played end. On the 

Spanish flu of 1918. Kenneth tells of his father Brad's condemning two coal mines in 

Pennsylvania. Kenneth sings several comic songs. His accelerated academic career at Wheaton. 

Rodin's restaurant. The Mortensons move to Wheaton. Kenneth and Margaret become engaged. 

HOUR #21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 

Kenneth graduates from Wheaton. Works at the ice plant with Red Grange that summer. 

Margaret and Kenneth's engagement announced. Kenneth goes to Princeton Theological 

Seminary. Elsie Dow, formidable English professor at Wheaton. Pranks at the college. Kenneth 

tells how he moved into religious work, after his wild youth. His book business at Princeton. 

How he decided to go to Princeton. 

HOUR #22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 

Kenneth's decision to become a minister. He sings "my little Bimbo, down in the bamboo 

isle." Memories of Red Grange. Taking Mrs. Rodin swimming. Margaret describes Evanston 

again. The position she secured teaching at Bear Lake, Wisconsin. Her father's last summer, 

travelling with Rufus Park and evangelizing. His death. Kenneth tells his "Darling, Love" story. 

Robert Dick Wilson and Das Machen of Princeton. 

viii


HOUR #23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 

When Margaret and Kenneth became engaged. Kenneth tells of his studies at Princeton. Das 

Machen's parties. Robert Dick Wilson's invitation to late night tea and study. Kenneth and his 

father visit Uncle Ed Landon. Kenneth candidates for a church in Columbus, New Jersey. 

Lawyer Hutchinson. Meeting Joe and Agnes Wright. The modernist controversy at Princeton. 

Professor Bernie Green—"There's a little life in the old man yet." 

HOUR #24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 

On Kenneth's work at the Columbus church. His studies at Princeton. When the fourteen 

young people joined the church. Margaret tells of Uncle Chris' company that failed. Her 

mother's lost investment in it. Margaret goes to Bear Lake to teach high school. 

HOUR #25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 

Margaret tells again of her father's illness and death. She describes her life in Bear Lake and 

her work at the school. On Miss Torrey, Bible teacher at Wheaton College. 

HOUR #26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 

Margaret continues on her year in Bear Lake. Her mother sets out to have a house built in 

Wheaton. Its defective roof. On College Chapel's building (now Pierce Chapel) at Wheaton. 

Margaret describes the primeval forest in Michigan. Plans for the wedding. 

HOUR #27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 

Kenneth buys the wedding ring. The evangelistic services he has planned for his Columbus 

church. He begins to be interested in becoming a missionary. Dad Hall and the evangelistic 

services. Kenneth's working relationship with Robert Dick Wilson. The Big Chief, Joe and 

Agnes Wright's father. 

HOUR #28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 

Margaret continues on her year at Bear Lake. James Oliver Buswell, president of Wheaton 

College. Preparations for the wedding. Kenneth's interest in becoming a missionary grows. 

HOUR #29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 

The end of Margaret's year at Bear Lake. Kenneth begins seriously exploring missionary 

work. His dramatic rendition of "Romeo and Juliet," a doggerel song of the day. Wedding 

preparations. The wedding itself, June 16, 1926. Elliott Coleman plays the organ. The 

beginning of the honeymoon. 

HOUR #30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 

The honeymoon. Stony Lake. Kenneth's exhaustion and constant sleeping. The trip to 

Niagara Falls. Kenneth's bout of "ptomaine poisoning." Staying in Lawyer Hutchinson's house 

in Bordentown, New Jersey. The duck eggs. Kenneth tells of Mrs. Ridgeway, his friend and 

patron at the Columbus church. 

HOUR #31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 

The first summer in Bordentown. On the Wrights of Columbus. Margaret's sisters Evangeline 

and Betty Mortenson come to visit the new couple. 

ix


HOUR #32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 

Margaret describes the Welshes of Wheaton. Kenneth and Margaret move in to Princeton. 

Kenneth's plans to go as a missionary advance. The Landons' first Christmas together. The long 

distance telephone call. Margaret's "illness" in early 1927. She is pregnant! Kenneth and the 

sermon contest he almost won without knowing he was in it. 

HOUR #33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 

More on the sermon contest. Kenneth's mother Mae's poor health. The Landons are accepted 

as missionaries to Siam. Preparations to go. The conversation Kenneth and Margaret had as 

they approached Bangkok. They knew nothing about the country. 

HOUR #34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 

More on Margaret's "illness" in February. Her pregnancy, and her sadness about going to 

Siam instead of having the baby here. Kenneth's ordination in Meadville. The beginning of the 

trip to San Francisco. 

HOUR #35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 

San Francisco. More on the trip across the country. Departing the U.S. on the ship. Mrs. 

Mary Hoffert, memorable passenger. Honolulu. Kobe, Japan. The civil war in China of the 

time. 

HOUR #36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 

Shanghai. Hong Kong. Manila. Singapore. The .LVWQD. Arrival in Bangkok. The famous 

conversation Margaret and Kenneth had as they neared Bangkok. The first day. Kenneth's car. 

Al and Jeanette Seigle. The Landons stay in their house. Beginning language training with Kru 

Tardt. Edna Cole and the Wang Lang school. 

HOUR #37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 

Minister McKenzie and the #1 tea. Kenneth's silver tekal buttons. His walks around Bangkok. 

The snake farm. The auction at the Danish Legation. The cobra Kenneth found on the toilet seat 

in the middle of the night. The mechanics of living in the tropics. Adjusting to the culture. 

Remnants of feudalism among the Thai. 

HOUR #38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 

On the Thai system of values. Peggy's breech birth, September 14, 1927. Kenneth's dramatic 

run to get Dr. Theobald from across the river. Miss Johanna Christiansen, Margaret's nurse. Her 

personal history. Kenneth's normal day during this time. The Landons' first dinner party. Ah 

Chuan, their gourmet cook. 

HOUR #39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 

Language study continues, in high, biblical Thai. The assignment to Nakhon Si Thammarat. 

Dr. George McFarland and his wife Bertha Blount McFarland. The Golden Mountain in 

Bangkok. King Prajadhipok's birthday celebrations. The tennis tournament Margaret played in. 

The white elephant and the great procession. A Siamese wedding. 

x


HOUR #40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 

More on the Siamese wedding. Seeing the King and Queen at a concert. Kenneth rushes 

through his language training. His exams. Paul Eakin. Kenneth's first sermon in Siamese. He 

learns a series of lovesongs from a Mon boy, not realizing they are salacious. Sings them at a 

church social to wild applause from the young people. 

HOUR #41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 

Ah Chuan the cook has a son. The British in Southeast Asia. The Theobalds. Ah Chuan's 

dinner party in honor of his new son. Ah Chuan's illness. Jeanette's baby's convulsions, and 

Margaret's knowing what to do. The crisis with Ah Chuan, and Kenneth's firing him. Again, 

Minister McKenzie and the #1 tea. 

HOUR #42 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 

New Year celebrations in Thailand. On education, especially of women. The Wang Lang 

school. Kenneth has dengue fever. The move to Nakhon Si Thammarat. Dr. McDaniel. 

Margaret discusses Nakhon and its history. Miss Helen McCague. Rev. Snyder, and Kenneth's 

evangelistic trip with him. Nothing to eat! Kenneth's first experience of a Chinese restaurant in 

Thailand. Meeting the head of the Buddhist monks, Phra Kru Hame. 

HOUR #43 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 

The monks who studied the Christian religion under Kenneth. His evangelistic touring. Rev. 

Frank Snyder's personal history. His conflict with Dr. McDaniel. On Dr. McDaniel. James W. 

McCain's leper colony in the north, and McDaniel's in the south. Nakhon and its many temples. 

The Landons' first cat. Leander, "swims the Hellespont," and Kenneth saves him. 

HOUR #44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 

Life in Nakhon. The rubber estates the British had established on the peninsula. Bill is born, 

November 26, 1928. The Norwoods, and Mrs. Norwood's difficult birthgiving. Helen 

McCague's personal history. Dr. and the first Mrs. McFarland; her illness; and Bertha Blount. 

HOUR #45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 

Margaret continues on Bertha Blount, who married Dr. McFarland after his first wife died. 

Margaret comes to know of Kru Pakai in Nakhon. The prison. Kenneth's evangelistic touring. 

Kru Tim, who went insane. Dr. Jame McCain and his leper asylum. The disastrous meal Nai Dit 

prepared when Dr. McCain and Dr. McDaniel came for dinner. 

HOUR #46 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 

The Towke and his two wives. The Landons are assigned to Trang. Kenneth's evangelistic 

touring. The night he saw the phosphorescent sea. The history of the Trang mission; the 

Dunlaps, and the Bulkleys. 

HOUR #47 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 

The beginning of Margaret's gardening. The large compound the Landons lived on in Trang. 

A story from Nakhon: the day baby Peggy was encircled by the great king cobra in the yard. 

Ken Wells and his muddy encounter with the buffalo. Another story from Nakhon: Nai Dit traps 

the musang (a mongoose). Kenneth tells of Boon Pha and Ngiap Seng, and how Ngiap Seng 

xi


began teaching him Chinese. Rev. Snyder's sudden death. 

HOUR #48 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 

On E.P. Dunlap. Vacationing in Chong. Kenneth goes to the Nanthalung shadow show that 

runs through the night. On Phya Ratsida, the former Lord Lieutenant, and his father from China, 

Kaw Su Chien. The country women who often came to call on Margaret and spend the 

afternoon. Kenneth's encounter with the pygmy people from the jungle. 

HOUR #49 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 

Kenneth's evangelist assistant, Ngiap Seng. Ah Sim, his sister, who helped with the children. 

Margaret describes the house in Trang. Her normal day. Her problems with servants. Durian, 

"the king of fruits." 

HOUR #50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 

Margaret again describes the house. A Siamese wedding. The day Kenneth's mother Mae 

Landon died in America, and Kenneth's knowing it in Thailand. More on Margaret's problems 

with servants. Ah Sim, who was excellent. On the Lord Lieutenant of southern Siam and his 

relations with Kenneth. The climate in Trang. On banana trees. 

HOUR #51 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 

Kenneth tells of his preaching at his ordinaton in 1927. The police lieutenant in Trang who 

captured the "tiger bandit" singlehanded. Kenneth's evangelistic touring. On the monsoons. 

Evangeline's death in an auto accident in 1941. 

HOUR #52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 

The dog Suzy. Margaret comes down with dengue fever. Her recuperation at the hill station 

in Malaya. Doris and Dan Bovee come to visit and are stranded because of the stock market 

crash in America; no money. The constant threat of disease. 

HOUR #53 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 

More on the Bovees. Peggy and her beautiful tankles. Margaret assumes responsibility for 

the girls' school in Trang. A visit with the Sheehans at the tin mine in Phuket. 

HOUR #54 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 

The Landons visit native Christians in Phuket. Dr. Toy, the strange pastor of the church. 

Kenneth tells of the offshore island that was hollow inside, and the time he explored it. The OSS 

used it during WWII. Kenneth tells of the village, Thung Song, that offered to become his 

feudal servants. On fundamentalism in the 1920's. Dr. Bulkley and his tiger skulls. 

HOUR #55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 

Kenneth continues on Dr. Bulkley's tiger skulls. The night Dr. Bulkley operated on the 

wounded hunter and gave him Livingstone's shoulder. On the baby elephant Bulkley shipped to 

America under his wife's care. Margaret describes the girls' school. She tells of writers, like 

Somerset Maugham, who took advantage of the mssionaries. William McGovern, the fraudulent 

scholar on Tibet. Kenneth encounters the panther under Dr. Bulkley's house. 

xii


HOUR #56 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 

Durian fruit. Margaret's short story, "A Grave for Frankie." On modernism in the mission. 

The Bovees leave after staying for months. Izzy and Lizzy, the hornbills. Kenneth begins 

sending out his pastoral letter. Margaret describes a Sunday morning. The story of Margaret's 

first learning of Anna Leonowens begins. 

HOUR #57 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 

In Nakhon, Dr. McDaniel introduces Margaret to Anna Leonowens' two books. On the 

McDaniels. Margaret's gardening in Trang advances. )RXU \HDU EUHDN LQ WKH WDSLQJ IURP -XQH 

WR -XQH Kenneth tells of the time the elephant hosed down his evangelistic tracts. 

And the first time he ever used a bathing cloth, a dramatic failure. Ken Wells and his muddy 

encounter with buffalo. 

HOUR #58 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 

Kenneth retells how he asked Margaret to marry him. We realize that, after 56 years of 

marriage, she has yet to say yes! Christmas in Thailand. The Thai loved it. The time the ants 

filled the Christmas tree. The army ants that periodically trooped through the house in Trang. 

The elephant that ate Kenneth's cookies one day. The crocodile that almost ate Kenneth. Chong 

described. The gibbons (or monkeys) that came down in the jungle and hooted at Kenneth. 

Kenneth's youth group, riding bikes through the jungles. 

HOUR #59 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 

The peasants who wanted to catch the train but couldn't tell time. From the Landons' first 

year, in Bangkok: the Chinese dinner at which Kenneth could not find the men's room. 

Kenneth's experience with the Chumphon gangster. The night Margaret and Kenneth almost 

rode their bikes into an elephant. The Lord Lieutenant helps Kenneth make a distribution of his 

Gospel booklets to every village in southern Thailand. Kenneth describes his large parish. 

Carol's birth in 1933. Kenneth's appendicitis, his self-diagnosis, and his operation. How Bill 

learned to take his medicine. 

HOUR #60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 

Kenneth's special relations with the Chinese in Thailand. The five (or six?) schools and 

churches he helped them start. The schism in the Chinese church. Graham Fuller's jealousy of 

Kenneth. On the Japanese in Thailand, at least one in every town. The controversy in the 

mission concerning Kenneth's evangelism, especially among the Chinese. The special meeting 

of Siam missionaries in New York, 1938, and the Landons' resignation from the mission. 

Kenneth sums up his work in Thailand. Kenneth's trip home on his first furlough, 1931, visiting 

Egypt, the Holy Land, and Beirut. 

HOUR #61 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 

Kenneth's visit to Beirut, 1931. The voyage of the two Damascus rugs. Kenneth again tells of 

the night on the phosphorescent sea, 1929. Margaret tells of Kru Pakai and her letters. On the 

Presbyterian mission in Thailand. Edna Cole and the Wang Lang School. Carol's birth, March 

9, 1933. How Margaret became head of the girls' school in Trang. Edna Bulkley's personal 

history. Bertha Blount McFarland. 

xiii


HOUR #62 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 

The story of Kru Pakai and her letters continued. Pakai's affairs discovered. She is dismissed. 

Kru Briyuhn replaces her. Paul Eakin comes to Trang to investigate the matter. The truth 

revealed, to his dismay, in the terrible letters. 

HOUR #63 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 

The story of Kru Pakai concludes. Kru Kim Juang, Margaret's head teacher and friend. Notes 

on the year 1937-1938, which we never taped. Kenneth's furious year at Chicago earning his Ph.D. in 

comparative religion. Kenneth's attempt to get a church in the U.S. Kenneth tells how he found his job 

at Earlham College. Pres. William Cullen Dennis. The Landons' years in Richmond, Indiana. 

Kenneth is called to Washington "temporarily" as a consultant on the Japanese. Kenneth 

describes his year trying to give the library of Prince Damrong to a university in this country. 

Kenneth's first day in Washington. James Roosevelt, and Major Pettigrew of G-2, whose 

carefully guarded, accumulated intelligence on Southeast Asia was: four articles by Kenneth P. 

Landon. 

HOUR #64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 

William Donovan tells Kenneth how he came to seek his services. The questions Kenneth was 

given to work with, and Kenneth's answers. Calling on President Roosevelt with William 

Donovan. Kenneth's stay in Washington extended. Then Pearl Harbor. The stay becomes 

permanent. Kenneth works for the OCI, then the BEW. The day he briefed the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff on elephants. What the OCI was about. The OWI broadcasts. Seni Pramoj. Kenneth tells 

of the night in Thailand that he stayed with the Chinese family who snored mightily. 

HOUR #65 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 

Shio Sakanichi's last party, the night of December 6, 1941. The East and West Association 

dinner at which Kenneth sold Anna. Kenneth delivers the Taft lectures at the University of 

Cincinnati. The Chungking project. Why the OCI became the OSS. The BEW. 

HOUR #66 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 

Kenneth becomes a reviewer for the Journal of Philosophy. He delivers the Haskell lectures in 

comparative religion at Chicago in 1947. The Landons buy 4711 Fulton Street in 1944. 

Kenneth's work with the BEW in 1942-3. The bombing of the Hanoi dykes. The Free Thai 

movement. The use of the offshore island with the huge cave inside to move agents into 

Thailand during the war. Kenneth's move to the State Department. The birth of Kip, July 24, 

1943. Margaret races to finish Anna. 

HOUR #67 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 

Kenneth's work in Washington. He describes his later work with the OCB, part of the NSC. 

Stanley Hornbeck of the State Department. Kenneth's work in State. Drafting the first paper to 

articulate President Roosevelt's policy that no French return to Indochina after the war. Abbot 

Low Moffat. Kenneth tells how he acquired his executive office chair. His first office in the 

Executive Office Building.. 

HOUR #68 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 

Kenneth and the McCarthy era; the tapped phone; the searched files. The argument between 

xiv


Seni Pramoj and Karp Kunjara Kenneth became involved in. After WWII, Kenneth's encounter 

with the former Queen of Thailand and her entourage in New York. The night she came to 

dinner at 4711 Fulton St. Von Bredenburg, the next-door neighbor, and his attempts to get 

military aid for the Dutch in Indonesia, which Kenneth blocked. Peggy's big party, and the boy 

who drank the fish oil. Kenneth's encounter with the armed, 90,000-man Japanese army in rural 

Thailand, 1945. Calling on the governor of Battambang, Cambodia, when the gun Kenneth was 

carrying fell out of his pants at the governor's feet. 

HOUR #69 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 

Kenneth's trip to Thailand for the British-Thai negotiations, 1945. Visiting Angkor Wat. 

Buying books in Paris. What Kenneth carried on his trip. Flying over Rommel's battlefield. 

Visiting Burma. Opening the Legation in Bangkok. Acting as political advisor in the 

negotiations. Coming to know Jim Thompson of the OSS, and helping him start his silk 

business. Thompson's later supplying The King and I productions with costumes. The story of 

how Kenneth procured Pridi's economic plan for Thailand in the 1930's. The hundreds of books 

he now acquired for his library and the Library of Congress with Pridi's help. 

HOUR #70 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 

The night in Bangkok when Kenneth was poisoned. The 130 nightclubs in the city. Dancing 

with the future queen at the Saranarong Gardens nightclub. How she and King Phumipol met 

and married. On the British-Thai negotiations. )RXU PRQWK EUHDN LQ WDSLQJ Margaret tells how 

her writing began. Miss Wambaugh in high school. Margaret's year at the Medill School of 

Journalism at Northwestern University, and her successful articles. 

HOUR #71 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 

Margaret tells of Redbook's letter-writing contest, which she won. )LYH \HDU EUHDN LQ WDSLQJ 

:H UHVXPH LQ Kenneth tells the story of Ah Peh and the viper, from the Siam years. He 

continues his account of his 1945-6 trip to Southeast Asia. Admiral D'Argenlieu in Saigon, and 

Madame Galsworthy. The trip to Djakarta. Visiting the Weldebreton prison, when the guerrillas 

suddenly appeared. The Stadthius. Travelling with General Salan up to Hanoi. 

HOUR #72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 

Arriving in Hanoi; stranded at the airport. A famished Kenneth shares dinner with a Chinese 

soldier. Riding into Hanoi with the truckload of soldiers. Calling on Ho Chi Minh. His ten days 

of meetings with Ho. Calling on Emperor Bao Dai. Kenneth delivers the Haskell lecture at the 

University of Chicago, 1947. He tells of his furious year earning his Ph.D. in 1937-8. 

HOUR #73 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 

The Haskell lectures become Kenneth's third book. A story from Kenneth's childhood: he and 

Bradley go canoeing on the Cassawaga River; or rather, LQ it. Kenneth retells the great stout 

story and its sequel. The time in 1949 when Kenneth sent arms to Malaya on his own. The 

Secretary of State's reaction. Kenneth speaks of the three books he wrote. 

HOUR #74 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 

Kenneth speaks of his relationship with the CIA. Margaret tells the story of her Chinese 

pictures of Christian scenes. Her friend Lydia Na Ranong, who grew up in the Forbidden City of 

xv


China. The day Candy the bulldog tried to kill baby Kip. Margaret tells again of the day she 

first learned of Anna Leonowens. 

HOUR #75 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 

Margaret first wanted to write of Edna Cole. Her week with Miss Cole in Missouri. Kenneth's 

encounter with Dean Gerald Moore in Chicago, whose mother knew Anna. Miss Avis Fyshe, 

Anna's granddaughter, visits Mrs. Moore and meets the Landons. She subsequently presents 

them with Anna's letters and all her materials on Anna. Margaret finds copies of Anna's two 

books in Chicago. Kenneth's help on research when he went to Washington. Kenneth tells of 

the leper who came to beg in Trang. "Lo lo dalang!" Kenneth's 1950 trip to Southeast Asia for 

the cremation of King Ananda and the coronation of King Phumipol. 

HOUR #76 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 

Kenneth's pictures of the ceremonies for The National Geographic. Calling on Emperor Bao 

Dai again, in Saigon. Impersonating Phillip Jessup of the State Department in Hanoi, to great 

acclaim. Governor Tri's elaborate dinner. Visiting with King Sihanouk in Cambodia. Visiting 

with the King of Laos. Flying into the volcano in Java. The day the plane almost took off on 

empty tanks. Meeting General Sarit in Bangkok for the first time. 

HOUR #77 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 

Margaret tells of her trip home on furlough in 1931. She tells of writing Anna in Richmond, 

Indiana, from 1939 on, where Kenneth was teaching at Earlham. In 1941 he left for Washington. 

Kenneth again tells of selling the book at the East and West Association inaugural dinner. The 

day Margaret finished the book. Kip's birth twelve hours later, July 24, 1943. The Literary 

Guild makes Anna its selection, printing 200,000 copies. The reviews in the New York papers. 

HOUR #78 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 

The making of the first movie of Anna with Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne. Rodgers and 

Hammerstein create The King and I. Gertrude Lawrence's key role. The casting of Yul 

Brynner. The making of the second movie. Peggy and her suitors. Charles Schoenherr. 

William Donovan becomes ambassador to Thailand, 1953. 

HOUR #79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 

Kenneth travels with Donovan to Thailand. The beginning of the Mekong River development 

project. Kenneth acquires his exotic peacock feather hat. The Thai government awards him the 

Order of Exalted White Elephant. Bedell Smith's comment. The three statues of Buddha the 

government gave him in 1946. Kenneth's move from the State Department to the OCB. 

HOUR #80 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 

Kenneth continues on his move to the OCB, an arm of the NSC of the White House staff. The 

purpose of the OCB. Kenneth's avocado tree. His tiger skull ashtray, and the briefings of 

Richard Nixon in his office. Nixon proceeds to get a bigger tiger skull ashtray on his trip to 

Southeast Asia. Marshall Sarit in 1958 visits the Landon home, when all the animals appear. 

The sequel in Bangkok, 1960. Peggy shares her memories of Margaret's writing Anna. 

xvi


HOUR #81 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 

Kenneth tells of Mrs. Yip In Choy of Thailand and his two paintings by her. He tells of the 

Siamese wedding in Trang, 1929 or so, when all the high officials crawled past him. The lak 

muang post that stood at the heart of every old city in Thailand. Kenneth describes the Executive 

Office Building. Bill Godel, formerly of the CIA, and the 1956 trip he and Kenneth made to 

Southeast Asia with Admiral Eddie Layton. 

HOUR #82 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 

Admiral Eddie Layton and the cold fried eels. Saigon. Ed Lansdale and Kenneth call on Ngo 

Dinh Diem. Kenneth tells of the time in 1953 that he and Ambassador Pot Sarasin called on 

John Foster Dulles. Margaret tells the story of her second book Never Dies the Dream. Bertha 

Blount McFarland. 

HOUR #83 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534 

The story of Never Dies the Dream continued. Billie Burke's visit to 4711 Fulton St. 

Kenneth recalls his sermon on angels as a young pastor. The time in 1932 that the Landons 

acquired their Japanese teaset in Nagasaki. Kenneth's 1960 trip to Southeast Asia. His breakfast 

visit with Prime Minister Sarit. The coup in Laos. The report Kenneth made from Burma that 

went straight to President Eisenhower. Meeting Bill Godel in Singapore. Helping to set up the 

center for the study of Southeast Asia in Singapore. 

HOUR #84 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is elected. Kenneth briefs McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow on the 

crisis in Laos. The OCB is abolished. The anonymous memos Kenneth wrote for Rostow. 

Under a Presidential directive, Kenneth sets up and runs the Country Team Seminar (later 

renamed the National Interdepartmental Seminar) to train country teams in countering 

communist insurgency. The contretemps with General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, Jr. The campaign 

to remove Kenneth from the Seminar in 1963. Alex Johnson finally "promotes" him to the 

deanship of the Foreign Service Institute. Kenneth reorganizes the area studies program. Then 

he moves to American University. 

HOUR #85 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 

The move to American University in Washington. Kenneth sets up and runs the Center for 

South and Southeast Asian Studies, part of the School of International Service. He tells of 

meeting President Kennedy in 1962, with the first class of the Country Team Seminar. His 

retirement in 1974 from American University. His assessment of the Kennedy administration. 

The time early 1960's the White House called him over to advise them on the Buddhist monks 

who were immolating themselves in Vietnam. Kenneth's call on Queen Rumphai Barni in 

Thailand, 1950. He describes the Executive Office Building. 

HOUR #86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554 

The assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Kennedy administration's involvement. Kenneth 

tells of the American Presidents he met and his assessment of them. His assessment of Thailand 

today, 1989. How Kenneth joined the Cosmos Club. Serving on the admissions committee. 

President Kennedy's application for membership. Carl Rowan is blackballed. Margaret's 

membership in The Literary Society in Washington. 

xvii


HOUR #87 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561 

The people of accomplishment the Landons knew in The Literary Society. Kenneth's brief 

career as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post. A summing up of his and 

Margaret's careers. Kenneth tells of the golf game he set up between the Prime Minister of 

Thailand and President Eisenhower. Kenneth's 1966 trip to Southeast Asia for the Advanced 

Research Project Agency of the Pentagon. 

HOUR #88 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 

Kenneth continues on his 1966 trip. The time in 1960 when he, Norm, and Eddie Hanna went 

"swimming" in the kiddie pool in Kabul in the middle of the night. More on Kenneth's brief 

career writing short stories. More on the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies that he 

established and ran. The student unrest at the University because of the Vietnam War. The 

Pentagon Papers scandal of 1971, and Kenneth's telegrams concerning Ho Chi Minh. The 

interview with CBS News. "Kenneth P. Landon Day" in Columbus, Georgia. Kenneth's long 

meeting with Governor Jimmy Carter. 

HOUR #89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 

How Kenneth started making bread. In his retirement, he learns to cook. Takes over the 

running of the house. The story of Margaret's statue of the Madonna and child, and Kenneth's 

having a marble copy made. Margaret's suit against Twentieth Century Fox and CBS in 1972. 

The new production of The King and I with Yul Brynner in 1978. Margaret and Kenneth 

celebrate their fiftieth anniversary in 1976. 

ADDENDUM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 

(),567 7$3( Hour #1 In June and July, 1962, Kenneth records an ongoing journal 

concerning the first session of the Country Team Seminar. Murry Marder of the Washington 

Post writes an article about it. (p583) 

Hour #2 Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Walt Rostow visit the Seminar. General 

Maxwell Taylor also visits. (p587) 

Hour #3 The Seminar staff and course members call on President John F. Kennedy at the 

White House. Edward R. Murrow spends an afternoon at the Seminar. (p592) 

Hour #4 The triumphant conclusion of the first session, and the party at the State 

Department, overlooking the city of Washington, which Secretary of State Dean Rusk attended. 

(6(&21' 7$3( In February and March, 1963, Kenneth records a post mortem, now that he 

has left the Country Team Seminar. The foundations of the Seminar in 1962, and the 

bureaucratic infighting that led in the end to the basic administrative and thematic restructuring 

of the Seminar and the course. (p600) 

Hour #5 Kenneth is removed and given a new and better job in the Foreign Service Institute. 

The accolades he received. Abe Moses' revelation. Dean Rusk's letter. (p609) 

xviii

LANDON CHRONICLES INDEX 

INDEX 

)LUVW QXPEHU UHIHUV WR WKH KRXU 

VHFRQG WR WKH LQGH[ ZLWKLQ WKH KRXU 7KXV 

³ ´ UHIHUV WR +RXU LQGH[ 

"The Alcoholic Blues" Kenneth sings 3-13, 

20-5 

"And My Hands in My Pockets" Kenneth 

sings with gusto 75-5 

"I Ripped My Pants on a Rusty Nail" 

Kenneth sings with more gusto 47- 

6 

"My Little Bimbo" Kenneth's rendition 3- 

13, 22-2 

"Oh I'm Waiting for a Check From Home" 

Another song from youth 20-5 

"Oh, it's hard to see a fly upon the 

mountain" Kenneth sings Mr. 

Sheehan's song 53-6 

"Rain or Shine, I'll Pay My Fine" A song 

from the railroad 23-6 

"Romeo and Juliet" Kenneth's dramatic 

rendition of the song, 29-3 

"When Father Hung the Paper on the Wall" 

Kenneth sings some more! 20-4 

2400 Harrison St. Margaret's childhood 

home in Evanston, Illinois 14-9 

2910 Brandywine St., NW in D.C. Landon 

home from 1942-1944 66-2, 77-3 

301 E. Seminary Avenue The home of 

Margaret's mother in her later years 

75-2 

4711 Fulton St., NW in D.C. Landon home 

from 1944-1991 66-2, 68-4,6, 80-5 

610 Irving Street Mortenson home in 

Wheaton, Illinois 20-8 

710 Walnut Street Kenneth's childhood 

home 2-1,2 

Abasement A true example of the gesture 

of total, feudal abasement to a lord 

54-5 

Abby (SP?), Glen Consul General in Burma 

in 1945 69-4 

Adelle Estburg Mortenson See "Mother, 

xix 

Margaret's" 

Advanced Research Project Agency of the 

Pentagon 80-3, 87-7, 88-1 

Aeolians Margaret's Wheaton College 

literary society 19-6, 20-5 

Ah Chuan Margaret and Kenneth's first 

cook 38-6,7, 39-1, 40-1, 41-1; the 

dinner he gave in honor of his new 

son 41-5; his dismissal 41-6 

Ah Sim Mali Tan, Landons' servant in 

Trang 41-5, 47-6, 50-3,4, 51-1 

Ah Peh and the viper 71-3 

Ah Ti Chinese evangelist who worked with 

Kenneth 46-2 

Aitken, Mrs. Sheena at the Trang school 

61-3,4 

“Alcoholic Blues, The” Kenneth's rendition 

of the song 3-13 

Allis, Professor of Princeton Seminary 23- 

2 

American Council of Learned Societies 63- 

3,4, 64-3; the pamphlet Kenneth 

wrote for them 66-2 

American University 84-6, 85-1,2, 88-4,5 

Ananda, King See "King Ananda" 

“And Deliver Us From Authors” Margaret's 

article 70-7 

Angkor Wat Kenneth's 1945 visit to 69-1 

Anna and the King of Siam Margaret tells how 

she first learned of Anna and read 

her books in Nakhon Si Thammarat 

56-8, 57-1, 74-4; the process of its 

writing and publishing 63-4, 75- 

2,3,4, 77-3,4,5,6,7; Kenneth's help in 

researching materials for 64-1, 66-5, 

75-4; Peggy's memories of 

Margaret's writing 80-5; the East- 

West Association dinner at which 

Kenneth sold the book 25-5, 65-4, 

77-4; the day Margaret finished the 

book 66-5, 68-6; the initial, serial 

publication in Asia and the 

Americas 77-6; the choosing of the 

title, the selection by the Literary 

Guild, and the day of publication 

77-6; reviews of the book 77-7; the


making of the first movie 78-1; the 

making of The King and I and the 

second movie 78-2,3; the member of 

the royal family who liked it 87-2; 

the 1972 television series 89-4; 

Margaret's suit against Twentieth 

Century Fox and CBS, 1972ff 89-4; 

the revival of the musical on 

Broadway in 1978 89-5 

Anna Leonowens See "Leonowens, Anna" 

Annenus Duabus Mortenson See "Father, 

Margaret's" 

Anniversary Margaret and Kenneth's 50th 

89-5 

Anokul Safri School in Trang 45-1, 55-3, 

61-2,3; Margaret assumes 

responsibility for 53-3, 54-6, 61-4; 

Margaret's administration of 62, 63- 

1,2; Kru Pakai and her letters 62 

Ants in Thailand 47-1; the ants in the 

Christmas tree 58-3; the army ants 

that went through the house in Trang 

58-4 

Appendicitis Kenneth's case of, 59-8; Bill's 

case of 59-8 

Area studies 84-5,6, 85-1,2,3,4; the 

program Kenneth set up at American 

University 88-4; at the University of 

North Carolina at Raleigh 88-7 

Arnold and Porter Lawfirm in D.C. 89-4 

ARPA See "Advanced Research Project 

Agency" 

Asia and the Americas 77-4; the initial 

publishing of Anna and the King of 

Siam in serial form 77-6 

ATV Cleanco "Adds To Varnish" Brad 

Landon's furniture polish business 

2-2,11; 6-7; 73-3 

Atwood, William and Margaret Landon 

friends in the Literary Society 51-3, 

67-5 

Aung San (SP?) Burmese leader in 1945 

69-4 

Avis Fyshe See "Fyshe, Avis" 

Avocado tree Kenneth's in the State 

Department and the OCB 80-2, 81-5 

xx 

Aylward, Gladys Missionary in China 55- 

4 

Babe Jenkins Kenneth's childhood friend 

2-4; the day Kenny played ball in 

Babe's dress 75-5 

Bacon, Ruth 84-5 

Baggage Margaret's amazing baggage, and 

Kenneth's amazement at it 29-3, 30- 

2, 31-1 

Bali Kenneth's 1950 visit to 76-6 

Ballantyne Head of Far East section of State 

Department in WWII 67-3 

Ban Na Where Kenneth started the first of 

five (or six?) Chinese schools and 

churches 60-1 

Bananas in Thailand 50-7 

Bangkok Margaret and Kenneth's arrival at 

and year in 36, 3,4,6,7; 37, 38, 

39,40,41; the Presbyterian mission 

there 61-2; Kenneth's 1945 time in 

for the British-Thai negotiations 68- 

7, 69-3,4,5,6,7, 70-1,2,3, 79-6; 

Kenneth's 1950 visit to for King 

Ananda's cremation and King 

Phumipol's coronation 75-6, 76-1; 

Kenneth's 1953 visit to with William 

Donovan 79-1,2,3; Kenneth's 1956 

visit to with Admiral Eddie Layton 

82-3; Kenneth's 1960 visit to 83-4; 

Kenneth's 1966 visit to for ARPA 

87-7, 88-1 

Bangkok House Furnishing Company, The 

Where the Landons had their 

furniture made 40-4 

Bao Dai, Emperor See "Emperor Bao Dai" 

Baptism The schism in the Chinese church 

over baptism 60-2 

Barnhouse, Donald Gray 25-4 

Baxter, James Phinney Head of the OCI 

and later deputy head of the OSS 

64-4 

Batavia See "Djakarta" 

Batson, Benny Kenneth's roommate at 

Cincinnati University 6-11, 18-7 

Battambang Kenneth's 1945 visit to 68-7 

Baumer (SP?), Edwin Editor of Redbook


in 1939 71-1 

Beam, Jake DCM to Merle Cochrane, 1950 

76-6 

Bear Lake, Wisconsin Margaret's year 

teaching high school in, chaperoning 

the freshmen, coaching basketball 

22-11, 24-7, 26-1,2,3,5,6,7, 25-7,8,9, 

27-13, 28-1,4, 29-1 

Bedell Smith See "Smith, General" 

Beirut Kenneth's visit to in 1931 60-5, 61- 

1 

Bella (SP?), Walter 68-7 

Bellamy, May Kenneth's secretary 68-1 

Beltonians Kenneth's Wheaton College 

literary society 19-6, 20-4,5 

Benda, Harry 83-6 

Bergerson, Dorthea, Margaret's paternal 

grandmother from Norway 9-2; her 

experience in the great Chicago fire 

of 1871 9-2 

Betty Margaret's sister See "Elizabeth 

Julia Mortenson (Amsler)" 

BEW See "Board of Economic Warfare" 

Bidialongkorn (SP?), Prince 37-2, 39-5 

Big Chief, The Walter Wright Joe and 

Agnes Wright's father 27-11, 31-2,3 

Bike gang The youth group Kenneth 

formed and rode through the jungles 

with 58-6,7; the member who 

became a judo champion 58-7 

Bill Landon (William Bradley Landon) His 

birth 44-2,3; see also 45-6, 49-2,7,8, 

52-2,5, 53-2,6, 56-7,8, 57-2,3, 75-6, 

78-1, 80-5; how he learned to take 

his medicine 59-8 

Birth Kenneth's birth 1-5; Margaret's birth 

11-3,8, 13-9; the meaning of her 

name 11-8; her birth certificate 11- 

9, 34-4 

Bishop, Max 80-1, 82-3 

Blanchard, Charles, President of Wheaton 

College; Kenneth's meeting 6-12; 

19-1, 17-1 

Blount, Bertha see "McFarland, Bertha 

Blount" 

Board of Economic Warfare Kenneth's 

xxi 

work in during WWII 64-2,6, 65- 

3,7,8; the dykes of North Vietnam, 

and the bombing of in WWII 66-3 

Bond, Betty 88-7 

Books For Margaret's books, see Anna and 

the King of Siam and Never Dies the 

Dream; for Kenneth's books, see Siam 

in Transition The Chinese in Thailand 

and Southeast Asia: Crossroad of 

Religions; see also "Writing, 

Margaret's" and "Writing, Kenneth's" 

Boon Pha Friend of the Landons in Nakhon 

Si Thammarat 51-5, 60-4 

Borobudur, Indonesia 76-6 

Bosworth D.B., Kenneth's grandfather 1-2 

Bovee, Dan and Doris Hume Extended 

visitors to the Landons in Trang 52- 

4,5, 53-1,2,3, 54-2, 55-4,5, 56-4 

Bowles, Professor of Wheaton College, 

who built Adelle Mortenson's house 

and defective roof 24-6, 26-2,4, 32- 

4 

Boxing Kenneth's boxing as a young man 

4-4 

Boy Scouts Kenneth's brief career in 3-7 

Boyd, William and Mrs. Friends of 

Margaret's father who visited 

Thailand 56-5 

Brad Landon See "Father, Kenneth's" 

Bradley Landon See "Brother, Kenneth's" 

Bradley, Dr. Dan Beach Early missionary 

to Thailand 43-3, 81-3; his printing 

press 64-1 

Bradley, Irene 45-2 

Bread Kenneth's making of 88-7, 89-1,2 

British in Southeast Asia 41-2,3, 44-1,3, 45- 

2, 52-1, 65-1, 68-2,7, 69-5, 70-3; 

British hill stations 52-2 

British-Thai negotiations after WWII 68- 

2,7, 69-5, 70-3, 79-6 

Brother Kenneth's brother Bradley 

(William Bradley Landon, Jr.) 2-1, 

7-9, 73-2; physical appearance 6-4; 

his sudden death from appendicitis 

6-10 

“Brothers' Quarrel” Short story Kenneth


published in the Saturday Evening 

Post 87-3 

Brower, Mrs. Campbell of Kenneth's 

church in Richmond, Indiana 71-2 

Brown, Dr. Arthur Judson of the 

Presbyterian mission board 33- 

2,3,6, 49-6 

Brown, Elsie Margaret's childhood friend 

13-1 

Bruce, Mrs. of the Columbus, New Jersey 

church 30-8 

Brynner, Yul in The King and I 78-3, 89-5 

Buck, Pearl and her East and West 

Association 25-5, 77-4, 82-5 

Buddhas The three buddhas "given" to 

Kenneth by the Thai government 

79-6 

Buffalo in Thailand 47-3, 57-6, 58-1 

Bulkley, Dr. and Mrs. L.C. (Con and Edna) 

Missionaries in Trang 46-5,6, 47-2, 

49-1, 50-3,4 54-6, 55-1, 61-3,4, 71- 

3; their personal histories 61-5; the 

doctor operates and gives the 

wounded hunter Livingstone's 

shoulder 55-1; the baby elephant he 

sent off with Edna to America 55-2 

Bundy, McGeorge of President Kennedy's 

White House staff 80-2, 83-7, 84- 

1,2 

Bunker, Ellsworth Ambassador to Vietnam 

86-1 

Burke, Billie Actress with an interest in 

Never Dies the Dream 83-1 

Burleigh (SP?), Adolph Assistant Secretary 

in the State Department 67-4; the 

reason for his nickname "Two 

Bathtub" 68-2 

Burma Kenneth's visit to, 1945 69-4 

Burmese Gospel chant Margaret and 

Kenneth perform it 58-2 

Burns, Arthur of the Federal Reserve Board 

89-1 

Buswell, Dr. James Oliver President of 

Wheaton College 28-3, 50-2 

Butterworth, W. Walton Assistant Secretary 

of State, 1950 76-5 

xxii 

Byrd, Thomas British Consul General in 

Chiang Mai in 1941 79-6; British 

negotiator in Bangkok in 1945 69-5 

Cairo, Egypt Kenneth's visit in 1931 60-5 

Cambridge University Press which 

published Kenneth's three books 73- 

1 

Cambridge City, Indiana Kenneth's small 

church there 71-2 

Camp Margaret's summer camp as a child 

16-10, 17-2,4 

Campbell, Joseph 85-3, 88-5 

Candy The Landons' bulldog; the day she 

tried to kill baby Kip 65-5, 74-3 

Car Kenneth's first car 25-2; his second 

car 31-6,8; Judge Prather's Lincoln; 

Brad's first car 4-11 

Carol Elizabeth Landon (Pearson) Her 

birth in 1933 59-7, 61-4; 67-1, 68- 

1,3, 78-4 

Carter, Jimmy Kenneth's long meeting 

with, when he was governor of 

Georgia 88-7 

Cat The Landon's cat in Siam 43-4, 49-3 

Cave in the hollow island off the Thai 

coast, used by the OSS 54-3, 66-4 

CBS Margaret's suit against 89-4 

CBS News Interview with Kenneth in 1971 

72-2, 88-6 

“Celluloid Heroes Capture Siam” see 

“Hollywood Invades Siam” 

Center for South and Southeast Asian 

Studies at American University 

which Kenneth created and 

administered 85-1, 88-4 

Chair Kenneth's beloved, purloined 

executive office chair 67-5 

Charlotte Johns whom Kenneth dated in 

Meadville 8-7 

Chiang Kai Shek 35-8 

Chiang Mai 79-6, the Presbyterian mission 

there 61-2 

Chicago, University of Kenneth's studies at 

63-2,3; Kenneth's year studying for 

his Ph.D. 72-6; Haskell lectures 66- 

2, 68-1, 72-6


Children Margaret and Kenneth's, see 

"Peggy," "Bill," "Carol," "Kip" 

China Civil war of 1927, 35-8 

Chinese in Thailand 33-4, 39-2, 42-7, 43- 

3, 45-1, 48-5, 59-2, 64-6; Kenneth's 

special relationship with 59-8, 60- 

1,2,4 

Chinese in Thailand, The Kenneth's book 

in 1941 60-1; how the Japanese 

bought it up and used it in the war; 

its inclusion in books by two other 

scholars 73-5 

Chinese army in Vietnam in 1946 71-4,72- 

1,2,4 

Chinese language study Kenneth's, 39-2, 

47-6, 60-1; Kenneth's speaking in the 

Swatow dialect 64-5 

Chinese paintings How the Landons got 

their paintings of Bible scenes by 

Chinese artists 74-2 

Chinese philosophy Kenneth's teaching of 

63-3, 64-4,6, 65-6, 66-1 

Chong Vacation spot in southern Thailand 

48-2,4,5,6, 49-1, 58-6 

Christiansen, Miss Johanna Margaret's 

nurse and friend in Thailand 37-5,6, 

38-1,3, 44-2,5, 46-5, 52-2, 61-5, 62-1 

Christmas Margaret's great love of 14-8, 

32-6,8; the time as a girl she dragged 

home the used Christmas tree 14-8 

Christmas in Thailand 58-3; the ants in the 

Christmas tree 58-3 

Chulalongkorn, King 48-1 

Chumphon 59-3 

Chungking project 65-6 

Church Kenneth's first two churches in 

New Jersey 21-2; his church in 

Indiana 71-2; the five (or six?) 

Chinese churches Kenneth started in 

Thailand 60-1,2,4 

CIA 78-5, 80-1, 81-6, 88-5; the CIA types 

who bragged about possible 

assassination to Kenneth; his 

relations with the OSS and CIA 74- 

1; concerning its role in 

assassinations 86-1 

xxiii 

Cigars Kenneth's love of cigars as a boy 

4-3 

Cincinnati University Kenneth's year at 6- 

11, 18-6,7,8; Taft lectures 64-6, 65- 

6, 66-1 

Clara Mortensons' Swedish maid 16-8 

Clawson, Dr., at Kenneth's birth 1-5 

Clothes Kenneth buys clothes for himself 

as a boy 4-3, 4-19; he buys clothes 

for his mother 4-7 

Cobey, Winnie 89-2 

Cochrane, Merle Ambassador to Indonesia 

in 1950 76-4,5,6 

Cole, Edna 36-5, 39-3, 42-3, 43-3, 45-1, 

61-3; the person Margaret wanted to 

write her first book on; her personal 

history; Margaret's week with, and 

her many letters 75-1,2 

Coleman, Elliott Organist at Landons' 

wedding; later of Johns Hopkins 

University 29-5 

Colic Kenneth's problem with milk; colic as 

a baby 1-6 

College Church, Wheaton, Illinois in which 

the Landons were married 18-2, 26- 

3, 28-3, 50-2 

Columbus, Georgia and "Kenneth P. 

Landon Day" 88-7 

Columbus, New Jersey Kenneth's first 

church 23-9,10,11, 24-1,4, 27- 

6,7,8,12, 28-3, 29-2, 30-6, 31-1, 32- 

5,7; his departure 34-4,6 

Communism 60-1, 68-1; see "Ho Chi 

Minh"; see "Sukarno"; see "National 

Interdepartmental Seminar" 

Constipation Brad Landon's fascination 

with the subject 6-6; his anticonstipation 

machine 6-10 

Cooking Kenneth's in his retirement 89-2 

Coronation of King Phumipol, 1950 75-6, 

76-1 

Cosmos Club 67-5; how Kenneth joined 

86-4; his years on the admissions 

committee 86-5 

Coulter, Harry 22-12 

Country women in Thailand, Margaret's


relationship with and respect for 48- 

5 

Country Team Seminar 84-3,4,5, 85-3,4, 

Addendum Hours 1 thru 5 

Cremation in Thailand 42-1 

Crocodile The croc that almost ate Kenneth 

58-6 

Curtis Publishing Company For which 

Margaret's father worked 14-7,9 

D'Argenlieu, Admiral French general in 

Vietnam 71-4 

Dai Li Chinese head of secret service in 

WWII 66-3, 80-3 

Daisy Margaret's beloved doll as a child 

14-9 

Damascus Kenneth's 1931 visit to; the saga 

of the two rugs he bought 61-1 

Damrong, Prince See "Prince Damrong" 

Danish china How the Landons bought 

theirs 37-4 

Danish Legation in Bangkok 37-4 

Darling, Ding at Princeton Seminary 22- 

12 

Dead Sea Kenneth "swims" in 60-5 

Dean Moore See "Moore, Dean Gerald G." 

Dengue fever Kenneth's bout of 42-5; 

Margaret's bout of 52-2 

Dennis, William Cullen President of 

Earlham College 63-3, 86-4 

Dentist Kenneth's first experience with 

11-6; the Japanese dentist in 

Thailand 65-1 

Desserts Margaret's love of 12-6,13-1 

Dhani, Prince See "Prince Dhani" 

Djakarta, Indonesia Kenneth's 1946 visit to 

71-5; his 1950 visit to 76-4,5 

Dobkin, James Lawyer for Margaret in her 

suit against Fox and CBS 89-4 

Dog Kenneth's childhood dog, Jimmy 5- 

2,13,15; see "Suzi"; see "Candy" 

Dolls Margaret's doll Daisy 14-9; 

Katherine 14-9 

Donovan, Col. William Head of the OCI 

and then the OSS 63-5,6; Kenneth's 

relationship with 64-1,2, 66-5; how 

he came to set up the OCI 64-3,4; 

xxiv 

when he became ambassador to 

Thailand 77-1, 78-5, 79-1,2,3 

Doubleday Company that published Never 

Dies the Dream 83-1 

Dousman, Wisconsin 89-5 

Dow, Elsie Wheaton College English 

professor 21-5, 26-1 

Drumwright, Assistant Secretary in the State 

Department, 1949 73-4; Consul 

General in Hong Kong 82-1 

Dulles, Allen Head of the CIA 78-5 

Dulles, John Foster Secretary of State in the 

Eisenhower administration 78-5, 79- 

7, 80-1, 82-4 

Dunlap, E.P. Missionary in Trang before 

the Landons 43-4, 46-2,5, 47-2, 48- 

1,7, 49-7; his book, "Those That Has 

Been Talked" 54-5 

Durian "the king of fruits" 49-8, 56-1 

Dutch East Indies See "Indonesia" 

Dykes Ho Chi Minh on the bombing of the 

Hanoi-Haiphong dykes in WWII 66- 

3, 72-5 

Dyrness, Enoch Registrar at Wheaton 

College 21-5, 26-4 

Eakin, John Anderson Missionary in 

Thailand 33-4, 36-4, 37-1 

Eakin, Paul Missionary in Thailand 36-5, 

39-2, 40-3, 61-2, 62-5,6, 70-7 

Eakin, Ruth who built up the 

Anokuhnsatree School in Trang 46- 

5,6, 54-6, 61-2,3 

Earlham College Kenneth's time at 63- 

3,4,5, 74-3 

East and West Association The inaugural 

dinner at which Kenneth sold Anna 

25-5, 65-4, 77-4 

Ed Landon Kenneth's uncle 5-2,3,6,11, 23- 

7,8, 88-3 

Education in Thailand 42-2,3, 45-1, 61-3; 

see "Cole, Edna"; See "Wang Lang 

school" and "Wattana Wittiah 

Academy"; see "Anokuhnsatree 

School"; the schools Kenneth got 

started with the Chinese of the south 

60-1


Eels Admiral Layton and the cold, fried 

eels 81-6, 82-1 

Eisenhower, President Dwight D. 86-1,2, 

87-6 

Elephants When Margaret and Kenneth 

almost rode into one 59-4; the 

elephant that hosed down Kenneth's 

religious tracts 57-5; the elephant 

that ate Kenneth's cookies 58-5; 

Kenneth briefs the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff on elephants 64-2, 66-3; 

Kenneth's short stories on elephants 

88-3, 87-3 

Elizabeth Julia Mortenson (Amsler) 

Margaret's sister 12-5, 31-4,6,8, 32- 

6,8, 78-4; her difficult birth 15-2; 

her temperament 15-4; childhood 

health problems 15-5; the day she 

threw sand into the flour bin 12-16 

Elsie Brown, Margaret's childhood friend 

13-1 

Emperor Bao Dai Kenneth's visit with in 

Hanoi, 1946, and in Saigon, 1950 

72-3, 76-1 

Engagement When Kenneth and Margaret 

became engaged; she never actually 

said yes! 22-16, 23-1, 58-1,2 

English Governess at the Siamese Court, 

The Anna Leonowens' first book 

74-4, 75-3 

EOB See "Executive Office Building" 

Epistles Kenneth's pastoral letters to his 

parish 55-7, 56-5,7,8 

Erdman, Charles of Princeton Seminary 

22-15 

Essaie, Tony 89-4 

Estburg Michael Simanson, Margaret's 

maternal grandfather 9-5 

Evangeline Renata Mortenson (Welsh) 

Margaret's sister 12-3,4; Margaret's 

close relationship with 12-4; the day 

she had to spit 12-15; eating mud 

pies 14-10; see also 31-4,5,8, 32- 

1,8, 33-1,8, 34-1, 51-4,6, 52-6, 53-1; 

her charm 15-6; her compassion 15- 

7; her gift for style and art 15-7; her 

xxv 

death 51-6, 52-1 

Evangelism Kenneth's work in 27- 

6,7,8,12, 42-6,7, 43-1,2,3,4, 44- 

1,2,4, 45-3,5, 46-2,3,4, 47-6, 48-2, 

49-1,5,7, 50-1,5, 51-1,6, 52-1,2, 53- 

4, 54-5, 55-7, 56-1,3,5, 57-5, 59-3,5, 

60-1,2,3, 63-1, 70-6; the great 

distribution of Gospel booklets in 

southern Thailand 59-5; he sums up 

his evangelistic work 60-4 

Evanston, Illinois Where Margaret grew up 

13-6,7,10,12,13; 22-5,6; the 

Lincolnwood grade school Margaret 

attended 15-1; the Music Festival 

15-1 

Evanston Township High School 16-7; 

Margaret's studies 16-9 

Executive Office Building Kenneth's 

description of ; Rockefeller's office 

and Kenneth's office 67-5, 81-5, 85- 

5 

Expectation of Siam, The by Dr. Arthur J. 

Brown of the Presbyterian mission 

board 49-6 

Fairbank, John King of Harvard 63-4 

Father Kenneth's father Brad (William 

Bradley Landon) His origins 5-5; 

his schooling 5-7; first job, in D.C. 

5-7; how he got his job with the Erie 

Railroad 5-7; meeting Mae 1-4; 

Bright's disease 1-4; his Puritan 

background 1-12; his opposition to 

Demon Rum 2-13, 73-3; his Erie 

Railroad labratory 1-13; his work 

and work habits 5-2,12,16, 6-1, 84- 

4; his ATV business 2-2,11, 6-7; 

relations with women 6-2; Bible 

teaching 6-3; physical appearance 6- 

3; relations with his family 6-9; his 

way of taking his sons' money 4-18; 

fascination with constipation 6-6,10; 

making pancakes 7-8; his fear of 

Margaret 7-2; his temperament 5- 

2,3; his difficult visits with 

Kenneth's family 7-4; his death 7-4 

Father Margaret's father Annenus Duabus


Mortenson 9-4; his work at the 

Curtis Publishing Company 25-5; 

his temperament, his stiff Danish 

quality 15-10, 51-5, 58-1; his love 

of Margaret 15-10; his first stroke 

18-5; his illness 19-3, 21-1, 22-5,7, 

25-5,6; his last summer and his death 

22-11, 24-5, 25-6 

Faulkner, Waldron and Elizabeth Friends of 

the Landons in the Literary Society 

87-1 

FE Far East section of State in WWII 67- 

3,4 

Feng, Mr. Plantatation owner near Nakhon 

Si Thammarat 44-1 

Feudalism in Siam 37-7, 48-5, 51-3; how it 

lives on to this day in the formation 

of governments 54-5; the gesture of 

total abasement 54-5 

Fierst, Herb The Landons' lawyer 89-4,5 

Fiftieth anniversary Margaret and Kenneth's 

89-5 

Fig newtons How Kenneth came to "love" 

'em as a boy 2-14 

Fighting Kenneth learns to fight as a boy 

2-1,5,6,7; Kenneth and the boys of 

Meadville fight with beebee guns 

and .22 shorts 4-9 

Flexible Flier Kenneth's beloved sled, and 

his adventures with it 1-8 

Florida Florida Mitchell, the Mortensons' 

maid when Margaret was a girl 13- 

11, 22-5; when Florida was 

collecting money for her church and 

danced in the street 13-11, 16-8, 22- 

5 

Flu The great epidemic of 1918 20-2 

Flute Kenneth's childhood flute and his 

Haynes flute 3-11 

Football How Margaret came to love it as a 

child 12-17 

Foote, "Uncle Billy" Consul General in 

Djakarta, 1945 71-5 

“For the Sake of Love” Short story Kenneth 

published in the Saturday Evening 

Post 87-3 

xxvi 

Foreign Service Institute When Kenneth 

moved to, 1962 84-2; when he 

became Dean of Area Studies 84- 

5,6, 85-4 

Forest The primeval forest Margaret saw in 

Michigan 26-6 

Foster, Rockwood 81-5 

Free Thai movement 65-6, 66-3, 68-2,3, 74- 

2, 80-3 

French language Kenneth's "mastery" of 

71-4, 76-3 

FSI See "Foreign Service Institute" 

Fuller, Mr. and Mrs. Graham Missionaries 

in Thailand 33-4, 36-7, 39-2, 41- 

3,4; his jealousy of Kenneth's 

success with the Chinese in Thailand 

60-3 

Fuller, Muriel Margaret's friend from 

Wheaton College on 17-2,4, 33-2, 

57-2, 71-1, 77-3,7 

Fuller, Paul and Margaret Missionaries in 

Thailand 37-3, 38-7, 40-5 

Fundamentalism and modernism in the 

1920's 23-10-12, 36-4, 54-6, 56-3 

Furniture The furniture the Landons had 

made for them in Bangkok 40-4, 42- 

2 

Fyshe, Anna Concert pianist and 

descendant of Anna Leonowens 87- 

3 

Fyshe, Avis Granddaughter of Anna 

Leonowens 75-2,3 

Galbraith, Kenneth 86-5 

Gale, Alex who dated Margaret at Wheaton 

College 18-1, 25-5; Mortenson 

family visit to his home 19-8 

Gale, Bill who dated Margaret at Wheaton 

College 18-3 

Galsworthy, Madame Mistress of General 

D'Argenlieu 71-4 

Galt, Miss Missionary in Thailand 44-3 

Games The games Margaret and Kenneth 

played as children 7-7, 13-5 

Gangster The Chumphon gangster who 

befriended Kenneth 59-3, 70-6 

Gardening Margaret's love of 46-6, 47-1,


50-1, 51-4, 52-2, 57-3 

Gates at the royal palace, with their great 

posts and high sills 81-4 

General Lo Han Chinese general in 

Vietnam in 1946 72-4 

German Kenneth's study of in Trang 56-6 

Gertrude Lawrence See "Lawrence, 

Gertrude" 

Gibbons Kenneth's encounter with at Chong 

58-6 

Gibson, Walter 19th century American in 

Indonesia 71-5 

Girls Kenneth's dating as a boy 4-10 

Giving Margaret's love of giving gifts 14-3 

Godel, Bill of the CIA and the OCB 81-5, 

82-1,3, 83-6 

Golden Mountain, The in Bangkok 39-4 

Golf Kenneth's playing 52-3, 87-4 

Government Kenneth's career in See 

"Office of Co-ordinator of 

Information," "Executive Office 

Building," "Board of Economic 

Warfare," "State Department," 

"Operations Co-ordinating Board," 

"Foreign Service Institute," 

"National Interdepartmental 

Seminar"; his assessment of his 

government career 87-5 

Grace Van Hough 18-4 

Grandfather Kenneth's grandfather D.B. 

Bosworth 1-2 

Grandfather Margaret's maternal 

grandfather Michael Simanson 

Estburg 9-5, 12-7,8 

Grandfather Margaret's paternal 

grandfather Laurids Mortenson 9- 

1,3,4; his harshness 10-4; his late 

conversion 10-4 

Grandmother Kenneth's maternal 

grandmother Agnes Robinson 

Fletcher; her last illness 25-3 

Grandmother Margaret's paternal 

grandmother Dorthea Bergerson 9-2 

Grandmother Margaret's maternal 

grandmother Julie Marie Larsen 9-5 

Grange, Red 20-6, 22-4 

xxvii 

Graves, Mortimer Secretary of the 

American Council of Learned 

Societies 63-4, 64-1,3 

Gray, Gordon of Eisenhower's staff 83-5 

Greek Smith Wheaton College registrar 19- 

3 

Green Lake, Wisconsin 15-8 

Green, Bernie of Princeton Seminary 23- 

13, 24-1 

Grew, Joseph 67-4 

Griffith, Ernest of the Library of Congress 

and American University 63-5, 64- 

1,3, 84-6, 85-1 

Grundahl (SP?), Ted in Bangkok 69-4 

Gull Lake Bible conferences 3-6, 6-12, 19- 

1, 30-2,3 

Gull Lake, Michigan when Kenneth was 

called to Washington 63-5 

Hadley, Lindsay of the Presbyterian 

mission board 32-7 

Hague, The Kenneth's week in 87-7 

Hahn, Mr. Lawyer in the Aimee Semple 

McPherson case 35-4, 36-1 

Hak, Charles Pastor of church in Trang 

51-4, 56-6, 57-1 

Hall, Monroe Rody Hall of the State 

Department 67-5 

Hall, Dad Evangelist 27-6 

Hanna, Norman 74-2, 87-7; Norm and 

Betty 81-2; Norm and Eddie (his 

first wife) 88-2 

Hanoi 71-4; Kenneth's visit to in 1946 71- 

6,7, 72-1,2,3,4,5; his1950 visit to 

76-2; the bombing of the dykes in 

WWII 66-3 

Harriman, Averell 84-1 

Harrison, Rex in the first Anna and the King 

of Siam movie 78-1 

Haskell lectures in comparative religion at 

Chicago University in 1947, which 

became Southeast Asia: Crossroad of 

Religions 66-2, 68-1, 72-6 

Hats When Kenneth got his peacock hat 

79-3,4; when Kenneth got his 

Afghan hat in Kabul 88-2 

Hayden (SP?), Everett 84-3


Haydon, A. Eustace Kenneth's mentor at 

Chicago University 63-3, 66-2, 72- 

6, 88-6 

Heintzman, Mrs., medium in whose house 

Kenneth lived at Cincinnati 

University 6-11, 18-7; the seance 

the boys rigged 6-11, 18-7 

Helburn, Teresa of the Literary Guild who 

tried to get a play written based on 

Anna 77-7, 78-1,2 

Hellebranth, Berthe de Sculptress who 

gave Margaret her work of the 

Madonna and child 89-3 

Henry Landon Kenneth's uncle; his origins 

5-14; Kenneth's visit to as a boy 3- 

14, 4-1; his temperament 5-4; the 

railroad he built in North Carolina 

5-9,14 

Hibbs, Ben Editor at the Saturday Evening 

Post 88-3 

High School Kenneth's grades in 18-6 

Ho Chi Minh 35-8, 46-3, 68-1; Kenneth's 

meetings with in 1946 72-1,2,3,4,5 

Hoffert, Mary Passenger on the ship across 

the Pacific, 35-3,6 

Holidays the Siamese love of holidays 58- 

3 

“Hollywood Invades Siam” Margaret's first 

professional sale 70-6 

Holy Land Kenneth's trip to in 1931 60-5 

Homes Important homes in the Landons' 

lives See "2400 Harrison St" [at 

beginning of index], "710 Walnut 

St," "610 Irving St"; their home in 

Trang 49-4,7, 50-1, 58-4; see "301 

E. Seminary," "2910 Brandywine," 

"4711 Fulton St." 

Honeymoon Margaret and Kenneth's, 30- 

1,2,3; Kenneth's illness on 30-4,6 

Hong Kong Margaret and Kenneth's 1927 

stopover in 36-1,2; Margaret's week 

in, 1931 77-1; Kenneth's visit to, 

1956 82-1 

Honolulu Margaret and Kenneth's stopover 

in 35-4,5 

Hornbeck, Stanley Political officer in State 

xxviii 

Department 66-5, 67-3 

Hornbills Landon pets in Thailand 49-3, 

56-4 

Horst, Dr. in Bangkok 59-7 

Howard, Alice at Wheaton College 17-2 

Howard, Philip 17-2 

Howard, Trumbull at Wheaton College 17- 

2,4 

Hua Hin The King of Thailand's vacation 

palace 52-3 

Hull, Cordell of the State Department 67-5 

Hummel, Arthur of the Library of Congress 

64-5 

Hutchinson, Lawyer 23-11; his house in 

Bordentown, New Jersey, where 

Kenneth and Margaret stayed after 

their wedding 30-6, 31-1 

Imhoff, Mabes Kenneth's piano teacher 87- 

3 

Indonesia 68-5, 71-5,6, 76-4,5, 76-6 

Ingels, Wesley Kenneth's roommate at 

Wheaton College 21-9,10 

Ingersoll, Jasper 79-2, 88-1 

Interviews Margaret's experience of being 

misquoted 56-5 

Irish The Irish in Kenneth 79-2 

Irwin, Billy Kenneth's roommate at 

Princeton 21-8, 24-3, 25-4 

Island the island with the cathedral cave off 

the Thai coast, used by OSS in 

WWII 54-3, 66-4 

Izzy and Lizzy, the hornbills 49-3, 56-4 

Jack Daniels Kenneth's favorite bourbon 

82-3 

Jackson Place Kenneth's office across from 

the White House 80-2 

Jakarta See "Djakarta" 

Japan Margaret and Kenneth's 1927 

stopover in 35-5,6,7, 36-1; their 

stopover in, 1932 83-3; Kenneth's 

visit to, 1956 82-1 

Japanese in Southeast Asia 63-5,6; their 

spies in each town in Thailand 60-3, 

65-1; the Japanese "dentist" who 

worked on Kenneth 65-1; Kenneth's 

1941 predictions concerning their


attacks on Thailand, Malaya, and 

Singapore 64-1 

Japanese army Kenneth encountered in 1945 

68-7 

Jerusalem Kenneth's visit to in 1931 60-5 

Jessup, Phillip The State Department officer 

Kenneth impersonated in Hanoi, 

1950 76-2,3 

Jimmy Kenneth's childhood dog 5-2,13,15 

John Day Publishing company that 

published Anna 65-4, 77-6, 83-1 

Johnson, Alex of the State Department 17- 

3, 83-4, 84-3,4,5, Addendum 2-6,7, 

4-2,4, 5-1,3 

Joint Chiefs of Staff when Kenneth briefed 

them on elephants 64-2, 66-3 

Jones, E. Stanley Evangelist who visited 

Bangkok 39-3 

Jumping rope Kenneth's expertise in 36-6 

Kabul Kenneth's 1960 visit to 88-2 

Kalb, Marvin CBS newsman who 

interviewed Kenneth in 1971 72-2, 

87-2, 88-6 

Karp Kunjara Thai military attaché in 

WWII 66-3, 68-2, 80-3 

Kaw Su Chien, who came to Thailand as 

coolie and became wealthy; father of 

Phya Ratsida 48-5 

Keddie, Luke of the Bear Lake school where 

Margaret taught 27-1 

Kennedy, President John F. Kenneth's 

encounter with, 1962 85-3, 

Addendum 3-3; Kenneth's 

assessment of 85-4, 86-2; when 

JFK applied for membership in the 

Cosmos Club 86-5 

Kennedy, Robert F. Attorney General in 

1962-3 Addendum 2-1,3 

Kenneth Landon, Jr. see "Kip" 

Kenwood Golf and Country Club 87-4 

Key, David Ambassador to Burma in 1953 

79-1 

Kilpatrick, Faye 62-1 

King and I, The The making of, and the 

opening 78-2; the casting of Yul 

Brynner in the play and the making 

xxix 

of the movie 78-3; how Kenneth 

helped the original productions get 

authentic costumes from Thailand 

69-5; the 1972 television series 89- 

4; the revival of the musical on 

Broadway in 1978 89-5; see "Anna 

and the King of Siam" 

King Ananda of Thailand 69-5, 70-2,3; his 

cremation in 1950 75-6 

King Chulalongkorn of Thailand 48-1 

King Mongkut 51-5 

King Phumipol of Thailand 69-5, 70-2,3; 

his marriage and coronation in 1950 

75-6, 76-1 

King Prajadhipok of Thailand 39-4,7, 40-2, 

48-1, 63-4, 69-7, 85-5, 87-2 

King of Laos Kenneth's 1950 visit with 

76-4 

Kip Landon (Kenneth Perry Landon, Jr.) 

His birth 66-5, 68-6, 77-5; 

Kenneth's care for as a newborn 67- 

1; playing the piano 87-3,4 

Kistna Ship Margaret and Kenneth took 

from Singapore to Bangkok 36-2 

Kitchen, Jean, the love of Kenneth's life 

from age four to seven 4-10 

Kitchen, Jeff of the State Department 17-3 

Klique, The The youth group in the 

Columbus, New Jersey church 30-9, 

33-5 

Knitting Margaret's expertise, 18-4 

Knox, Gaylord and his wife Leila 45-2, 46- 

5,6, 77-1,2; their children Gaylord 

(Gay Gay) and Jean 77-1,2 

Ko Geng Hsui of Singapore 83-6 

Kru Briyuhn (SP?) 62-4, 63-1,2 

Kru Bunjua 61-3 

Kru Chin Da 50-7 

Kru Flora Lapsa 55-6 

Kru Juang 49-2 

Kru Kim Juang Kru Juang's wife and 

Margaret's favorite head teacher in 

Trang 49-2, 50-1, 51-6, 63-2 

Kru Pakai 44-5, 45-1; Margaret tells the 

story of Kru Pakai's letters, 61-2, 

62-1,2,3,4,5,6


Kru Plueng 62-5,6 

Kru Proi 56-1; her uncle the wizard 56-2 

Kru Tardt Margaret and Kenneth's Siamese 

language teacher 36-5,6, 37-6,7, 40- 

3,5 

Kru Tim who went insane 45-4 

Kru Wat 62-3, 63-1 

Krulak, General Victor "Brute" of the 

Marines 17-3, 84-3,5, 85-4, 

Addendum 2-6,7, 4-3, 5-1 

Kuai Tien Sung (SP?) who poured out his 

life to Kenneth in Phatthalung 49-5 

Kunjara, Karp See "Karp Kunjara" 

Kuriapaiwan (SP?), Prime Minister of 

Thailand 38-1 

Lak muang The post that stood at the 

center of the old cities in Thailand 

81-4 

Lalang grass 47-1 

Landon, Bill Margaret and Kenneth's son 

See "Bill Landon" (William Bradley 

Landon)" 

Landon, Brad (William Bradley Landon) 

See "Father, Kenneth's" 

Landon, Bradley (William Bradley 

Landon, Jr.) See "Brother, 

Kenneth's" 

Landon, Carol Margaret and Kenneth's 

daughter See "Carol Elizabeth 

Landon" 

Landon, Ed Kenneth's uncle See "Ed 

Landon" 

Landon, Henry Kenneth's uncle See 

"Henry Landon" 

Landon, Kip Margaret and Kenneth's son 

See "Kip Landon" 

Landon, Mae See "Mother, Kenneth's" 

Landon, Peggy Margaret and Kenneth's 

daughter See "Peggy Landon" 

Landon, Will See "Bill Landon" 

Landon, Zoe at Wheaton College 19-2 

Lansdale, Colonel Ed of the CIA 82-2 

Laos Kenneth's 1950 visit to 76-4; his visit 

to, just before the coup of 1960 83-4 

Larsen Julie Marie, Margaret's maternal 

grandmother 9-5 

xxx 

Lattimore, Owen head of OWI in WWII 

64-5, 68-1 

Lawrence, Gertrude in The King and I 71- 

1, 78-2,3 

Lay, Jimmy secretary of the NSC 80-1, 

85-4 

Layton, Admiral Eddie 81-6; the cold, fried 

eels 82-1,3 

Leander the cat 43-4, 49-3 

Lebanon Kenneth's visit to in 1931 60-5 

Leber, Charles of the Presbyterian mission 

board 60-3 

Lecturing Kenneth's, 87-5, 88-7 

Legation in Bangkok, after WWII 69-4 

Lemnitzer, General Lyman 77-1, 81-6, 82-1 

Leonowens, Anna 56-8, 57-1, 74-4, 75-2,3 

Leper The leper in Trang who came every 

week to beg 75-5 

Letter-writing contest Redbook's, in 

1939, which Margaret won 71-1 

Letters from a Headmaster's Study 

which Margaret edited 89-5 

Library Kenneth and Margaret's library 

60-3, 69-2,7, 75-4 

Library of Congress The collection of Thai 

books Kenneth procured for the 

Library from the national library in 

Bangkok 69-7; Kenneth's office in 

64-1,5 

Lincolnwood School Margaret's grade 

school in Evanston 15-1 

Lindner, Kathryn Lehrer, Bradley Landon's 

fiancée 6-5 

Lindsay, Vachel The poet Kenneth's uncle 

Ed claimed to have met 5-6,8, 88-3 

Literacy Kenneth teaches people how to 

read 55-1 

Literary Society, The Margaret's 

membership in 56-2, 64-4, 86-6, 87- 

1 

Literary Guild, The which made Anna its 

selection in 1944 77-6 

/R OR GDODQJ! The leper in Trang who came 

every week to beg 75-5 

Lodge, Henry Cabot Ambassador to 

Vietnam 86-1


Lois McShane Margaret's Wheaton 

College friend 18-1,3, 19-2, 20-8 

Long, Breckinridge Assistant Secretary in 

the State Department in WWII 67-5 

Lord Lieutenant Phya Ratsida the great 

Lord Lieutenant early in the century, 

and his father from China, Kaw Su 

Chien 48-5; Phya Si 

Thammarat, the Lord Lieutenant in 

the Landons' time, who admired 

Kenneth's evangelistic methods, and 

who helped him distribute his Gospel 

booklets, tens of thousands of them 

46-2, 50-5,6, 59-5 

Love, Eddie at Princeton Seminary 22-12 

Lovell, Jimmy 88-7 

Luang Pradit Menuthom (SP?) See "Pridi 

Panomyong" 

Luang Prabang Kenneth's 1950 visit 76-4 

Luang Priboon Sunkraun (SP?) Regent of 

Thailand in WWII, involved with 

Free Thai movement 66-3; Prime 

Minister of Thailand during 

Eisenhower administration 86-2, 87- 

6 

Lung Boribon (SP?) 79-6 

Lung Duan Elder in the church in Trang 

55-4 

Lydia Na Ranong Chinese friend of 

Margaret's 48-4, 50-1, 54-5, 74-2 

Ma Cham Landons' servant in Bangkok 

41-1,6, 55-1 

Ma Pawm Landons' servant in Nakhon and 

Trang 51-1,4 

Ma Wan Nurse at Petchaburi and wife of 

Charlie Hak (SP?) 51-4, 61-4 

Ma Yuin Landons' servant in Nakhon and 

Trang 46-1 

MacArthur, Doug of the State Department, 

nephew of the famous Douglas 

MacArthur 79-7 

Machen, Das Professor at Princeton 

Seminary 21-11, 22-10,15, 23-3 

Madison, Dolly Kenneth's lovelorn 

secretary 65-5 

Madonna and child Margaret's Chinese 

xxxi 

painting of 74-2; her plaster and 

marble sculptures of 89-3 

Mae Agnes Landon See "Mother, 

Kenneth's" 

Malacca cane Kenneth's, 36-2 

Marder, Murry (SP?) Washington Post 

reporter who did story on the 

Country Team Seminar in 1962 

Addendum 1-1, 2-2 

Marshall Sarit See "Sarit, Marshall" 

Marshall, Edison Writer who took 

advantage of missionaries 55-5 

Marshall, George Catlett, General 

Secretary of State in 1949 73-4, 76- 

3 

Martin, Mary Famous actress who played a 

role in the casting of Yul Brynner 

78-3 

Mary Peabody, Margaret's childhood friend 

13-1,4, 14-12 

Mastoiditis Margaret's second infection, 

and the operation that took her 

hearing 12-2 

Mastoiditis Margaret's infection at age 3 

11-13 

Maud, Aunt Maud Fletcher Kenneth's 

favorite aunt 31-2 

Maugham, Somerset taking advantage of 

missionaries 55-4, 70-7 

Mayo Clinic Where Margaret's mother had 

her goiter operation 15-11 

McCague, Miss Helen Who ran the girls' 

school in Nakhon 42-5,6, 43-3,4,5, 

45-1,4,5; her illness 43-5, 44-1,5; 

her marriage 44-5 

McCain, Hugh Missionary in Thailand 79- 

6 

McCain, Dr. James W and his leper asylum 

in northern Thailand 43-3, 45-6; his 

red slippers 43-3 

McCarroll Wheaton College trustee 19-1 

McCarthy era 68-1 

McCord, Margaret of the Wang Lang 

school 38-3, 75-2; in relation to 


McCormick, Kenneth editor at Doubleday


77-3 

McDaniel, Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Bruce 

Missionary doctor in Nakhon 42- 

5,6, 43-3, 45-4, 56-8, 57-1, 63-4, 57- 

1, 74-4; his leper asylum 45-6; his 

introducing Margaret to the books of 

Anna Leonowens 56-8, 57-1, 74-4 

McDaniel, Dr. Edwin Bailey son of Dr. 

Edwin Bruce McDaniel 57-1, 63-4 

McFarland, Dr. George 39-3, 45-1 

McFarland, Bertha Blount 39-3, 44-5, 45-1, 

61-5, 62-1,2,3,4,5; in relation to 


McGovern, William Fraudulent scholar on 

Tibet 55-4, 70-7 

McIlvaine, Dr. Pastor in Meadville 51-2 

McKenzie, the American minister to Siam 

37-1; his misadventure with the #1 

tea 37-1, 41-7 

McKinney, Archie Suitor to Evangeline 

Mortenson 22-7, 33-1,8, 34-1 

McNair, Harley Farnsworth 66-2 

McNutt, Paul 65-4, 77-4 

McShane, Lois Friend of Margaret's at 

Wheaton College 18-1, 19-2, 20-8 

Medill School of Journalism Margaret's 

year in 63-5, 70-5,6,7 

Mekong River Project 79-2 

Melks, Jane of Bear Lake, Wisconsin 25- 

8, 26-3, 27-1, 28-4,9 

Metcalf, Dr. Keyes DeWitt, librarian at 

Harvard 63-4 

Methodism Margaret's church as a girl 14- 

6 

Metropole, Hotel in Hanoi, where Kenneth 

stayed in 1946 72-1 

Miles, Admiral Merry and the tiger skull 

ashtray 80-3 

Milliken, Max 84-3, 85-4, Addendum 2-3, 

3-5 

Ming, Mr. 40-4 

Minium Mrs. D'Armant Minium of 

Meadville 8-6 

Mission board, Presbyterian 29-2, 32-7, 33- 

2,3,5,7,8, 61-2; the 1938 meeting to 

reassess mission policy in Thailand, 

xxxii 

when the Landons resigned from the 

mission 60-3 

Missionary Kenneth's call to become a 

missionary 27-7, 28-5,6, 29-2, 32-7; 

Kenneth and Margaret's preparations 

for going to Thailand 33-2,3,5,6,7,8, 

34-2,3,5,6; their trip across America 

to leave the country 35-1; their 

sailing from San Francisco 35- 

2,3,4,6; their trip to Siam 36-1 

Moffat, Abbot Low of the State Department 

67-4, 80-3 

Mongkut, King 51-5 

Monsoons in Southeast Asia and Thailand 

51-6, 58-4 

Moore, Dean Gerald G. Kenneth's meeting 

in 1939, which led to the writing of 

Anna 75-2 

Moore, W. Robert photographer for The 

National Geographic 76-1 

Morgan, George Director of Foreign 

Service Institute in 1962-3 

Addendum 

Morigi, Roger Stonecarver at the 

Washington Cathedral 89-3 

Mortenson, A.D. Annenus Duabus See 

"Father, Margaret's" 

Mortenson, Adelle See "Mother, 

Margaret's" 

Mortenson, Chris Margaret's uncle, 24-6 

Mortenson, Elizabeth (or Betty) Margaret's 

sister See "Elizabeth Julia 

Mortenson (Amsler)" 

Mortenson, Evangeline See "Evangeline 

Renata Mortenson (Welsh)" 

Mortenson Laurids J.M., Margaret's 

paternal grandfather from Denmark 

9-1,3,4; his S-bolt machine 9-3 

Moses, Abraham who tried and failed to find 

"dirt" on Kenneth in 1963 84-5, 

Addendum 4-3, 5-3 

Mother Margaret's mother Adelle; 28-2,3, 

32-4,8, 34-1, 52-1, 53-1, 57-2, 77-1; 

her childhood 9-5,6,7; her education 

10-1, 11-7; her singing 10-1; her 

wedding 10-8, 11-1; her health


problems 15-4,11; her operation 15- 

11; her heart problems 15-12; the 

house she built after A.D. died, and 

its defective roof 26-2,4,9; 

Kenneth's opinion of 19-6, 26-9 

Mother Kenneth's mother Mae Agnes 

Fletcher Landon 1-1, 8-2,3,4,5; her 

strict upbringing 7-5; her 

unhappiness in her marriage 7-9; her 

physical bearing 7-11; her piano 

playing 8-1; her health problems 8- 

1, 31-6, 33-1,3, 49-6; the great stout 

story 2-11, 73-3; Kenneth's knowing 

in Siam when she died 8-1, 38-5, 

50-2,6 

Mountbatten, Lord Louis 69-4, 70-3 

Muir, John Muriel Fuller's grandfather 34- 

4 

Muriel Fuller See "Fuller, Muriel" 

Murrow, Edward R. Addendum 3-5 

Music Its role in the Mortenson family 15- 

13 

Musical instruments Instruments Kenneth 

played 3-11, 46-5, 65-4, 87-3 

Nagasaki, Japan Where the Landons 

bought their chinaware teaset, 1932 

83-3 

Nagorsearga, Prince 63-4 

Nai Dit Coolie and cook in Nakhon si 

Thammarat 44-1,2, 45-4; the 

disastrous dinner 45-6; trapping the 

mu sang 47-4 

Nai Lai The fix-it man 53-4 

Nai Nuang friend of the Landons in Trang 

51-5, 60-4 

Nakhon Si Thammarat 53-5, 56-8, 67-1, 

61-2, 74-4; Margaret and Kenneth's 

year in 39-2, 42-5,6, 43, 44, 45-1 

Nanthalung shadow show 42-2, 47-5, 48-3 

National Interdepartmental Seminar New 

name given to Country Team 

Seminar in 1963 See "Country 

Team Seminar" 

National Security Council Kenneth's move 

to 79-7; see also 80-2, 84-3; see 

"Operations Co-ordinating Board" 

xxxiii 

National Geographic, The Kenneth's 

photograph of rice cultivation in its 

various stages 51-6; his pictures of 

the cremation and coronation in 

Bangkok, 1950 76-1 

Ne Win of Burma 37-7 

Necco wafers Kenneth's beloved candy as 

a boy 4-17 

Negotiations See "British-Thai 

negotiations" 

Negritoes Kenneth's encounter with 48-6 

Never Dies the Dream Margaret tells of 

its writing 82-5, 83-1 

New Year celebrations in Thailand 41-7, 

42-1 

Ngiap Seng Kenneth's loyal evangelist 47- 

6, 49-2, 57-5, 60-1 

Ngo Dinh Diem 83-4; Kenneth's visits 

with, 1956 82-2; Diem's 

assassination 86-1 

Niagara Falls Margaret and Kenneth's 

honeymoon 30-3 

Nixon, Richard M. The briefings in 

Kenneth's office 80-2; the tiger skull 

ashtray affair 80-2,3; Kenneth's 

evaluation of 86-2 

Nolting, Ambassador Frederick 86-1 

Norman Hanna See "Hanna, Norman" 

Norris, Dr. J. Frank Lillian Norris's father 

His trial for murder 33-4 

Norris, Lillian (Weaver) Friend of 

Margaret's at Wheaton College 20-1 

Norwood, Rev. and Mrs. Cecil British 

missionaries in Thailand 44-3, 45-2 

NSC See "National Security Council" and 


O'Brian, John Lord who set up the U.S.' 

first intelligence operation in WWI 

64-4, 87-1 

OCB See "Operations Co-ordinating 

Board" 

OCI See "Office of the Co-ordinator of 

Information" 

Office of the Co-ordinator of Information 

Kenneth's work in, 1941-1942 64- 

1,2,3,4, 65-7


Office of War Information Kenneth's 

wartime broadcasts with 64-1,5 

Operations Co-ordinating Board Kenneth's 

move to in 1954 79-7, 80-1; when 

Kenneth moved in at Jackson Place 

81-5; how the OCB was set up 81-6; 

the purpose of 80-2; Kenneth's work 

on 67-2, 83-4; Kenneth's paper on 

religion in Southeast Asian politics 

85-6; the OCB's end 84-2 

Opium in Thailand 54-2, 60-1 

Order of Exalted White Elephant awarded 

to Kenneth by Thai government in 

1953 79-5 

Ordination Kenneth's, in Meadville 28-6, 

34-7 

OSS 78-5, 80-3; why the OCI became the 

OSS 65-7; the island cave used to 

move agents into Thailand in WWII, 

which Kenneth informed them of 

54-3, 66-4 

OWI See "Office of War Information" 

Paintings Mrs. Yip in Choy's paintings, 

which hung in Kenneth's office 81-1 

Paintings, Chinese How the Landons got 

their paintings of Bible scenes by 


Pakai See "Kru Pakai" 

Pakhisan (SP?) the northeastern plateau 

area of Thailand 88-1 

Palembang Kenneth's dramatic takeoff 

from the airport 76-6 

Palestine Kenneth's visit to in 1931 60-5 

Palms, royal The trees Margaret planted at 

the house in Trang, and Kenneth's 

flyover 20 years later 57-3 

Pao, General of the police in Thailand 79- 

3 

Paris, France the bookstore Kenneth 

bought so many books from 69-2 

Parish Kenneth's parish in Thailand 39-2, 

46-2, 47-6, 59-6, 58-7 

Park, Rufus Evangelist Margaret's father 

was with when he died 24-5, 25-6 

Pastoral letters Kenneth's to his parish 55- 

7, 56-5,7,8 

xxxiv 

Patek Philippe watch Kenneth's 79-5 

Patrine Christina Mortenson Margaret's 

great aunt Coming to America; her 

investment with Grandfather 

Laurids, which was lost 10-6 

Payne, J.J. Corrupt evangelist in Bear Lake 

28-9, 29-1 

Peabody, Mary See "Mary Peabody" 

Peacock feather hat Kenneth's most exotic 

chapeau and how he acquired it 79- 

3,4 

Pearl Buck and the East-West Association 

inaugural dinner, at which Kenneth 

sold Anna 25-5, 65-4, 77-4 

Pearson, Andrew Carol Landon Pearson's 

son, bites Kenneth, who bites him 

back! 89-4 

Pearson, Carol Elizabeth Landon See 

"Carol Elizabeth Landon (Pearson)" 

Peggy Landon (Margaret Dorothea Landon 

Schoenherr) Her birth 38-1,2,3,4,5; 

see also 42-6, 43-1,4, 44-1, 45-3, 46- 

4, 47-2,3, 48-5, 49-2,7 50-4,5,6, 52- 

2,5, 53-3,6, 56-7,8, 57-2,3, 78-4, 80- 

5; the day the king cobra encircled 

her as a baby 47-2,3; her social 

nature 53-1; her beautiful tankles 

53-2; her dating as a teenager 68-6; 

her help in the writing of Anna 75-4; 

caring for Kip as a baby 67-1; the 

day she saved baby Kip's life 74-3 

Penang See "Pinang" 

Pentagon Papers scandal of 1971 72-2, 88-6 

Pepper in Thailand 48-5 

Perry Origin of Kenneth's middle name 1- 

1 

Pershing, General "Black Jack" His office 

in the State Department in WWII 

67-5 

Peter, Armistead Last owner of Tudor 

Place in D.C. and Landon friend in 

the Literary Society 87-1 

Peterson, Captain Friend of Kenneth's in 

Thailand 51-6 

Petoskey stones in Michigan 15-8 

Pets Kenneth's boyhood dog Jimmy 5-


2,13,15; the Landons' pets in 

Thailand 49-3, 52-1; the monkey 

56-1; the hornbills, the cats, Suzi the 

dog 56-4; Candy the bulldog in 

Richmond, Indiana, and in D.C. 65- 

5, 74-3 

Ph.D. Kenneth's furious year studying for 

72-6 

Phangnga, Thailand 54-3 

Phatthalung, Thailand 47-6, 49-5 

Philco Ford Re: ARPA 80-3, 87-7, 88-1 

Phnom Penh Kenneth's 1950 visit to 76-3 

Phosphorescent sea Kenneth's experience 

of 46-4, 61-1 

Photography Kenneth's, 51-6, 52-3,6, 54-4, 

59-6; his pictures and movies of 

King Ananda's cremation and King 

Phumipol's coronation in 1950, some 

of them published in National 

Geographic 76-1; Kenneth's 

remarkable photograph of rice 

cultivation in Thailand, published in 

the Geographic 51-6 

Phra Kru Hame Head of the Buddhist 

monks in Thailand and friendly to 

Kenneth 42-7, 43-1, 46-2 

Phuket 53-4,5,6, 54-1,2,3 

Phumipol, King See "King Phumipol" 

Phya Ratsida the Lord Lieutenant early in 

the century, and his father from 

China, Kaw Su Chien 48-5 

Phya Si Thammarat, the Lord Lieutenant in 

the Landons' time, friendly to 

Kenneth 46-2, 50-5,6, 59-5 

Piano Kenneth's playing, in the 1950's; the 

Landons' fine Steinway 87-3 

Pierce Chapel, Wheaton College 26-3 

Pinang 48-5, 52-1,2 

Pineapples in Thailand 48-7 

Pipe Kenneth's pipe as a youth 4-3 

Pittman-Potter Center for World Order The 

conference Kenneth participated in 

17-3 

Plain of Jars Kenneth's visit to, 1960 83-4 

Plattsburg, New Jersey Kenneth's second 

church while in seminary 23-11 

xxxv 

Poison The night in Bangkok that Kenneth 

was poisoned, December 14, 1945 

70-1 

Poleman, Horace Kenneth's friend in 

Washington 65-1, 67-1 

Ponk Common slang word in Margaret's 

youth 16-7 

Pooks, Ray Remarkable track athlete in 

Meadville 7-6 

Pool Kenneth's playing at the poolhall as 

a boy 4-2,3 

Pot Sarasin Thai ambassador to the U.S. in 

1953 79-5, 82-4; in Bangkok, 1966 

88-1 

Prajadhipok, King See "King Prajadhipok" 

Pramoj, Kukrit 68-2 

Pramoj, Seni 64-2, 68-2, 70-3, 87-2; the 

Thai declaration of war on the U.S. 

that he refused to present 64-5 

Preaching 31-,4,5, 32-4, 51-2, 83-2; 

Kenneth's preaching techniques 7-3; 

the Princeton seminary sermon 

contest 32-10, 33-1,5; his first 

sermon in Thai 40-4 

Pregnancy Margaret's first, which doctors at 

first thought was illness 32-10, 34-1 

Presbyterian mission board 29-2, 32-7, 33- 

2,3,5,7,8, 61-2; the 1938 meeting to 

reassess mission policy in Thailand 

60-3 

President Wilson, The Ship that Margaret 

and Kenneth took from San 

Francisco 36-1 

Presidents Kenneth evaluates the 

Presidents under whom he served 

86-2 

Pridi Panomyong (SP?) Regent of Thailand 

in WWII 68-3, 69-6,7, 70-1, 80-3 

Prince Damrong of Thailand 36-5, 37-1, 

45-6, 75-1; his library and the year 

Kenneth tried to give it to a library in 

the U.S. 63-4, 87-5; his personal 

history 63-4 

Prince Dhani of Thailand 69-6, 70-2, 75-6 

Prince Nagorsearga of Thailand 63-4 

Prince Supsowat (SP?) The member of the


royal family who liked Margaret's 

book 87-2 

Prince Wiwat (SP?) of Thailand 69-5 

Princeton Theological Seminary 21-8,11, 

22-12, 23-2, 32-3,10, 33-3 

Princeton, New Jersey 31-1, 32-1,2 

Prison in Nakhon Si Thammarat 45-2 

Propeller Kenneth's great propeller 

escapade 1-13 

Prostration A true example of the gesture 

of total, feudal abasement to a lord 

54-5 

Psychological Strategy Board which was 

transformed into the OCB 79-7 

Pye, Lucian 84-3, 85-4, Addendum 1-2, 2- 

3 

Pygmies Kenneth's encounter with 48-6 

Queen Rumphai Barni widow of King 

Prajadhipok 68-3; the night she 

came for dinner at 4711; Kenneth's 

call on her in 1950 68-3, 85-5, 87-2 

Queen Sirikit of Thailand 89-5; Kenneth's 

dancing with her as a girl in 

Bangkok 70-2 

Radford, Admiral Chairman of the JCS, 

1953 79-5 

Railroad Kenneth's job in the Erie Railroad 

shop as a boy 3-5, 8-11 

Ramayana, The 39-7,8, 42-2, 47-5, 48-3 

Reading Margaret's love of reading as a 

child 12-11 

Reams Robert Bordon Reams, Foreign 

Service officer who married 

Charlotte Johns from Meadville 8-7 

Red Grange 20-6, 21-2 

Redbook magazine and the letter-writing 

contest Margaret won 71-1 

Reischauer, Ed who became ambassador to 

Japan 64-5 

Remer, Charles Frederick chief of FE in the 

OCI 64-4 

Resignation Kenneth and Margaret's 

resignation from the Presbyterian 

mission 60-3, 67-4, 70-7 

Retirement Kenneth's, 85-2, 89-2 

Reviews Kenneth's career reviewing books 

xxxvi 

66-1 

Rheinheimer, Howard Lawyer for Rodgers 

and Hammerstein 78-2 

Rheumatic fever Margaret's bout with in 

1946 82-5 

Rice cultivation in Thailand 48-3, 51-6 

Richmond, Indiana the Landons' years in 

63-3,4,5; Margaret's year alone there 

with the children 77-3 

Richmond, Mr. and Mrs. William of Bear 

Lake, Wisconsin, with whom 

Margaret lived, 1925-6 24-7, 25-7 

Ridgeway, Eliza Kenneth's friend and 

patroness at Columbus, NJ 30-8, 34- 

4, 83-2 

Ring Margaret's engagement ring 23-1, 

58-1,2; the wedding ring Kenneth 

bought for her 27-4; Kenneth's gold 

ring with two diamonds 1-2 

Ripley, Dillon as OSS agent 54-3 

“Ripped My Pants on a Rusty Nail, I” 

Kenneth sings lustily 47-6 

Robertson, Walter Assistant Secrety for the 

Far East in 1953 78-5, 79-1, 80-1 

Rockefeller, Nelson in the State Department 

in WWII; his office in the EOB, his 

fireplace, and his special logs 67-5, 

81-5 

Rodgers and Hammerstein 78-2,3, 89-4,5 

Rodin, Mrs. Kenneth's relationship with in 

college 22-4 

Rodin's Restaurant, where Kenneth worked 

in college 20-6, 22-4, 58-1 

Rogovin, Mitchell Lawyer for Margaret in 

her suit against Fox and CBS 89-4 

Romance of the Harem, The Anna 

Leonowens' second book 74-4, 75-3 

Rombitan tree in Thailand 48-7 

Rommel's battlefield When Kenneth flew 

over it in 1945 69-4 

Roosevelt, James The President's son 63-6 

Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano 64-3 

Kenneth' meeting with in 1941 64-1; 

Kenneth drafts the paper articulating 

FDR's policy concerning the French 

return to Indochina after WWII 67-


4; Kenneth's evaluation of 86-2 

Rose Palace in Bangkok 66-3 

Ross, Martin of the Medill School of 

Journalism 70-5 

Rostow, Walt of President Kennedy's 

White House staff 80-2, 83-7, 84- 

1,2,3,4,5, 85-3, 86-5, Addendum 2- 

1,3, 2-5, 4-3 

Rowan, Carl Journalist blackballed by the 

Cosmos Club 86-5 

Rubber trees in Thailand 47-1 

Rubber estates in Thailand 44-1 

Rugs The saga of the two Damascus rugs 

Kenneth bought in 1931 61-1 

Running away Kenneth runs away at age 4 

1-9 

Rusk, Dean Secretary of State, 1961ff 84- 

2,4, Addendum 4-2, 5-4 

Saigon Kenneth's visit to in 1946 71-4; his 

1950 visit to 76-1; his 1956 visit to 

82-2 

Saintenay, General French minister in 

Hanoi in 1946 71-4 

Sakanichi, Shio of the Library of Congress 

in 1941; Japanese spy 64-5; Shio's 

last party, December 6, 1941 65-1 

Salan, General Commander of "French 

troops" in Indochina in 1946 71-7 

Salsbury, Larry of the State Department 

66-5, 67-5 

Saltz, Lewis Men's clothier in D.C. 79-4 

Samui The offshore island 46-3 

San Francisco Margaret and Kenneth's 

stopover in 34-7, 35-1,2 

Sarasin See "Pot Sarasin" 

Sarit, Marshall 39-2, 69-5, 77-1, 79-3, 83- 

4; Kenneth's first meeting with, in 

1950 76-7; Sarit's visit to 4711 

Fulton St. in 1958, and the sequel in 

Bangkok when Sarit was Prime 

Minister 80-4,5 

Saturday Evening Post When Kenneth 

published his three short stories 87- 

3, 88-3 

Schalk, Lou Suitor to Peggy Landon 78-4 

Schneider, Herb of the Journal of 

xxxvii 

Philosophy at Columbia University 

66-1 

Schoenherr, Charles Husband of Peggy 

Landon Schoenherr 78-4 

Schoenherr, Peggy (Margaret Dorothea 

Landon Schoenherr) See "Peggy 

Landon" 

Schools The school in Bear Lake, 

Wisconsin, where Margaret taught, 

see "Bear Lake"; the school in Trang 

that Margaret administered, see 

"Anokuhnsatree (SP?) School"; the 

five (or six?) Chinese schools 

Kenneth helped to start in southern 

Thailand 60-1 

School of International Service at American 

University where Kenneth worked 

84-6 

Seferlis, Constantine Stonecarver and 

sculptor at the Washington 

Cathedral, who carved Margaret's 

Madonna and child 89-3 

Seigle, Al and Jeanette Missionaries in 

Bangkok and friends of the Landons 

36-4,6,7, 39-1, 41-6 

Seni Pramoj See "Pramoj, Seni" 

Shanghai, China Margaret and Kenneth's 

1927 stopover in 36-1 

Shantymen's Christian Associaton, The 

Rufus Parks' sponsoring organization 

25-6 

Sharir Top official in Indonesia, 1950 76-5 

Sheehan, Mr. and Mrs. in Phuket Tin 

miner 53-6 

Shio Sakanichi See "Sakanichi" 

Short stories Kenneth's brief career in 

writing 87-3, 88-3 

“Siam Rides the Tiger” Margaret and 

Kenneth's article for Asia and the 

Americas 60-3, 63-5, 70-5 

Siam in Transition Kenneth's first book 

69-6 

Siam Origin of the name 50-4 

Siamese language Margaret and Kenneth's 

study of 36-5,6, 37-3,4,5,6,7, 38-6, 

39-2, 41-1; the first-year exam


Kenneth and Margaret both took 40- 

3; Kenneth's second-year exam 40- 

2,3; Kenneth's third-year exam 44-3; 

Margaret's continuing study 49-7; 

Margaret's second-year exam 55-6; 

Marshall Sarit's comment on 

Kenneth's biblical Thai 76-7 

Sihanouk of Cambodia Kenneth's 1950 

visit with, and Kenneth's "brilliant" 

conversation in French 76-3 

Singapore Margaret and Kenneth's 1927 

stopover in 36-1,2; Kenneth's visit 

to, 1960 83-6 

Sirikit See "Queen Sirikit" 

Sisters Margaret's, See "Betty" or 

"Elizabeth" and "Evangeline" 

Slavery in Thailand 46-1 

Sledang The wild cattle of Thailand 47-1 

Smith, "Greek" Wheaton College registrar 

19-3 

Smith, General Walter Bedell of WWII 

fame 79-5 

Smith, Col. Wilfred of ARPA 80-3, 87-7 

Smoking Kenneth's smoking when young 

4-3 

Snakes in Thailand 47-2,3,5, 53-1, 59-4, 

71-3; snake farm in Bangkok 37-3 

Snyder, Rev. and Mrs. Frank L. 

Missionaries in Nakhon 39-2, 42- 

5,6,7, 43-3, 44-1, 48-1, 61-2, 74-4 

his sudden death 47-7 

Songs Kenneth sings songs from his youth: 

"The Alcoholic Blues" 3-13, 20-5; 

"My Little Bimbo" 3-13, 22-2; "I 

Ripped My Pants on a Rusty Nail" 

47-6; "Oh I'm Waiting for a Check 

from Home" 20-5; "Oh It's Hard to 

See a Fly on the Mountain" 53-6; 

"Rain or Shine, I'll Pay My Fine" 

23-6; "Romeo and Juliet" 29-3; 

"When Father Hung the Paper on the 

Wall" 20-4 

Southeast Asian studies 63-4; the program 

Kenneth set up at American 

University 88-4; the new program at 

the University of North Carolina at 

xxxviii 

Raleigh 88-7 

Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions 

Kenneth's third book, 1949 66-2, 

68-1, 72-6 

“Spirit of Wheaton, The” Margaret's essay 

22-9 

Sports Margaret's love for sports 14-11 

Softball, volleyball, tennis 

Staats, Elmer Principal co-ordinator of the 

OCB staff 67-2, 79-7, 80-1 

Stadthuis The old courthouse in Djakarta; 

Kenneth's visit to in 1945 71-5 

Stanton, Edwin and Josie Ambassador to 

Thailand in 1950 and his wife 74-1, 

75-6, 76-7, 79-1, 82-3 

Starling, Dorothy Richard Professional 

violinist from Meadville 36-2 

State Department 84-5; Kenneth's move to 

in 1943 66-5; his work in, and his 

freewheeling in Washington 67- 

2,3,5; his anti-colonial line, and the 

paper he wrote on FDR's policy 

concerning the return of the French 

to Indochina 67-4; Kenneth's office 

in 1943, overlooking the White 

House 67-4; Kenneth and the 

coffeebreaks with the secretaries 

73-6; his last year in 85-1; see 

"Executive Office Building" 

Stettinius, Edward Undersecretary of State 

and then Secretary in WWII 67-5 

Stilwell, General "Vinegar Joe", Jr. in the 

National Interdepartmental Seminar 

84-4, 85-4 

Stony Lake, Michigan Mortenson vacation 

spot 15-11, 25-5, 26-6, 31-3; 

Margaret and Kenneth's honeymoon 

30-2,3 

Stout The great stout story from Kenneth's 

youth First telling: 2-11; the sequel 

7-11; second and better try 73-3; the 

sequel 73-5 

Stover Company, The Margaret's Uncle 

Chris' company 24-6 

Strauss, Helen Margaret's agent at William 

Morris 77-7, 78-2


Suit Margaret's suit against Twentieth 

Century Fox and CBS, 1972ff 89-4 

Sukarno 76-5; on the CIA's attempt to 

assassinate him 86-1 

Sulfaguanidine for dysentery 69-3, 76-6 

Sullivan, Bill Aide to Averell Harriman, 

1961 84-1 

Supsowat (SP?), Prince The member of the 

royal family who liked Margaret's 

book 87-2 

Suzy the dog in Trang 52-2,5 

Swimming Kenneth and the boys of 

Meadville swimming out at French 

Creek 4-15, 7-10 

Swimming pool The White House pool 

Kenneth swam in 81-5 

Taft lectures on Chinese philosophy which 

Kenneth delivered at Cincinnati 

University in 1942 64-6, 65-6, 66-1 

Taiping, Malaya British hill station where 

Margaret vacationed 52-2 

Tamarind tree Margaret used as a 


Tardt, Kru See "Kru Tardt" 

Taylor, General Maxwell 84-3, 85-3, 

Addendum 2-7, 3-3, 4-3 

Teachers Margaret's teachers from 

kindergarten to eighth grade 12-9; 

see "Wambaugh, Effie," "Dow, 

Elsie," "Torrey, Miss," "Kru Tardt," 

"Watson, Elmo Scott," "Ross, 

Martin"; for teachers who worked at 

Margaret's school in Trang, see "Kru 

Briyuhn" HW DOLD; for Kenneth's key 

teachers, see "Dow, Elsie," "Machen, 

Das," "Wilson, Robert Dick," "Allis, 

Professor," "Green, Bernie," 

"Haydon, A. Eustace," "Kru Tardt," 

"Ngiap Seng," "Imhoff, Mabes" 

Teaching Margaret's work in, see "Bear 

Lake" and "Anokuhnsatree School"; 

Kenneth's work in, at Earlham 

College 63-3,4,5; at American 

University 84-6, 85-1,2, 88-4,5 

Tekal buttons made of silver How Kenneth 

acquired his 37-2 

xxxix 

Thailand Kenneth's evaluation of after a 

lifetime of experience, 1989 86-3 

Theatre Guild which tried to get a play 

written based on Anna 77-7, 78-1,2 

Theobald, Dr. and Mrs. Geoffrey in 

Bangkok; British doctor who 

delivered Peggy, and friends of the 

Landons 38-1,2,4, 39-4, 41-3, 44-5, 

45-2 

Thomas, Claude and Ruth Missionary 

friends of the Landons from 

Wheaton and Princeton 36-1 

Thompson, Jim of the OSS 59-3, 69-4; the 

beginning of his silk business; 

supplying costumes for The King 

and I 69-5 

Thongpleo, Dr. Thai orator 70-3 

Thorina Olena Mortenson Graves 

Margaret's aunt, Auntie Trine 20-7 

Thung Song 80-6; the village that sought 

to become Kenneth's feudal servants 

54-5 

Tiger skull ashtray in Kenneth's office; the 

exchange with Vice President 

Richard M. Nixon 80-2,3 

Timmerman, General American negotiator 

in Colombo after WWII 68-2, 70-3 

Tin mining in Thailand 51-6, 52-1, 53-6, 

56-7, 58-5 

Torrey, Miss Bible teacher at Wheaton 

College; her opinion of Margaret 

25-9, 26-1 

Towke Samuin and his two wives 45-7, 46- 

1 

Toy, Dr. W.B. Emotionally disturbed pastor 

of church in Phuket 53-4, 54-1 

Trace, Jimmy Kenneth's childhood friend; 

going to the movies 4-2, 40-3 

Trang Margaret and Kenneth's assignment 

to and life in 44-3, 45-1, 46 through 

63 

Travelling Kenneth's mode of travel around 

the world 69-3 

Tri, Governor in Hanoi, 1950 76-2,3 

“Trial Surgery” Short story Kenneth 

published in the Saturday Evening


Post 87-3 

Triangle Building in Washington, D.C. 

Kenneth's office in 63-6, 64-1 

Tsiang, Dr. Mien i 65-6,7 

Tudor Place in D.C. Estate owned by the 

Landons' friend Armistead Peter 87- 

1 

Twentieth Century Fox 78-1; Margaret's 

suit against 89-4 

U Nu of Burma 37-7, 83-5 

U.S. News and World Report article on 

Kenneth in 1971 72-2 

Uncles Kenneth's, see "Ed Landon," "Henry 

Landon"; Margaret's, see 

"Mortenson, Chris" 

Unger, Leonard DCM in Bangkok, 1960 

80-4, 83-4 

Vachel Lindsay The poet Kenneth's Uncle 

Ed claimed to have met while 

bumming round the country 5-6,8, 

88-3 

Van Hough, Grace 18-4 

Vang Pao Lao general in Vietnam War 

whom Kenneth knew 74-1 

Varhaug, Ralph Kenneth's friend 29-2,5, 

34-4; Ralph and his wife 57-2 

Vassar Margaret's desire to go to, 17-1 

Viavi salve Kenneth's massaging his 

mother's back with the salve as a boy 

4-7 

Vientiane, Laos Kenneth's 1950 visit to 

76-4 

Vietnam 88-5; the assassination of Ngo 

Dinh Diem 86-1; Kenneth's opinion 

of our war there 86-2 

Visk, Felix Kenneth's Russian roommate at 

Cincinnati University 6-11, 18-7 

von Bredenburg (SP?) Counsellor at the 

Netherlands embassy and neighbor 

of the Landons in 1944 68-5 

Wadsworth, Lawrence of the State 

Department and American 

University 17-3 

Wales, Quaritch His library, much of 

which Kenneth and Margaret bought 

69-2 

xl 

Walking Kenneth's love of, 32-4, 34-2, 37- 

2 

Wallace, Henry of the BEW 64-2 

Walled cities in Thailand 42-5 

Walsh, Richard of the John Day Company, 

publisher of Anna 65-4, 77-4,6, 82-5 

Wambaugh Effie, Margaret's English 

teacher; the day she challenged 

Margaret to write 16-10, 70-4,5, 75- 

1 

Wang Lang School in Bangkok 36-5, 42-3, 

45-1, 75-1, 82-5; see "Wattana 

Wittiya" 

Wangy Evangeline Mortenson's nickname 

24-10 

Washington, D.C. Kenneth and Margaret's 

years in 63-6 and on 

Wattana Wittiah Academy in Bangkok 39- 

3, 42-3, 61-3 

Watson, Elmo Scott of the Medill School of 

Journalism 70-5,6; his evaluation of 

Margaret's writing ability 70-7 

Ways (SP?), Max of the BEW 64-2 

Wayside Gospel Mission Rufus Parks' 

organization 25-6 

Wedding Margaret and Kenneth's 26-9, 

27-4,9, 28-5,7,8, 29-1,2,4, 30-1,2; 

the actual event 29-5,6 

Wedding, Siamese 50-1; the Siamese 

wedding when all the high officials 

crawled past Kenneth 81-3 

Weil, Elsie of Asia and the Americas 

magazine and the John Day 

Company, which published Anna 65- 

4, 77-4 

Weldebreton prison in Djakarta, Indonesia; 

Kenneth's visit to in 1945 71-5,6 

Wells, Margaretta and Ken Missionary 

friends of the Landons in Thailand 

34-3, 44-3, 65-7; Ken's muddy 

encounter with the buffalo 47-3, 57- 

6; their escape from the Japanese in 

1941 79-6; the job Kenneth found 

Ken in the State Department in 

WWII 67-4 

Welsh, Evangeline Renata Mortenson See


"Evangeline Renata Mortenson 

(Welsh)" 

Welsh, Evan Evangeline Mortenson's 

husband 28-3, 32-1, 34-1, 52-5,6, 

53-1 

Welsh, Dr. John Wallace Evan's father 28- 

3,7 

Welsh, Mrs. Evan's mother 32-1, 34-1, 37- 

6 

Westmoreland, General William Kenneth's 

opinion of 86-2 

Wheaton College, Illinois 18-1, 19-1, 21- 

7,9, 33-1; Margaret's first visit to 

17-1; Kenneth's first day, meeting 

Margaret Mortenson 6-13, 19-2; 

"The Spirit of Wheaton," Margaret's 

essay on the college 22-9 

Wheeler, General who worked on the 

Mekong River development project 

79-2 

White ants in Thailand 47-1 

White elephant in Thailand 39-7 

White Elephant, Order of Exalted 

awarded to Kenneth by Thai 

government in 1953 79-5 

White House staff Kenneth's work on in 

the Eisenhower administration, see 


White House Swimming pool Kenneth 

occasionally used 81-5 

Will Landon See "Bill Landon" 

William Morris Agency which represented 

Margaret 71-1, 78-1,2 

Williston Hall Dorm at Wheaton College 

where Margaret lived 17-2 

Wilson, Robert Dick of Princeton 

Seminary, and Kenneth's studies 

with 21-11, 22-13,14; 23-2,5, 24-3, 

26-8, 27-10 

Wilson, Ann Robert Dick's daughter, who 

was drawn to Kenneth 26-8,9, 27-2 

Wilson, George T. the jeweller in Meadville 

Kenneth purchased Margaret's rings 

from 52-4, 58-1 

Wong, Mr. of Bangkok 39-5 

Woodpussies of the World of which the 

xli 

Landons were honored members 51- 

3 

World War I Margaret's memory of 18-4 

Wright, Joe and Agnes Friends of the 

Landons from Columbus, New 

Jersey 23-11, 27-11, 31-2,3, 32-3, 

57-2 

Wright, Louis Head of the Folger Library 

and friend of the Landons 87-1 

Wright, Paul of Wheaton College 22-8 

Wright, Truman of the Greenbriar Hotel; 

members of Joe and Agnes' family 

27-11 

Wright, Walter The Big Chief, Joe and 

Agnes' father 27-11, 31-2,3 

Wriston His plan reorganizing the State 

Department 79-7 

Writing Margaret's, 60-3, 63-5, Miss 

Wambaugh's challenge 70-4,5; 

Margaret's year at the Medill School 

of Journalism 70-5,6,7; the Redbook 

letter-writing contest of 1939 71-1; 

see Siam Rides the Tiger; see Anna and 

the King of Siam; see Never Dies the 

Dream; her story, "A Grave for 

Frankie" 56-2; her attempted history 

of Southeast Asia 89-5; her editing 

of Canon Charles Martin's Letters 

from a Headmaster's Study 89-5 

Writing Kenneth's, 60-1,3, 63-5, 66-1; see 

Siam Rides the Tiger; Siam in Transition; 

The Chinese in Thailand; and Southeast 

Asia: Crossroad of Religions; his work 

on a book about Walter Gibson that 

never got written 71-5; editing 

ARPA's manuals on Thailand 88-1; 

his short story career in the 1950's 

87-3, 88-3; his own assessment of 

his writing 73-5 

Yenching Palace restaurant in D.C. 72-4 

Yip in Choy, Mr. and Mrs. 81-1,2 

Yost, Charles Chargé d'Affaires in 

Bangkok in 1945, and his wife Irena 

59-1, 69-4 

Youth work Kenneth's In Columbus, New 

Jersey 30-9, 33-5; in Trang 58-6,7


Yuan Tser Quien (SP?) political advisor to 

General Lo Han in Vietnam in 1946 

72-4 

Yul Brynner in The King and I 78-3, 89-5 

zoysia matrella The Korean grave grass 

Kenneth planted at 4711 Fulton St. 

68-4 

xlii

)$925,7( 6725,(6 

FAVORITE STORIES OF MARGARET AND KENNETH LANDON 

Kenneth's recalls his birth 1-5 

Kenneth's colic and the Irish nurse who 

solved it 1-6 

The day Kenneth's baby buggy took off 

down the hill with him in it 1-7 

Sledding down N. Main Street with the 

college kids 1-8 

Running away at age 4 1-9 

The great propeller escapade 1-13 

Kenny plays ball in Babe Jenkins' dress 75- 

5 

The great stout story (first version) 2-13; 

the sequel 7-11; the great stout story and 

sequel (second and better version) 73-3 

A short career in Beaver Patrol #3 3-7 

Brad Landon makes pancakes 7-8 

Visiting Uncle Henry and riding his train 3- 

14; visiting Washington, DC, on that trip. 

Ainsworth Lang's pie 4-6 

Bradley Landon's sudden death 6-10 

Mrs. Heintzman's seance 6-11 

Grandmother Dorthea and the great Chicago 

fire 9-2 

Florida Mitchell dances on the sidewalk 13- 

11 

Margaret drags home the used Christmas 

tree 14-8 

Margaret's first visit to Wheaton College 

17-1,2 

Kenneth meets Charles Blanchard 6-12, 19- 

1 

Kenneth's first day at Wheaton College, 

meeting Margaret Mortenson 6-13, 19-2; 

her memory of it 19-3 

The day Margaret and the Wheaton College 

co-eds played football 19-10, 20-1 

Kenneth rocks the church with his 

testimony: "A strange woman came to 

me. . . ." 71-2 

"Oh Love!" "Oh Darling!" 22-12 

The night Robert Dick Wilson invited 

Kenneth to tea 23-5 

Kenneth's first Sunday pastoring his first 

xliii 

church 23-11 

"There's a little life in the old man yet!" 

Greek Smith of Princeton 23-13 

Lawyer Hutchinson and the duck eggs 30-6 

The abortive sermon contest 32-10, 33-1,5 

Margaret and Kenneth's conversation as they 

neared Bangkok 33-6, 36-4 

Kenneth and Margaret begin studying Thai 

36-6 

Minister McKenzie and the #1 tea 37-1, 41- 

7 

Peggy's dramatic birth 38 

The cobra on the toilet seat 37-5 

The Mon lovesongs Kenneth learned in 

Papadang 40-5 

The Siamese wedding at which all the high 

officials crawled past Kenneth 81-3 

Kenneth's first tour with Mr. Snyder 42-6,7, 

43-2 

Mr. Snyder's false teeth 42-7 

Leander in the well 43-4 

Mrs. Norwood climbs into Margaret's bed 

44-3 

The phosphorescent sea at night 46-4, 61-1 

Baby Peggy and the king cobra that 

encircled her 47-2 

Ken Wells' muddy encounter with the 

buffalo 47-3, 57-6 

Nai Dit traps the musang 47-4 

The day at Chong when the monkeys (or 

gibbons) travelled with Kenneth 48-2, 

58-6 

Kenneth and the Negritoes from the jungle 

48-7 

The Trang police lieutenant who captured 

the tiger bandit 51-3 

The sound of the monsoon rain 51-6 

Peggy and her beautiful tankles 53-2 

The cathedral cave in the offshore island 

54-3, 66-4; OSS adventures using it 

during WWII and moving agents into 

Bangkok 54-3 

The village that sought to become Kenneth's

)$925,7( 6725,(6 

feudal servants 54-5 

Dr. Bulkley and the tigers 54-6, 55-1 

Dr. Bulkley operates on the wounded hunter 

and gives him Livingstone's shoulder; 

Kenneth starts the illiterate hunter 

reading, and he goes on to become the 

Deputy Minister of adult education! 55-1 

Kenneth encounters the panther under Dr. 

Bulkley's house 55-7 

Dr. Bulkley's feast of exotic meats 55-7 

The elephant that hosed down Kenneth's 

religious tracts 57-5 

The first time Kenneth used a bathing cloth! 

57-6 

Christmas in Thailand, and the ants in the 


The army ants that went through the house 

58-4 

The elephant that ate Kenneth's cookies 58- 

5 

The crocodile that almost ate Kenneth! 58-6 

Kenneth's bike gang and the member who 

became a judo champion 58-7 

The peasants who wanted to catch the train 

but had no sense of time 59-1 

The Chinese dinner and Kenneth's hopeless 

quest for the men's room 59-2 

Kenneth and the Chumphon gangster 59-3 

The night Margaret and Kenneth almost 

rode into the elephant 59-4 

The Lord Lieutenant helps Kenneth 

distribute his Gospel booklets 59-5, 70-6 

Kenneth's personal leper in Trang 75-5 

The soup that put Kenneth to sleep on 

Jeanette Seigle's shoulder 59-7 

Appendicitis and the tickle test 59-8 

How little Bill learned to take his medicine 

59-8 

The five (or six) schools and churches 

Kenneth started with the Chinese in 

southern Thailand 60-1 

The schism over baptism in the Chinese 

church 60-2 

Ah Peh and the viper 71-3 

Mrs. Yip in Choy's paintings 81-1 

How Kenneth procured Pridi's economic 

xliv 

plan for Thailand 69-6,7 

Kenneth's trip to the Holy Land in 1931 60- 

5; swimming in the Dead Sea; visiting 

Egypt, Jerusalem, Lebanon 

Margaret's 1931 trip home with the children 

and the ship that almost sailed without 

her 77-1 

The saga of the two Damascus rugs 61-1 

Kru Pakai's letters 61-2ff, 62, 63-1,2 

The Chinese family Kenneth stayed with in 

the 1930's who all snored mightily 64-6 

When Margaret first learned of Anna 

Leonowens 74-4 

Margaret wins the Redbook letter-writing 

contest 71-1 

Margaret's year at the Medill School of 

Journalism 70-5,6,7 

Her week with Edna Cole 75-1 

Kenneth meets Dean Gerald Moore, and 

Avis Fyshe gives Margaret Anna's letters 

75-2 

Margaret finds Anna's two books 75-3 

The writing of Anna 77-3 

How Kenneth found his job at Earlham 

College 63-3 

The day at Gull Lake that the government 

called Kenneth to Washington 63-5 

His first day in Washington; James 

Roosevelt; and G-2 63-6 

His meeting with President Roosevelt 64-1; 

his prediction on when the Japanese 

would attack 

Kenneth briefs the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 

elephants 64-2 

Nelson Rockefeller's office and the 

cellophane-wrapped birch logs 81-5 

Kenneth sells Anna at the East and West 

Association dinner 65-4, 77-4 

The day Margaret finished Anna and gave 

birth to Kip 77-5 

The Literary Guild buys Anna 77-6 

Kenneth's drafting the paper articulating 

FDR's policy concerning the French 

return to Indochina after WWII 67-4 

The great executive office chair caper 67-5 

Kenneth meets the former Queen of

)$925,7( 6725,(6 

Thailand's party in New York after WWII 

68-3 

The night the Queen came to dinner at 4711 

68-3 

Kenneth and his aristocratic neighbor, von 

Bredenburg 68-4 

Kenneth's trip to Southeast Asia after WWII 

68-7, 69, 70, 71, 72; his visit to Angkor 

Wat 

Kenneth's encounter with the Japanese army 

in 68-7 

Meeting the governor of Battambang, when 

the gun slipped out of Kenneth's pants 

68-7 

The night in Bangkok that Kenneth was 

poisoned 70-1 

The night Kenneth danced with the future 

queen in Bangkok 70-2 

Kenneth's dinner with Admiral D'Argenlieu, 

and Madame Galsworthy 71-4 

Kenneth's dramatic visit to Weldebreton 

Prison in 1946 71-5 

His trip to Hanoi with General Salan 71-7 

His Chinese meal at the airport 72-1 

Meeting with Ho Chi Minh 72-1,2,3,4,5 

Calling on Emperor Bao Dai, and the wild 

ride through the mountains 72-3, 76-1 

The time in 1949 when Kenneth sent arms to 

Americans in Malaya on his own 

authority 73-4 

Coffee breaks at the State Department 73-6 

The Landons' paintings of Bible scenes by 


Kenneth impersonates Phillip Jessup in 

Hanoi, 1950 76-2,3 

Kenneth calls on Queen Ramphai Barni at 

her home 85-5 

Dinner with Sihanouk, 1950, and speaking 

"French" 76-3 

Kenneth's flight into the volcano 76-5 

His dramatic takeoff from Palembang 76-6 

Travelling to Thailand with William 

Donovan when he became ambassador, 

1953; the beginning of the Mekong River 

project 78-5, 79-1,2,3 

The saga of Kenneth's exotic peacock 

xlv 

feather hat 79-3,4 

Kenneth receives the Order of Exalted 

White Elephant; Bedell Smith's comment 

79-5 

Richard Nixon's briefings in Kenneth's 

office, and the tiger skull ashtray 80-2,3 

Admiral Merry Miles receives KLV tiger skull 

ashtray 80-3 

Kenneth moves from State to the OCB 79- 

7, 80-1 

Kenneth's 1956 Southeast Asian trip with 

Admiral Eddie Layton, and the cold fried 

eels 81-6, 82-1,2,3 

Calling on Ngo Dinh Diem, 1956 82-2 

Marshall Sarit and the animals at 4711 

Fulton St, 1958 80-4; the sequel in 

Bangkok 83-4 

Pot Sarasin and John Foster Dulles 82-4 

Kenneth's report from Burma that went 

straight to President Eisenhower 83-5 

Swimming in the kiddie pool with Norm and 

Eddie Hanna in the middle of the night, 

Kabul, 1960 88-2 

Kenneth briefs Walt Rostow and McGeorge 

Bundy when JFK comes into office 83-7, 

84-1 

When Kenneth's job with the OCB was 

"abolished", and the anonymous memos 

Kenneth wrote for Rostow 84-2 

Kenneth creates the Country Team Seminar 

84-3, Addendum Hours 1 thru 5 

Kenneth, General Stilwell, and the eating 

habits of chickens 84-4 

Kenneth meets John F Kennedy 85-3, 

Addendum 3-3 

The day Alex Johnson publicly fired 

Kenneth from the Country Team 

Seminar, "promoting" him to the FSI 

deanship 84-5, Addendum 5-2 

When Carl Rowan was blackballed at the 

Cosmos Club 86-5

)$925,7( 6725,(6 

12/1/95 

Unfortunately, there are at least two classic Landon stories that were never recorded. 

One was the tale of Margaret and Kenneth's purchase of their rare Kashan hunting rug from a 

Mr. Manoukian. It had animals and hunters rampant all over it, and a pale rose background. 

There was much drama in the choice of the rug, the bargaining with Mr. Manoukian, and the 

denouement, when a wealthy lady from New York, I believe, sought to purchase the rug after 

the Landons had already done so. 

The second story came from the Landons' first furlough from Thailand, when Kenneth 

somehow became involved with his farmer friend Joe Wright of New Jersey transporting one 

of Joe's calves to the South. This would have been in 1932, and it was illegal. The two men 

travelled in an old Ford which had lost first gear. To get up a hill, they either had to have 

enough momentum from the previous downhill or turn the car around and back their way up. 

The calf rode in the rear, the seat having been removed. When they reached a city, Kenneth's 

job was to insert his hand into the calf's mouth to keep it from bawling. The calf would suck 

mightily, pulling Kenneth's arm in up to the elbow. It was hungry. Kenneth said his arm had 

never been so clean in his life. 

During a stopover in Washington, D.C., the two men ran into the Bonus Army, a large 

body of WWI veterans who had come to the capital to demand a special bonus from the 

government. It was the Great Depression, and few if any of them had jobs. Kenneth told of 

being mistaken by a trooper on horseback for one of the veterans and being chased round a 

tree as the trooper swung his saber at him. 

Needless to say, this was one of the riproaringest of Kenneth's riproaring stories, and I am 

sorry we missed it. 

KPL Jr 

xlvi

INTRODUCTION #2 

(The "technical" introduction) 

The Landon Chronicles tapes were made in the years 1976-1978, 1982, 1983, and 

1988-1989 at 4711 Fulton St., N.W., Washington, D.C., the Margaret and Kenneth Landons' 

home since 1944. The original tapes were 1800' and 2400' quarter-inch reels recorded on a Sony 

TC-377 reel-to-reel tape recorder. They were in two-channel stereo. There were fourteen of 

them altogether, totalling eighty-nine hours, and they were numbered I, II, III, and so on. 

In 1989-1990, I made a number of cassette tape copies for members of the family and 

typed out a sketchy synopsis to go with them, based on my jottings as I sat with Mother and Dad 

in our recording sessions. 

In 1994, 1995, and 1996, I made digital tape copies from the original reels, using a 

Panasonic SV-3700 DAT tape recorder. Each DAT tape is sixty minutes long. Thus, there are 

ninety-four hour-long tapes in each set. On each tape, there are a number of index marks at key 

points to help the listener move quickly to the part of the tape he or she may wish to hear. 

In 1998 my brother Will Landon made several 94-CD copies of the DAT tapes, complete 

with indexes, playable on any standard CD or CD-ROM player. 

With the new digital copy of The Landon Chronicles I have also written the new and 

thorough synopsis that follows, and with the synopsis, an index. 

There are two kinds of references in the synopsis and index. The first refers to the 

recorded hour. If a story occurs during hour #26, at index mark 5, the reference in the index will 

appear as: 26-5. The second kind of reference refers to the original reel-to-reel tapes and will 

appear only in the synopsis. If a story was originally recorded on the third reel, first side, at 

mark 865, the reference will appear as: (IIIA865). After the first few hours, this type of 

reference will appear only at the beginning of each hour's synopsis. 

The synopsis and index, combined with the index marks recorded during each recorded 

hour, should make it possible for one to go directly to the hour during which any story or 

information found in the synopsis or index is recorded, load CD (or other media), run it to the 

appropriate index mark, and find the desired material within seconds. 

xlvii 

KPL Jr

THE LANDON CHRONICLES—#1 48 

HOUR 1 

Session #1 July 20, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip. 

1 

0:00 Kenneth explains that the Perry of his name comes from his "collateral" relative Commodore 

Oliver Hazard Perry. He sings a song in honor of Commodore Perry and tells how at age 13 he went 

with his father to see the great picture of the Commodore at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. 

Kenneth's father was William Bradley Landon, his mother Mae Agnes Fletcher. The 

"tragedy" of her misnaming at baptism, when the minister named her "Mary." 

How Kenneth rode the train as a child, using his pass. He traveled often to Brooklyn, New 

York, his mother's home. She was the second of four. Her father: David Bosworth Fletcher. Her 

mother: Agnes Robinson Fletcher. Margaret gives the birth dates for them and for each of their 

children. 

2 

6:00 Kenneth tells the story of his gold ring with the two diamonds (IA50). It belonged to his 

grandfather, D.B. Bosworth, who bought the diamonds, having one put in a ring for his fiancée and 

the other in a stickpin for himself. He went to the Civil War, was captured, and spent much of the 

war in Libby Prison. He returned safely and had the two diamonds put together in a Tiffany setting 

in a ring which he wore the rest of his life. This passed to Mae, and after her death, came to Kenneth. 

In Thailand, he took the ring to a Chinese jeweler to have a new ring made up with the two diamonds, 

in gold, and subsequently wore the ring for many years. 12:30 The fine Civil War sword Bosworth 

owned, which passed to Kenneth's cousin David Fletcher. 

3 

14:00 (IA80) The great family celebrations of Kenneth's early childhood. Everyone would come 

beautifully dressed, in sleighs drawn by horses. He remembers them standing in line in front of the 

house. At one of these, a Thanksgiving gathering, Uncle Billy came in and gave Mae a large 

magnum of champagne, telling her to do what needed to be done with it. He assumed she knew. She 

poured it into a pitcher. At the climax of the meal, Uncle Billy called for the champagne. Mae 

brought it in, dead flat. Uncle Billy was thunderstruck. 

4 

16:40 (IA110) On Kenneth's father, William Bradley Landon. Brad studied pharmacy at Cooper 

Union. One of his friends had a date with a girl named Mae Fletcher. He invited Brad to come along 

and date the sister, Grace. Brad liked his friend's date much better. He soon began courting her. 

They would sit in the living room. Her mother would insist that she let him take no liberties. "Leave 

me be!" Mae would say in a loud voice, and then, VRWWR YRFH, "Hold me tight." It was a favorite story 

of hers the rest of her life. Brad carried a flask of whiskey in his pocket. He had a problem falling 

asleep, he explained. Whiskey helped him stay awake. He often fell asleep when with Mae, 

sometimes in mid-sentence. She was alarmed. Mae knew of a Dr. Salisbury and insisted that Brad 

go to him. The diagnosis was that he had Bright's disease. Salisbury ordered him to lay off alcohol 

and put him on the Salisbury diet, according to which he was to eat lots of meat and avoid 

carbohydrates. This diet gave the name to the Salisbury steak. At Thanksgiving, because of the diet, 

48

LANDON CHRONICLES—#1 49 

Mae and Brad ate an entire turkey together. Nothing else. Just turkey. The diet worked, apparently, 

and Brad recovered. After that, he turned against alcohol and became a teetotaler. 

5 

25:00 (IA140) Brad became the chief chemist of the Erie Railroad and moved to Meadville, Pa. 

Kenneth tells how he was born. Dr. Clawson was downstairs with his father, Brad, in the kitchen. 

The two of them swapped stories while Mae struggled upstairs alone, giving birth. Brother Bradley, 

who was four, went outside and sat on the curb, angry at being neglected. Mae was mad at the two 

men for neglecting both her and Bradley, and never forgot it. She managed to throw something down 

the stairs to express her anger and get the men's attention. And so little Kenneth was born. It was 

March 27, 1903. 

6 

27:00 (IA150) He was a colicky baby, crying all the time. He couldn't digest milk. Then Mae and 

Brad hired an Irish nurse, and soon Kenny stopped his crying. Mae was chagrined that the nurse was 

able to do with him what she could not. Then one day she came into the kitchen and discovered the 

Irish nurse putting drops of something in the milk. It was Irish whiskey! the nurse explained. 

Kenneth theorizes that the whiskey provided the enzymes that enabled him to digest milk. Mae 

promptly fired the nurse, and Kenny went back to being a colicky baby. He has never cared for milk 

since. 

7 

29:30 (IA170) Kenneth's vivid memory of the day his baby buggy took off down the hill, North 

Main Street. His exhilaration. The buggy was dashing down the steep hill at full speed. It finally hit 

a curb and threw him out onto the red brick road. His mother rushed down and swept him up in 

relief. Shortly thereafter she found a book called "The Slant Book," a romanticized tale of a baby 

riding in a baby buggy. The two of them enjoyed it many times. 

8 

32:00 185) At age four, Kenneth's Flexible Flier sled. He hauled it up North Main Street and slid 

down on it. The hill was a mile long, he says. Other people used bobsleds. For Christmas he 

received a Rice Brothers sled to go with his first sled. He and his older brother fastened an ironing 

board across the top of the two sleds. At the tail end of the contraption, Kenneth tied his teddy bear, 

his pride and joy. He would get college kids to help him pull the sleds up the hill. It was too heavy 

for him alone. Then he would invite college kids going down the hill to ride with him. He steered 

and they rode behind him. Whizzed down the hill. Mae lived in terror. She would see her tiny son 

with these large college students flying down past the house. But he never had an accident. At the 

foot of the hill, the streetcar came into the street; there was a danger of running into it; but he never 

did. 

9 

35:40 205 His differences with his father at age four. Kenneth didn't like the way Brad treated Mae. 

He thought his brother was a big booby because he often sided with Brad against 

Mae. In any event, he decided to run away. He tried to get two different friends to run away with 

him, but neither would go. It was a rainy day, and he was wearing rubbers. He started out Main 

Street, out of town. He had no objective. He was just going. The bricks ended, and the road turned 

49


to dirt. He stepped into a mud hole, and the mud sucked his rubber off. He knew Mae wouldn't like 

that, so he found a stick and tried to find it. But he couldn't. Suddenly Kenneth realized a horse was 

above him. There was an old man sitting on the wagon with a long beard who said, "Boy, what are 

you doing?" Kenny explained his intentions and told of his problem. The man came down, found the 

rubber, then invited Kenny to ride with him. He took the boy to his home, fed him, and put him to 

bed. While Kenny slept, the man telephoned around and found out who his parents were. In the 

morning, he loaded Kenny in the wagon and took him home. Kenny was mad as the dickens. The 

first of many times he ran away. 

10 

44:00 Aunt Maud in Brooklyn takes him to P.S. 9 where she went to school as a child and where 

she now taught. After a while, he took off for the Fletcher house but lost his way. He sat on a curb 

and started to bawl. Everyone thought he had run away. He was soon found. The time he ran 

away in the subway. Hid behind a pillar while the family searched for him frantically. 

11 

46:00 (IA270). How fair his hair was. He was called "Buster Brown," "Whitey." The girls 

brought him candies because they thought he was so cute. One time he ate a whole bag of candy, 

became ill, and lost it all. Regretful that the candies were wasted. 

12 

47:00 (IA280). The houses Kenneth's family lived in. They moved often because he and his 

brother were an annoyance to the neighborhood. Bradley and Kenny were forever thinking up 

projects, starting fires, building things in the trees. 

The story of Martha Harper and her long hair. Martha's mother warned Kenneth not to 

molest Martha. It hadn't occurred to him to molest her, but after her mother said that, he dipped her 

hair in the ink well. 

From N. Main Street, the Landons moved up to Park Avenue. A woman named Lottie Price 

and her sister lived in the upper part of the house. Lottie gave him ice cream. He never had an 

allowance. Had to earn everything. His father was of Puritan, Congregational background. He didn't 

believe in Christmas and other ceremonial celebrations. The family never had a Christmas tree. 

There were almost no presents. A penknife, or a teddy bear, perhaps. No wrapping. Gift would just 

be set on a chair. His shock when he married Margaret, who celebrated everything! 

Kenneth tells of buying sour balls from Mister Griffith. Or begging them when he had no 

money. 

The next move was to Baldwin Street, at about age 6 or 7. The family lived near Jean 

Kitchen, Kenneth's first great love. He had met her at age 4. Dark-haired girl with bangs. She 

smelled nice. 

13 

54:00 When Brad became chief chemist of the Erie railroad, he built his laboratory in eight old 

boxcars. He worked in them for forty years. 

Kenny and Bradley, who was four years older, were interested in a particular kind of 

propeller. They wanted to build one, and they went to the railroad shop where their Dad worked and 

scavenged a large steel spindle, roller bearings, a shaft, some sheet metal, and cutting shears. They 

cut out the propeller; bent it; made holes in it; rigged it on the spindle on the bearings on top of the 

50


shaft. They set it up in Huidekoper's yard, a great estate on Water Street. The Huidekopers had a 

field where they grew corn. The boys wound a clothesline on the spindle, and the two of them ran as 

fast as they could to get the thing spinning. The propeller came up off the spindle, paused for a 

moment in the air, then took off past the house out into Baldwin Street. It hit the roadway after a 

hundred yards on the streetcar tracks. A streetcar had just turned into the street. The motorman saw 

it coming straight at him and hit the brakes. The propeller lifted and cut a gash through the steel front 

of the streetcar. 

The family moved again after that. Everyone knew the Landon boys were the culprits. They 

moved to Randolph Street, across from Babe Jenkins' house. It was Babe's clothes that he wore in the 

picture of him at age 7 in girl's clothes. 

On Randolph Street Kenny began running into gangs and their battles. 

51


Session #1 continued: 

HOUR 2 

1 

0:00 (IA350) Kenneth begins to get into fights with other children. His friend Juddy lived about a 

mile up the street, and he often visited him. Their barn and hay loft, where the boys loved to play. 

Kenny's older brother, Bradley, was a "black Irish type," with enormous arms and legs. "A 

real brute." But he had gentle, brown eyes. He always wanted to beat Kenny up, but Mae wouldn't 

let him. If any of the other boys tried to beat Kenny up, however, Bradley would protect him. 

After all the moves, and all the problems with the neighbors because of his two wild sons, 

Kenneth's father decided the only answer was to move out to the edge of town. A man named Pete 

Graham agreed to build them a house at 710 Walnut Street, which would make it the very last house 

on the street. It was a block away from the nearest house in every direction. Woods all around. The 

Ellis farm was out beyond that. 

Where to live while the house was being built? 

2 

2:40 Brad's Cleanco Company. Produced ATV Cleanco "Adds to Varnish, Cleans, Polishes, and 

Disinfects in One Operation." Took the money from the company and rented a house in the poorest 

part of the town. The roughest part. The Polish area. No proper bathroom, though there was a toilet. 

Had to take baths standing by a large sink. Even Mae. There was no central heating, only a potbellied 

stove. They lived there for most of a year. 

Then they moved to 710 Walnut. (Brad was to live in that house until 1939 before he sold it. 

The furniture from that house came to Kenneth and Margaret in Richmond, Indiana, in 1939. Some 

of it ended up at 4711 Fulton St. in D.C. One of the living room chairs is in the basement, and a 

library table.) 

Session #2 July 29, 1976 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Nona Landon 

3 

8:00 (IA409) A review of the houses he lived in as a child. On Lottie Price, who liked Kenny. He 

would shovel her walk, and she would buy him a pint of ice cream and sit with him and protect him 

from Bradley, who wanted to take it from him. Made Bradley furious. 

By age eight, he started fighting. Everyone wanted to beat him up. His nose was bleeding all 

the time. 

4 

12:50 (IA446) That was the year he dressed up in Babe Jenkins' dress and hat. She gave a costume 

party, and he dressed up as a girl. They were about the same size. He wore her best dress! After the 

party, he went out with Bradley to play baseball in the street—still wearing Babe's clothes. Bradley 

and another friend were playing with Kenny, when a number of men came along and saw these two 

big boys playing with this little "girl," throwing the ball at her as hard as they could. Kenny didn't 

think anything of that, but the men were indignant. 

52


5 

14:25 His problem getting to and from school. All the boys thought they could beat him up; he 

looked so skinny and vulnerable. 

Brad's company that analyzed anything chemically for people. Work he did in addition to his 

work with the railroad. He was always inventing things. He was just about to invent ATV, but not 

yet. His company was on the other side of French Creek, in the tough part of the town, and that was 

where they lived while their house was being built. This made it even more difficult for Kenny 

getting to school. He was about eight. 

At this point, Kenny fell in love with ham. He would scavenge it and carry it around in his 

shirt pocket so that he could have a snack later. 

This was also the time that he wore his first zippers. Where they crossed the bridge over 

French Creek, next to the railroad shops, there was an old shack. A man there was working to invent 

zippers. Every day he would throw out a bag of zippers, and the boys would play with them. The 

man hadn't perfected his invention, but eventually did. Sadly, he never got anything out of it, for all 

his efforts. 

Kenneth describes the areas of town and the gangs of boys who roamed them. Walnut Street, 

where they were soon to live, was the best part of town. The house where they were presently 

staying was the worst. 

His new friend, Pinky Prather. Black-haired, black-eyed, looked like an Indian. 

6 

20:50 Kenny had a real problem getting to and from school, especially during the year that he lived 

in the tough part of town. There were always boys waiting to beat him up. He would try to evade 

them, run from them at full speed, and got quite good at that. But after several years of this, he 

developed his own form of attack. Between the age of ten and eleven, he reached a point that he had 

been beaten up so many times that he didn't care any more. He developed the tactic of suddenly and 

viciously attacking and then fleeing. Things changed. He became a special challenge to the other 

boys. They knew they could still beat him, but at considerable cost. Torn ears. Split shins. He 

fought dirty because he was small and light. Used any tactic he could. 

7 

22:50 The time he turned up without the belt of his Norfolk jacket, and Mae demanded that he get it 

back. So he had to go on the attack. By this time, the other boys had become afraid of him. He got 

the belt back. 

8 

24:30 His brother and he built a tree house in the ravine across from 710 Walnut St. A steep dropoff 

down to Mill Run. The other side of Mill Run was an ice pond. The tree house was elaborate. 

Siding. Electric light. A rug. Various treasures. And a security system, because it became an object 

of attack from across the ravine. Bradley was into wireless radio with two other, older boys. Had to 

have an aerial. They ran their best aerial from their house to a huge maple tree in the middle of the 

block. Kenny had to climb near the top of the tree and haul it up with rope and pulley. They also ran 

an aerial to the tree house. They ran a fine network of wire up the trunk of the tree and electrified it 

so that anyone who climbed the tree "unauthorized" would get a nasty shock. The tree house became 

the locus of some great conflicts with the kids from across the ravine. 

53


9 

27:20 (IA550) The people who lived across the ravine were of another social strata, grocers, 

plumbers, and so on. The people on the Landon side of the ravine were lawyers and judges and 

doctors and top railroad officials. Kenny became friends with their children. Judge Kent's kid. 

Elizabeth Bates, the daughter of the Cleveland Republican Mr. Bates. Alice Townsend. They 

formed a little card playing group. They would dance at each other's houses. This group held 

together through high school. Pimp Altenburg. The Bradshaw brothers. Kenny became a graceful 

dancer. No dancing lessons. Meadville was a great dance town. When he was fifteen, sixteen, he 

would get a date and go down to the dance hall. The era of the Charleston, the Camel walk, the 

Crazy dip. 

In the South Ward, the people were laborers, machinists, foremen. It was worth your life to 

date a girl from there, which was a good reason to do it. 

10 

32:40 (IA580) Alice Townsend. A shy girl; very pretty. Once stole some money from school and 

got caught. She stole all the time; she was close to being a kleptomaniac. Her mother wasn't 

respectable, but Alice was. Later made a fine marriage to a doctor. 

11 

34:15 (IA595) One of his most vivid memories was making ATV. When they moved to Walnut 

Street, Brad moved his chemical company from the South Ward to the other side of French Creek, in 

an alley. He had a steel tank set up in a double garage behind the house that held 200 gallons of 

liquid. There he began to manufacture ATV. Bradley was the "manufacturing company." He made 

the stuff. Mae was supposed to do the typing, but Bradley did that too. Kenny helped from the first. 

When Kenny was ten, Brad decided to advertize, with circulars to be mailed. That summer Kenny 

sat at the typewriter, getting addresses from phonebooks, addressing over 10,000 circulars. His first 

job. Earned ten cents an hour, excellent pay at the time. Has never had trouble with names of any 

kind since that day. 

12 

37:10 The following year, Mae became anemic and sickly. Dr. Clawson was called in. He knew 

the family well. Knew what a religious man Brad was. The leading elder of the Central Presbyterian 

Church, on Center Street, which split off from the main Presbyterian Church in 1838. The pastor was 

Frank Silsley, and Brad was his ruling elder. The First Presbyterian Church had a huge building but a 

small congregation and no pastor. So a reuniting of the two churches was arranged, with Silsley to be 

the pastor of the whole. On the great day, the two men led the sheep up from the Central church to 

First Presbyterian, a day of great drama. 

Kenneth tells of imagining he could fly when he was a child. 

13 

40:00 (IA635) The great stout story. Brad's street preaching, on street corners. Preached against 

"demon rum" and saloons. Mae felt the same way. Would have nothing to do with 

any man who had the smell of liquor on his breath. Brad's favorite song was "The brewer's big 

horses can't run over me." He used to take Bradley and Kenny along to help him sing. Kenny's preadolescent 

voice was clear and bell-like. 

So, Clawson came and examined Mae. Kenny listened outside to the mutterings in the room. 

54


The doctor prescribed stout to fortify her blood. Brad was outraged, but he ordered the stout on 

Mae's insistence. Called the brewery to order it delivered, and commissioned Kenny to stay home for 

the delivery. Kenny knew how to handle barrels, and how to tap them, so Brad instructed him to do 

this in the cellar and take a glass of stout to Mae. 

A little before noon, the brewer's big horses came up Fairview Avenue—a two-block street— 

with the wagon behind. The driver rolled the keg down a plank, muscled it up onto the porch, but 

when Kenny asked him to take it to the cellar, announced, "I deliver to, not in." He left. So Kenny 

had to maneuver the thing to the cellar, knocking it over, rolling it, maneuvering it to the top of the 

wood stairs, and trying to slide it down with him below. Lost control of it immediately. Danced out 

of the way. The keg bumped down the stairs, crashed into the concrete wall, bounced around, and 

finally grew still. Kenny rocked it up and began cutting the hole for the tap. Heard sizzling from 

inside the keg. Stout exploded through the hole, a gusher Kenny could not stop. Stout went 

everywhere. Kenny drenched. Mae appeared on the steps, laughing quietly. 

Kenneth sings "The brewer's big horses can't run over me." 55:45 

How monotonous Brad's voice was. How beautiful Kenneth's grandfather's voice was. 

14 

57:00 (IA770) How Kenneth came to "love" fig newtons. The time Brad took his family to Niagara 

Falls. He didn't want to spend money on food, especially for the kids. He decided that fig newtons 

would be excellent for them. Bought a ten-pound bag. Kenny ate fig newtons in the morning, fig 

newtons at noon, and fig newtons at night. To this day he cannot stand fig newtons. 

15 

59:00 Brad's preoccupation with his bowels, and his constipation problem. Every day had to begin 

with a large bowel movement, and he would announce his success at breakfast. He had a machine 

that was "guaranteed to move you." (Story completed in Hour 3.) 

55


Session 2 continued, July 29, 1976 

HOUR 3 

1 

0:00 (IA790) Brad had a machine that was "guaranteed to move you." It was fastened to the wall, 

and it had two crank handles that operated an eccentric, and a plate that fitted on the belly. You 

leaned against it and turned the crank, churning your belly. When Bradley had appendicitis, Brad 

stupidly told him to use the machine to get the gas out. This may have cost his son his life. 

2 

1:00 (IA800) Bradley's wireless outfit was in the attic, and Kenny regularly fooled with it, 

provoking him. Bradley was forever saying to Mae, "Just let me take care of him once!" Mae would 

say no, and Kenny would say, "Yah, yah, you can't catch me!" One day in the attic, Kenny annoyed 

Bradley so much that he turned on him. Bradley hit him, knocked him down. Kenny kicked him in 

several places, caught his hair, smashed his head down by the stairwell. Knocked him over. Caught 

Bradley completely by surprise. Then he knew he had to run. Ran down the stairs, with Bradley 

after him, dodged behind the door, Bradley rushed past, and Kenny ran back inside and shut and 

locked the door. But Bradley got pliers to turn the lock, and Kenny knew he had to run. The window 

was open, and he went head first out the window, doing a belly flop on the roof of the porch one story 

down. Bradley was just behind him. Kenneth never went home that night, hung around downtown. 

Came back cautiously the next day. 

3 

5:35 (IA830) The time the orphans from the Odd Fellows Home were in a row with Bradley and 

chased him home and dared him to come out. Mae walked out and called them cowards, announcing 

that her son would take them on one by one and beat them. She called Bradley out. Not one of them 

wanted to take him on singly. So they all left. "It was a very quarrelsome town." Probably because 

it was a railroad town. Kenneth describes all the shops in town. Also the bronze metal company. 

Many laborers and immigrants. 

All the respectable people in town were Presbyterian and Republican, like his family. Near to 

them were the Methodists. "The Baptists didn't amount to much." The Catholics were the 

immigrants, "the guineas, the wops, the polacks," and so on; the lesser breeds. It never dawned on 

him that respectable people could be other than Presbyterian and Republican until he came to 

Washington and discovered the best people were often Democrats and of other denominations. 

4 

9:00 (IA865) The railroad station was a mile from their house. He often went down and got on 

train #3 to New York for the weekend to visit the folks in Brooklyn. He had a pass; didn't cost him 

anything except when he had to take the ferry at New York or ride the street car. On one of his 

earliest trips, he knew he had to change trolleys to get up to 8th Street, Prospect Park. But he didn't 

know where it was. He was a small child. Alone. Traveled lightly. He would take one spare collar 

for his shirt and a toothbrush, and sometimes not even the toothbrush. He would have a dollar or so 

for some toast. At Jersey City, he would have a penny glass of soda water. No sweetness in it, no 

flavor. Just soda. He loved it. Then he took the ferry across to New York, then the horse trolley— 

the last one in New York City, he thinks—then the mechanical trolley. He asked the motorman 

56


where he had to change to get the trolley for Prospect Park. The man answered, "Boahoh!" Kenny 

had no idea what that was. Went over and over it in his mind. Finally, at one stop, the man shouted, 

"Boahoh!" and Kenny leaped off the trolley. Has remembered that sound all his life. "Boahoh!" 

Many years later he learned that it was "Borough Hall." So he would arrive at 382 8th Street. Slept 

on a Morris chair, with a green velvet covering. The back could be laid back flat. Aunt Maud would 

give him a blanket, no sheets. He slept in his clothes. Aunt Maud was his great favorite. She had 

married a man named Sauter. Aunt Edith married a man named Coe and had a son named David; 

they lived in California. 

5 

14:40 (IA920) How he hung around the railroad shops since his earliest years. At the age of 

fourteen, it seemed natural to him to get a job with the Erie Railroad. He was unimpressive, small. 

His first job was working in the storehouse, and he had to handle things like airhose and railroad 

springs, which were heavy. Working with them quickly built up his upper body muscles. Also, his 

work with ATV for Brad built his upper body, because he was handling heavy materials. The 

railroad was a good experience for him. He worked in a number of shops, through high school. He 

only went to school half days, after which he would throw his books on a shelf over the stairs, take 

his lunch with him to the shop, and work for five hours. A normal work day was ten hours at that 

time. He worked in the machine shop, working on the shaper, drill press, lathe, various cutting 

machines, then the blacksmith shop, with the electric steam hammer, manufacturing railroad springs. 

It took a delicate touch; a powerful and dangerous machine. From there, he went to the drafting shop 

to draft tracings of locomotives and parts until he could make a draft on the linen-cloth paper they 

used, make a blueprint from that, send the blueprint over to the machine shop, which would make the 

part, and finally take the new part over to the roundhouse and put it in. A fairly comprehensive, 

practical education. 

It seemed natural after an experience like that to follow his brother to Cincinnati University 

and go into engineering. When he went, he had an arrangement in which he would go to school two 

weeks and then return to Meadville and work two weeks. By then, as a freshman at the university, he 

was an assistant foreman and could handle almost any job in the shops. 

He had a lot of energy. Rarely felt tired. He would work Saturday, take the train that night, 

arrive in Cincinnati Sunday night, go dancing, then attend school Monday. 

Bradley never graduated. He died one year short of graduation. He had become a fine 

practical engineer by this time. 

6 

23:00 (IA1000) Bradley died when Kenneth was sixteen. After that, Brad began taking the family 

to Gull Lake for Bible conferences. The deal with the family was that he would take them there and 

give them a vacation if they would agree to go to one of the services each day. Kenneth always took 

the earliest one to get it over with. He always had a girl. 

He finished high school. The principal was Miss Haxton. He had never studied. Was 

surprised to learn later that he managed good grades, one way or the other. Miss Haxton called on 

Mae five years after he graduated and never asked about Kenneth. Mae finally asked, "Wouldn't you 

like to know what Kenneth's doing?" Miss Haxton fell back and said, "Frankly, I'm afraid to ask. I 

never thought he'd come to any good." Mae was furious. She explained that Kenneth was studying 

for the ministry at Princeton University. Miss Haxton was stunned. "I can't believe it! I just can't 

believe it!" she said. Mae never forgave her. 

He was the kid who would sit in study class, take a penny on his thumbnail, and flip it. It 

57


would hit, and roll and roll and roll, and finally stop. A cheap price to pay for cheap entertainment. 

7 

26:40 (IA1025) Beaver Patrol #3 in the First Presbyterian Church, when he was twelve. "I 

became a tenderfoot boy scout, and I never advanced beyond that grade." He went to the meetings, 

and engaged in the "childish" exercises. Played basketball. And then went to camp. In helping Mae, 

he had developed some cooking skills. At camp, which was some thirty miles from Meadville, he got 

involved in cooking bread, which had to be done every day, which meant that he had to get up early. 

He became thoroughly sick of it. Many loaves of bread, every day, which were all gone by the end of 

the day. Camp was to run three weeks. Early one morning, even before he was to get up to make 

the bread, he got up and took off. Walked the thirty miles home. Took him all day. The people in 

camp were perplexed, of course. He never had a great sense of direction, but he knew the way. Mae 

heard him coming up the mill run whistling. Brad was furious because he had paid for three weeks, 

and Kenny only stayed one. That was the end of his career as a boy scout. 

8 

30:30 (IA1060) In those days, winters were severe. Lots of snow. They would make their own 

skis out of barrel staves, or out of pine slats. He began skating very young. French Creek would 

freeze, and so would the ice pond, and it was deep ice. They could skate from Meadville all the way 

up to Cambridge Springs. Twelve miles or so. They had great skating parties. He also played ice 

hockey. Had hockey skates. By 15, he was part of an excellent town hockey team that went to other 

towns to play. They even took a trip up to Winnipeg. People paid 25 cents to watch. 

He never had time to play school sports. When the team practiced, he had to be at the shops 

working. 

9 

34:00 (IA1120) Brad had a peculiar method of punishing his kids. He would punch them, 

anywhere, in the face or elsewhere. One day when Kenneth was about 15, Brad hit him in this way, 

and Kenneth turned on him, backed him up against the wall, and said, "Don't you ever touch me 

again!" He never did. After working in the shops, Kenneth had built up strong arms and shoulders 

and was stronger than Brad. 

People in town thought Brad was mean. The time Kenneth was struggling with two huge 

bundles of circulars on his bike, and two women in the town, seeing his problem, assisted him. This 

would have been when he was ten or so. Afterward, the women complained to Mae, who had 

nothing to do with it. She was so upset, she tore into Brad, and Brad was so angry with Kenneth for 

letting the women help him, he tore into him! 

Brad was nice to people around town but mean to his family. "He was very mean to my 

mother." She had a musical education, but for the first ten years of the marriage, she had no piano. 

She never had any pocket money. Never had money to buy anything. Had to telephone shops to 

have things sent out. If she bought directly, she had to charge. The boys never had an allowance. 

They had to scrounge around, run errands, get a job if they wanted to have money. 

10 

38:00 (IA1130) On his first bike. The frame was a girl's frame. He had to scrounge around to buy 

a wheel here, and a chain there. Got some old tires. The routine they had to go through to repair 

their tires. Had to keep the tire soft all the time or the repair would blow out. His second bike was a 

good one. Had the right kind of frame. Bought some of the parts this time. 

58


11 

40:25 In one of the shops, he found an old wooden flute that had some German silver keys and 

some open holes. A very old flute. The wood was cracked in the upper part, so he got it cheap. 

Couldn't play on it much because of the crack. At the railroad shop, he used some "iron cement" 

which flowed into the crack. Filed it down and polished it. Then he put the whole flute into a vat of 

olive oil to swell the wood around the metal filling. This did the trick, and gave the flute a mellow 

tone. About once a year he had to soak it in a vat of olive oil for about a week, and it would tighten 

up again. He learned to play on his own. 

He played lots of instruments. He also had a banjo. A saxophone. A balalaika. He liked 

musical instruments. The one he stuck with was the flute, which he had with him when he went to 

Siam. He really loved the flute. In Siam he got his William S. Haynes flute, which was brought out 

by a Mrs. Parks. Played that until the late 1930's, when he had to sell the flute when he was 

unemployed. After that, he lost interest. Went on to other things. 

That is his pattern. Once he leaves something behind, he never goes back to it. 

Theoretically, he's still an ordained minister to this day. Several churches invited him just recently to 

preach while their pastor was away. But he has no inclination to. 

12 

44:40 Tells how he gave up playing the piano under Mabes Imhoff, in his 50's. Kip began asking 

to take piano lessons, he says, something Kip does not recall. Began at the age of 9. Became so 

good, and so dominated the piano, that Kenneth would come home from the State Department and 

find the piano bench taken. Enjoyed listening to Kip play anyway. So that was the end of his piano 

career. Never went back to it. 

13 

47:00 (IA1235) Kenneth sings, "How dry I am." "I've got the blues, I've got the alcoholic blues. 

No more beer my heart to cheer, no more whiskey, used to make me frisky, no more high balls, no 

more gin, I wonder when we're going to have some fun again." Many verses. "My little bimbo down 

in the bamboo isle. She's waiting there for me. She'll wait a while. I've seen wrecks, plenty of 

wrecks, out on the wild, wild sea. But by heck never a wreck like the wreck she's made of me. Oh 

my little bimbo. . . ." Tells how the kids would get together in someone's home and stand around the 

piano and sing these songs together. It was easy to pick them up. If you went out on a date, you took 

a banjo or balalaika along. 

14 

49:40 (IA1260) Brad decided to take Kenneth to visit his brother Henry, the oldest brother, who 

had been born in Massachusetts. Henry, like Brad, was very successful, an engineer who built his 

own railroad between Greensboro and North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. It extracted timber from 

the hill areas there. Brad feared Henry's wife, who had a sharp tongue. Also, he had never repaid the 

money Henry had loaned him so that he could go through Lafayette College. He was still paying it 

off, and Henry's wife gave him a hard time about it. But in any case, they started out, via 

Washington, D.C. When Brad had married Mae, his first job was in Washington to make patent 

medicine. So he wanted to see the city again. He especially wanted Kenny to see the great painting 

of Commodore Perry of Lake Erie in the Capitol. Brad explained that Kenneth was named after him. 

And sure enough, there, at the turn of the stairwell in the Capitol, was this enormous painting of 

Perry. 

59


The two of them enjoyed swimming, and so they went swimming in the Potomac. There 

were bathhouses in a curve of the river. His memory is that the water was forty feet deep right off the 

dock. He has a vivid memory of floating on his back in the river and looking straight up at the 

Washington Monument. The whole area has been filled in now. But then, in 1915 or so, the river 

came close to the Monument. 

Was surprised how few people there seemed to be in Washington. 

Then they took the train to North Wilkesboro. His same-age cousins were two girls, Inez and 

Frieda. Then there was Katherine, who was older, and Fred, older still, and Henry the oldest. 

Anything he asked for, these girls would promise him; but they never would perform. He and his 

Uncle Henry became very friendly, and one day Uncle Henry invited him to ride on his train. Henry 

was an honorary Colonel. Everyone called him "Colonel." At the depot, they were told the train had 

departed twenty minutes ago. No problem, Henry said, we'll catch it. Kenny was baffled. They 

walked down the track a ways, and there came the train back to the main line from a siding, where it 

had been picking up a load. 

15 

57:00 (1350) Many years later, after Kenneth's daughter Carol married Lennart Pearson, it 

happened that they were living in South Carolina. Kenneth was visiting, and proposed driving up to 

see if any Landons were still in North Wilkesboro. They were all dressed in shorts and informal 

clothes. In the town, they asked around and found out about the Landon garage. Kenneth drove in, 

got out, looked into the dark interior. Saw a man. "Is there anyone named Landon here?" he called. 

"Yes, cousin Kenneth, I'm your cousin Henry." Henry knew him because he had seen a piece on 

Kenneth in the "Saturday Evening Post." Henry invited them all home with him. A bad mistake. He 

gave his wife and daughters no warning, and they had all just washed their hair. Not pleased to have 

guests. Glad to see the guests leave. 

60


Session #2 continued July 29, 1976 

HOUR 4 

1 

0:00 During this visit, Henry gave Kenneth quite a lecture on how "we in the South" don't like it 

when "you Northerners come down and tell us what to do." This was during the Civil Rights period. 

Kenneth was amused by this since Henry's father had originally been a quintessential Northerner. 

Uncle Henry had become so completely Southern that he was given the honorary title of "Colonel," 

and furthermore, his name was on a plaque on a huge tree by the courthouse dedicating "the hanging 

tree," where seven "damn Yankees" were hung in the Civil War. Uncle Henry had been the one who 

dedicated the tree, as one of the leading citizens of the town. 

Kenneth asked Henry about Katherine, and he said he had disowned her. Wouldn't have 

anything to do with her because she "was in trouble with the Federal Government." She was being 

investigated by the FBI, he said. The FBI had come down asking questions about her because of 

some job she had in the government. Kenneth tried to explain that this was normal procedure when 

someone was in a sensitive security position, but Henry would have none of it. 

2 

2:30 (IA1415) By the time he was 16 and in long pants, Kenny began hanging around the pool 

hall. As a religious man, Brad had warned Kenny against certain things. Against the movies, for 

one. Bad people make movies, he said, and they would have a bad influence on him. Also warned 

against smoking cigarettes. They're bad for you. If you smoke cigarettes, it will probably be because 

you've gone to the movies. You'll see people smoking in the movies, and that will influence you. 

And the next thing you know, you'll be taking a drink. Because people in the movies drink. And 

that's bad. And the next thing you know, you'll be tempted by the kind of women you see in the 

movies, and these are bad women. And if you start going with these fast women, and drinking, and 

smoking, and going to the movies, you're on the road to hell, son. And I tried them all, and he's right. 

Kenneth discovered that all of these things were perfectly delightful. 

The movies in those days cost a nickel. His friend Jimmy Trace was having an affair with 

the girl who sold the tickets at the movie house, and Jimmy would go to the window, reach through to 

hold the hand of the girl, and she would give him two tickets. They would stay and see everything 

twice. "The Perils of Poor Pauline" were very much in vogue. A new episode every week. 

3 

6:00 (IA1460) He began buying all his own clothes at the age of fourteen. His first pair of long 

pants. Then he began going to the pool hall and found he had a natural skill for the game. He soon 

learned you could make money at pool, and so he would gamble. Pocket pool. Bottle pool. Kelly 

pool. Straight pool, running off strings of balls. Spent a lot of time at the pool hall, with some pretty 

fast people. 

He had begun smoking cigars when they were in the Fifth Ward. One of the pieces of 

furniture Brad moved with them to the Fifth Ward was a desk with a bin that he had stashed behind 

the desk in the warehouse that was full of cigars people had given him at special occasions. Brad 

didn't smoke. Kenny discovered them and started working on the cigars from the bottom up, so that 

they wouldn't be missed. Mae often commented that he "smelled like a bonfire" and she couldn't 

61


figure out why. Cigarettes never appealed to him. At the pool hall, he would gamble for cigars. His 

family got used to seeing him with cigars in time. 

He also decided he had to have a pipe. The finest and most expensive pipe was a Dunhill. 

One day he told his father he was going to New York City to buy a pipe. All that way, just to buy a 

pipe. Meadville didn't have them. He had learned from the phone book that there was a shop in New 

York that carried them. Brad went with him on the train, and went to the shop. He was shocked at 

the price. Kenneth got a beautiful pipe, with an underslung sort of body and a bulldog end to it, and 

he always smoked it upside down. This was very stylish. 

4 

9:35 (IA1515) The Moose Hall was putting on boxing matches Saturday nights. They even had 

Benny Leonard come there once. Kenneth did some boxing, when he learned he could earn $10 for 

boxing in the preliminaries. 

When he was about seventeen, one day, at the pool hall, a fellow on a high chair began 

reaching out with his foot and kicking the end of Kenneth's cue just as he was making his shot. It 

was a game for money. The second time he did it, Kenneth turned around and slashed the man with 

his cue, right in the middle. This man was the local town bruiser, and he was down on Kenneth in a 

flash. But Kenneth hit him once, and it took eight stitches to fix up the man's cheek. "I really hit 

him." 

Two or three weeks later, the man's entire gang got Kenneth cornered behind the Evening 

Tribune building, and insisted that he and Kenneth have a fist fight. Kenneth knew he was going to 

get a licking, but he also knew he could hurt the man. He had no choice. A ring was formed, and the 

two of them slugged it out. A man named Leffingwell, the leading heavyweight boxer in Meadville, 

acted as referee. There were no rounds; it was continuous. Kenneth put his head down and plowed 

away until finally the man got tired of hitting him. Kenneth didn't suffer much damage because he 

kept his head down. 

5 

13:00 (End of IA, beginning of IB) Brad and Mae were not very compatible. He had little 

consideration for her. After Bradley was born, she wanted to leave him and went home to her mother 

in Brooklyn. But her mother said, "You've made your bed, and you've got to lie in it. There are no 

divorces in our family." So she was stuck with it. Then Kenneth was born. 

Brad was a great one for "honor your father and your mother, and particularly your father," 

and you wouldn't dare to disagree with him. If you did, he would sock you. You couldn't contradict 

him, no matter how ridiculous he was. But the trouble was that Kenneth never could restrain his 

sense of humor. One night in particular, Brad wanted to make love to Mae, and she didn't want to, 

and he put on a big family scene. He was weeping, and crying, and saying, "My wife doesn't love 

me!" He got down on his knees, praying, calling on the Lord to soften her heart! This was in the 

middle of the night. Bradley got up and sided with Brad, and so Kenneth sided with Mae, and started 

laughing at Brad, which made him furious. So much so that Kenny left the house. Kenneth, at age 

twelve or thirteen, didn't understand it all, just that his father was making a fool of himself, 

blubbering like a baby, and he told him so. This broke things up so that Brad stopped. 

The sequel came at prayer meeting Wednesday night, which they regularly went to. Brad 

stood up in prayer meeting and began to tell everyone how Mae had behaved and asked that they pray 

for her, asking the Lord to soften her heart and be a true wife to him! Mae was indignant, stood up, 

and prayed that the Lord would make that hard-hearted husband of hers behave himself and be 

something of a man and shut up in public! A prayer of rebuttal. She walked out of the church, and 

62


never went to prayer meeting again. 

Many years later, in Singapore, Margaret met a woman named Dorothy Richards, who had 

lived in Meadville and knew the Landons. Dorothy's comment was that people in town didn't respect 

Brad Landon for the way he treated his family. Thought he treated them shamefully. 

6 

17:50 (IB27) Brad loved pie. Mae made the most wonderful shoofly pies, lemon meringue pies, 

blueberry pies, apple pies, all kinds of pies. Brad had a pie for every meal, and usually several 

pieces. Along with French Creek, Meadville had the Cassawaga River, a grand title for a very small 

stream. It was only good for canoeing, but it went for miles. A favorite place to take girls. One day, 

Brad, Kenny, Ainsworth Lang, and Amos Dinsmore took a large canoe and went up the river. At 

lunch time, they all got out to have their lunches. Brad and Kenny's lunches were pedestrian, but to 

his great misfortune, Ainsworth Lang had brought a lovely big piece of apple pie. Brad's eyes lit up, 

and he decided to get that pie away from the boy. He began to explain that pie was not really the best 

thing for a growing boy. Only a person who was full grown could eat pie without damage to his 

system. As an act of kindness, he would give his cookies to Ainsworth, and he would take 

Ainsworth's pie. Ainsworth didn't want to give up his pie, but before he knew it, he was holding 

Brad's one cookie, and Brad was eating his pie. 

7 

20:30 (IB40) Mae was ill much of the time. She had something called Viavi salve which you 

heated up and softened and had someone rub into your back. It smelled good; it was harmless; and 

Mae would get Kenny to massage it into her back. So he did a lot of massaging her back. 

He would also go down to the department store to buy clothes for her. One winter he decided 

that Mother needed a new muff and fur piece. She wouldn't have the nerve to do it for herself, so he 

decided to do it for her. He got a clerk named Reimer, who taught a Bible class in the Christian 

Missionary Alliance church. Kenneth was about fifteen. He found a nice fur neck piece and muff, 

and charged them to his father. When Brad got home that night, he found Mae all dressed up in her 

new fur set, and he hit the roof. He ranted, he raved, he was so angry. But Mae was pleased, and 

said she was going to keep them. Brad had to pay! 

8 

23:40 (IB60) Harry Reimer was the man who, years later, after Kenneth had been through 

seminary, approached him about a passage he had found in Scripture about "divers places." In the 

King James Version. He didn't realize that "divers" meant "various." He thought the passage had to 

do with discoveries that divers and archaeologists had been making in the sea which seemed to 

confirm Scripture. 

9 

24:50 As a child, some of the gang fighting involved the use of beebee guns. One boy lost his eye 

in this. Then along came .22 shorts, which in pistols were more powerful than beebees but no threat 

to life. The boys would wear heavy overcoats, and shoot at each other with these things. The 

overcoats were enough to stop them. Kenneth sings, "In the fields and in the marshes." 

10 

26:35 Dating Mabel Shirk in the Fifth Ward, and trying to avoid the gangs there afterward. A 

tough girl. Another tough girl was Mabel Poppinay. Pretty; big, black, lustrous eyes; danced 

63


magnificently; but real tough. Many years later, he was back in Meadville and saw Mabel on the 

street. A huge woman by then. 

Jean Kitchen, the love of his life from age four to seven, who by age seventeen was greasylooking, 

with pimples, straggly hair; she looked terrible. 

He always had girls. He dated just one after another until he went to Wheaton. 

11 

28:40 They had no car. Judge Prather, who liked Abraham Lincoln, bought a huge, old Lincoln. 

He had never driven a car. At the garage, they showed him how to start it and go, but they forgot to 

tell him how to stop it, and he didn't think to ask. Fortunately, there was no traffic to speak of. He 

knew how to slow the thing down. But he didn't know how to turn it off. He managed to get to the 

courthouse square, which went round the bandstand, and there he drove round and round for hours 

until he ran out of gas. Everyone was coming out and waving happily at him. He eventually learned. 

A few years later, Brad bought his first car, used, a Ford coupe that would only carry him and 

one other person. Bought it in January when ice and snow was heavy on the ground. His first ride 

was with chains. Ken was in high school at the time. Brad came clanking up in front of the house. 

A rough driver. The car bucked and leaped and jerked. When he would start it, it would buck like a 

bronco. Brad thought it was supposed to be like that. In time, he got into the practice of buying a 

new car every few years. 

Ken's first car was at the end of his first year of seminary. Second hand, shabby. He took 

some black car paint and some varnish, adding in shellac, mixed it up, and painted the thing. It 

looked like paten leather. No self-starter. Had to crank it while priming it with the other hand. This 

was the car he owned when he married Margaret. Turned it in when he went to Siam, and bought a 

new one, a coupe, and shipped it out to Bangkok. When they got off the boat, it was there, out of the 

box, waiting for them to get into. Used it through his first term and then sold it when he came back 

on furlough. It was turned into a truck by the new owner. 

Session #3 August 2, 1976 Kenneth, Kip, Margaret 

12 

(IB128) 36:20 Dr. Tallmadge of Brooklyn, a famous preacher. He was especially famous for 

jumping into a bathtub of cold water just before preaching, to prepare himself, quickly drying off and 

changing, and then charging out and preaching a tremendous sermon. If he couldn't think of anything 

to say at the moment, he would just keep roaring until the next inspiration struck. 

13 

38:30 At age 3, a memory of being with the family at the railroad station. Many tracks. The way 

they swerved as the train came into the station made it look as if the huge, ferocious-sounding train 

the family intended to board were going to run him down. He took off like a shot, running out of the 

station and home. No one could catch him. Both Brad and Bradley chased after him. The family 

had to have the train held in the station until Ken could be captured and loaded onto the train for the 

trip! 

14 

42:20 At age 6-7, while living on Baldwin Street, playing follow-the-leader with the older boys. 

Red Dykes; Jimmy Trace; Jack Lavely; Bradley. All four or five years older. The leader jumped out 

64


the first story window into a pile of dirt, which wasn't bad, and everyone followed. Then he jumped 

out the second story window into the pile of dirt, and everyone followed. Then he went out the attic 

window, and a couple of the boys wouldn't follow. But Ken went out as if he had a parachute, 

landing with a terrific thump. Victorine Smith, across the street, saw this happen, much to her 

astonishment. Referred to it many times through the years. 

15 

44:50 The time he played follow-the-leader at about age 12 at a swimming hole in French Creek. 

It was at a bend of the river that had a severe undertow. If they really wanted a thrill, they would 

jump into it deliberately, knowing the river would take them around the bend, where they would pop 

up again. The kids would grab hold of a freight car to ride out there. His mother forbade him to go 

there or go swimming. He would come home and have everything dry, as he thought, but somehow 

she always knew! She kept a little rattan about 18 inches long, and she would whip him with it. 

Whop whop whop. It was nothing. He wasn't impressed. But he obediently made noises of pain 

because he knew this was expected. 

16 

48:40 The time in the new house on Park Avenue when he was playing alone, stepped backward 

into the new chimneyway, and fell headfirst down the chimney. He was wearing a big straw hat. 

The brim and crown were cut through, and his forehead gashed. He realized he had been 

unconscious when he came to. His main concern was his hat. He told Mae, who was so shocked that 

she comforted him instead of scolding him. 

17 

51:00 His beloved Necco wafers. He liked sour balls too. Necco wafers were much bigger than 

they are now. Pack was five or six inches long. Each one bigger than a quarter, and all different 

colors and flavors. He had a Houbigant imitation leather perfume case, red, with a cover that 

snapped down, and it was just the right length to carry a package of Neccos. They picked up the 

perfume scent, which added to the experience. He had two after breakfast, two before lunch, two 

after lunch, and then after dinner, he would have three! They were expensive! They cost a nickel! 

So he had to portion them out with care. Bradley would steal them if he could find them. 

18 

54:00 (IB235) The problem he and Bradley had with their father, Brad, who would take any money 

they earned if he knew they had it. He considered it his. Would search their rooms to find it. The 

two of them learned they could remove part of the newel post and secrete their money inside the post. 

It gave them delight whenever Brad went up the steps, putting his hand on the newel post. One vivid 

memory: the time Bradley took his savings and put them into an account at the bank, graduating from 

the newel post. Brad learned of this, went to the bank, took out the money, and bought Bradley stock 

in the Meadville Chemical Company—that is, KLV company. He assured his son that this would be 

educational for him. Bradley went back to using the newel post. Anything the two of them got, they 

spent, knowing that otherwise their father would take it from them. 

19 

56:40 On buying his own clothes. He observed what Cash Smith wore, the man who owned the 

clothing store. Got to know him well. He bought his first suit of long pants from Cash, a gray 

flannel. It happened that he was the right size to model clothes, and he made some money from Cash 

65


modeling clothes for him on Saturdays. He could step right into any suit he had, and he was graceful. 

And for this, Cash gave him a good price on clothes. 

On buying his own glasses. He graduated from steel rims to gold, which his father wouldn't buy 

for him. Had to get them himself. Wore them all the time. They were in all sorts of S-shapes 

because he wore them while fighting, playing sports, everything. 

66


Session #3 continued August 2, 1976 

HOUR 5 

1 

0:00 Continuing on his glasses. Mother tells of Dad's continuing to wear knickers at age 15, with 

his steel-rim glasses. By the next year, he was wearing his new suit and his gold-rim glasses. Big 

transition. 

2 

1:30 (IB280) Dad's dog Jimmy. It was a gift to his father, but he didn't care about it. In the Erie 

Railroad, he was an important man, and the dog was a gift from someone who was trying to sell coal 

to the railroad. Brad passed on the qualities and utilization of all coal, oil, paints, and so on that the 

railroad used. Kenny was with him on one trip when he went down to New York to condemn a 

couple of mines in Pennsylvania that were owned by the son of the Vice President of the Erie 

Railroad. He read his report on the BTU and the slag and declared that the coal from these mines was 

suitable only for stationary engines, not locomotives. It was not economical. The Vice President was 

sitting there and protested. But Brad was unyielding. As a result, those mines were closed. Many 

years later, when Kenneth was working in the State Department, one of the secretaries in his office 

told of her father's losing his job in one of those mines when it closed. She was angry with Kenneth! 

Brad was so familiar with coal that he could walk over a trainload of coal and evaluate it on 

sight. He would then do the scientific testing in the lab to confirm his initial evaluation. He was a 

brilliant man, a leading chemist, well-known throughout the country. 

Brad's personality was abrasive. He was kind to his employees. But mean to his family, a 

meanness that carried over from his own family in New Jersey. Whenever Kenneth was with Brad 

and his brother Ed, Kenneth had to try to keep the peace between them. Brad was always after Ed to 

shape up. Ed's two brothers were highly successful, but Ed just didn't want to make the effort. He 

stayed home and took care of his mother. Did odd jobs. Ate, loafed, sat around and talked. 

Everyone liked him. 

3 

8:50 The story Dad wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, a railroad story, was based on a real 

experience that he had with his father and his brother Ed when the three of them went to the old 

swimming hole together outside Frenchtown, New Jersey, where they had grown up. 

Brad was always after everyone. He couldn't leave you alone. When he visited the Landon family 

in Washington, he would make unkind, cutting remarks, which he found funny. Carol was the one 

Landon child who was not intimidated; she turned on him and sliced him up verbally, and from then 

on he never bothered her again. 

4 

10:40 As for Uncle Henry, he was very bland, a politician type, very likable. He understood 

people. He always knew what was going on and knew how to adjust to it. 

5 

12:00 (IB340) Brad Landon was born in Barberton, NJ, which is now called Barber Station, 

February 16, 1869. He was married July 20, 1895, in Brooklyn, New York. He died July 11, 1953, 

67


in St. Petersburg, Florida. He grew up in Frenchtown. Decided to become a druggist. Worked in a 

drugstore. Was in charge on Sundays. He sold whiskey along with the prescriptions, something he 

hated doing. He also worked making peach baskets and developed strong hands doing that. 

6 

16:08 Both Brad and Henry worked as children, but not Ed. Ed would run away from home, get on 

a freight train, and go bumming. He turned up in Meadville one time, when Mae was playing the 

piano, at night, and she looked up and saw him looking in the window, which frightened her. She 

screamed; yelled for Brad, who came down. Ed ran away rather than come in. 

Ed told of encountering a wild-eyed man on the train during one of his trips, who, he said, 

turned out to be Vachel Lindsay, a poet. Ed had some bread with him, and Lindsay was hungry. So 

Lindsay gave him a poem in exchange for bread. 

7 

19:50 Brad went to study chemistry at Lafayette College, and then at Cooper Union he studied 

pharmacy and got his degree. When he married Mae in 1895, his first job was with a patent medicine 

company in Washington, D.C. All they had for furniture was boxes. They slept in a folding bed, 

which once folded on them when they were in it! He got his job at the Pennsylvania Railroad in 

Altoona through one of his college chums at Lafayette. He was an inventor, but he was a poor 

businessman. He was always scheming ways of making money, creating little chemical companies, 

but they never turned into anything. When the Erie Railroad approached the Pennsylvania Railroad 

looking for someone who could set up their laboratories, Brad was recommended. And so he became 

the chief chemist of the Erie Railroad in Meadville, Pennsylvania, halfway between New York City 

and Chicago. 

He put the bulk of his budgeted funds into equipment and had little left for a building. But 

then he had the idea of using freight cars, boxcars, which were solidly built. He used eight in all, in 

two sets of four, end to end. They put them up on cinder blocks, and that's where he and his staff 

worked the next forty years. His own office was small. 

8 

29:40 Mother returns to the subject of Vachel Lindsay, who wasn't born until 1879 and died in 

1931. He tramped through the South in 1906, which makes her wonder if Ed really met him. He 

would exchange his poem "The Tree of Laughing Bells" for bed and board. He tramped through the 

West in 1912. She thinks it was a photographer she and Dad met in Richmond who told them the 

story of meeting Vachel Lindsay in just this way. Dad remembers this too. Some possibility that Ed 

is being confused with this photographer. 

9 

32:25 (IB500) All three brothers were associated with railroads. Henry built them. Brad was the 

chemist for one. And Ed rode them as a hobo! Trains had a kind of magnificence then. Now they 

tend to look ratty by comparison, Mother says. Henry was a civil engineer. Somehow he came to 

know some men of wealth who wanted to exploit the timber in the western part of North Carolina and 

needed a railroad to do so. He built it and owned stock in it. It was a funny little railroad. Just 

jogged along at 30-40 miles an hour. People would wave it down to get on board. Or it would go off 

on a siding to pick up someone's milk. 

68


10 

36:20 Brad loved automobiles. When Henry died—Kenneth was out of the country—Brad 

decided to drive. It was winter. He feared Henry's wife because he still hadn't paid off his debt to 

Henry after all these years. He got about halfway there, decided he couldn't face it, turned around, 

and drove back home. Claimed it was because of bad weather. 

11 

38:30 Ed stayed on in the old house, living alone. The house deteriorated badly. He lived in one 

bedroom and the kitchen. In his final illness, Brad took him back to Meadville. This was while 

Mother and Dad were in Thailand. 

Brad had Victorine to help him, after Mae died. She wanted to marry him. One night while he 

was saying his prayers next to his bed, she turned up in her nightgown and kneeled down beside him. 

He had no interest; sent her off. 

Ed died there, and Brad took the body back to Frenchtown and buried him there. Sold the house. 

Elizabeth Landon, Henry's daughter, took some of the furniture. Brad took a few pieces, among them 

the chairs that ended up in Mother and Dad's breakfast room. They were in sticks at the time. 

12 

41:15 Bradley was born October 20, 1898. Brad was in Washington for two years, then moved to 

Bellwood, outside Altoona. Bradley was born in Bellwood. Two or three years later, Brad went to 

Meadville, where Dad was born in 1903. 

Brad saved the railroad a great deal of money. There was one year that he saved them more than a 

million dollars. People were always giving him things. Cigars. Jimmy the dog, which came from 

England, with a pedigree. 

13 

44:20 Mae didn't want a dog. But along came this puppy, an airedale, in a crate, whimpering and 

scared to death. When they opened the crate, the puppy ran frantically all over the place dripping 

fluids in its panic. It was trembling uncontrollably. This touched Mae's heart, and she scooped it up 

in her arms to reassure it. His name was James Blah Blah Blah Bothwell (the name of the British 

kennel), a big long name. Years later, probably ten or so, the dog was either poisoned or ate glass or 

something that tore him up inside, and died. Bradley wept over that dog and cried, "I'd rather it was 

Kenny! I'd rather it was Kenny!" 

14 

47:50 (IB590) Henry Clayton Landon, born in Westfield, Massachusetts, July 11, 1860, the oldest 

child of George Clayton Landon and Mary Tallmadge Dayton Landon. Died March 20, 1931, in 

Wilkesboro, NC, and buried there. Went to Lehigh University in civil engineering. He married Inez 

Allwood. Mother reads from a paper by Catherine Landon, his daughter, on the debt that Brad 

incurred when he went to school. The money had been Henry's nest egg for his marriage to Inez, and 

was supposed to be paid off before Brad married—a promise he broke. She resented this all through 

the years. She had a sharp tongue, and Brad was afraid of her. Because of the bad feeling between 

the two families, there were few visits back and forth. 

On Henry's building the railroad from North Wilkesboro to Boone to serve the timber 

interests. They used convict labor. After thirty miles were built, a flood washed it out. Then came 

World War One. The convict labor vanished, and much of the railroad was never built. The railroad 

went bankrupt, but Henry was employed as engineer by the new owner for the rest of his life. 

69


Dad recalls Henry's dedicating "the hanging tree" in North Wilkesboro. 

15 

57:20 The legend that Jimmy could climb trees and hunt bears. They would tell this story to other 

kids. But of course it wasn't true. Kenneth would fall asleep at night on the floor holding tight to 

Jimmy, and Jimmy would let him. Then Brad would say, "Kenny, go to bed!" And Jimmy would get 

right up and go up to Kenny's bedroom. A smart dog. 

16 

59:00 Brad's excellent work habits. A good executive. Always first at the shop in the morning. He 

would get everyone started on various jobs. When he needed a new worker, he would pick a man out 

of the shop and turn him into a practical chemist. Tony Bucci was one example. 

70


Session #3 continued August 2, 1976 

HOUR 6 

1 

0:00 Continuing on Brad's work habits. Once he had the staff going, he would take off and do 

chores around town. Shopping. He would often turn up at the house, a mile and a quarter from the 

lab, with bundles of groceries and so on. Might hang around for a while. Then huff off again. Then 

come back for lunch. Then back to the lab. He never spent much time there. He would write the 

reports, of course, his analysis of his chemists' analyses. What to buy; what to pay for it. His work 

was excellent. And yet he himself had no business sense. He had most of the top brass at the railroad 

investing in his chemical company. But it always lost money. Whatever money he had, he put into 

his own company. He never gave money to his sons. If they wanted money, they had to get a job 

and earn it. 

2 

5:20 He was very popular with women. At his funeral, all the old girls turned up en masse. He 

always had feminine companions, after Mae died. Hazel Hotchkiss, his mistress. The Presbyterian 

Church admonished him as an elder of the church for setting a poor example. And so he left the 

church and joined the Christian Missionary Alliance. Victorine Smith lived in his house as his 

housekeeper. Dad doesn't think there was anything between them. He had a woman living with him 

in his trailer in St. Petersburg at the time he died. Dad learned that Brad had run him down to this 

woman and her father. Had a nasty encounter with the father. 

Brad had sold his house to Earl Hall, his successor at Erie, and for the rest of his life he had 

$50 a month from Earl for the house, plus his railroad pension. There was no social security for him. 

But he had enough to live on. 

3 

9:30 In his Bible class, he would relate chemistry to the Bible. He saw all kinds of extravagant 

relations between chemistry and the Bible. A poor public speaker, though. Terribly uneasy. Painful 

to watch, he was so self-conscious. But the women loved him. He was very religious, always very 

pious. He was against tobacco, movies, alcohol, pool halls, theater, loose women. He would spend 

all of Sunday at church and then go out street preaching. 

Physically, he was about five-foot-eight. Big feet, like "flippers." An awkward man. Uncoordinated. 

Not muscular. Bald. Big nose. The day the boys were playing a game to see how far 

they could jump up the bank. He came along and joined right in. And won! 

4 

13:30 Bradley was a robust boy, large for his age. A "black Irish type" with beetle brows and thick 

brown hair that grew low on his forehead. Nice-looking. Heavy arms and thighs. He was the 

favorite of both parents. He was hardly ever sick, while Kenny was always running at the nose, and 

skinny, and "slumpy." Mae thought something was wrong with Kenny. 

But Aunt Maude doted on him. When he went to Brooklyn, he would get into bed with her and 

make up stories. He was a great one for telling stories. He would stick his face down into the pillow 

and tell what he saw "in the pillow." A great joke. 

71


5 

17:00 Bradley's beloved, Kathryn Lehrer Lindner, from Glendale, Ohio. The Erie Railroad passed 

through the town. Bradley met her at the University of Cincinnati, where he was studying 

engineering. She was a gay, red-headed, pretty girl. He fell in love. But he didn't know anything 

about girls. Kenny had always gone with girls. So Bradley asked Kenny to go and check her out, 

give his opinion. Bradley was at home at the time. Kenny went by train, carrying only a toothbrush 

and an extra collar, and stayed for a week. Bradley came at the end of the week. Kenny's report was 

favorable. Thought she was a nice girl. So Bradley asked her to marry him, and they became 

engaged. 

6 

22:30 Bradley admired Bill Hickock, and tried to get people to call him "Bill." But no one would. 

Brad, the father, was always constipated. He was very articulate on the subject. He would 

discuss it at the dinner table. He was always trying concoctions to solve the problem, with explosive 

results at times. He was convinced he had to have a large bowel movement every day or become ill. 

He was a faddist. He tried dietary hobbies regularly. Halibut liver oil. Blackstrap molasses. He 

mixed them up in a concoction which he carried in a hip flask, which he periodically drank from. 

People thought it was liquor. But the oil turned rancid, and the thing just stank. Later, he turned to 

carrots. Everything had to be carrots. The time he spoiled an elaborate dinner Mother had prepared 

here at 4711, refusing to eat it, taking over the kitchen, and grinding up carrots, which was all he 

would eat. He loved grapefruit too. And coffee. 

7 

27:00 The ATV business. It ended up in bankruptcy. Brad sold barrels of the stuff to the Erie 

Railroad. A bit of graft and corruption. Furniture polish to a railroad? Of course, when Kenny left 

home, that was the end of the manufacturing staff. The business was in debt, and Brad just gave it 

up. 

He had this huge vat set up on steel legs in the garage, with a large wooden paddle for mixing. 

Held about 175 gallons. Had a cock on one end to drain off the liquid. Kenny mixed everything. 

Barrels of oil. Orrisroot. The stuff worked fairly well. They used it on their own furniture. Of 

course, in the process of inventing ATV, Brad had tried it out on various pieces of furniture until he 

got it so that it didn't destroy anything. 

His metal polish was a different matter. He tried that out in the bathtub, and it ate the enamel 

off. That one didn't last very long. 

8 

30:00 They never celebrated birthdays or Christmas. They didn't even have Christmas trees. Brad 

had grown up a Congregationalist, in the Puritan tradition. 

Two things really shocked Kenneth when he got married. One was the acquisition of 

baggage. And the other was the aggregation of all these celebrations. He had never carried much 

baggage. When he went to college, he couldn't fill one suitcase. When he graduated, he managed to 

fill a suitcase and a box with books. But Margaret came with boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. It 

was a great shock. He still hasn't entirely recovered. When they moved from Bangkok to Nakhon, it 

took an entire freight car! The story of his life ever since. "I've never been attached to things very 

much. Whatever I have, I like to be of the finest quality. But I could do without an awful lot and 

never miss it." 

And ceremonials, and the protocol, and all that. She likes Christmas! Dotes on birthdays! 

72


9 

33:50 Brad loved Mae, and felt proud of her. She was pretty, and he often commented on how 

pretty she was. He expected her to perform her wifely duties, of course, and this led to some great 

scenes when she wasn't eager. He would call his sons in to witness, in his outrage, right into the 

bedroom. It happened more than once. 

He expected complete obedience from his sons. Would not tolerate any challenge. Bradley 

accepted this. Kenny did not. He had ideas of his own, and the father and son would have a row. 

This was why Kenny started running away at the age of four. Brad tried to put him down all his life, 

and tried to make him conform to whatever he wanted done. And Kenneth would not. When he was 

a child, Brad would hit him, sock him. That kept on until Kenneth went to work in the railroad shop 

and developed muscles. The work gave him a powerful upper body. 

Brad never stopped trying to put Kenneth down. Even when he was successful adult. 

10 

38:25 (IB999) When Bradley died. He was a wrestler at the university. In his fourth year. He 

weighed about 195. He was so strong that he could pick up a railroad frog—a conjunction of a 

couple of tracks. He got the idea that he could build greater strength if he didn't drink water. Well, 

he came down with terrible belly pains and gas. He was in Meadville at the time. It was 

appendicitis, but Brad was convinced it was constipation. Brad told him to use a machine he had 

mounted on the wall which he used for his own constipation. You applied your belly to it and turned 

a hand crank which massaged your belly and helped you work the stuff out of your guts. Bradley's 

appendix burst, leading to peritonitis. He went to the hospital, and they operated on him. The third 

day after the operation, Brad left town on an inspection trip. Bradley died while he was gone. 

It was winter. The ground was too hard to dig a grave. Brad came back; they had the funeral; 

and the body was put in the mausoleum, where it remained until spring. They had a number of 

bodies waiting for the spring. 

Kenneth was 16 at the time. 

11 

43:45 Bradley was the true engineer. Ingenious. Kenneth could do the work. He did well enough 

at the railroad shop. But it wasn't really his interest. Nevertheless, he followed his brother to 

Cincinnati. His grades, though, were not satisfactory, and they turned him down. He went to see the 

dean and talked himself into the university. He did fairly well for a year. Had two roommates, 

Benny Batson and Felix Visk, living in a Mrs. Heintzman's house. The program was demanding, and 

by the end of a year, he was sick of it, and left the university. 

Mrs. Heintzman was a medium. When Kenneth came down for breakfast, she would tell him 

she had been talking to his brother the night before, and then she would regale him with everything 

his dead brother had told her. Kenneth was living a fairly wild life there, staying out all night at the 

pool halls and such. 

She had regular seances for people from the university. Kenneth, Benny, and Felix decided to 

cook up a show for one of her seances. They rigged up an arrangement through the chandelier and up 

into their rooms which would produce all sorts of flashes and dramatic sounds. It had a remarkable 

effect 

12 

49:45 Feels Bradley would have been a good engineer. But he wasn't sophisticated about people. 

As for Brad, he was "always righteous unto the Lord." He could rationalize anything he did 

73


as right. But the death of Bradley was a very sobering experience for Kenneth. 

The following summer, they went to the Gull Lake Bible Conference. His father wanted him 

to have a life-transforming experience. Of course, he had been "saved" many times already, but his 

father didn't feel that was sufficient. 

The summer after that, when he had left Cincinnati, they went to the Conference again, where 

he met President Charles Blanchard of Wheaton College. Blanchard asked where he was going to 

college, and of course, he said that he had left the university. Blanchard told him about "his college" 

and invited him to come. Kenneth replied, "Is that one of those teahound joints?" Blanchard didn't 

know what that meant. He was very sober. A grand looking man. Very New England in his 

attitudes. Anti-Mason. In favor of missions to the Indians. He put a man named McCarroll on to 

Kenneth, a trustee of the college, and McCarroll and Blanchard both spoke to Brad, who urged 

Kenneth to go. 

13 

56:00 So, in the fall, Brad and Kenneth went to Wheaton to look around. Kenneth was most 

unimpressed. They went into the registrar's office, and there was this dottering old man, Greek 

Smith, who had difficulty speaking, and Kenneth was even less impressed. He didn't think he would 

stay. And then Margaret walked in. 

Kenneth was dressed in bell-bottom pants with cerise inserts, shiny shoes and shiny hair. He 

felt instant recognition. "That's the girl for me!" he thought. She had long blond hair. She was 

beautiful. She noticed him, and he her; he thinks there was recognition on both sides. So he stayed. 

He made the decision at that moment. 

But Margaret wouldn't give him a date. It happened that a girl named Zoe Landon was at the 

college, and they decided to pretend they were brother and sister. He took her on a date to Chicago. 

But that didn't last long. 

Margaret Mortenson was the darling of all the football players. Every time he asked her for a 

date, she said she already had an engagement. Finally he cornered her and accused her of being too 

proud to have a date with him. She said she was not. So he said, name a date when you are free, 

which she did. And he made a date with her. 

One of the great turning point moments of his life. 

74


Session 3 continued 

HOUR 7 

1 

0:00 (IB1260) He had an incomplete at the end of his year at Cincinnati. He had had so much 

practical chemistry in his work in Meadville that it all felt like kidstuff. He was way ahead of the 

"kids" at Cincinnati. He didn't really care about his studies, especially as he increasingly realized that 

engineering was not for him. 

To his astonishment, in his second year at Wheaton, the registrar called him in and told him 

he would graduate at the end of the next year. He had done so much work at Cincinnati that he was 

given credit for many courses. So he graduated from Wheaton in three years. 

2 

2;10 When Kenneth told Brad about Margaret, he came out to Wheaton to meet her. He 

immediately knew she had qualities he couldn't cope with. He didn't like her blond hair. Wondered 

why Kenneth couldn't find a girl with dark hair like his mother. He was afraid of her from the first 

time he met her. 

When they went to Thailand, Brad was pleased. He approved of their being missionaries. 

Mae was filled with trepidation because she felt she would never see her son again. And she was 

right. She never did. 

3 

4:12 After he was ordained, he preached in the Presbyterian church in Meadville, and Dr. 

McIlvaine commented that it was a remarkable sermon, worthy of someone long in ministry. 

Kenneth had picked up the techniques of the Bible conference teachers. He had memorized most of 

the New Testament and huge sections of the Old. He never had to read from the Bible. He quoted 

from it by memory. And he never used notes when he preached. He talked directly to the audience, 

something he had learned from the topflight preachers. He learned early how to hold an audience. 

He was comfortable in front of a group of people. Thinks he would have made a good actor because 

of his feel for the audience. Brad found this astonishing, wondering where Kenneth had gotten it. 

4 

6:45 Brad was alarmed when Kenneth retired from the mission field because he feared Kenneth and 

the family were going to come and be a charge on him! 

Brad was awed by Kenneth's getting his doctorate in one year at Chicago. He himself had 

gotten the degree of Dr. by doing something at Cooper Union, but it was mainly an honorary thing. 

When Kenneth was a professor of philosophy at Earlham, he came to visit them there. He had 

sold his house and cleared out his furniture, some of which he sent to them at the time. When 

Kenneth entered government, Brad was astonished again. Couldn't understand it. And when 

Margaret sold Anna, and the money started coming in, he was even more amazed. He would come 

into their house, which to him was like a mansion, and wonder how this son of his had done it. 

He never could be with them more than a day or two without a row. They would welcome 

him, make him at home. He would leave his car out at the edge of town. Never drove in. Would 

telephone and have Kenneth come out and get him, say, in Falls Church. He said he feared driving in 

the city. It also put Kenneth in the position of having to serve him, drive him around. By the second 

75


day, he would begin making snide remarks, and Kenneth would make a remark back. By the third 

day, Brad was in tears. In dead silence, Kenneth would drive him back out to his car. And then he 

would just sit there and cry. "You don't love me. You don't honor your parents." And they would 

have a long, difficult talk. Kenneth would confront him about coming into his home and trying to 

take over, run everything. "Honor thy father and mother!" he would say. And Kenneth would 

answer with a Scripture of his own. Finally, Brad would drive off to Florida. 

The day he died, a beastly hot day in Florida, he was out buying grapefruit. Went to the cash 

register, paid for his three grapefruit, and dropped dead. 84. Kenneth made the funeral arrangements 

in Meadville. He and Margaret drove up there, both wearing white suits, and he with his big hat. 

They were conspicuous in Meadville. The paper wrote them up, and photographers took their 

pictures. 

No Presbyterians were invited, but many of the old girls from his Bible class came. The 

funeral was in the funeral home. 

5 

19:00 Mae's strict upbringing. She had been carefully trained how to walk, how to sit, as if with a 

book on her head. She never allowed her back to touch the back of a chair. Her clothes had to be just 

so. One day, Kennedy Crumrine was standing on the corner in Meadville, wearing an elegant beaver 

hat, when Mae walked by, and he greeted her. She walked by without speaking or acknowledging 

him in any way, though he was a family friend. He confronted her about this at church, and she 

answered, "I was brought up never to speak to a man loitering in the street!" 

6 

21:00 7$3( ,, of reel-to-reel series 

Session 4 August 26, 1976 Kenneth, Kip, Nona 

Kenneth had a brief flurry of engaging in a track meet at Meadville High School. The field 

was next to the railroad tracks. A table was set up to check in the contestants. In the line of athletes, 

there came up a man named Ray Pooks. He asked first how much one won for first, second, and so 

on in various events. He signed up for the broad jump, the pole vault, the 100-yard dash, the shotput, 

and so on, saying that he would take first in this, first in that. In the 220, he said, he would 

probably take second. He thought he could run in the mile if they would reschedule events so they 

wouldn't conflict. People were getting impatient with him. Tittering. Well, he went out and did 

every event just as he said that he would. Kenneth was overwhelmed. Remains incredulous to this 

day. [Tape cut off at this point by a malfunction.] 

7 

26:30 Session 5 September 2, 1976 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip. 

Games they would play as children. "Duck on the Rock." Baseball, of course, and always 

hardball, not softball. Hide and seek. Follow the leader. Wrestling matches. Paper chases. 

Marbles. The very special marbles they would get. They played for each other's marbles. 

Always went to church on Sunday, of course. Then they went for a family walk in the 

afternoon and called on somebody. 

Mother speaks of skipping rope. Her mother wouldn't allow her to jump more than 16 times! 

Felt it was hard on the heart. Hop scotch. The after school life was vigorous. Most of the games 

involved running and physical exercise. Kenneth would run so hard that his legs would cramp, and 

76


he would go home whimpering, and Mae would get the liniment and rub and rub his legs until they 

stopped quivering. No television or radio, of course. Even at parties, there were all sorts of active 

things people did. People sang in groups. They'd all stand around the piano while a girl played and 

they sang. There were many old songs that everyone knew. Or they'd play charades. In short, they 

created their own entertainment. They were not entertained in the passive sense, as children are 

today. Dominos. Cards. Jackstraws. Making divinity fudge, that is, white fudge with nuts in it. 

8 

39:40 The time Brad made pancakes. Mae was away. Brad, Bradley, and Kenneth were home, and 

Brad said, "Let's have some pancakes." As a chemist, he felt he could analyze it. He would start 

with flour and water. Obviously too watery, so he added more flour. Got to have some salt, so he 

shook in some salt. Needed something to make it rise, and so threw in some baking powder. 

Greased the pan. Tried it out. Stuck to the pan. He decided he needed grease in the mixture, so he 

melted in some butter. Too much liquid. Needed to add more flour. Tried again. They didn't stick, 

but they wouldn't hold together. So he threw in a few eggs. Which meant he had to add more flour. 

This time they stuck together, but they looked funny, and didn't rise. So he added more baking 

powder and some molasses for color. Too wet. He added more flour. He had to use larger and 

larger bowls. In the end, it was a bust. "It's just a chemical thing," he kept saying. And he was right. 

But he didn't know the formula! And it never occurred to him to look up a recipe. He ended up 

throwing the whole mess away. The kitchen was a disaster. 

9 

43:18 Kenneth and Bradley. Bradley was gullible. Went along with Brad most of the time. 

At one time, Mae wanted to leave Brad. This was before Kenneth was born. She couldn't stand 

Brad any more. She packed up and went off to Brooklyn, telling her mother she couldn't stand him. 

He was a brute, she said. And her mother said, "You've made your bed, and you have to sleep in it," 

and packed her up and sent her back home. 

Mae often talked of her desire to leave Brad, but she had two children, no money, and 

nowhere to go. She talked to Kenneth very frankly. 

Bradley was forever saying to his mother of Kenny, "You let me at him. You let me beat him 

up. I'll straighten him out!" But of course she wouldn't let him. But if anyone else attacked him, 

Bradley would come to his defense. The brothers were actually quite close. Kenneth gave him a fine 

clothes brush once, and an expensive watch he had won playing craps at the railroad shop. Margaret 

remembers how, when she first met Kenneth, he would talk often of Bradley, and warmly. 

Bradley wet the bed as a young teenager, and Kenneth "cured him" of it by dancing around in 

the streets one day shouting, "Yah, yah, he wets the bed! He wets the bed!" in the presence of a 

couple of the girls Bradley was interested in. He was so mad, he chased after Kenny but couldn't 

catch him. He was about 13. Never wet the bed again! 

10 

50:15 How Kenneth learned to swim in Mill Run, near their house on Walnut Street. Then the boys 

took him out to "Nigger's Hole" in the river, a real swimming hole, with a strong undertow at the 

bend of the river. It had that name because four black men had drowned there, some of them trying 

to save the others. 

It was a town in which pejorative terms were commonly used. Few blacks. Numerous 

southern Europeans. Wops. Polacks. 

The bank at the Hole was very steep, ten feet straight down. Had to claw your way up mud 

77


and clay to get out. They went up the railroad tracks on the Meadville side of the river. Sometimes 

they walked. But it was several miles. When he got a bicycle, he would ride on a path beside the 

tracks. Then he learned how to bike up beside a freight train going out of town, grab on, and let the 

train pull him along. Sometimes he would hit a bump or something and go flying down the bank. 

When they arrived, they took off their clothes and swam across the river to get to the Hole. His first 

time, he didn't see how you went in down that bank. So a couple of the boys picked him up and 

threw him in. He quickly learned. 

11 

55:45 The sequel to the great stout story. The ladies of the church had heard that Mae was ill, and 

had seen a doctor, so three of them decided to visit her. They called to tell her they were calling. 

The house simply stank of all the stout which had sprayed the basement. Brad had tried to clean it 

out with lysol, but there was no way to get the stuff out of the ceiling of the basement. You walked 

in, and it would hit you with force. So in came these ladies of the church. They stopped, 

dumbfounded. Looked at each other. Yes, they realized, Mrs. Landon is sick indeed. She was an 

alcoholic! And poor Mr. Landon, who preached against demon alcohol, had a wife like this. They 

came in and sat, and they sniffed, and they sniffed, to be sure Mrs. Landon understood that they 

understood. But she made no explanation. They went out and spread the word all over town. 

Kenneth told the children of the town the truth, but no one believed him. She never explained. She 

was unbending. 

She had flashing brown eyes. When she came down the stairs, she was light of foot, even 

though she was overweight. She seemed to float down. And she trotted up the stairs. Always wore 

high heels. They were comfortable for her, she said. Low heels hurt her Achilles tendons, which 

were too tight. Kenneth cannot imagine her in loafers. She was always properly dressed. 

78


Session 5 continued 9/2/76 

HOUR 8 

1 

0:00 (IIA200) Mae had an ancestor who worked on the design of dresses and clothing for the royal 

court in England, on the Robinson side. Mae had a musical education. Played the piano beautifully. 

Subscribed to The Etude. She often sat and played two or three hours a day. All kinds of music. 

Beethoven, Mozart. She could sight-read easily. 

She had a lot of headaches and backaches and various nervous complaints. When he was a 

boy, she got started with a Mrs. Dunbar who provided her with a salve called Viavi, which Mae 

would heat up in a boiler. She would have Kenneth rub it into her back. She also had Viavi pills, big 

brown ones. He was always her masseur. Massaged her a couple of nights a week. She'd take her 

shirt off and sit in front of him, and the two of them would have a nice social time talking while he 

rubbed her back. 

She had a horror of surgery. Knew something serious was wrong, but she wouldn't go to the 

doctor. The surgeon was Dr. Gamble, and he was consulted for possible surgery. Before Kenneth 

left for Siam in 1927, he called on Dr. Clawson concerning his mother, and asked if Mae had cancer. 

Clawson said, "I wouldn't say that." Two years later she died—of cancer. 

The day she died, he suddenly knew. He was sitting with Margaret on the mook—the 

extended porch at their home in Siam. Suddenly, he became very still. Margaret remembers it 

clearly to this day. She asked him what was wrong, and he turned to her and said, "My mother has 

just died." The next day he received a cable informing him of her death the previous day. 

2 

8:40 Mae had gotten together some money, probably from her father, and purchased a beautiful 

piano bench. Kenneth was about two. One night she was going out, and she asked Brad to take care 

of the baby. Brad, in the usual way, fell sound asleep after dinner, with loud snoring. Kenneth had a 

small hammer, and he headed straight for the shiniest thing in the room, the piano bench, and he 

whacked and he whacked and he whacked away, having a lovely time, while Brad slept soundly. The 

bench had dimples all over it, some going through the varnish into the wood. Kenneth still 

remembers Mae's distress when she came home. It was a subject that came up many times through 

the years. 

3 

11:45 Mae believed in phrenology. You could judge a person's character by the length of the upper 

lip, the look of the jaw, how close the eyes were to each other, the size of the ears, and the bumps on 

the skull. She read people in this way regularly. 

4 

13:50 She wore whalebone corsets, which were like armorplate. She would hang onto the bed, and 

Kenneth would pull the laces up behind. It took all he had. Then she would test her breathing and 

say, "I can breathe too easily. Try it again." And he would work with a buttonhook to pull it all 

tighter. Getting out of it was easy. Getting into it was difficult alone. 

79


5 

16:16 Mae shopped by telephone, since she had no money. She would call Mr. Griffith the butcher, 

and he would deliver. She would look the delivery all over, and if she found fat in the meat, she 

would promptly call and complain, demanding the meat be taken back. Delivery was made by horse 

and wagon. 

6 

19:40 Mrs. D'Armant Minium, a brunette with her hair piled high on her head, very buxom, plump 

arms, a voice like cream—the kind of plump woman who was much admired at the time. Mae 

disapproved of her. At the age of 16 she became curious about having a baby, and so she had one, 

and then disposed of it somehow. Wealthy family. Mae never forgave her for the baby, though she 

became very respectable and went regularly to church. 

7 

22:05 Charlotte Johns was a freshman when Kenneth was a senior; thin; not very tall; a fine dancer; 

so naturally Kenneth began to date her and take her to dances. Cinnamon-colored hair. Her mother 

had been the mistress of an official of the Erie Railroad who set her up in Meadville. The mother 

commented that she wished Kenneth were as brilliant as her son Benny, who was studying to become 

an engineer. Benny came home one weekend with a trunk which, when he opened it, turned out to be 

filled with nothing but collars. He never laundered them himself. He just kept buying new collars to 

wear with his one or two shirts. Wing collars, turnover collars, formal collars. He brought them to 

his mother to launder for him. 

Kenneth lost touch with Charlotte when he went off to college. Many years later, when he 

working in the Executive Office Building in Washington, next to the White House—about 1956—he 

began to feel that somebody was following him. Kept on for some time. Finally one day, as he was 

standing at the top of those steep steps going down to Pennsylvania Avenue, out stepped a heavyset 

man with a round face, almost bald, who walked up to Kenneth and accosted him. He identified 

himself as the husband of Charlotte Johns. He said, "You're not at all like the man she's described to 

me!" For years and years, Charlotte had been telling him about this extraordinary man she had 

known. How athletic he was. How strong. How remarkable. How bright. His muscles like steel. 

Every time he and Charlotte had argued, she would bring up Ken Landon and how extraordinary he 

had been. The man said he was not impressed! His name was Robert Bordon Reams. He was in the 

Foreign Service. Rose to the top. Several years later, he divorced Charlotte. "She went quietly," he 

said. 

8 

33:55 French Creek would freeze in the winter, a foot and a half thick, so they could ice skate six 

miles up to the next town, or twelve miles up to Cambridge Springs. In the spring, when the ice 

broke up, the huge cakes would back up against the bridges and back up the water in turn, causing 

flooding in the town. Brad would go to work wearing hip boots, walking in water well above his 

knees. People enjoyed it. They got out their canoes and paddled around the streets. 

9 

36:35 The boys would make their own skis, out of barrel staves or long boards. They would steam 

the wood and bend the end of the board up. They would ski down the hill onto the frozen river. 

80


10 

38:05 One of his friends was known as Stinky Altenburg, "Shrimp," or "Pimp." His father called 

him "Shitty." A polite town. His sister became one of the town prostitutes. His other sisters were 

very proper. He and Pinky Prather and Johnny Kent and Kenneth hung around together. Stinky 

became a successful lawyer. 

11 

39:45 Kenneth applied for a job with the railroad at age 14 or so, while he was still wearing 

kneepants. He asked the foreman for a job. He was a spindly kid, flat-chested, didn't look very 

strong. But because Brad was his father, they took him on. He was initially assigned to the 

storehouse. One of his first instructions was to go to the end of the shop and get a bucket of steam. 

They handed him the bucket. Said there would be a demand for steam. After all, these were steam 

locomotives! Kenneth understood it was a joke, so he just took off for the day, returning at the end of 

work to say he had looked everywhere but been unable to find the steam. 

He quickly discovered that he could hide in the coils of airhose. 

He was soon put to work stacking springs for freight cars and locomotives. Leaf springs that 

weighed up to 500 pounds. You got an eyehook, and hooked into the end of one to pull it around. It 

often took two of them to move one spring. Soon he was driving trucks, moving heavy equipment 

around. He went on to do all kinds of jobs. 

Every Saturday night was payday. The fellows would go get a bath—their one bath of the 

week—put on a fresh shirt, and go downtown to shoot craps. Kenneth watched with interest. He 

noticed that the guys who "faded" bets were the ones who made money. But he was particularly 

impressed by the role of the banker. He sometimes played banker for the gamblers. And he 

emulated the technique of "fading" bets and so won consistently. 

12 

46:30 Miss McCabe, the Sunday school teacher, wanted all her boys to become preachers. One day 

she announced that Theodore Borrel had decided to become a minister. She turned to Kenneth and 

wondered why he didn't want to become a preacher. But he just didn't. Shortly thereafter, 

Theodore's two sisters became pregnant at about the same time, and the person responsible was 

believed to be the son of the minister! Theodore never became a minister. But Kenneth did! 

13 

48:20 At about age 16, he took a trip to Detroit to sell some ATV. He had an annual pass on all the 

railroads east of the Mississippi. He had his samples and his orders. The first night, in the smoking 

compartment of the Pullman car, he got to talking to a man, and told him he was a salesman, and had 

been having some good sales. The man said he was a salesman too. Kenneth asked him how many 

sales he had made lately. Only made one sale, the man said, about a year ago. Kenneth felt very sad 

for him. "What do you sell?" he asked the man. "Steel mills," the man answered. 

In Detroit, Kenneth had no luck at all. Went to doctors' offices, and all over the place. No one 

bought, and he went broke. Had to call home for help. Which ended his career as a salesman. 

14 

51:30 Boise Penrose was the governor of the state, and he had a son with many garments he no 

longer needed. For several years, these were passed on to Kenneth. 

81


15 

53:00 The Sunday afternoon walk. After church, you would have a heavy dinner, and then you 

would go for a walk as a family and call on somebody. Brad generally called on his bosses or on 

people he did church work with. Children couldn't play games or anything like that on Sundays. In 

the evening, they would go to church again. 

16 

55:25 Chestnut Street had a wonderful streetcar that went all the way out to the Springs. The trestle 

where the streetcar went was where the kids would take their clothes off to go swimming. The area 

was infested with black snakes. They would often come back to shore and find black snakes curled 

up in their clothes. Had to drive them off with stones and sticks. Once, when Barnum and Bailey 

came to town, they put out the word that they wanted snakes, big ones. So one of the guys got one, a 

six-footer, and set off for town with it toward the circus. The snake curled around his arm and up to 

his neck and began to squeeze. The arm went numb. The other kids were running along beside 

whooping it up. The boy began to panic because that snake was getting to him. He rushed up to a 

farmer passing on a wagon and screamed for help. The farmer got out a big pocketknife and began 

stropping it up and down, stropping it up and down. Finally he went up, got hold of the snake, and 

began cutting it up. It took a good bit of cutting to get that snake off. 

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HOUR 9 

End of Session 5 Kip describes an experience with a great black snake at Dayspring Retreat Farm in 

Maryland several years earlier. 

Session 6 September 20, 1976 (IIA603) Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

2:07 Mother begins her story. Margaret Dorothea Mortenson Landon. She begins with her 

grandparents, who were immigrants. 

Laurids Jurgen Moeller Mortenson, a Dane, born in the Jutland area, the northern peninsula of 

Denmark, was her grandfather. The people there have a reputation for independence. The men walk 

with their hands behind their back. He was one of ten children. The Lutheran Church was the state 

church and kept records. Mother's cousin Marjorie Perham went to Vrelev and found the parish 

church, and there were the records. He was born in 1850. In his confirmation class, he said that if he 

were the best in class, he would become a minister. His brother Christian Caspar Mortenson, an 

inventor, came to the U.S. in 1879. His mother provided the money or the trip. She was apparently a 

person of some property. After giving birth to her tenth child, she divorced her husband and went to 

live in another city. She could support herself. Grandfather started for the U.S. at about age 19 

intending to study for the Methodist ministry in the Garrett Institute in Illinois. 

Sadly, he lost his ticket once on the ship. The wind blew it overboard. He spoke no English. 

When he arrived, he managed somehow to get to Chicago, hiding between the seats in a train. He 

was a small man. He found a blacksmith shop and began work right away, shoeing a horse that no 

one else had been able to handle. He swore at it in Danish, and the horse promptly calmed down! He 

had a sister living in Racine, Wisconsin, and he went up there. That was the first time he saw a 

tomato. He thought it was an apple, and so he bought it and bit into it. Threw it as far as he could in 

his rage. 

He did go to Garrett and reached the point of graduation. He was actually preaching in a little 

Scandinavian church in Evanston, Illinois. Living and working for a family there. The house caught 

on fire. He rescued the family, but lost everything he owned, including his schoolbooks. The church 

raised money to help him. 

People from Jutland had a reputation for being high-tempered and rigid. Fierce. Laurids went 

to the first Methodist conference he had ever attended, and was so revolted by the way the ministers 

fawned on the bishops in trying to get favored appointments that he walked out, walked out of the 

school, walked out of the church, and never set foot in a church again. 

2 

12:00 Grandmother, Dorthea Bergerson, was born in Norway, near Oslo, in a parish called 

Trygstadt. She became a Methodist at about age 15. Her father was a violent man. The family 

believes this was why she ran away for the U.S. No knowledge of where she got the money. She and 

a group of other girls came under the sponsorship of a minister. On the trip to England, the girls 

spread their skirts and hid a young Norwegian who was fleeing the draft. The girls went to Chicago 

and were placed in homes as au pairs. Grandmother lived with a family named Bassett, just north of 

the river. 

One night in 1871, grandmother woke in the night, looked out of her window, and saw the 

whole sky south of the house a solid sheet of flame. She leaped out of bed and ran through the house. 

83


(She led a hard life, but she was gay to the last day of her life. Full of laughter. She had a strong 

accent. The children would tease her. "Say 'joke,' Grandmother." "Yoke," she would answer. She 

played along with them.) She would laugh as she told the story of how she ran through the house that 

terrible night shouting, "The Day of Judgment has come! The Day of Judgment has come!" She got 

them all out of the house, and they drew water from the water tower, and gave it to people fleeing the 

city. It was the great Chicago fire. The Bassetts subsequently moved to Evanston. 

Grandmother had a beautiful soprano voice. People called her the Norwegian Jenny Lind. 

The Bassetts wanted to send her to Italy to study for the opera. But she was a Methodist, and 

Methodists regarded every form of theater as of the Devil. So she felt she had to turn them down. 

But all her life she remembered her not going with sadness. 

Dorthea went to the Scandinavian church in Evanston, where she met Laurids. He came 

dressed very formally. He wore a silk hat, and carried a gold-headed cane. They married in 1874. 

Marjorie Perham (Margaret's cousin) owns the Bible in which their marriage was recorded. 

3 

19:10 Laurids went to work in a blacksmith shop. He was a brilliant inventor, but his inventions 

were all stolen. Behind their house, Margaret remembers a barn in which there was a huge machine 

which he had invented to make S-bolts for wagons. He had rented it to a local factory on a royalty 

basis, but there was a business misunderstanding, and he pulled the machine and never allowed it to 

be used again. He was a rigid, unbending man. He was very hard on his family, and above all on his 

firstborn son. 

4 

20:40 Margaret's father was born April 7, 1875, and was given the name Annenus Duabus 

Mortenson, a name he always hated. Supposedly, it was the Latin for "Two Annies," but Mother is 

skeptical. Both his grandmothers were named "Annie," and he was named after them. When he went 

to school, he called himself "John." He always signed his name "A.D." After him, there came a 

series of brothers and sisters. A.D. had to more or less assume responsibility for the family when he 

was twelve because his father, who had a little store by that time, occupied himself with his 

inventions and travels. The whole family came to depend on A.D., who worked to support them. He 

had a high sense of responsibility for all his brothers and sisters all his life. They were poor. 

One day, three top-hatted men came from one of the great steel companies in Pittsburgh, 

hunting for Laurids, and offered him $10,000 a year in Pittsburgh to work for their company. But by 

that time, he was so bitter that he would work for no one. He turned them down, and continued to 

live in near-poverty with his family. 

His daughter Laura was offered a full four-year scholarship to Vassar with everything 

included, and her father was against it and dissuaded her. She lost the opportunity of a lifetime. 

He was a little short man with a beard, looking just like Santa Claus—a man totally 

preoccupied with himself. He saw no one but himself. All the children suffered because of it. But 

they all loved their mother. 

A.D. was an omnivorous reader. He may not have been able to finish high school. Margaret 

isn't sure. But he had an enormous hunger for knowledge. He read the entire encyclopedia. 

He was very active in the First Methodist Church, which was where he met Adelle. 

5 

31:25 Adelle's parents were Norwegian. Michael Simanson Estburg. His last name meant "East 

Mountain," the estate near Oslo where he was born. Oslo was called Christiania then. He was 

84


apprenticed to a boot and shoe maker in Christiania, finishing his course in 1860. 

Julie Marie Larsen grew up in Christiania. They were married in 1860, and had four children 

born in Norway, from 1861 to 1870, at which time either the home or the shop burned down—or 

both, if they were one and the same. This happened three hours after the insurance had expired, on a 

Saturday afternoon. 

After the fire, Michael decided to go to the U.S. He came first to Stone Bank, Wisconsin, a 

small village. By the next year, he was able to bring the family over. The ocean crossing took six 

weeks. They came west by train in 1872, to Ixonia, Wisconsin. Three more children were born in 

this country, Adelle in 1877. 

Michael bought property in Franksville, just outside Racine, in 1874, where he built his shoe 

shop. He had three lots. He had a vegetable garden. A cow. Fruit trees. Did quite well. But he was 

very impressed by the farmers who came into town with huge rolls of bills. He got to thinking he 

could do better as a farmer, sold his shop, and set off for Minnesota to farm in 1884. Adelle was 

seven. Their nearest neighbor was a half mile away. They had great blizzards. They had to string a 

rope between the house and the barn to guide them back and forth in the worst weather. 

Adelle loved the outdoors. Loved the cows, and tried to ride them. Tried to snare gophers. 

But she loathed domestic work and avoided it. They had three months of school in the fall and three 

in the spring. It was a long distance from home. 

There was a bounty on wolves, and the brothers shot and killed one. The bounty was $2, and 

they went into town with the tail. They were refused the bounty because they had to have the other 

end, the head—or perhaps the ears—and so they came galloping back, cut off the correct part, and 

took it back for their bounty! 

6 

49:20 One story Adelle and her sister Julie loved to tell concerned a young Englishman, a 

"remittance man," who was working for a farmer in the area. (A "remittance man" was a second son 

of a landed family who was sent away from home more or less penniless. Everything went to the 

firstborn.) He had a fine watch, which he lost, and he offered the incredible sum of $5 to anyone who 

could find it. No one could. But the following spring, Aunt Julie found it. She was about ten, Adelle 

eight. They were so excited. It still ran. A gold watch. So they rushed off to the farm and presented 

it to the man, and he said, vaguely, "Well, I wonder what I could give you." And he reached into his 

pocket and handed her a dirty, soiled handkerchief—this little girl who was expecting $5—and she 

meekly accepted it, and took it home, and carefully washed it and ironed it. They laughed about that 

the rest of their lives. 

They were there four years, until 1888. They were so poor that at Christmas, all the children 

might receive would be a comb, or an orange, or some candy. In the fall of 1888, the barn burned, 

with all their crops in it. They saved the animals and the house. And with that Grandfather gave up. 

He realized he was not made to be a farmer. They held an auction, and moved away. 

7 

53:15 The family came to Somers, Wisconsin, near Kenosha, and built a new shop. Michael had a 

house and a shop next to each other. The house still stands to this day. The two boys went to work 

for the railroad. Sadly, Uncle Charlie was killed in an accident. As for Uncle Johnny, he worked for 

the railroad all his life. 

Adelle went to school in the Burr Oak School, to which she would walk barefoot, putting on 

her shoes when she got there. They had only one trunk in the house. Few clothes. One good dress; 

one school dress. Hung their clothes on hooks. She had excellent teachers in the school, and she got 

85


a beautiful grasp of the English language. In Franksville, she had gone to a German school, and 

learned some German. Her parents spoke Norwegian, and so both she and A.D. spoke Norwegian. 

(Neither made any effort to teach it to their children. So Margaret and her sisters did not learn as they 

were growing up.) 

Because of Adelle's love of the English language, she trained her three daughters in its use 

carefully as they grew up. She was very strict about it. 

As a young woman, she had a desperate desire to go on with her schooling, the only one of 

her siblings who wanted to. But there wasn't any money. 

86


Session #6 continued September 20, 1976 

HOUR 10 

1 

0:00 (IIA1080) Adelle borrowed money from Uncle John Lawrence and went to the L.V. Patterson 

Commercial Institute in Racine. Her name as she was christened was Edel Johanne Estberg. She 

completed her course in shorthand December 20, 1894, at age 17. She then went to work in Racine 

as a secretary, and a good one. Every fall she would sit looking out the window with this gnawing 

desire to go to college. When she was living at the YWCA, Dr. Charles Blanchard came to Racine, 

and she played a game of tennis with him. Always after that, she thought of Wheaton College and 

wished she could go. She had a lot of ability and initiative, but she was expected by the family to 

help support her father. Her mother died in 1896. 

Adelle led an active life. She had a fine contralto voice and sang with a women's quartet. She 

sang as the first alto. Tilly Torqualson, Nellie Evans, and Elizabeth Defore (SP?). They sang in 

churches around the city; they were quite in demand. It was a happy experience. 

She was active in the church, teaching Sunday school. A.D. was the head usher at the First 

Methodist Church. He wore a formal cutaway coat. Though Adelle was in a different church, they 

met through church connections, perhaps when she was singing at his church. They were engaged in 

1901. 

Her sister, Aunt Minnie, was keeping house for her father. When she became engaged at that 

same time, it was decided that Adelle would return home to care for her father. Adelle had not told 

the family yet that she was engaged and planning to be married in June, 1902. She had no idea how 

to cook or keep house. So Aunt Minnie set out to teach her. 

2 

8:55 Mother reads a letter from the J.I. Case Threshing-machine Company written as a 

recommendation for A.D. Mortenson, praising him for his quality of work as he left to seek work 

with another company. A.D. found a job with the Racine General Manufacturing Company, and his 

salary went up to about $50 a month. 

3 

11:05 She reads a second letter, this one by Adelle herself to A.D. in December, 1901. She thinks 

about him, wending his way alone to and from work. She is back home in Somers, spending a month 

learning housework from Minnie. She speaks of missing him and shedding an occasional tear. She 

had made pancakes for breakfast that morning, and they hadn't turned out so bad. Though one was 

"demolished" and became part of the cat's breakfast! She signed it "Dell." 

4 

15:00 The day a customer came into her grandfather's store to buy a cut-glass pitcher, in 1920 or so. 

He was closing the store out. The price on the pitcher was $6. A woman came in, and started to 

bargain with him, offering $3 for it. He was wearing his derby hat over his Santa Claus head of hair. 

He turned her down, and she left. She returned, saying that she would pay him the $6. And he 

refused to sell it to her. She had insulted him! He would never sell it to such a person. 

He was a cruel, heartless man. He once threw his sister out of the house, with no means of 

87


support. But there was some softening in him later in life. 

Uncle Christian was gay and charming, and he had a popular Sunday school class. He was 

involved in an evangelistic service one day when, to his amazement, his father Laurids came down to 

the altar. It was a conversion experience, and it moved his son Christian deeply. It was too late to 

undo the harm he'd done in a lifetime, but it changed the end of his life. 

Session #7 September 27, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth Landon 

5 

19:20 A present event, in 1976. Last Friday the security people installed a control panel in the 

kitchen as part of the house's security system. Friday night she, Margaret, went to bed as usual. She 

got up in the night and heard the telephone ringing. It was Westinghouse Security calling to say the 

alarm had gone off twice in the last 15 minutes. She had heard nothing. She went in, woke Kenneth, 

and told him, Kenneth got his gun, a .357 Smith and Wesson magnum, and went down the back 

steps, out into the front hall, and there the alarm really did go off—tripped off by the infrared sensor. 

Siren blasting away. He had his pajama bottoms on, bright red, with no top—and the chandelier in 

the hall was turned on as always—when the doorbell rang. He turned to the door, holding his 

weapon, and there stood two policemen. He put the gun down "quick." Didn't want to get shot! He 

turned the system off then, and the policemen came in. They said they recognized Kenneth as the 

householder! Both policemen liked the gun; hefted it and looked it over. [Kenneth here identifies it as a 

Smith and Wesson 9mm luger, so who knows. I always heard it was a .357. KPLJr.] They toured the house 

and found nothing. He assumed the system was malfunctioning because of the recent panel 

installation. 

6 

27:50 Margaret returns to family history. A story she learned in 1966 from Lucille Jensen Spitzer, 

a second cousin in Racine, descended from her grandfather's next-older sister Patrine Christina 

Mortenson. May 9, 1876, at age 28, she married Niels Christian Pedersen in Denmark. They had 

three children, Laurids, Martinas, and Astrid, the first of whom later died. Niels also died. Patrine 

was expert in the domestic arts, which was greatly admired in Denmark. Her butter was very fine. 

She could make delicious baked goods of all sorts. She decided to emigrate to the U.S. with her two 

young children and her mother, Anne Kirstina Christiansen. They arrived in 1883, and went to 

Racine, where they moved into a small apartment at the back of the store operated by her brother, 

Laurids—Margaret's grandfather. He'd come fifteen years before. 1301 N. Wisconsin St. The 

building is still there today. 

Patrine Christina invested her modest inheritance of about $600, equivalent to about $6000 

today. She helped at the store, and helped Laurids' wife with the children. In addition, she was often 

asked to prepare special pastries for parties. Buttermilk soup, fruit soup, lemon soup, all dessert 

confections. Coffee cakes. Special breads. Rhubarb pudding. She had a wonderful garden of 

flowers, and a vegetable garden. She churned her own butter. Sadly, Grandmother tended to take 

credit for Patrine Christina's cooking. 

Patrine Christina was gradually ground down by the labor and the lack of love. Her own 

mother was deeply unhappy and longed to be back in Denmark, and she died in 1885. Soon after 

this, Patrine decided to withdraw her original investment from the store and find more congenial 

employment. She had put the money in originally with the understanding that she could withdraw it 

at some later time. But Laurids refused to return it. Claimed that the money was lost. She had no 

88


papers to show for her investment. She had trusted him, as her brother. She went to a lawyer, but he 

could do nothing for her. 

Patrine Christina left the home with her two little ones and thought she would just keep 

walking until she got to the lake and end it all. She had nothing and no one and no place to go. She 

was black with depression. 

In fact, before the worst happened she found her way to the home of a cousin, who gave her 

lodging until she could find an apartment to rent. She later called her brother to talk and end the 

bitterness between them, but he would not come. She worked very hard. Ultimately married again. 

Life became better for her. But something had happened that could never be forgotten or undone. 

7$3( ,, 6LGH 

7 

39:50 Adelle tended to keep little souvenirs. She had a ball of homespun yarn kept in a little bag 

and a note that said it was yarn spun by her mother, her first attempt. The note also speaks of the 

prairie fire that destroyed their barn at the farm. In a little box, she kept the program for one of her 

quartet's song recitals. And a card for the Epworth League. A program for the Somers band concert 

in June, 1892, in which she also sang. "When my ship comes over the sea." Her teaching certificate 

to teach third grade, 1894. A few recommendations. One from an attorney in 1895 who employed 

her and who found her to be careful, painstaking, competent in every way as a stenographer. Another 

in 1897 stating that she was one of the best if not the best stenographers the company had ever had! 

She was not afraid of work. Another concert program in which she sang a solo, "Take me back to 

home and mother." 

8 

54:20 She and A.D. became engaged in 1901 and set the wedding for June, 1902. This past 

August, Kenneth, Margaret, and cousin Marjorie Perham drove out to the house where Adelle's father 

had lived, 8412 Highway E, Somers, Wisconsin. The present owner, Mrs. Alice Tabbert, was 

gracious and let them see the house, including the room in which Margaret was born. The wedding 

was June 19, 1902. A.D. wore a cutaway, and she a handmade dress. It was a simple home wedding. 

Very few people. 

89


HOUR 11 

Session #7 continued September 27, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth Landon 

1 

0:00 (IIB100) Margaret continues on the wedding. The Rev. A. Stockhan performed the 

ceremony. As he was doing so, there was a knock on the door. Adelle instinctively thought, Oh, I 

must go to the door. Then realized she couldn't do that. She was the bride! It was a Hungarian 

friend of her father's, John Harvey, who had walked five miles carrying a china bowl, a lovely, 

bright-colored, gorgeous thing that Adelle always loathed. Margaret reads from the Racine Journal 

the account of the wedding printed the following day, June 20. The address is given as 1417 N. 

Chatham St., the Estberg home. [Apparently this is the same as the Highway E address referred to in Hour 

10.] 

2 

3:20 They stayed on in that house, living with their father, and A.D. traveled back and forth to 

Racine to work. He had a special bicycle with a flanged wheel that he could ride on the railroad 

tracks into Racine. This was common in those days. Some men would ride in pairs on a handcar. If 

a train came, they had to stop and haul the thing off. A.D. had at least one narrow escape when he 

didn't hear the train coming. The distance was eight to ten miles. 

3 

5:40 Margaret was born in that house September 7, 1903, which was Labor Day, Monday, and 

Adelle always said that she kept her from going to the Labor Day picnic. It was in a tiny room, 

perhaps ten feet by ten. They stayed in that house through the winter and then moved to Racine, 

1741 Villa St. 

4 

7:55 It was in Racine that Adelle saw the first motorcar that appeared in that city—in the period 

before she was married. Everybody heard that it was coming. And then there was the sound of it. 

And the whole town rushed out into the streets. A woman was gaily riding, and Adelle was so 

disgusted because she was a "lady of easy virtue." No respectable girl had been willing to ride in it. 

5 

8:55 (IIB164) On when the time came, in Adelle's old age, that she had to move in with Betty. 

Wheaton College paid her a pension of only $67 after all her years of work. But she was a happy 

person. Loved the town. Went to events at the college. When her sight began to fail, it became clear 

that she could not continue on her own. Betty had decided to take her in. Margaret said that she 

would provide financial support. Adelle delayed things, though, and Kenneth had to go out and 

persuade her. And so she moved in with Betty and Wayne. 

Session #8 October 4, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

6 

11:10 Kenneth recalls his first significant experience with a dentist. He was seven or eight, and his 

90


baby teeth were dropping out. He had poor teeth. He needed nine fillings at least, and at least seven 

extractions. He couldn't eat easily. Had toothaches. Brad said he would arrange to take him to the 

dentist, Dr. Kaylor. When they went, Kenneth asked the dentist what he was going to do, and the 

man wouldn't say. He would only talk to Brad, in the next room, which made Kenneth feel very 

anxious. They came back in, and Brad got behind Kenneth, and Kaylor in front, holding what looked 

like a large pair of pliers. Kenneth closed his mouth tightly and demanded to know what he was 

going to do, and why, and Kaylor said he couldn't explain such things to a little boy. Kenneth 

decided he didn't like Dr. Kaylor, and he knew he didn't like his father, and he said he wouldn't cooperate. 

The two of them began fighting with him, forcing his jaws open, and then Kenneth bit 

Kaylor with all he had. Kaylor retreated in consternation to the next room, muttering under his 

breath. Brad was furious. The two consulted again in the next room, then came back in and 

demanded his compliance. Again Kenneth asked for an explanation of what they were going to do, 

and again they refused to give it, and Kenneth said he would not co-operate and that if he could, he 

would bite Dr. Kaylor again. Brad for a moment looked as if he were going to hit him, but didn't. 

Finally, they gave up. Went home. Told Mae about the whole debacle, and she scolded Kenneth too. 

Several days later, Kenneth found a dentist on his own. Dr. Leonard. Doesn't remember how 

he found him. Remembers the office vividly. He found his way in and talked to the doctor's nurse. 

When the doctor came out, Kenneth explained who he was and what he needed, and Leonard 

examined him and announced the extensive work that needed doing. "All right," Kenneth said, “Let's 

do it.” Leonard wanted to know who had sent him. Nobody had sent him, he said. He had decided 

to come on his own. The doctor went out for a while, fiddled around—probably to have his nurse 

call home to make sure this work would be paid for—then returned and proceeded to remove seven 

teeth in that first session. Kenneth spit out the blood and made an appointment to come back to do 

the fillings. Kenneth didn't care about the blood. He was always having bloody noses. 

So he went home, and Mae asked him where he'd been. She interrogated him on the whole 

thing. But she didn't say much. When Brad came home, Mae told him what had happened, and Brad 

hit the ceiling. He really had no choice but to accept the thing and pay the bill. So, Dr. Leonard 

became Kenneth's dentist, and remained his dentist through the years. 

7 

21:45 Margaret tells how Adelle went to the German school when she lived in Franksville. Then in 

Somers, her best friend—whose name is lost—was a little half-Indian girl. She had been rejected by 

her tribe because her father was European, and a Methodist minister had brought her from the tribal 

area in northern Wisconsin to Somers. Adelle learned one Indian sentence from her. We don't know 

what happened to the girl. 

8 

25:04 More on Margaret's birth. Very early in the morning. Aunt Minnie, Adelle's older sister, had 

a son the month before, Albert Elroy Bishop. 

Margaret's parents chose names for their meaning. Margaret means “pearl,” and Dorothea 

means "given of God." A.D. pronounced this second name as "doROthea," and she hated it. Her 

sister, Evangeline, disliked her name too, Evangeline Renata Mortenson. It means "the bearer of 

good tidings" and "of the new birth." Neither name was fashionable. 

In 1904 the family moved to Racine. 1741 Villa St., a few blocks from the lake and from 

downtown. (Margaret reports finding the name of her grandfather's store in Racine, the Mortenson 

Family Supply House.) 

91


By February, 1905, they had moved to 1642 Washington Ave. in Racine. Evangeline was 

born there. 

9 

37:40 Her birth certificate was registered in Kenosha County. People didn't worry about such 

things in those days. When she went to Siam with Kenneth in 1927, she had to get a copy of her birth 

certificate, and she discovered that it read, "Female Mortenson." Adelle had to go to the courthouse 

in Wheaton and swear out an affidavit asserting that Margaret was who she said she was. 

10 

39:53 A.D. could not support his family on his income. He was expected to work ten hours a day 

and much of Saturday. So he found a position with Reid Murdoch and Co. in Chicago. His work 

involved buying fancy groceries, about which he knew nothing when he started. He then found a 

small, eight-room "cottage" to rent in Evanston, north of the city, and wrote Adelle about it. 

Margaret reads his description. The rent was $27.50 per month. So he was able to bring his family 

down to live in November, 1905. In 1969, Margaret and Kenneth visited the house and 

photographed it. 

11 

49:50 Margaret's first memory was of no importance but quite vivid. She remembers herself as a 

very small child standing at the door of a room looking in, with a window to her left, and before the 

window a table with a bright red-check cloth on it. She was holding in her hand her most treasured 

possession, a little barrel of tiny, miniature clothespins. When as an adult she told this to Adelle, her 

mother was astonished because, she said, Margaret had been eighteen months old at that time. It 

seemed incredible that she would remember something so early. 

She walked very young, and began talking very early in life, though she has no memory of 

these things. 

She had a high chair which her grandfather had bought for her—which is still in the family, 

with daughter Carol Landon Pearson, who refinished it and used it for her own children—and Adelle 

would set her in it, putting a dish of food down before her, because she learned to feed herself very 

early too, and when she was through, she would take the dish and push it over the edge, declaring, 

"$Z JRQH!" And the dish would fall and smash. She broke quite a few. In the end Adelle had to go 

out and buy a new, white enamel set. 

12 

53:20 Adelle saved things. Saved Margaret's first teddy bear. Teddy bears came in with Teddy 

Roosevelt, and Margaret probably had one of the very early ones. It was only a foot high, and it was 

gray. And it was a very choice possession. She could not go to sleep without her teddy bear. Sadly, 

teddy disappeared. What distress! Ultimately, Adelle found it. Margaret had somehow dropped him 

outside, and one of the workmen across the street who was building a new house had found him, and 

driven a large nail straight through his body, impaling him on the house. All his lovely stuffing had 

come out. Adelle took him down and saved him. Peggy may have him today. 

13 

55:05 Another of her earliest possessions was a book about Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter's little 

masterpiece. Probably an early edition. "I loved that story, but I was always distressed by the 

sentence that said, 'And Peter VTXHH]HG under the gate.' I always felt, 'Poor Peter. Got VTXHHHH]HG 

92


under the gate.'" 

14 

56:00 Shortly after Christmas, both Margaret and Evangeline came down with scarlet fever. 

Though Evangeline looked fragile, she was actually more resistant to disease than Margaret. 

Whatever they got, Margaret got it worse. Margaret's infection went into her right ear, and 

mastoiditis set in. She was operated on February 17, 1906, a Saturday, and came through safely. 

Grandfather Laurids Mortenson wrote the family on learning of Margaret's illness and operation, 

"Dear son and all, In reply to letter and telegram, I can only say, 'Such is life.' When we think one 

minute, the prospect are bright, we find ourselves the next minute in the trough of despair. But 

through it all, keep cool. The fact is we are very small beings afloat on the large ocean, nature, and 

can do very little this that or the other way. We are getting along here very well. The thing I most 

need is time. I am always short of time. But then even time will come to an end. And my time may 

be very near it. So no use to worry, but plod along the best I know how. God bless you all. Your 

loving Father." Not very comforting, that. 

93


Session #8 continued Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

HOUR 12 

1 

0:00 (IIB500) Margaret continues, reading a letter from Aunt Laura. 

The family had moved by this time to a street now called Pioneer St. 

After the girls were well, Adelle took them out in a buggy, when a woman named Mrs. 

Rosing from across the street with two sons about the same age as the girls saw Adelle coming and 

hurried across the street with her boys to avoid them. Adelle never forgot it. 

The Mortensons joined the Central Street Methodist Church, two blocks north of where they 

lived, where the streetcar ran. 

2 

3:45 Almost unbelievably, the very next year, both girls got scarlet fever for a second time. It was 

not supposed to happen. But they got it through their milk. The Borden Company employed hand 

milkers, and one of the men had had scarlet fever and came back to work with the scabs still on his 

hands. He gave scarlet fever to many hundreds of children, including the Mortensons. This time it 

was worse, and Margaret again developed mastoiditis in her right ear, the same ear. She was then 

three. The doctor, a heavy man named Dr. East, said to her mother in the kitchen, "There isn't time to 

get this child to the hospital." She remembers his lifting her on to a table, and then she has no 

memory. She would have been under anesthetic. He told Adelle afterward that he was just in time. 

The amount of bone left after he removed the infected tissue was as thin as tissue paper; just that 

much left to protect her brain. She recovered, but from that time on she was totally deaf in her right 

ear. 

All during her children, her hearing in her left ear was so acute that her teachers did not 

realize she was deaf in her right ear. She was never conscious of any loss. 

3 

7:38 The Mortensons moved from that house and took over a boarding house on Dempster St. 

They were there when she started kindergarten. She remembers walking to school with the other 

children. She had a sailor hat and a little coat. She had to cross a railroad track. She remembers an 

elderly man living in the house who made charming doll cradles. Like everyone else, he liked 

Evangeline. Everyone adored her. She was a very dignified child, even at two. She didn't like all the 

attention, but she went along and waited until people would put her down. The men of the church 

especially loved her. And the elderly boarder made Evangeline a doll cradle that she kept for many 

years. 

Her parents moved back to north Evanston within a few months to a new house. Then 

Margaret began to go to the Central Street kindergarten, and her teacher was Miss Felt, whom 

everyone adored. Margaret had her first open disgrace in that kindergarten. She didn't know the 

names of the days of the week, and the other children all did. "Yes, isn't it terrible! I was five! And 

I had to put my head down on the table. It was really a disgrace. I remember it to this day. The table 

had little squares marked out like inches, and I can remember having to put my head down there." 

94


4 

12:08 Margaret remembers a scene in the kitchen, probably in the first house on Hartzel St. Her 

father was swinging Evangeline between his legs. And there were two little aprons someone had 

given the girls. Evangeline got the pink one, which was the one Margaret wanted. It was an event of 

little consequence, except for this: that in this moment she realized that Evangeline was more loved 

than she was. This was not merely a child's misperception. It was correct. After she was grown. 

Adelle told her that she was A.D.'s favorite child, but she knew it wasn't true. She knew as a child 

that Evangeline was more loved by both her parents. And the interesting thing is that she never felt 

any jealousy against her, nor any resentment against her parents for favoring her. Evangeline was 

just so adorable. Feels this was remarkable. It had no effect on the sisters' relationship. They were 

very close. True friends. Compatible. They were different enough that they weren't in competition. 

Even if they hadn't been sisters, they would have been friends. It was one of the most important 

relationships of her life. They knew what the other felt. They would be walking along and not 

talking, and they would know. 

Evangeline had a rare quality in a child. She was compassionate. She was nice to people who 

wanted to be her friends, even if she didn't want their friendship. 

Session #9 October 12, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

5 

17:00 Margaret continues on Evangeline's being more loved than she. When Betty was born March 

26, 1912, she supplanted Evangeline as the favorite, and remained Adelle's favorite most of the rest 

of her life. When Kenneth began coming to the house, Betty was a big, gawky girl—"and a darned 

nuisance," he interjects. She was different from her older sisters. She didn't bother with the rules, 

and Adelle would overlook it, whereas she was very strict with the others. 

Years later, she went to work for the registrar of Wheaton College, Enoch Dyrness, a very 

angular man. She did a lot of public relations for him, in effect, softening his effect on people. She 

always had favorites in the office, and everybody knew it. It was her way. 

She always had friends. Lots of friends. 

6 

21:25 From infancy, Margaret was fond of desserts. Never very fond of vegetables, unfortunately. 

When she was convalescing, Adelle made a batch of creampuffs for her. She was down to the last 

one when the doctor came to see her, and Adelle suggested she give it to Dr. East. "And to this day I 

can remember, I did, but I didn't want to! I regretted that creampuff!" 

7 

22:50 Grandmother Estberg had died in 1896, so Margaret never saw her. But she has one clear 

memory of Grandfather Estberg, who lived in Somers. Aunt Minnie lived in Somers also. At the 

very end of his life, he went to live with Aunt Julia. 

While she was still three, Adelle took the girls up for a visit. One day, Margaret was sitting 

on the back stoop, which had about five or six steps. There were other children about, when suddenly 

she became aware of a great tall man—he seemed enormously tall to her childish eyes—looking 

down at her, dressed all in black. He was a tall, gaunt man, and in her memory he is mixed up with 

her image of Abraham Lincoln. That is all there is to the memory, this tall man looking down at her, 

and she looking up at him. Perhaps, it was because of the way he was looking at her in that moment, 

not at the other children. 

95


8 

26:33 He died June 4, 1907. Adelle and the two girls had gone up to be with him at the end. 

Margaret reads from the obituary. He was seventy-one, having been born in 1836 in Norway. He 

was interred at the Oakwood Cemetery in Somers. 

Margaret reads the bill from the funeral home. Casket, $95. Hearse, $8. Four carriages, $24. 

Permit, $.75. Total, $144.25. 

Margaret reads from the accounting of Estberg's estate made the next year by Uncle John 

Lawrence. He owned a windmill, and he was the one prosperous member of the family. He owned a 

number of properties. So it was natural that he should take care of the estate. Uncle John wrote 

Adelle inclosing a check for $233.20, after he had deducted the $100 he said he had already sent her. 

The items in the estate were listed. Cash in pocketbook, $22.01. Two months' house rent, $13. Bank 

account, $200.52. Cash for hay, $6. Kitchen table, $1. Bits of furniture. Settlement of mortgage, 

$400. 

9 

36:10 Adelle kept many memorabilia from Margaret's childhood. June 12, 1904, she was baptized. 

A small item with a turkey cut out of paper and colored, and a sailboat cut out and put on a piece of 

paper—her first kindergarten work. 

Her kindergarten teacher was Miss Felt. Her first grade teacher was Miss Morse. Second, 

Miss Stevens. Third, Miss Stephenson. Fourth, Miss Helen A. Hart. Fifth, Miss Clara B. Jophes. 

Sixth, Miss Harriet L. Leaning. Seventh, Miss Elzada G. Brown for three months, then Miss Leaning 

came over, to everyone's delight. Eighth, Miss Helen Lutyen. "I remember them all." Miss Morse 

was very severe, old style. But she didn't worry Margaret. 

10 

41:05 The Mortensons were living then at 2218 Central St. She has a memory of being gotten up 

out of bed when Halley's Comet came over in 1911. In the middle of the night, they knelt down by a 

window and looked up to see the comet. 

11 

42:00 From the beginning of school, "I fell in love with reading." In Miss Morse's class. They had 

to sit very straight at their desks. At the back of the room was utter magic. There was a shelf full of 

such delicious books as The Sunbonnet Babies and The Overall Boys. If you did your assigned 

work, and completed it to Miss Morse's satisfaction before the period ended, you were permitted to 

go back and take one of those books and read. "Which I did." 

Adelle read to her daughters, and Margaret has a memory, while sitting in the kitchen, of her 

reading Hiawatha. She got to the part in which there was a death, and Margaret felt it so strongly 

that she wanted to escape. Adelle went on reading relentlessly, but Margaret wanted so badly to run, 

to get away, not to have to hear this tragic thing. 

12 

44:10 Margaret acquired two kittens, Katherine and Eleanor. Sadly, they disappeared, and Adelle 

was concerned to keep Margaret from learning what had happened. But she overheard Adelle telling 

A.D. that the tom had killed them both. That was her first experience of the death of anything close 

to her. She had no memory of her grandfather's death. 

96


13 

45:30 A.D. would bring home a bag of candy every Saturday afternoon after work. Margaret 

marvels at how polite the girls were toward each other. When the candy got down to the final pieces, 

Monday or Tuesday, the protocol of offering the candy to the other, knowing that the other would 

feel required to take the smaller piece, has a comic quality in memory. 

They had a swing and a trapeze there in the yard at the 2218 house. 

14 

47:40 The streetcar ran north and south on Central Street, with a stop near their house. The church 

was nearby as well. 

15 

50:05 One day Adelle was taking the girls downtown by streetcar, and they were standing at the 

stop, and the streetcar was coming, when Adelle suddenly realized Evangeline was not there. She 

looked around and caught sight of this little figure flying around the house, running to catch the 

streetcar. She made it! Adelle was scolding her, and Evangeline protested, "I had to spit! So I had to 

go out to the alley!" That became a family story. There was an alley through the center of every 

block. It was required. Trash and garbage went there, and was picked up every day. It was the 

appropriate place for spit. 

Another day, Margaret ran in front of a streetcar and was severely punished for it. She never 

did it again. The punishment was verbal. Adelle was not given to spanking. With Elizabeth 

spanking never worked anyway, though Adelle did try it because she was so disobedient. The only 

thing that worked with her was being made to sit still, for perhaps a half hour. That she could not 

stand. 

16 

53:18 There was a table in the kitchen with a bin underneath that you filled with flour, perhaps 

twenty-five pounds of it. One day, Margaret saw two-year-old Elizabeth standing at the back door, 

holding a cup full of sand from her sandbox; Adelle was baking, and turned to go to the sink; and as 

quick as a flash, Betty dashed in and threw the sand into the flour bin. 

17 

55:25 Uncle Lawrence came down to enter Northwestern University in electrical engineering and 

lived with the family for a while. He was fond of Evangeline, but not of Margaret. He played on the 

football team. Got his nose broken several times. A.D. began taking Margaret to his football games 

when she was seven, which was when she acquired her taste for football. Northwestern always lost. 

They went to a lot of Chicago games too, and they won. They had a great coach, Amos Alonzo 

Stagg. 

18 

57:04 When Margaret was seven, perhaps eight, she became very ill. She may have been poisoned 

in some way. Their doctor by now was Dr. William Alexander. (After Anna came out in 1944, Dr. 

Alexander wrote her, after all those years.) They never determined what her illness was. There was 

little they could do. Suddenly, she could neither retain food nor water. It had a most curious effect, 

so that all her senses became extremely acute. She would be lying in bed on the second floor, and 

Adelle would be in the basement, cracking nuts, and Margaret could hear it clearly. It went on until 

97


the bones of her feet came through the skin, she says. They must have thought she was near death. 

Then all of sudden she had a terrible convulsion—the only one she ever had in her life—and it was 

over. Adelle had said during her illness that once she recovered, they would have a lovely dinner. . . . 

(Story to be continued) 

98


HOUR 13 

Session #9 continued Margaret, Kenneth, Kip October 12, 1976 

1 

0:00 (IIB950) Margaret continues on the "lovely meal." They invited the Browns from Harrison 

St. behind their house. Their daughter, Elsie Brown, was her dear friend, and she still is. She now 

lives in Florida. She had two friends, the other being Mary Peabody. Elsie married a man named 

Robert Vernon Jones, a lawyer. She was very successful as a student at Northwestern University. 

They had four children. Were married thirty-five years or so. They were wealthy. Had beautiful 

homes. Elsie was an artist. He went on a trip to Russia, or so he said. The next day, she received a 

letter from him saying that he was leaving her. She had had no sense that it was coming. But in fact 

he was involved with another woman. He divorced her. 

So anyway, they invited the four Browns. Margaret had chosen frankfurters for the meat, and 

a number of other dishes. But the main thing was that she had asked for seven desserts. She can't 

remember them, but they were all the desserts she especially liked. Probably ice cream, creampuffs, 

and so on. 

Margaret always was "top dog." Always had friends. Always was the president of her class, 

or captain of the team. She was a natural leader. It was never anything she even coveted. She was 

just always chosen. 

2 

7:58 She did have her reverses. In seventh grade, dancing classes started, and her parents wouldn't 

let her go. She was already the best dancer in her class, and that really hurt. Once she snuck there. 

But she couldn't do it again. She couldn't practice that kind of deceit. Mary and Elsie both went. 

3 

8:56 Margaret remembers second grade with Miss Stevens. In a rather dark room. The main thing 

Margaret remembers is that her favorite song was "Marching Through Georgia." She had no idea 

what a dreadful thing that song celebrated—Sherman's march through Georgia, ravaging the country. 

Margaret sings. "Hurray! Hurray! We'll fight to make men free!" They all had music lessons. That 

was part of life. Their piano lessons were from Mary Peabody's aunt, her mother's sister. 

4 

10:35 Mary was a friend from very early. They were companionable in an easy, relaxed friendship. 

She was a little black-haired shrimp of a girl, Kenneth says, and Margaret towered above her. She 

sparkled; was lots of fun. Her father was Vice President of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, 

in charge of the signals. 

5 

12:43 Margaret reads a recent letter to The Washington Post (in 1976) concerning children's 

games from the past. The writer comments that many children's games were passed down by 

generation to generation of children for centuries, but nearly all of them have been lost in our century. 

With the coming of television, everything changed. 

Margaret talks about some of the games she played as a child. She and Mary had a favorite 

tree they climbed. They would often take their lunches up into the tree and eat there. 

99


One game the children played was "Run sheepy run." Margaret remembers the name, but not 

the game. "Washington Poke." Hide and seek. Boys rarely played with girls. Jumping rope. 

Playing jacks. Riding bikes. Tennis at the tennis courts. Softball, which she played from fourth 

grade through college. Kenneth speaks of playing mumbledypeg. King of the mountain. 

On Sunday, Margaret liked to go to Mary's house, because her father subscribed to the 

Sunday paper, which A.D. wouldn't allow in the house, and she would read the comics. 

6 

19:30 Third grade was different. Someone had come up with the idea that an open-air classroom 

would be healthier than the normal, heated classroom. And Adelle subscribed to this. So she sent her 

two daughters to the open-air school. 

Evanston was made up of single homes. Apartment buildings were forbidden. The base was 

middle-class, although there were a few wealthy. It was one of the first places to which blacks from 

the South came, because they could find work there. So the schools were always integrated. 

Margaret remembers Clifton, the one black who came to her school and whom everyone liked. She 

remembers seeing blacks everywhere. 

The schools of Evanston were excellent, and famous, especially the high school. 

In the open-air school, each student had a box to put his or her feet in, and a blanket to go 

around their feet. They wore their winter coats and hats, and they sat there in that cold room all 

winter long. There were only a few children, not more than twenty. She only went there the one 

year. 

Before long, Margaret discovered the library and began borrowing books. She felt resistant, 

though, to what teachers and librarians felt she should read. So she missed a lot. 

7 

27:00 Margaret began going to Chicago alone when she was seven. She had astigmatism, and had 

to wear glasses, and from time to time had to go and see the doctor. Adelle knew she was perfectly 

safe making that trip alone. The railroad ran on the left side because the original investors had been 

British. Margaret remembers the details of the trip, arriving in Chicago, getting on the Marshall 

Fields bus, which was free and was pulled by two horses. She would get right up behind the driver so 

that she could watch the horses. She would get out at the store, cross the street, and see the doctor for 

her eyes. 

She remembers the marvellous train set Fields had at Christmastime. What she particularly 

liked to do was to walk very sedately up and down, up and down the aisles, playing her favorite game 

of deciding what she would buy if she had the money. She speaks particularly of the gorgeous dolls. 

They all knew that when they reached the bottom of the Loop—Fields was at the northern end 

of the Loop—it was not safe. She did not go there. 

She can remember no crime at all in all the years she lived in Evanston. It was a safe place. 

No liquor was sold there. It was the home of Frances Willard, the founder of the Women's Christian 

Temperance Union. There were no saloons. Outside of town, there was a "blind pig" where liquor 

was sold. But that was all. Even the University students were very responsible then. 

Imagine the shock at the murder of a child for the thrill of it by Loeb and Leopold, two 

Chicago University students. The whole nation was rocked by it. It was unimaginable. 

8 

37:40 Margaret recalls Donald Williams, who lived across the street, and who was a "horrid 

child." His sister Camillia was lovely. But Donald was bad from the very beginning. Cruel. He 

100


took a little boy, tied him to a tree, and started a fire under him. Fortunately, the child was rescued. 

Session #10 November 2, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

9 

39:00 (IIB1361) Margaret reads a letter from her grandmother, Laurids' wife, written to her on 

August 8, 1921, recalling the time of Margaret's birth. She was a warm and lovely person who had a 

hard life. She never mastered English, and spoke with a strong accent. She referred in her letter to 

her son Chris, who was Margaret's favorite uncle on her father's side. Aunt Julia was her favorite 

aunt on her mother's side. "I well remember Christ [sic] came after me with a horse and buggy to 

take me out to see and wash my firstborn grandchild. And I was so happy to go and find both mother 

and that dear baby well and everybody happy. I washed you and put you by your dear mother to 

sleep. Is that seventeen years ago? I wish you many happy birthdays." "God be with you all of your 

life. Love, Your Grandmother." 

10 

44:10 The family habit of visiting. Transportation was easy. There were streetcars in every city, 

and they never lived more than a block from the streetcar. Then there was the Northwestern Railroad 

to Chicago. You could go to Chicago in twenty minutes. To go to Racine, they went to the Central 

Street Station and in an hour they were there. And there was the Interurban, which you found in 

towns all over the country. For the most part, people were not yet using cars. They were a rarity. A 

Mr. Smith in Evanston, a funny little man who was a brilliant inventor, had a Stanley Steamer. It just 

floated down the street without a sound. It was large for that day. 

Near the railroad station on Central Street were the shops. Everyone took it for granted that 

you walked. Sometimes, they would pull a wagon. Margaret still remembers the German's butcher 

shop. They would go in and order some cut of meat, which he would go and get for them, and when 

he had wrapped it, he would always say, in a booming tone, "And Vhat Else?" It became a saying in 

the family. 

11 

48:20 On the Negroes, as they tended to be called, coming up from the South. Many were maternal 

families, and they came to work. There was no such thing as welfare in those days. Adelle had a 

woman working for her named Florida Mitchell. Many of the women were very large. Margaret 

remembers riding the streetcar with these huge black women going to work. As for Florida, she was 

not like that. She was "a lady." Both she and her husband worked. She would say of him, "He ain't 

purrfect, but he does pretty well!" Which became another family saying. 

Once Florida was collecting money for her church, and she brought a bank. A.D. and Adelle 

always tithed, no matter how rough things became, and they decided to give a rather substantial sum 

of money to Florida, who had expected just a few quarters. As Florida left to take the streetcar home, 

and Adelle looked out the window and saw Florida standing, dancing on the sidewalk for sheer joy. 

Adelle was always astonished at the way these black women would come into the butcher's 

and spend large amounts of money on meat. 

12 

51:30 There was also a market where you could get six chocolate-covered caramels for five cents. 

"I remember it to this day." A nickel meant something in those days. She often invested a nickel to 

101


get six caramels. 

Then there was Miss Style's store. All sorts of things. Cloth. Baby ribbon, silk ribbon that 

cost a cent a yard. That was where children bought their schoolbooks. Adelle commented that Miss 

Style's feet were like bananas—long and thin. 

7$3( ,,, 6LGH 

13 

53:40 On the corner was the drugstore. A small bank. And down the street that ran beside the 

railroad Adelle discovered a store called the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Store. Prices there were really 

much more reasonable than in the market. There were no chains in those days. The store quickly 

came to known as the A&P. It had originally been a coffee and tea store. Margaret remembers the 

store, rather dark, and the bins. 

In the last years of his life, A.D. had an income of $5000 a year, which was considered a 

substantial amount. In today's values, this might be $30,000-40,000. He stopped working in 1922. 

14 

57:48 Another facet of their family life was the habit of visiting. They visited Grandmother 

constantly, in Racine. Then Uncle Chris and Aunt Clara in Racine. Aunt Mary and Uncle Christian; 

he was Grandmother's nephew; a gentle little man who never really succeeded. On the other side, 

Aunt Julia and Aunt Minnie. Rarely visited the older Mortenson children, Aunt Martha and Uncle 

Johnny and Uncle Charlie—the ones who had been born in the old country. 

102


HOUR 14 

Session #10 continued November 2, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth Landon 

1 

0:00 (IIIA30) Margaret continues on visiting family. Aunt Julia had married a railroad man. Both 

her brothers were railroad men. Her husband, Uncle Wilfred, was a bit "grumpy." His name was 

C.W. Bush, and they lived in Franksville, Wisconsin. 

At one point, Aunt Julia opened an ice cream parlor. Margaret remembers standing hopefully 

near the door of the parlor until Aunt Julia gave her an ice cream cone. 

Aunt Julia had two children, Harriet Adelle, born in 1900, and Donald, born in 1905. The 

family moved to Round Lake, Wisconsin, and Margaret remembers the field beside the house, with 

its lovely hill. They would roll down that hill in a wagon. Cows used the field, and one time Donald 

landed smack in a cowpat. They all thought this was terribly funny. 

2 

4:40 In Evanston, Margaret had never seen anyone who was drunk. But when she visited 

Grandmother in Racine, she would often send Margaret to Haumerson's, a shop that is still there by 

another name. She would send her for a loaf of bread. Margaret had to pass a saloon to get there, 

something she had never seen. It had a side door with swinging half-doors. She would get to within 

five feet of that door and then run just as fast as she could go to get past that danger point. It 

frightened her to see inebriated men coming from there. 

3 

7:10 She was about nine or ten. She had a passion already for giving people things. That was just 

natural to her from earliest childhood. She would save every bit of her allowance before Christmas 

and make gifts. When they were at Round Lake, she wanted to take gifts home for each member of 

the family. She bought a stickpen for her father, a gold one with a little pearl in the middle. And she 

bought a book for her mother, "Not Like Other Girls"! To earn the money to buy these, she swatted 

flies. Adelle had told her that if she did this for Aunt Julia, she would pay her one cent per dozen. 

Well, Margaret couldn't find enough flies inside the house to make it worthwhile, but she discovered 

she could get a lot more if she worked out on the porch. She swatted a couple of hundred dozen flies 

that summer, so that she went home triumphantly with her gifts. She counted the flies herself. She 

was scrupulously honest about things like that. 

4 

9:40 Margaret had learned not to lie when she tried it the very first time! She was never any good 

at it. Never had any practice. "I can deceive a little bit." That first time, she wanted some white 

stockings. And she said that her mother had promised them to her, when in fact she had not. Adelle 

told her that that was something she must never do. She tried a bit of stealing once too. She was in 

her grandfather's shop in Racine, and she stole a piece of gum. One piece. Nobody knew it. Nobody 

saw it. Nobody said anything. But she was so unhappy with herself that she decided that was not for 

her. 

103


5 

11:58 Adelle was annoyed with Aunt Minnie because she would so rarely come down to visit. But 

Aunt Minnie was a farm wife. Her husband Albert's farm was small. Albert was a bit "backward." 

He wouldn't have an indoor toilet. He considered that "dirty." They had no running water. Their son 

was Elroy, who came to Margaret and Kenneth's fiftieth anniversary dinner in 1976. Margaret and 

Elroy had nothing in common. One day she went downtown in Somers to get some candy, and she 

found that what she could get the most for the least money was rock candy. Elroy was disgusted 

because he liked chocolate drops, which were much more expensive. 

Aunt Minnie had a lilac hedge, a hundred feet long. It was so lovely. Often in Siam, 

Margaret would remember that lilac hedge. 

Their other child was Loren, who became a successful farmer. Elroy hated the farm and went 

to work for the National Biscuit Company. 

6 

16:24 The church was always an important part of their life. Both her grandparents and her parents 

were Methodists. Methodism didn't reach Norway until the middle of the nineteenth century. Pastor 

Ole Peter Peterson, who came to the U.S. originally as a sailor, and who had wanted to become a 

Lutheran minister, was converted to Methodism in this country and returned to Norway to found 

Methodism in that country. Margaret's grandmother came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of O.P. 

Peterson. 

A.D. and Adelle were active in the Central Street Church, which was a small wooden 

building. When Margaret was ten or eleven, they built a new church, a larger, brick building on 

Harrison St. 

7 

20:42 One of the members of the church was a Mr. William Boyd, who worked for the Curtis 

Publishing Company in their advertizing department, which was located in Chicago. The magazines 

were published in Philadelphia A.D.'s position at Reid Murdoch was not sufficient to provide for the 

family. Boyd was impressed by A.D. and persuaded him to come over to Curtis. It was then that he 

began to make good money for the first time. Margaret reads a Christmas card from Mr. Boyd. She 

recalls the Boyd family. Both parents were very able, and he went to the top of the company as 

advertizing director. They were educated people. The son was named William Roland. 

A.D. was now able to save some money, and to afford a nicer home. 

8 

26:35 "I always loved Christmas." For some reason A.D. had to make a business trip. So he 

couldn't be home for Christmas, and Adelle didn't buy a Christmas tree. The day after Christmas, 

Margaret was walking down toward the school and the little shopping center, through a vacant lot 

along a path that children's feet had made, and she found a little Christmas tree that someone had 

thrown out. She was so happy to find it that she dragged it all the way home in triumph. Adelle was 

distressed to realize that it meant that much to her, and she resolved that from then on they would 

always have a Christmas tree. And they always did. 

There is a picture in Adelle's old album of Evangeline with her friend Margaret Feckley, both 

dressed in tarlatan, portraying angels, standing by the Christmas tree. In front was the row of their 

precious dolls. 

104


9 

29:17 Margaret's favorite doll was named Daisy. She had not named it that. She would have 

named it Eleanor or something like that. But Daisy was the doll's name when it came to her. The 

Curtis Publishing Company put out three magazines, The Ladies Home Journal, the Saturday 

Evening Post, and The Country Gentleman. The Post was the big money-earner. Prestigious. 

The best writers in the U.S. would write for it. Mary Roberts Rinehart. Curtis was very particular 

about its advertizing. Had a high standard. A.D. was a credit manager in the advertizing department. 

(Margaret asserts that he developed high blood pressure and died young because of the strain of this 

job and, more, the high stress of being responsible for his family when a boy.) 

In 1913 the Mortensons bought their first house, at 2400 Harrison St., just a few blocks from 

2218 Central St. That was their house until 1923, when the family moved to Wheaton. It was a 

comfortable, plain, square house, like so many throughout the Midwest. In 1969, it was still 

standing. It had a basement. You came into a large front hall. There was a living room and dining 

room, a kitchen and a large pantry, which was turned into a den for A.D. Two stairways, in the front 

and in the rear. And then four bedrooms upstairs. 

A.D. received bound volumes of the magazines at the end of the year. 

So anyway, Daisy was advertized in one of the magazines. A full-page advertizement. You 

could get this beautiful doll if you sold three subscriptions and sent in a certain sum of money. 

Margaret managed to sell the three subscriptions, and got that doll. It was beautiful, made in 

Germany, about 18" high. She kept that doll all through the years, and when her daughter Carol 

asked for it, had it repaired for her. So it stays in the family. 

Margaret was never as fond of Katherine, her other main doll, as she was of Daisy. But she 

kept her too, and when Carol's daughter Linnea asked for her this past year, Margaret and Kenneth 

rehabilitated her in the same way. She was a problem because her thigh was missing. Margaret 

looked everywhere but could not find it. A great mystery. This was just last Christmas, 1975. A 

new thigh had to be carved out of balsa to put her back in shape. A new wig had to be put on, and 

new eyes. Most of the clothes were intact. 

Kenneth eventually solved the mystery of the thigh. The glass-fiber insulation in the attic was 

falling apart, and Kenneth set about finding a way to seal it up with sheets of what actually was 

intended to be veneer. And in the process of preparing the rafters to attach the sheets, he found the 

thigh tied tightly to one of the rafters. Son Bill many years ago must have done this in some project 

of his. Kenneth wrote Bill to find out what exactly he had had in mind, but Bill never answered. So 

it remains a mystery. Margaret sent the thigh on to Carol to reunite it with beloved Katherine. 

Session #11 November 9, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

10 

41:55 Margaret tells of a day when she was sitting and playing out behind the house, probably at 

2409 Hartsel Street. Evangeline was there, about two years old, and she was making mudpies. This 

was common enough among children of the time, but the thing that was different was that she was 

eating them. And she liked it! She had mud smeared all around her mouth. It was something she did 

more than once. Adelle had a difficult time curing her of it. 

Margaret tells of the practice of Methodist camp meetings. Annually, there was a camp 

meeting at Desplaines, and one summer the Mortensons went. Margaret was small. There was a 

dining tent, and she wandered in there, sat down, and had a meal. It seemed the natural thing to do. 

Her parents, as it turned out, had to pay for the meal, and they were very, very much upset! It cost 

them 50 cents. Margaret was made to feel like a criminal. She never did it again! 

105


11 

48:55 Margaret remembers "seeing gorillas" as a child—that is, in her imagination. And eating 

gorillas! 

Recently, she pulled out the picture of her eighth grade class, and found she could name 

almost all the girls. Didn't do so well with the boys. "They were a most unattractive group of boys." 

First grade gave her her love of reading. Fourth grade introduced her to sports, especially 

softball. She played first base. Was a heavy hitter. Could usually manage two- or three-baggers. 

She was likely to be "the cleanup man" on the squad, all the way through college. It was a heavy 

ball, and you had to hit it awfully hard. 

Her next sport was volleyball, which she learned in fifth or sixth grade, and in which she 

broke her leg. This happened at the noon break one day. They played other schools. She leaped 

sideways and went down on her left leg, breaking it. Once home, she was stretched out on the couch, 

where she lay all night. The leg wasn't set until the following morning, at the hospital. The cast was 

very heavy. Crutches were too slow, so she learned to get around—and almost run—on her one good 

leg. What she didn't know was that that long period of going on one leg overdeveloped it. Many 

years later she discovered that her left leg was shorter than her right leg. 

In seventh grade, the park service built two tennis courts near her home, and she began 

playing tennis too. 

12 

57:00 She was now living on the south side of Central Street, which became the dividing line when 

the new Lincolnwood School was finished in 1913. One of the finest school buildings she was ever 

in. Her first four years of school were in the Central Street School. Then in fifth grade, she and the 

other children who lived south of Central Street picked up all their books one morning and marched 

en masse down to the new school. 

Mary Peabody, her great friend, was shy. Very attractive, pretty. The most domestic of the 

three pals, Margaret, Elsie, and Mary. She went to a women's college. Never married. 

106


HOUR 15 

Session #11 continued November 9, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IIIA420) Margaret describes the Lincolnwood School. Every room had skylights, so that 

they had excellent lighting. Evangeline sent her a picture of the school when she was in Siam. They 

had excellent special teachers, such as Miss Ferguson, the art teacher, whose arrival was always an 

occasion of delight. She came perhaps one day a week. The children were taken on tours of the art 

institute once a year or so. 

In the seventh and eighth grades, they were prepared to sing with all the other seventh and 

eighth grade students in Evanston in the Evanston Music Festival. A great event. The finest 

orchestras came. The finest opera stars. John McCormack, who once would not go on until he was 

paid. He was drunk, but then he often sang drunk. A famous story. They had to scramble madly to 

find the cash, right down to collecting change to give to the great man. It was wonderful music. 

Great music. The children's chorus sang on Saturday, and of course their music was very simple. 

They were on a banked stage, sitting just behind the orchestra. Margaret remembers when Rosa 

Raisa was the soloist. She came out dramatically and, just as she was about to sing, opened a vast 

fan. 

A.D. would pay Margaret a dollar if she came home with all A's. That seemed like a lot of 

money. 

Her neighborhood was a neighborhood of children. Every house seemed to have children. 

2 

7:15 Margaret recalls going to the beach at Lake Michigan. She remembers the little striped tents, 

looking like teepees, the men set up. In these they would change. They were having a picnic. She 

doesn't remember how old she was at the time. This was a mile from their home, and they would 

take the streetcar to get there and back. 

3 

8:15 Elizabeth was born March 26, 1912. Margaret was eight and a half. Betty was born by 

cesarean section, the first birth of that sort in the Evanston Hospital. It was a near-miracle that Adelle 

survived. She was operated on by a surgeon named Dr. Danforth. It was a much more serious 

operation then than it is now. The placenta was completely across the exit from the womb. The 

incision was large and slow to heal. Grandmother came down from Racine to stay with Evangeline 

and Margaret. It was an anxious time, and A.D. wrote notes hour by hour through the ordeal.. 

4 

10:08 In the Harrison Street neighborhood, there was of course the usual alley. Even the milkman 

came down the alley. He would never think of driving down the main street. Streets were not for 

service vehicles. 

Across the alley, directly behind the Mortensons, was the Lehman house, Paul and Janet being 

the children. Paul was the proud possessor of one or two toboggans. Tobogganing was a favorite 

sport in the winter. Paul would sit in front, and four or so children would get on behind him, and 

down they would sweep, 150 feet or so. Everyone envied Paul his toboggan. 

107


There was a girl in the neighborhood who owned a pony, which was a great attraction, but she 

was quite stingy about it. Otherwise, everyone owned bicycles. 

Betty was a rascal from the day she was born. "Well, really, it took a little longer than that." 

At this time, Adelle began to have health problems. Perhaps because of the operation. She 

wasn't allowed to climb the stairs much. Betty would get into some kind of trouble, and then she 

would race to the top of the stairs, knowing Adelle couldn't come after her. She would peer through 

the railing at her mother and say, "Aha, you can't get me now!" Eventually, of course, she would 

come down. She was extremely active. Both Adelle and Elizabeth had tremendous natural vigor. 

Adelle's most severe punishment was to make her sit still. 

5 

15:08 When Betty was two or three, she fell down the stairs, hitting her head. As a result, her eyes 

crossed. She also had double vision. Her eyes were perfectly normal before that. She had problems 

with them from then on. She had to wear glasses, of course. And as soon as they could, they 

operated. 

She had scarlet fever at age five or six, and had to go to the hospital. When she came home, 

she was still very weak, and Margaret remembers picking her up and carrying her up the stairs, 

astonished at how light she was. She was "like nothing." 

She was innately imitative. They never had ask her who she had been playing with, because 

when she came home, she ZDV that child. 

6 

18:55 On Lincoln Street, just south of and parallel to Harrison, another block over, there lived a 

woman named Lucy Fitch Perkins, a famous writer of children's books. Her books are still read 

today. Evangeline was just about the age of her son Larry, and so Evangeline would be invited over 

to listen to her reading those books. Mrs. Perkins was trying them out on the neighborhood children. 

Margaret was too old for this. 

Evangeline had great charm. On Mayday, there was a funny local custom in which the boys 

would make little May baskets of woven paper, fill them with wildflowers, and deliver them to the 

girls they admired. There would always be a number of these for Evangeline on the porch, the 

morning of May 1. 

7 

21:15 Adelle had a sense of style when she was young. But the dresses she sewed for her daughters 

did not seem very nice to Margaret. She also did their hair. A.D. insisted that his daughters have 

long hair. It was some sort of biblical thing. When Evangeline cut her hair, he was practically sick 

about it, and since it distressed him, she grew it again. This was her innate compassion at work. She 

did it for him. Then, after his death, she cut it again. 

Evangeline had a gift for style. A gift for art. Her parents sent her into the art institute. She 

took lessons as a child. But when she went to Wheaton, there was nothing. She did design dresses. 

She began sewing at the age of four, making dresses for her dolls. Margaret did this too. At age 

eleven, Evangeline made a dress for herself of tissue gingham, a very sheer and pretty material, in a 

check pattern, set into the skirt a band of organdy, and added an appliqué of flowers. It was chic. A 

woman stopped her on the street and asked her where her mother had bought the dress. The woman 

couldn't believe she had made it. 

108


8 

25:14 In the summer of 1914 Adelle took the children up to Michigan with her to stay at a cottage 

on Green Lake. Margaret remembers how much fun the lake was. After a couple of weeks, A.D. 

came for his vacation, and they started out on the usual Sunday afternoon walk, when they came to a 

stop at a clearing in the woods and stood there in utter horror. The clearing seemed to be filled with 

the heads of snakes, huge snakes, one of the worst sights she ever saw in her life. It made them feel 

the woods were infested with serpents they knew nothing about. They rushed away. In fact, the 

heads were turtle heads. But why anyone had taken so many turtles to that spot and decapitated 

them, she has no idea. 

That summer was the first time she had ever seen Petoskey stones, which were curiously 

marked, very much like the back of a turtle. Beautiful. The children would hunt for them. These can 

still be found in that part of Michigan. She has one to this day. Kenneth speculates that they were 

fragments of a meteorite. 

Another indelible memory of that summer was blueberry muffins. Her mother made them, 

and she ate them, and ate them, and ate them, and the inevitable result was: that she threw up! The 

really disastrous thing was that Adelle couldn't get the stain out. It was in the bedroom, a round, dark 

spot which she left as her mark. 

9 

30:52 Sewing and cooking were not offered in the school. The girls went downtown for these, to 

the Haven Annex. Each girl had a complete set of miniature cooking utensils, a miniature stove, 

including an oven, and it was just downright fun. They all looked forward to it. The first time 

Margaret made anything was something called junket, a kind of pudding. Each of them had a little 

pail which they owned, so they could take home what they made. A little gray enamel pail. She had 

skated down there that day, instead of riding the streetcar, so she skated home with her junket in her 

pail—and it curdled on the way. But A.D. heroically ate it, because she had made it! 

One semester they would do cooking down there, and the other they would do sewing. 

10 

32:55 A.D. "preached at me an awful lot." She can never remember a word of praise from her 

father. Adelle told her many years later that she was his favorite child, but she doesn't quite believe 

it. Kenneth says he does. His letters were full of preaching. He never seemed to realize that even as 

a child, she had a deep religious feeling. She had starting praying before she knew what praying was. 

Of course, they would kneel beside the bed when they were little. He never seemed to recognize her 

faith and would preach at her as if she weren't a believer. She got to the point that she avoided him, 

smoothly, the way a child can, just slipping way. And yet she knew nothing was too much trouble. 

He would give up his lunch hour any day to get something for them. There was just this stiff Danish 

quality in him that didn't know how to bend. And yet he saved everything, every little card they 

would make for him. He was very cold, though he didn't want to be. Adelle was very warm. 

Margaret loved cooking. It was such fun. 

In eighth grade, the girls had to make their own dresses, all of them alike, for graduation. 

She kept a diary that year. Her spelling was abominable, though she was a good speller at 

school. 

11 

36:03 Adelle's health became a matter of growing concern. She had an enlarged goiter. She and 

the daughters would go away in the summer so that she could rest. She had difficulty breathing, 

109


especially in hot weather, and she found it easier to breathe in the lake environment. In 1915, Adelle 

learned from a neighbor about a lake in Michigan called Stony Lake, and that summer they went for 

the first time there. Adelle didn't like the lake as much as Green Lake, because the lake bottom was 

more muddy than sandy. But it was easier to get to. They went out in a jitney, a Ford. Margaret 

remembers how deep the ruts were. They went to Stony Lake from then on. The family built a 

cottage at the lake eventually, and there Margaret and Kenneth had their honeymoon. 

In 1917, Adelle's condition worsened to the point that she went up to the Mayo Clinic and had 

an operation. She was reluctant to go. Had to go up alone. Rode up on the train. Margaret reads 

from a diary entry she made the day Adelle left. The operation was April 27. There were three 

doctors, the two brothers Mayo, and a third. He was drunk when he operated, Margaret says, and he 

took off too much of the thyroid. She stayed in St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic hospital run by nuns. 

She was terribly ill after the operation, and the nuns neglected her while taking wonderful care of the 

Catholic woman across the room. It gave Adelle an anti-Catholic feeling that stayed with her for 

many years. She would lie there on the bed, trying to eat, and they wouldn't help her. They wouldn't 

even change her soiled napkin. But she was a very strong person, and she survived. 

She came home in late May. Managed to come to Margaret's graduation. She and A.D. gave 

Margaret a gold watch. There were other gifts too. 

12 

45:15 Shortly after that, Adelle had to go into the Evanston Hospital again, for a long bout. This 

time she was beautifully treated by the nurses. Her heart had been damaged by the botched operation 

in Minnesota, and she began having a series of heart attacks. Margaret remembers a time when she 

knew her mother was expected to die. Adelle was spending most of her time in bed. She herself felt 

that she would not survive, and she wanted A.D. to marry again—actually chose a woman named 

Leila Treviss. This is something she told Margaret later. 

Margaret doesn't know how many heart attacks she had. Remembers at Stony Lake sitting at 

the table, looking over, and seeing her mother turn absolutely green. She was having another heart 

attack. Ultimately, she recovered. 

13 

47:32 They all had music lessons. That was part of growing up. Both Betty and Evangeline were 

talented musically, naturals. Betty had perfect pitch. Margaret had no gift. Betty had a brilliant 

teacher at Northwestern University. But when they moved to Wheaton, Betty lost out. She got a 

teacher who was deadly. "I've heard it often said that talent is very easily dampened and destroyed 

by poor teaching." "Genius can't be stopped. It's like a steamroller. It destroys anything and 

everyone in its path, but it goes on. But talent can be destroyed." [In this she is citing a paper once read 

to The Literary Society, to which she belonged in Washington, D.C.] 

There was always music in the house. Sunday morning, before going off to Sunday School, 

Adelle would have them around the piano. At Stony Lake, there was lots of singing. They had an 

old Victrola, too, that was often playing. 

14 

51:05 Margaret reads from her diary May 16, 1917. Hot. Planning to wear her summer nightgown. 

Going to take a bath every morning now. In fact, she decided in fifth grade that she liked to take a 

bath every day. Adelle didn't see the point in that. One bath a week was sufficient. Both she and 

Evangeline had the kind of skin that chapped, and if they bathed often, their skin broke open. This 

was not true of Margaret. "I simply liked to take baths. I simply liked to be clean." She remembers 

110


arguing firmly about it. She was going to bathe every day! And she did. 

May 17, she recorded that she put on her summer underwear that day, and she still roasted! 

Played a softball game that day. Trying experience. Her garter broke. Hung down. Took it off 

carefully. Put it in her history book. Went into the school building, where she put it on again. 

May 22, practicing with her violin. Adelle came home from the hospital in Minnesota. She 

couldn't talk very well. She came home bringing gifts for the children. 

May 24, the children gave the entertainment, which they had planned in honor of their 

mother. First, they illustrated nursery rhymes. In costumes they had made. They played music. 

They then gave a play called "The Necklace." A lot of work. 

Session #12 November 15, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip (Margaret calls it "January 15," but in 

fact it was November.) 

15 

55:53 Margaret reads from her diary again, which she wrote in the eighth grade. She realizes how 

busy she was as a child. Her life was very ordered. Full of activity. On January 5 she wrote that she 

was going to join a club of twelve boys and twelve girls, organized by the parents. They 

divided into three groups, and they had to put on the programs. There was always a debate, and the 

group had to get together during the week to get up the program, perhaps a little play. They had a 

committee that met regularly. 

Monday January 1, 1917, she recorded that the family went skating. Adelle had not skated for 

twenty-five years, so she had some difficulty. (Story completed in Hour 16) 

111


HOUR 16 


1 

0:00 (IIIA800) Margaret continues in her eighth grade diary, on going skating with the family. 

Betty knocked down two people on her sled, a lady and Daffodil Wilcox. Margaret "cracked the 

whip" with several of her friends. She skated every minute of the day. 

January 5, the day she got angry at a boy for throwing some ice at Evangeline, and wanted to 

hit his head—except that he was too small! 

January 12, "we had quite a scuffle in school today." When she came in from recess, she 

found history books all over her desk. She knew Levering Cartwright had done it. So she threw one 

at him. It hit the desk first, and then hit him in the arm. She found two pieces of rubber art gum, too, 

both of which she threw at him. She got him in the nose with the second one. 

2 

4:38 Elsie, Margaret's childhood friend, visited in D.C. in 1975. She told Margaret that Levering 

Cartwright remained as unpleasant as he was as a child. 

The living room at home had a library table, with a chair beside it in mission oak. Margaret 

would perch on the chair arm, absorbed in something she was reading, and an hour later she would 

still be there. Adelle kept trying to get her to change. 

3 

6:34 That year, 1917, the church organized a youth choir under a Miss Grace Goodman, a music 

student from Northwestern U. Margaret became a member. On February 3, Margaret played a violin 

in a recital. She was taking both violin and piano. With choir, and lessons and practice on two 

instruments, and sports, and school, and the club, and the family, and her special friends, she was 

endlessly busy. The junior choir sang for the first time March 4. She was one of the leaders. 

She was restricted by not being permitted to go to plays, movies, or dances. She wanted to 

see The Prince and the Pauper at the Strand. And a Douglas Fairbanks picture. The other children 

in her class all went. And they went to dancing class Saturday nights, which she could not do, even 

though she was the best dancer in her class. Evangeline was never as disturbed by the restrictions as 

Margaret was. For Margaret, it made for a sense of distance with her father because he was so strict. 

Adelle would have let her go, and she cherished that fact for years. 

4 

10:10 The Club. On March 16, it was Margaret's turn to put on a program. They put on four 

scenes from Hiawatha. And living pictures representing songs. It took a lot of preparation. This 

was typical. Children had a great deal of initiative. They were forever putting on programs of 

entertainment. 

A.D.'s birthday was April 7. The children decided to put on Cinderella. Elizabeth was to be 

Cinderella. Evangeline was to be "the other things." Their joint gift was a pot of daffodils. For their 

play, they made the costumes. Several friends of the family came, so that they had a bit of an 

audience. 

Margaret reads further from her diary of that year, and comments on it. "I think I should like 

112


to be an actress. This is my latest idea. I wish I could see movies. Douglas Fairbanks was at The 

Strand in 'In Again, Out Again.' I wish I could see it." 

5 

16:38 Margaret was on the committee that was designated to write the school song. "And it is a 

riot." They used Northwestern's fight song as the melody. "Oak trees, elm trees spread out their 

branches. Wildflowers and birds all hover near to guard thee, our dear school. To thee we raise a 

cheer. Our books and games now are all over. Our desks and rooms now we must leave. But to 

thee, our dear school, our hearts will ever cleave." And so on. The chorus, "Then give a rah rah rah, 

here's to Lincolnwood. Hurrah. Rah rah. And cheer cheer cheer, best in the land, with a hurrah rah 

rah we fight for Lincolnwood, she's perfectly grand. She's got to stand!" Margaret was embarrassed. 

6 

21:38 That summer Adelle and the girls went up to Somers, where Adelle tried to recuperate from 

her surgery. 

Betty had a brown spot on her foot, and the chickens would peck at it, thinking that it was 

something to eat. There's a memory. 

Margaret kept her diary only that one year, 1917. 

7 

23:30 September 10, Margaret began at the Evanston Township High School. She was now 

fourteen. School began at 8:15 and ran until 1:00. She had to take the train to Dempster St., near the 

school. She describes various details of school. One of her classmates was Whitney J. Oates, who 

later became a Princeton University classics professor and who founded the Woodrow Wilson 

fellowship program. He founded Princeton's Council of Humanities. 

The word "ponk" (SP?). Used by kids for something not good. 

The high school was college preparatory. It provided education in the classics. One year the 

school received the Dartmouth Plaque, which was awarded by Dartmouth to the school that had three 

students whose grades were the highest. It was the first time that any school outside New England 

had won it. 

Lunch was served in a cafeteria. There was no afternoon session for the whole school. 

Instead, in the afternoon, there was a tutorial program, for free. If they were preparing for college 

boards, they would get tutoring to prepare them for it. Margaret did not do tutorial work because she 

didn't need to. There were 167 graduates in her class at the end, and Margaret placed fourteenth. She 

did not try to be first. There was too much to do to worry about that. Where she was in competition 

was in sports. She had an aptitude for it, and it gave her an outlet that her parents permitted. 

Miss Metcalfe was a graduate of Wellsley, and she ran the athletic program. She introduced a 

full program for the girls, and for the first time, when Margaret was a senior, girls were eligible to 

receive the "E" for Evanston High School. Miss Metcalfe married shortly after that and died in 

childbirth a year later. They all grieved for her because she had meant so much to them. 

8 

34:38 Clara, their Swedish maid, worked full time. She took care of the house. Every Saturday 

morning before she came, Margaret and Evangeline's job was to clean the house. So they naturally 

loved Clara, who took care of that now. But one day, after she had been with the family for some 

months, she punished Betty for some infraction by standing her on her head. Which she deserved! 

But when Adelle learned of it, she promptly fired Clara. After that, they had "colored" help, and not 

113


full time, though Adelle needed full-time help. 

The word FRORUHG was considered a nicer word than 1HJUR. 

Florida Mitchell. Margaret tells again of the day Florida danced outside after receiving the 

generous gift for her church. "Dancing in the street with utter and complete joy." 

9 

38:48 During her high school years, Margaret dropped music. But not, of course, sports. She 

studied Latin, French, ancient history, plain geometry, algebra as a sophomore. And English, of 

course. As a junior, English, French, Latin, English history, and chemistry. As a senior, English, 

French, Latin, Latin composition, and algebra. The "modern classical" program. She was usually the 

captain of some team or other. They usually won. As a senior she was in the journalism class, 

working on the Evanstonian. And she was secretary of her class. 

10 

41:30 As a junior, Margaret's English teacher was Miss Effie Wambaugh, a brilliant teacher. She 

was quite impressed with Margaret, though Margaret wasn't aware of it. She was impressed first with 

her dramatic ability. Most of the students were terrified of her because she would forgive lack of 

preparation, but she would not forgive poor thinking. She threw things at you, compelling you to 

think. Margaret enjoyed her; found her challenging. One day, Miss Wambaugh came up behind 

Margaret in the hall and put her hand on her, whirling her around. "Margaret Mortenson," she said. 

"You have the gift of words. Do something with it!" It startled the girl. It stayed with her all the rest 

of her life. It actually had a bearing on her decision, when she came back from the mission field in 

1937, to see whether she really did have enough of a gift so that she could write professionally. She 

wasn't interested in writing amateur things. She had done that all along. 

11 

47:35 Margaret stops us to show us the pedigree of her dog. Didn't know she'd had a dog. Shows 

us pictures from high school. 

Her history teacher was Miss Louise Sumner, and in the summer she ran a camp, Boulder 

Point Camp, in the Adirondack mountains. In her junior year, Margaret was able to go, for eight 

weeks. It was one of her happiest experiences. "Growing up is a painful process. It always is, I 

think. It doesn't matter how much a child has." There were about forty girls. It was beautifully run. 

Margaret digresses to talk about the black children. The blacks lived in south Evanston, near 

Chicago. In high school, there were very few blacks. 

She shows us a picture of one of the camp war canoes. She was good at that too. Was usually 

in the back, giving the commands and steering. 

They had a full days. All kinds of sports. Tennis. Basketball. Canoeing. Swimming twice a 

day. Diving lessons. Excellent food. And then there was Anna Morris. They were seated at tables 

for four. Anna Morris took any food that she could get. And then too there was the tent-mate, in her 

second summer at camp, who made her drop things. She just started dropping things. Miss Sumner 

observed this and concluded she was doing it because of the stress of this tent-mate that she disliked. 

So Miss Sumner moved Margaret to another tent, and she stopped dropping things. 

"I've always felt things. I can go into a room and feel sick to my stomach at the colors on the 

wall." 

12 

58:30 At the end of high school, her heart's desire was to go to Vassar. A number of her friends 

114


were going there. Practically everyone she knew was going East for college, and she wanted to as 

well. 

Margaret digresses to tell of the Packard the Mortensons bought. Her father gave up driving it 

almost immediately because he couldn't master the skill of braking for corners. He would go around 

corners on two wheels. Adelle was an excellent driver. 

115


HOUR 17 


1 

0:00 (IIIA1430) On Margaret's desire to go to Vassar. In those days, when you went to a women's 

college, your life was WKHUH. You didn't go off campus. And Vassar attracted her. Dixie Cook's 

mother was sure she could get Margaret in. (Margaret's friend in adulthood, Bussie Faulkner, went to 

Vassar.) However, Margaret's parents were determined that she should go to a Christian school, and 

the school they had chosen for her was Wheaton College. In the spring vacation of her senior year, 

her parents took her out to see the college. They rode the Chicago Northwestern out to Wheaton, 

Illinois, which was the county seat of Dupage County, a town of about 8000. It was a rainy day. 

They got into a taxi at the station, in which the back seat was higher than the front—something they 

all found highly amusing. 

They arrived at the campus, which in those days was poorly kept. The parents were being 

very, very cheerful. Daughter was reluctant. The students were gone for vacation. They went into 

Blanchard Hall. Margaret briefly describes Charles Blanchard, a handsome man to the end of his life, 

a magnificent person. "He was really a great human being." Unfortunately, he was not at the college 

that day. Instead, his wife was at his desk, a very bright woman, a practicing physician, which was 

unusual in those days, but a woman without charm. She was wearing a soiled, pink blouse of cotton 

crepe that was considered by young people at the time as very RXWUp That was Margaret's first bad 

impression. The building was old and shabby. The east wing had not been added yet. The whole 

place felt gloomy. In one room they found a blackboard with a large circular drawing in the form of 

a spiral, and in the very center were the words, "Spit here." Margaret felt disconsolate. This was a 

"cow-town college. This was the bottom. This was terrible." 

7$3( ,,, 6LGH 

2 

7:46 From there, they went to Williston Hall, the only girls' dormitory, where they met the Dean of 

Women, Mrs. Garlough, whose husband taught mathematics. Another unattractive person. "It was 

really a dreadful day." She asked two girls from the East who had not gone home to let Margaret see 

their room. In those days, two people had three rooms, a bedroom for each on either side of a study 

room. The two girls were Muriel Fuller and Alice Howard [a relative of Elisabeth Elliot]. Muriel was 

engaged to Trumbull Howard, Alice's brother. Their father was Philip Howard, editor of the Sunday 

School Times, a widely distributed religious paper of the time. All his children went to Wheaton. 

Alice and Muriel had a corner suite. The two of them were the one bright part of that awful day. 

Adelle and A.D. bargained with Margaret that she could have another summer of camp if she 

would agree to go to Wheaton, and Margaret agreed. She felt she had no choice. 

In June, Margaret graduated from high school, and shortly thereafter went off to Camp 

Boulder Point for her wonderful summer. She put off thinking of the terrible thing that was going to 

happen to her in the fall. Even at the end of camp, she gave so little thought to the fate that lay ahead 

of her that she didn't buy a single garment for college. She "just regarded it as the end of the world. 

The end of everything. I was being sent into limbo. I was being sent into Coventry. I was being sent 

into exile." 

116


Session #13 November 22, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth Landon 

3 

14:00 Kenneth tells us of a conference this past week at the Pittman-Potter Center for World Order, 

which is headed by Lawrence Wadsworth. This man used to be a colleague at the State Department 

and is now a professor at American University. He had invited Kenneth to participate in 

the conference, which was on the formulation of U.S. foreign policy with a view to recommending 

new policies to be considered by Congress and the new Carter administration. Kenneth showed up 

Monday morning, and was assigned to Panel B, which dealt with conflict control. There were four 

panels. Among the panel members was an Indian who had once been one of his students and who 

had come all the way from India for the conference. 

The first day, he met Jeff Kitchen, who had been the number two man to Undersecretary of 

State Alex Johnson at a time when Kenneth was Alex's State Department representative, selected by 

Walt Rostow, to set up what became the National Interdepartmental Seminar. After the course had 

been running for some time, Jeff Kitchen was given the job by Alex Johnson of getting Kenneth 

fired. Margaret interjects to speak of Alex and Pat Johnson's jealousy of Kenneth because Kenneth 

was "Mr. Siam." She tells of an unpleasant encounter with Pat Johnson at the Cosmos Club. 

Anyway, Kitchen assigned an intelligence operative to get something on Kenneth that could be used 

as a pretext for firing him. Gen. Brute Krulak of the Marines lusted after Kenneth's job. The 

operative who investigated Kenneth came to him eventually and said that all his efforts had come to 

nothing. He couldn't get anything on him. "Frankly, I think you ought to receive a special reward for 

what you've done in this seminar. You've done a hell of a good job which very few people could do." 

He told Kenneth he was going to be fired anyway, so he might as well prepare. And of course the 

man was right. Krulak took over as director of the course, and Kenneth became Dean of Area 

Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. 

So there was Kitchen, at the conference. He was now a consultant, no longer in formal 

government work. 

Kenneth also met Burt Marshall, who is well known nationally for his writings on military 

matters. 

Panel B had a Jewish woman who represented the League of Women Voters and was down 

from New York. And Kenneth Thompson of the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Kenneth (Landon) made two new policy proposals. One was that all Americans abroad, that 

is, all American soldiers and military types, should be brought home on the grounds that the strategic 

weapons of today do not mandate that use of the military abroad. The second was that all military aid 

programs of the future should be adopted for purely military or security reasons and not for political 

reasons, inasmuch as all military programs were presently carried out for political reasons at great 

waste to the taxpayer. The old policy stemmed from 1951, when Kenneth himself proposed two 

small military programs for Southeast Asia which Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer challenged as not militarily 

feasible. Kenneth's reply was that they should do them for political reasons. And that became the 

standard practice from then on. 

The two proposals were very controversial and dominated the discussion for two days of 

Panel B. Kenneth himself just listened while everyone wrestled with the issues. 

Toward the end of the week, the Indian gentleman—standing across the room—called out, 

"Mr. Landon, before you were American, were you British?" Yes, Kenneth answered. The Indian 

said that he had thought so. And when did Mr. Landon emigrate? "I think about 1640," Kenneth 

answered, and the gentleman howled. "You DUH British! You are pulling my leg!" 

After the conference, the Jewish woman came rushing up to him, threw her arms around him, 

117


gave him a big kiss on the cheek, and told him, "You're the most interesting man I've ever met. And 

you tell your wife I said so!" 

In the end, the conference could make no recommendations because they had so many 

conflicting ideas. Kenneth raised his hand and challenged this. He suggested they recommend to 

Congress and the Carter administration that the U.S. look at using international corporations for the 

achievement of U.S. policy objectives and, more than that, in the total global context, to achieve 

human rights. At this, a German gentleman held forth at length on the evil of American power in the 

world, which was already too great, and argued that any extension of it should be discouraged. 

Kenneth answered, "I don't share your dirty mind." American power has been more benign than 

malignant. And besides, Kenneth wasn't suggesting an extension of American power as such. 

As Kenneth was leaving, a Japanese professor came dashing up behind him, a man from 

Tokyo. He wanted to shake hands with "the famous Professor Landon." All of his works had been 

translated into Japanese. Even his short stories! Everyone in Japan had studied them. 

4 

38:15 Margaret tells briefly of camp that last summer before college. When they were walking 

eight or ten miles, the girls would make up songs, silly ones. She has abundant documentation from 

the summer. It cost $250 for camp, plus travel expenses. 

A letter came from Muriel Fuller to say that Alice was not coming back for the next year and 

inviting Margaret to take Alice's room, a stroke of good fortune. Muriel was a junior. Margaret 

reads her first letter from Wheaton, in September, 1921. Telling of seeing Myrtle Edman, the sister 

of the later president of Wheaton—V. Raymond Edman—who wore a dirty pink silk hat on the train 

to Wheaton. Muriel met Margaret at the station, and took her across the street to the bank to open an 

account there. Tuition for the first semester was $97.50. 

Trum Howard brings ice cream for the ladies, which Muriel pulls up to her window with a 

string. 

Rhetoric class, and Bob Neighbour, who was so self-assured that he gave offense. A brilliant 

violinist. His pompous correction of the previous recitation. Margaret responded with a correction of 

the previous recitation before that—the one delivered by Mr. Neighbour. Couldn't resist the 

temptation. 

Margaret continues reading from her letters of the time. Professor Straw of the Rhetoric class, 

who was eccentric. He was the only person who ever flunked Margaret, in Bible. 

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Session #13 continued November 22, 1976 

HOUR 18 

1 

0:00 (IIIB300) The Bible course Margaret took with Dr. Straw was the dullest course she had in 

her entire life. He gave her a 70, but she got the grade changed to an 85. 

The college was small then, about 250. Margaret quickly made a friend, Lois McShane, who 

approached her very directly in math class. Almost immediately a group formed around Lois and 

Margaret. Lois' family owned a home on the block where Edman Chapel now stands. Mr. McShane 

was with the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and rose to a high position. The house was beautiful and 

large, but it was torn down to make way for the chapel. The McShanes had a butler they had brought 

to Wheaton with them. They were very hospitable, and regularly had groups of students over. 

The class elected Alex Gale president, who soon began inviting Margaret out. They would go 

on Sunday afternoon walks, struggling to find things to talk about. His brother was Bill Gale, who 

later coached for many years at the college. 

Margaret reads a letter describing an afternoon at the McShanes. Entirely spontaneous. She 

only learned years later that it was hard for the people the group did not include. 

2 

9:00 The Serenade. Another letter, from September 19, 1921. Just as she was about to slip into 

bed, there was a blare of music outside. She ran up to the third floor with Muriel, and went out onto a 

fire escape to listen to boys who had come to sing to them and serenade them on violin, sax, 

mandolin. Everyone had a fine time. 

Evanston in those days was called "the Boston of the West," a sophisticated town. Wheaton 

was an unsophisticated county seat, and Margaret was acutely sensitive to this. 

The college chapel then was on the second floor of Blanchard Hall. 

Margaret talks about the Welsh's and College Church. The way young Jack was assigned to 

escort Elida Sears, which he did that entire year. 

3 

17:45 The night Margaret spent with Lois at her house. Many times she had dinner with the family. 

As they walked after dinner, Lois dropped her change, 50 cents, which they could not find for all 

their hunting. A whole crowd of boys assembled to help them. They finally managed to find 40 

cents. The Gales ran off with the change and bought peanut brittle with it, which they came back 

with. It was all fun. The girls enjoyed teasing the boys as much as the boys enjoyed teasing them. 

Margaret dated both Gales, but especially Willis, or Bill. 

4 

21:53 Margaret had to go home and have her tonsils out. She had many colds, and infections in her 

tonsils, so it was felt that these had to go. The operation did indeed eliminate the tonsillitis, of 

course. But not the colds! 

Kenneth comments that he is one of the few people in the world whose tonsils "simply 

dissolved." He had tonsillitis; the doctor said he should be operated on; Kenneth announced that he 

wasn't gonna be; and about two years later, the doctor peered into his throat to see how the tonsils 

119


were, then announced that they had "dissolved." They just weren't there! 

Grace Van Hough, whose husband died in the flu epidemic of 1918, and who came to live 

with the Mortensons for two years. 

Margaret comments that, while she had not mentioned World War I, it was very prominent at 

the time it was happening. Everyone was asked to knit socks, and so she learned how. The neighbor 

up at the lake who taught her to knit with no wasted motion, so that knitting became almost automatic 

and fast. Since then, she has knitted many dresses. Coats for the children. A sweater coat for Kip. 

Became quite expert. 

Grace persuaded Adelle to let her come and live with them, which she did for two years. She 

studied music in Chicago. She was the heiress to a substantial fortune, but she had broken with her 

mother, who had adopted her. The will, however, could not be broken, and so the bank was 

supporting her. She persuaded Adelle to let her buy a grand piano, and so Adelle's piano went out, 

replaced by Grace's. When she left later, she never replaced Adelle's piano, which was a real sadness 

for her. 

Adelle was very hospitable. Cousin Elroy Bishop also came to live with them for a semester 

after graduating from high school. And there was a girl named Peggy Page whose mother died and 

who came to live with them for a year. She was the same age as Betty. This was normal. People 

were always staying with the Mortensons. 

Margaret on her illness, and the nurse Grace arranged to come and care for her. The nurse's 

comment on how muscular Margaret's body had become through all her sports. 

Margaret observes that before that time, she had been able to gargle and sing at the same time, 

but from then on, she was never able to do it again! 

5 

32:45 That fall was the beginning of the end of A.D.'s life. None of them realized it at the time, 

including him. He had always taken Margaret to football games, and one favorite game they liked to 

go to each year was the Chicago-Wisconsin game, because those were two powerhouses. He was 

only able to get three tickets on the Wisconsin side of the field. The game was very exciting. 

Chicago was well ahead until close to the end, when Wisconsin put in a new halfback. In those days, 

substitution was very limited. If you went out, you could not come in again. This was the halfback's 

first game, and the change in the game was incredible. He promptly ran for two touchdowns and won 

the game for Wisconsin. In any case, either during the game, or at least that afternoon, A.D. had his 

first stroke. In a letter he wrote the next day, he commented on his difficulty writing. He thought he 

was suffering from a nervous affliction. In hindsight, one realizes that the cause was the first of a 

series of strokes that finally took his life four years later. 

From then on, while he tried to work, he was "very nervous," and work was a struggle. He 

was only forty-six years old. He became increasingly aware that he wasn't well. He joined the 

YMCA to get more exercise. He was sure that he would get better. But in fact he deteriorated 

steadily, and nothing could be done. 

Session #14 December 7, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

6 

38:04 Kenneth tells of his memory that he never took a book home to study in high school. His 

memory also is that he didn't have good grades. But this week, to his surprise and embarrassment, as 

he went through records of the time, he discovered that his grades were excellent. He reads from a 

120


letter to his mother shortly after Bradley's death. She was staying in Brooklyn for a time in her grief. 

He said he had learned to play the trumpet and looked forward to doing duets with her on the piano. 

He also said that he could play the flute well enough to perform in an orchestra. There had been a 

play at school, and he had played a dope fiend. He had a syringe, and a real opium pipe with a long 

stem which he smoked on stage. The kids called him "Dopey" for a while after that. 

He tells of Katherine Lindner's pathetic letters in the aftermath of Bradley's death. 

His interview with Dean Schneider of the Cincinnati engineering school. The regime 

involved working two weeks and being in school two weeks, off and on through eleven and a half 

months of the year. It was an arduous process. The Dean told Kenneth he wasn't qualified for 

engineering school. But the Dean had admired Bradley, and Kenneth tried to cash in on that. In the 

end, Schneider told him he would give him a chance. He had so much math in that one year that he 

never had to take math classes at Wheaton. 

7 

44:32 He lived at the home of a Mrs. Heintzman, where Bradley had lived. He shared a room with 

two other people, one of them Bennie Batson, who looked like a chipmunk, with protruding front 

teeth. An amiable person who always sat on the floor to put on his socks and shoes. His son later 

took up a career in Siam. The other man was a son of a Russian count with a long, elaborate name. 

The name he used at university was Felix Visk, a tall man who of course spoke Russian. 

They never got the lights out before two a.m. The study regimen was very demanding. 

Besides that, Kenneth was in the ROTC. For two weeks, Kenneth would work in the shops in 

Meadville, working through Saturday. Then he would catch a train overnight to Cincinnati, go to 

church with Katherine, take her dancing in the evening, and wearily appear for classes Monday. 

Mrs. Heintzman's husband was a laborer. She had a trucker who came every other day or so 

with food and vegetables, and he would sit in the kitchen and talk. She told Kenneth that he was like 

a second husband to her. 

She was a medium, and she began telling Kenneth what Bradley, now dead, was telling her. 

She had regular seances in her home with a regular clientele. She told Kenneth that her beautiful 

daughter had died. It was then that she learned of spiritism and found that she could communicate 

with her dead daughter. She had an ongoing and intimate relationship with her daughter, and two 

good men in her life. She was happy. She told Kenneth many things out of his childhood which he 

assumed Bradley must have told her, some of them things he was surprised Bradley would have 

talked about. 

Bennie and Kenneth decided to really give Mrs. Heintzman a show. They figured a way to 

have an explosion of light go off during one of her seances. Kenneth sat on the stairs listening to the 

seance, as Mrs. Heintzman intoned, and at the right moment, he signaled Bennie, who set off the 

lights. Whoom! Exclamations from below. Mrs. Heintzman caught on right away, of course, but the 

incident made her famous and more successful than ever. 

At Christmastime, Kenneth was close to flunking out. He had problems with chemistry. 

Other courses too. But by dint of great effort, he managed to get his grades up to an acceptable level. 

By spring, he was getting fed up. He had no time for anything but engineering. 

8 

54:52 Once a year Aunt Katie put on a party for Katherine Lindner, and that year they were six 

couples. They went to Wong Yi's. Quite a party. But a rare thing for him because he had so little 

time. 

The following summer, Katherine went to Gull Lake with the Landons, a thing she had done 

121


before. People there seemed to think Kenneth and Katherine were "heathens" and tried to stop them 

from dancing! 

Kenneth reads a letter from spring, 1922. Going to the zoo with Katherine. His work at 

school. His school schedule in the coming months. His co-ordinator tells him he wants Kenneth to 

move his job to Cincinnati because he had to work in a shop that had a co-operative relationship with 

the university, which the shop in Meadville did not. He would have to take a pay cut to do this. He 

had some status and good pay in Meadville. He was working on most of their machines. This was a 

factor in Kenneth's decision not to return to Cincinnati. 

122


HOUR 19 

Session #14 continued December 7, 1976 Kenneth, Margaret, Kenneth, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IIIB700) Kenneth was at Gull Lake, pondering his future, going to one Bible conference 

sermon a day—which was his deal with his father. He liked the preachers. Remembers Bill 

Pettingill, and a man named Evans, a predecessor of the Louis Evans presently pastoring National 

Presbyterian here in Washington. Kenneth had his usual canoe. Went down the lake now and then to 

dances. Went swimming daily. He was sitting on the pier there one day when he encountered old 

Dr. Blanchard in a very saggy bathing suit, with his magnificent head of hair and mustache. And 

Blanchard asked him where he went to college. Kenneth answered impulsively that he didn't. He 

had just quit. In that instant, he realized he had made his decision. "I often do this. I'm very 

impulsive in my decisions. But I've never regretted them. This is the way I do. I suppose I've gone 

all through the process inside of me. At any rate, I've always made my decisions quickly, 

spontaneously, easily, and without pain. I've never struggled over them." 

Blanchard said, "Why don't you come to my college." And Kenneth said, "What's your 

college?" He said, "I'm the president of Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois." And Kenneth said, "Is 

that one of these tea-hound colleges?" Blanchard didn't know what that was, so Kenneth explained to 

him that it was a liberal arts college whose students were very la-di-dah and went to tea parties and 

had a lot of time and that "we engineering students looked down on them because they had a lot of 

time and we didn't." No, Blanchard answered, it's a Christian school. And he started asking about 

Kenneth's parents. 

The next thing Kenneth knew, one of the trustees of Wheaton, a man named McCarroll, came 

to talk to him about the college, and at the end of their conversation suddenly went down on his knees 

to pray. So Kenneth got down too, and the two of them prayed a little bit. The upshot of it was that 

Kenneth decided, Well, I'll give Wheaton a try. Brad and Mae agreed to help him financially, since 

he would not be working in Wheaton. 

2 

4:45 Brad took Kenneth out to Wheaton to look the place over, and Kenneth wasn't terribly 

impressed. Then they went into the registrar's office, where Greek Smith presided. Brad sat there 

uncomfortably, turning and turning his derby hat in his hands. Then in walked this handsome, tall, 

blond girl, whom Kenneth noticed immediately. He turned to his father and said, "You know, I think 

I'm going to like it here. This isn't such a dump." Margaret interjects that this sounds apocryphal, but 

Kenneth asserts that it is true. He started immediately to ask about her. Found out she was a 

sophomore, and since he was to be a sophomore, he felt this would help a bit. He asked Zoe Landon 

about her, who told him that he didn't have a chance. Margaret was the favorite of the football team. 

A tennis star. "How about me?" Zoe said. He did date Zoe, and also Isabel Mann, a homely girl but 

always well dressed, and then Catherine Tate, who later married Ralph Varhaug. But his real interest 

was Margaret Mortenson. 

Kenneth had one thing going for him that he didn't realize at first, which was that he had an 

old friend in Lois McShane. Lois and he had been at Gull Lake together. At Wheaton he "horsed 

around" with Lois quite a bit, and played a lot of tennis with her. Margaret didn't want to play tennis 

with him because she could beat him, and did! Lois began inviting Kenneth to all the McShane 

123


parties, and there he would be with Margaret, and he would ask for her dates, and she would always 

have a date already. It didn't matter what he asked her for, she had a date. He finally got to the point 

where he felt it was hopeless. So he challenged her. There is some time in the future that you don't 

have a date, so when is it? She couldn't think of one. So he said, Well, let's begin. And he began 

going down the days. Margaret knew the jig was up, and so they finally found an occasion far 

enough in the future so that she could brace for the "awful experience." 

Once he got his foot in the door, he could work from there on. It wasn't very long before he 

was attempting to monopolize her time. He reads from a letter he wrote later in the year, concerning 

Margaret. Not sure at that point whether he was making progress with her or not. 

3 

10:32 Margaret's perspective on the first date. She begins telling us about Otie Fuller, Muriel's 

brother. He kept asking Margaret for dates up to a year ahead! This was partly Muriel's doing, 

because she had taken a great liking to Margaret. Alex Gale and Bill Gale were dating her also. So 

she wasn't deceiving Kenneth when she kept saying she already had dates. 

Margaret digresses to talk about her father's illness. She tells of the letter he wrote in August, 

1921, before she went to college, when she was at camp, concerning his fatigue and nervousness and 

his having to take a week off from work. So it seems to have begun that early. He was the kind of 

person who rose very early to have a time of prayer, and worked hard all day. He drove himself. She 

tells of the football game during which or just after which he had his first small stroke. His letters of 

the time are difficult for her to read even now. He kept hoping and expecting to get well. But she 

didn't get the full import of them at the time. By the time she was a sophomore, he was no longer 

able to work. But the Curtis Publishing Company took care of him. He had worked for them twenty 

years by then. 

Margaret reads a letter about a boat trip across Lake Michigan with a friend named Ann, 

returning to college. 

September 19, 1922. A rainy day. The courses she signed up for. The girl she helped to 

register the previous afternoon. "The only other new person I have talked to was a boy by the name 

of Kenneth Landon." She and Lois were sitting in the registrar's office that afternoon of the 18th 

when in walked Kenneth with his father. Kenneth went right up to Lois and asked if she were the 

Lois he knew from Gull Lake. Lois was an important factor in their meeting. Margaret's impression 

of Kenneth— 

She digresses to tell us about Greek Smith, a little old man who taught Greek—his name was 

George; originally there had been two George Smith's, and this one had come to be known as 

"Greek" to distinguish him—a man of eighty that you would see tottering out precariously to the 

football games. In those days the school was so small that the teachers doubled as administrators. 

Greek did everything very slowly, and this was maddening to Brad, whose life moved at a much 

faster pace. On his bulletin board at the beginning of every year, Smith would write out in Greek, 

and under it in English, "Cheer up!" 

Margaret describes the classroom in Blanchard Hall where she and Kenneth met. Both of 

them were very well dressed. She refers several times to Kenneth as the "boy" she met. Kenneth was 

wearing trousers that had bell bottoms with a slash that opened as he walked to show a colorful bit of 

fabric underneath. He says it was red, but she says it was blue. That night, there was a reception for 

new students, and she remembers talking to him there. He made a favorable impression on her. But 

that was that. 

Kenneth even got up a skating party to try to get Margaret skating, he tells us, and he had to 

invite various boys, and girls, all of whom were under the impression that he had invited WKHP. Not a 

124


success. 

4 

26:35 Kenneth reads a letter about a class fight in school with the freshmen, the "frosh." Prexy 

gave a speech in chapel about loving our fellow man and ended up telling them they were all yellow. 

Kenneth and his pals "stacked" the rooms of their adversaries, throwing everything on the floor. 

He tells of joining the Beltonians, a literary society, for which he prepared a musical program. 

Margaret was an Aeolian. The literary societies had their own halls. 

Several times Kenneth was observed walking arm in arm with Miss Isabel Mann. This was 

not done, and people began praying for them. "Such is life in a small community. Write 

immediately, if not before." 

Kenneth is going through his letters of the time. He gets into all kinds of theological stuff, he 

says. 

Ruth Nowak receives the word that her mother in China, a missionary, has been massacred. 

November 22, 1922. 

Supper at McShanes. "Mrs. Mac and I have a bad case on each other. She is some sport." In 

the aftermath of the fight at college, "She calls me 'my protector.' I asked her if she meant 'chest 

protector.'" 

5 

32:00 Margaret reads September 25, 1922, letter detailing all her expenses for the past week. Her 

mother had written from Stony Lake, Michigan, that it would help if Margaret could earn something 

to cover her minor expenses, and she wrote back to say that she had found a position in the library, 

but that it yielded only 15 cents an hour. And she would be working only one hour a day. Bus fare, 

1.25. Supper, 30 cents. Ticket on the boat across Lake Michigan, 3.75 and .90 for the berth. Tips 40 

cents. Breakfast 30 cents. Bus 8 cents. Breakfast 25 cents. Toothpaste 50 cents. Dinner 40 cents. 

Supper 30 cents. Tuition $55. Books $7.20. Board $5.50 a week. And so on. It all totaled $89.01. 

6 

37:18 Kenneth speaks of the four literary societies, Aeolians and Beltonians, that is, women's and 

men's, and two others, Excelsiors and Philolethians. They would compete with each other. Reads 

from letter from his second year at Wheaton, his junior year, which turned out to be his senior year. 

March 24, 1924, he wrote concerning the Tower yearbook, for which he was the advertizing 

manager who arranged for all the ads. He had been working hard on it, spending most of his time at 

Mortensons. He was involved in the design and drawing and artwork. The ideas were Margaret's. 

He added that he had a wonderful talk with Mrs. Mortenson the previous week. She told him 

that when he first started to go with Margaret, she didn't like him at all. And of course, he couldn't 

blame her any. He had been fast, she didn't know how far he had gone, she was afraid for her 

daughter, and rightfully so. Even when he was at the lake visiting her, Adelle was afraid of him. 

Wouldn't even let him take Margaret out on the lake at night. This school year, as she came to know 

him, she grew to like him better. He said he had opened up something of his life to her, and found 

her to be a very wise woman, very humble. She didn't ask him any questions that he couldn't have 

evaded if he had so desired, he wrote. "I've always been able to evade anything I want to." She 

commented that Kenneth must have had an unhappy home life. (He is writing this to his mother, 

Mae. He tells her that he has said nothing about his home life and that Mrs. Mortenson has drawn her 

conclusions in some other way. He does not dispute what she says.) "Well, believe me, Mother dear, 

125


there is one real woman. I am quite gone on her, and she has certainly brought up her family well 

and wisely. Yet she is so humble and unassuming, one cannot appreciate her at first." 

Kenneth and Adelle became great friends. He felt a strong affection for her. 

7 

41:40 Kenneth and Margaret's first "important date" was late in the spring of 1923, the Belt 

banquet, one of the big social events of the year. Margaret still has the little token from that banquet. 

She speaks of Alex Gale, who also was interested in her, who had to give up his college education to 

go home and run his parents' farm. He tried to keep up ties with Margaret, but it was impossible. 

She would never have married him, she says. 

8 

42:30 Margaret tells of the time in the summer of 1923 that the family started out for Michigan in 

"Old Henry," as they called the car. It was a Ford. A.D. was no longer working by this time. Adelle 

was driving, and she was an excellent driver. A.D. put too much air in the tires, and Adelle knew it, 

and said so, but he would not listen to her. He was a very sick man by this time. They had to drive 

straight through Chicago, which was quite an ordeal. The roads across Indiana were still gravel, and 

they hadn't gone far when one of the tires blew. It was hot. Out they got; A.D. jacked up the car; 

changed the tire; they went into the next town to get the tire fixed. Went a few more miles when the 

second tire blew. Three tires blew in all. They were so delayed that there was no way they could 

reach Stony Lake. 

Adelle embarrassed Margaret terribly by calling up Mrs. Gale, Alex's mother, who promptly 

invited them all to stay the night. Margaret has a set of pictures taken there. It was a large family, 

and there was plenty of space. An older brother, Irving, two sisters, Angeline and Adelaide, then Van 

Dusen, who was running the farm when he accidentally killed himself one day climbing a barbwire 

fence with a loaded shotgun, then Alex and Bill and a younger brother Grant. It was because of the 

accident that Alex had to return and take over the farm. Alex took Margaret out to see the fence 

where Van had died, which was distressing to her. 

That summer he came up and visited the Mortensons at Stony Lake. He would do nice things 

for her. Send her candy. She felt sad to disappoint him. He ended up very successful in his farming. 

Married and raised a family. 

9 

50:00 Kenneth writes of an Easter morning "praise service" at the Mortensons. April 21, 1924. 

Tells of going out with others to a home for the poor, to celebrate with them. And of Mrs. 

Mortenson's coming out after them in her new Buick. She was a bit shaky driving this. 

He speaks of learning to touch type, in ten days. 

Margaret tells of an ice cream "eating race" she partook in, much to her chagrin. 

He tells of the gorgeous letter paper he gave her for Christmas, the nicest she ever had in her 

life. It seems to have made no impact on her. But for him, it was quite a gift. He felt it was his first 

important gift. His mother had told him you could only give a girl flowers and such, so this was 

something different and special. 

10 

59:05 Margaret begins to tell of the morning the girls snuck out to play football. At Wheaton, 

football was a losing proposition, but the students were enormously faithful to the team. They played 

out on Lawson Field, with a small bleacher. Most people stood on the sidelines. 

126


HOUR 20 

Session #14 continued December 7,1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth Landon 

1 

0:00 (IIIB1230) Margaret continues her story of the girls going out to play a football game. They 

had been watching football all these years and decided they wanted to go out and play it, see what it 

was like. Lillian Norris, who later married and became Lillian Weaver, managed to get the helmets 

and equipment. They all went out very early in the morning because they didn't want anyone to see 

them. They knew they could never get permission to do something like this. It was October 29, 

1924. The sophs and seniors played the frosh and juniors. Neither side won, but they had "a jolly 

time." Margaret was the right end. Betty Dara played left halfback, an extremely beautiful girl. 

Margaret digresses to tell us about Blanche Murdock, who came to college with a set of 

trunks filled with clothes. Margaret especially remembers that she had forty-two pairs of shoes. She 

played the organ beautifully. Set out to marry Bill Harper, and did, but it was a tragic marriage. In 

any case, she too was a beautiful girl. Both she and Betty were from families of great wealth. 

Mrs. Dara, Betty's mother, came to a prayer meeting at which she said something Margaret 

remembered all her life. She said that she hoped these two girls she had brought would come to 

know at college that "to be was more important than to have." She said it beautifully and gently. 

Those two girls "had." But they "weren't." Mrs. Dara had epitomized them. 

Adelle had hot cocoa and crackers for all the girls when they came back from the game. 

The girls dressed in bloomers to play. They got a sense of how hard the game was. Margaret 

can't remember much of what she did in the game, however. 

Session #15 December 13, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

2 

5:05 On the great flu epidemic of 1918. The "Spanish flu." Margaret reads an article on it. In a 

few months in 1918, this flu circled the world. At least 23,000,000 people died around the world. 

550,000 in the U.S. People in the prime of their lives. Coffins would be stacked in the streets, filled 

with bodies. Whole villages were wiped out. Everyone in the Mortenson family came down with the 

flu except A.D. He was practically immune to colds and respiratory diseases. The other four of them 

all had it at the same time, each in one of the four bedrooms. A.D. stayed in the hall. Margaret 

remembers the steady procession of funerals going by outside. She tells how the osteopaths lost none 

of their patients during this epidemic, whereas the doctors did. For Margaret, it was like any other 

flu, but just more severe. 

3 

11:30 Kenneth tells (again) the story of the time his father Brad condemned the coal from two 

mines in Pennsylvania. The mines were large ones, employing many people. Brad wrote that the 

coal from them could not be used in a locomotive. Brad had not known that the president of the 

railroad and his son were intensely interested because the son owned the mines! He was selling all 

his coal to the railroad. In the end, the mines were closed. 

Kenneth tells of meeting the woman in his office many years later whose father had worked in 

127


one of those mines. Her great anger toward Kenneth. Her father had lost his work, and the entire 

family had undergone great hardship. She upbraided him and rushed out of the room. Later returned 

and apologized. 

The problem with this coal was that it formed large "clinkers" which tended to suppress the 

fire, a serious problem in a steam engine. 

4 

19:27 On the Beltonian Banquet, Kenneth and Margaret's first important date. Held at Gary 

Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church. It was June 15, 1923. Kenneth sang in a quartet. The Belt 

Quartet. Kenneth sings, 

7$3( ,9 6LGH 

5 

21:40 Kenneth continues to sing, 

When father hung the paper on the wall, 

he hung the parlor paper in the hall. 

He papered on the stairs, he papered on the chairs, 

when father hung the paper on the wall. 

Oh, when father hung the paper on the wall, 

the ladder slipped and he began to fall. 

Like some birds of a feather, we all got stuck together, 

when father hung the paper on the wall. 

Oh, I'm waiting for a check from home, 

Oh, I'm waiting for a check from home. 

Oh, I wish, oh, how I wish that it would come. 

Oh, my board is overdue, and my room rent too, 

Oh, I wish, oh, how I wish that check would come. 

Kenneth was the program chairman for the Belts that year. He recalls the night they put on a playlet 

called "The Halitosis Blues." Kenneth wrote to the Listerine Company and told them he was going to 

put on a play featuring Listerine, and asked if they could furnish samples for the audience. They 

responded with two cases of Listerine which the quartet distributed as they sang their song: 

I got the blues, I got the blues! 

I got them halitosis blues. 

A paraphrase of a prohibition song of the time, 

I got the blues, I got the blues, 

I got them alcoholic blues. 

No more beer my heart to cheer. 

No more whiskey, used to make me frisky. 

No more highballs, no more gin, 

128


I wonder when we're gonna to get it in agin'. 

I got the blues. . . . 

Each literary society had a well-furnished room for its meetings, and the meetings were 

scheduled for each Friday night. No other occasions were scheduled Friday nights. The Belts would 

always have "extemporaneous" and "impromptu," which were different. With "impromptu," you 

went up to the front and were given your subject on the spot. You had to hold forth immediately. 

With "extraneous," you were given about fifteen minutes to think about your subject before speaking. 

The members took the programs very seriously. The Aels would post their program days 

ahead. Someone would be assigned to prepare an essay to read. Kenneth speaks of typing 

Margaret's, his usual job. Someone would read Scripture and pray. Someone would deliver a lecture 

on some subject. Someone else would perform music. And so on. People were given platform 

experience. Roberts rules of order were used. It was a leftover from the nineteenth century. Very 

British. 

Kenneth mentions the time he played his balalaika to accompany the glee club. 

6 

33:27 Because of Kenneth's incredible eleven months at Cincinnati, he was able to skip his junior 

year at Wheaton. He had worked like a dog at Cincinnati. Never got to bed before two in the 

morning. Wheaton gave him credit for all that work. When he came to the end of his first year, he 

was called into the registrar's office and told that if he took a course or two in summer school and 

then so many hours each semester the following year, he could graduate in June a year earlier than he 

had expected. Kenneth was astounded and promptly decided to do it. 

So that summer he stayed in Wheaton. He worked at the ice plant along with Red Grange. 

He KDG been working for Mrs. Rodin at her restaurant south of the tracks, waiting tables. When he 

bought the engagement ring for Margaret—from Mr. Wilson's jewelry store in Meadville—he bought 

it entirely with tips he had received at Rodin's. It had two chip sapphires on the sides with the 

diamond in the middle. Wilson assured him the diamond was a good half carat. He carried it in his 

hip pocket waiting for the chance to use it. Seemed to carry it forever until the moment finally came 

and he could whip it out. Margaret was stunned. Didn't know he was carrying it, of course. 

Margaret and Kenneth wrestle with just when they became engaged. He kept asking her, but 

she was very "wary." She had provisos, and he wasn't about to marry anyone who had provisos. She 

tried to back out more than once. In any case, their memory is that they were sitting on a curb. "And 

it must have been spring," of 1924. [In 2/14/77 session, they remember that the date was actually 

September 22, 1924.] 

The Mortensons moved to Wheaton in the fall of 1923. Muriel had graduated in June. 

Margaret had lived in Williston her first two years. Kenneth tells of Margaret and his setting the all - 

time record for length of walk from the Tower to the Williston dormitory. Two steps forward and 

one back. That year Evangeline graduated from Evanston High School. Margaret again speaks of 

how provincial Wheaton was compared to Evanston, and yet, once she got there, she realized the 

quality of the people at Wheaton, which made the difference. 

7 

45:33 The Mortensons went up to Stony Lake as usual that summer of 1923. They drove up 

through Michigan all the way to Minnesota to visit A.D.'s sister Thorina Olena Mortenson Graves, a 

school teacher who married late. A difficult person. Married Chauncey Arthur Graves, a widower. 

His son Russell was one of her students, and she met him through Russell. They had married in 

129


1918, when she was forty-two. The roads along Lake Michigan were terrible. This is the same 

summer of the visit with the Gales, when the tires blew. A.D. was so nervous that it was hard on 

everyone. At one place, they had to cross on a ferry, and they saw a tremendous, old-fashioned car 

get on the ferry, an open touring car in which the women wore full-length dusters to protect the 

elegant clothes they were wearing. They arrived in Duluth to visit Auntie Trine, when word came 

that Grandmother Mortenson had died. Immediately they set out for Racine, completing a circle of 

the lake. 

Margaret recently learned that Russell Graves made his home in Washington, D.C., for many 

years, never communicating with her or Kenneth. She learned of this when his obituary appeared in 

the newspaper. 

8 

54:30 Grandmother had been very active in the church, which had originally been founded by 

Danes and Norwegians. They had all loved her. She wasn't educated, but she was a warm person. 

After the funeral, the Mortensons went back to Stony Lake. Then Adelle found a buyer for the house 

in Evanston, which sold for $12,000. She rented a modest house in Wheaton at 610 Irving St., which 

is still standing. They moved there before school started. Evangeline began college that fall, and her 

and Margaret's living at 610 Irving saved the family money. 

Mr. McShane was promoted and moved his family East that year. Lois came to live with the 

Mortensons at 610 Irving. Kenneth came to the house a lot. They would go to church Sunday 

evenings, sharing supper at the house beforehand. 

Kenneth remembers A.D. He was very reserved, and kept a tight inner grip on himself all the 

time. Seemed very cold. 

130


HOUR 21 

Session #15 continued December 13, 1976 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IVA210) A.D. kept a sort of diary during his illness. Betty remembers standing at his door 

and hearing him weeping inside. But he tried very hard not to visit his problems on the family. 

There was an incident in which Margaret had been chosen as one of the marshals for the 

Baccalaureate, and she said that she had to be there at 10:00. A.D. said that, No, she was not, she 

was to go at 10:30, and he would not let her leave. He was incorrect, and as a result she missed what 

was considered quite an honor. He was stricken by what he had done once he realized. 

In her sophomore year Margaret made up her mind to get a special scholarship. There was 

just one offered to a student in each class, the person who attained the highest grade average. She 

had reasonably good grades, but she had never tried in a competitive way. Now, with A.D.'s inability 

to work, and the family financial problems, she did. Her problem was Greek Smith and Earl 

Windsor. She would have perfect Greek recitations day after day, and yet Smith would only give her 

a 90. She needed 95's. Earl Windsor was the history professor. Margaret was a history major. In his 

class, she had 95 at the end of her first six weeks, and a second 95 at the end of the second six weeks. 

Then one day he came to the book store, and Margaret teased him. He was only a few years older 

than she. At the end of the course, he awarded her a grade of 70. It was vindictive. It cost her the 

scholarship, which would have been $200. It was a bitter experience, and because of it, she gave up 

on the history major and decided to major in Greek. This meant she had courses to make up, which 

forced her to do some courses the following summer. 

2 

6:08 Kenneth graduated in June, 1924. His mother was unable to come to his graduation because 

of her health. Only Brad came. 

That summer he worked at the ice plant, working nights. Then for Mrs. Rodin from 5:30 to 

7:00 a.m. Red Grange worked days, delivering the ice. 

Kenneth tells what A.D. said to him when the engagement was announced. "Young man, I 

have praying for you since before Margaret was born." 

The announcement of the engagement was October 11, 1924, and it was a formal occasion, a 

luncheon with all their friends as guests. Margaret reads us the entire menu and guest list. After 

lunch, they all went to a football game. 

Margaret reads a letter Mae sent her in November welcoming her into the family. A sweet 

letter. Kenneth was not at this luncheon because he had gone to Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Margaret still had a year of college. Kenneth wanted to get married after she graduated. 

He candidated for a church that first year and won it over an experienced pastor named Wiley 

Young, a fine preacher. But the congregation liked Kenneth better, and paid him $20 a week. This 

was at Columbus, New Jersey. He had a second church, a little country church, which paid him $5. 

He had to have a car to do this, and so the Columbus church bought him a second hand car, a dingy 

Ford coupé. That first summer he took that car and mixed up varnish and paint and also threw in 

some shellac for good measure and painted that thing out in a field one day. It was the shiniest thing 

in that whole part of the country! 

He immediately wanted to get married "because I was making all this money." He not only 

131


had two churches, but also a manse. 

3 

15:34 In the spring of 1924, Margaret and Ruth Nowak went to a tennis tournament down state, 

driven down by Adelle. Margaret went a certain way in the singles, but then she came up against a 

girl who was a tremendous athlete, preparing for the Olympics, and lost to her. The girl won the 

singles. Margaret and Ruth were paired against that girl and her partner in doubles, and had the 

match won, when Ruth went to pieces. It was a bitter disappointment. She just suddenly began to 

giggle and laugh and couldn't stop. They were in the final set. She was unable to hit the ball, and the 

two of them lost. 

4 

18:45 When Kenneth and Margaret were first going together, she commented on a little Italian girl, 

how pretty she was. Kenneth replied that she might look all right from the front, but her neck was 

dirty! The next time he saw Margaret, he noticed that her neck was all red. She had washed it to the 

point of irritation to make sure KHU neck wasn't dirty. 

Margaret tells of her childhood decision to take a bath every day. She had a liking for 

cleanliness. Muriel use to laugh at her and say, "Margaret, you smell like a baby!" She was so clean. 

5 

20:38 Miss Elsie Dow, the English professor. Whenever she made a point, she would draw herself 

up and sniff in an exaggerated way. She was a tremendous person, the only professor at Wheaton 

that Kenneth truly enjoyed. She was known as "The Good Ship Elsie Dow." When she walked, all 

you could see were her feet twinkling along below and this rotund body covered from jawbones to 

ankles sailing along like the Little King in the cartoon. She could easily have fitted into Harvard 

University. Dow was way beyond any other professor at Wheaton. She had an incredible memory 

and could quote freely from many sources. She knew English literature and could take any piece of 

literature and bring it alive. She was the only person who could make poetry interesting to Kenneth. 

He studied hard for her classes and thoroughly enjoyed them. 

Other teachers he remembers not so favorably. Dr. Straw, a fuddy duddy. He used to keep 

his cow in front of the college. Chuck Weaver once brought the cow and put it into Dr. Straw's room 

as a joke. You can imagine the mess. Poor Dr. Straw came in, saw the mess, and burst into tears. 

This happened before Margaret came to the college. It was a joke that wasn't really funny, but that 

showed Straw was human. 

On another occasion, at a graduation, Chuck and Enoch Dyrness drilled holes in the ceiling 

above the chapel and during the ceremony sifted pepper down through the holes onto the faculty, who 

began to sneeze, of course. "That one was a little bit funny!" Margaret says. This too happened 

before Margaret's time. 

The third thing they did was to attach a rope to the bell in the Tower and run it down through 

the trees outside, where they hid and rang it. No one could figure out who was ringing the bell. 

6 

27:35 Kenneth tells of his misadventure the time he stole the "donkey" from the junior table at the 

Washington Banquet. It was held in the gym that year. Bill Gale and he got together to take this 

thing. Bill was going to block, because he was the stronger of the two, and Kenneth was going to 

take the donkey, because he was the quicker. So at a crucial moment, Kenneth made a flying leap, 

whipped the donkey off the table, and all the juniors came after him. They swept over Bill Gale as if 

132


he weren't there. Kenneth had the donkey over his shoulder, a papier maché thing. He had a habit, 

something he stills does sometimes, when he has a long flight of stairs and a banister, of taking off 

with a hand on the banister and sliding all the way down, brrrr. He took off just about when the 

juniors hit him and didn't touch a step until he was close to the bottom, at which point his heel caught 

on a step. His left ankle was wrenched and terribly sprained. The donkey was torn to shreds. The 

juniors roughed him up a bit, but they had nothing to recover. He had destroyed their donkey! He 

was hurting so much he couldn't do anything. He feared his ankle was broken, but he hopped back 

up to the banquet because he wasn't about to miss that. He managed to get his shoe off, but when 

things were done, he found he couldn't get home. Pete Wall carried him all the way on his back. 

Instead of ice, Kenneth put his ankle in a bucket of hot water! The ankle swelled up half his 

leg. It was suggested that he see a doctor, which he did, but the swelling was so great that the doctor 

couldn't tell him anything. Kenneth went around on a crutch until the swelling went down. It wasn't 

broken. Just a bad sprain. To this day, the ankle gives him trouble if he steps the wrong way. 

Session #16 January 24, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

7 

32:38 Kenneth speaks of his easy adjustment, after his wild youth, to the strict rules of the Wheaton 

environment—no smoking, no movies, no dancing. He had undergone a real spiritual experience in 

the aftermath of his brother's death, according to Margaret, and this was a factor in his adjustment. 

Furthermore, he says, "I absorb very rapidly when I take on a new interest, as you know." How he 

and Margaret have done this throughout life, building a bibliography and going into each new interest 

in depth. 

He speaks of his absorbing the influence of the great preachers at Gull Lake. He also 

memorized many chapters of Scripture and could recite by heart whole books of the Bible. He had 

always worked, from the time he was a child, and when he worked, it was in line with an interest he 

had. At Wheaton, he just went into that world enthusiastically. "I've always been enthusiastic about 

whatever I was doing at the time." At Wheaton, the whole atmosphere was religious, and he 

immediately tried to get into the Gospel team—although they didn't want him. When he was 

Princeton, he was hardly there when he began casting around for where he could pastor, where he 

could preach, and how he could go about building his bibliography. 

8 

38:01 At Princeton, within a month after he moved in with Billy Irwin in Hodge Hall #109, his 

middler year, he had started a book business. He didn't have much money. He was anxious to buy 

books, and haunted theological bookstores looking for what he needed. A widow came along who 

had a fairly large preacher's library, and she asked a number of people what to do with it. Someone 

directed her to Ken Landon, who decided that he would auction the books, setting them up in lots. 

He said that he would take his pick of ten books from the library as his "fee," and would charge her 

nothing. 

Billy Irwin was a real "deadbeat," an ex-GI, very flashy, a skinny little man who was very 

wealthy and drove a big Cadillac and owned a big house. He had no right to a room on campus at all, 

but he had one for his convenience. He came in one day and found the whole sitting room filled with 

the books, which made him very unhappy. 

Kenneth put up signs around campus announcing the auction. He disposed of the whole 

bunch in about two hours. The boys just poured in. Sent the widow a money order for the amount. 

Doesn't remember the amount, but it was substantial, and the widow was very happy with him. 

133


This got him started, and he just kept his book business going from then on and did very 

nicely. By the time he was done, he had an excellent theological library of his own. "I never had a 

dissatisfied widow." The word got around, and other women brought libraries to him to dispose of. 

Irwin was dismayed, because the rooms were always full of these books. 

9 

44:45 At Wheaton: there was no men's dormitory. The original men's dormitory was in the top 

floor of Blanchard Hall. Margaret talks about the accommodations for the students. Houses. Court 

Cottage. Old Victorian houses. Private homes. The YMCA house, Bartlett Hall, where Kenneth 

lived—across from the Christian Science Church—on N. Main St. The college was growing so fast 

that it could not keep up with the demand for student housing. 

His roommate in Bartlett Hall his first year was Wesley Ingels, who worked in a bakery. 

Wesley was always bringing in baked goods, pastries and breads, but always a day or two past their 

prime. The two of them had a huge double desk, an executive desk, which both of them used. [The 

session is interrupted.] 

Session #17 January 31, 1977 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Nona Beth 

10 

49:00 Kenneth continues with the story of Wesley Ingels. Wesley had to get up around four-thirty 

a.m. to go to work, and so he would go to bed quite early. He was accustomed to going to sleep with 

the light on as Kenneth studied, and then to the light's going out. Time would pass, and then often 

Kenneth had to wake him up. Wesley would sleep right through the alarm clock. One night, 

Kenneth was thinking, Gee, I'm tired of this. So at about midnight he turned the light off in the study 

room and went to the bedroom. The house was dead quiet. Kenneth took his shirt and shoes off, 

went downstairs, turned on the light, and pretended to be getting up after a night's sleep. "It's time to 

get up," he announced. Poor Wesley dragged himself out of bed, put on some clothes, went all 

through the morning routine, and set out for work—at which time Kenneth stopped him. He didn't 

actually let him go all the way to work! 

One night, Wesley fell asleep while praying beside the cot. Inspired by this, Kenneth rigged 

the cot so that with the slightest bit of movement, the whole thing would cave in, and turned the light 

out. Sure enough, in a few minutes there was the most awful crash. Not a sound for a moment, then 

a wild moan. "Oh God, Oh God." Wesley stumbled around, turned the light on, apologized for all 

the noise. 

He wasn't a bad guy. Later wrote a book about Wheaton, possibly named The Silver 

Trumpet. 

11 

53:48 Kenneth had another roommate the following year, Harry Coulter, who was an ex-GI. 

His letters of the time speak of how ill Mae was when he visited at home. But she was in a 

happier frame of mind because Brad was treating her better in her illness. He was also pleased that 

Kenneth had decided to go into the ministry. 

Brad came to visit Kenneth for a week to ten days. After a day or two, there was the usual 

friction between them. 

Kenneth wasn't sure what he wanted to do in life. But many of his friends at Wheaton were 

going to Princeton, and so it was natural to think of going there. It was WKH seminary for 

Presbyterians. The great scholars in the conservative church movement— who were more or less 

134


fundamentalists—were at Princeton. The two leaders were Robert Dick Wilson, who was the world's 

greatest Semitic philologist of the time—he used over forty-five languages and dialects—and the 

great Greek scholar, Das Machen, whose books on the New Testament were recognized 

internationally. 

In his letters, he often described Elsie Dow and her mighty sniffs. This was the summer of 

1924. 

135


HOUR 22 

Session #17 continued January 31, 1977 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IVA600) Kenneth, on his decision to become a minister. It was rather sudden, with no great 

turmoil of soul. He tells of how he never agonizes over his decisions, going over the pros and cons. 

"That's not for me." He just decided, simply. "I'm going to be a preacher." Margaret says that he 

had made this decision before she ever knew him. He never talked about anything else. So he must 

have decided when he first went to Wheaton. 

2 

2:27 Kenneth and the song he so often brings forth, a song from Meadville, from the dancehall, 

which he used to sing with the balalaika. He had many songs he sang with the balalaika. 

Oh my little Bimbo, down in the bamboo isle, 

she's waiting there for me. She'll wait a while. 

I've seen wrecks, plenty of wrecks out on the wide, wide sea. 

But by heck, never a wreck like the wreck she made of me! 

Oh my little Bimbo, down in the bamboo isle, 

she's waiting there, and she'll wait a while. 

So much of the music then was gay and silly, Margaret says. It was just fun. 

3 

4:30 Margaret's surprise at how widely Kenneth had read. The Golden Bough and so on. He was 

a rapid reader, and read widely. He was eclectic. He was just as fond of "The Submarine Boys" as 

he was of the classics. Jack London's stuff. 

4 

5:32 That summer of 1924, there was a little gang of Bill Gale, Ralph Varhaug, Kenneth's very 

special friend, and Dick Hicks, and they were forever going swimming. Each morning at 5:30, 

Kenneth would open up Mrs. Rodin's restaurant and work through breakfast. Then he went to class, 

and after that he had to read at least five hours a day studying for Miss Dow. And on top of that he 

was working nights at the ice plant. He was pulling 400-pound cakes of ice, using a crane and then a 

pair of tongs to pull them by hand. He would saw them into 100-pound blocks. Red Grange would 

come in the morning, along with another man, and pick up these 100-pound blocks to load them for 

delivery. 

Grange was a Wheaton boy. He grew up on Main Street, Margaret said, and he played at the 

high school. He had a friend who played with him who was considered an even finer athlete until 

they moved on to the University of Illinois. That's when Grange became known as "The Galloping 

Ghost." Nobody could stop him. His friend didn't make it there, and the sports writers speculated 

that it was because of his small feet. Grange had very large feet. 

Kenneth had a big row with Mrs. Rodin one day because he had come in late a couple of 

mornings. She eventually backed off and invited him to take her swimming, which he did. The thing 

136


was, she couldn't swim. A big woman. One of the fellows would take her to the top of the slide and 

shove her off, and Kenneth would be at the bottom to catch her. She came down flat on her back, 

mouth wide open, screaming. From that time on, Mrs. Rodin's husband, Bill, called him "Kenneth." 

He was impressed at the way Kenneth had handled his wife, and it made him affectionate. 

The star waitress at Rodin's was Henrietta, and the greatest compliment Mrs. Rodin ever paid 

Kenneth was at the end of that summer when she told him he was as good a waiter as Henrietta. 

5 

11:24 Margaret kept all Kenneth's letters, but he burned all hers. He took them all over to the 

furnace at Princeton, just before the two of them set out for Siam in 1927, and committed them to the 

flames. His family tended not to keep such things, but hers did. 

A.D. had his first stroke in Margaret's freshman year, 1921. She did not fully understand the 

tragedy of it as it was happening. They all kept expecting him to get well. During her sophomore 

year, he gave up his work. He could not go on. And that summer of 1923, Adelle decided to move 

the family to Wheaton for financial reasons. The pension the Curtis Publishing Company was giving 

A.D. was not sufficient with two daughters going to college. 

Margaret discusses Evanston again. The influx of blacks during World War I. On the 

Swedish maid who punished Elizabeth by standing her on her head, leading to Adelle's dismissing the 

maid. Margaret tells again of Florida Mitchell, who was a naturally cultivated person, though 

without education, and who had a high sense of responsibility. She did everything well. She said of 

her husband, "He ain't purrfect, but he does pretty well," and this became a Mortenson family saying. 

The day Florida danced on the sidewalk for sheer joy after the Mortensons gave her a 

generous gift for her church. 

By Margaret's senior year in high school, Evanston was one-third black. 

The German butcher who would always say, "And vhat else?" to his customers with each 

purchase. 

6 

21:00 Evanston was laid out in squares. An alley was required on every block. The trash was 

picked up daily. If it snowed, a horse would come with a little plow to clear the sidewalks. There 

was a music festival every spring, which brought in famous performers. John McCormack. Caruso. 

Gallicurci. Rosa Ponsel. Rosa Raisa. Adelle always sang in the chorus. It was one of her great joys. 

All of this gave Evanston a quality that was missing from Wheaton. 

The first day Adelle was in Wheaton, she discovered there was no alley, of course. But she 

got a garbage can and set it out, and nothing happened. She learned that there ZDV no municipal 

garbage collection. You had to dispose of your trash yourself. 

Betty was eleven at the time. The move ruined her musical education. She had had an 

excellent teacher in Evanston, but the poor quality of the teaching in Wheaton snuffed out her gift. It 

was an example to Margaret of the saying, "Talent is easily killed. Genius, you cannot stop." Betty 

also lost out in her schooling. She was never able to complete her education in the fine Evanston 

schools. 

The house was at 610 Irving St., Kenneth says. 

7 

27:35 A.D. was quite difficult. He didn't want to be. But things upset him. Margaret tells of the 

incident when she was chosen a marshal for the graduation ceremony and for the Baccalaureate. 

Adelle had made her a charming, short, white dress. She was about to set out when A.D. stopped her 

137


and prohibited her from going on time. He was certain the correct time was later. When he learned 

what he had done, he was stricken. But he had done it. He was unreasonable. Margaret found 

herself drawing in to avoid the trouble as much as possible. 

They had a lot of fun that year. Archie McKinney was often at the house because he was 

dating Evangeline, and he was full of fun. He was a fine athlete, and many years later he was chosen 

for the Wheaton hall of fame. He was a basketball player. He was not tall. Of average height. But 

he could jump to a great height. He just went straight up, like a ballet dancer. 

Kenneth graduated that June of 1924, but stayed the summer for summer school in order to 

complete his course work. [At one point earlier, he seemed to have said that it was the summer of 

1923 when he stayed for summer school. But in fact it was 1924.] The Mortensons went off as usual to 

Stony Lake. 

8 

31:08 The people who lived next door to the Mortensons in Wheaton were named the Wrights. The 

son Paul Wright became a fine professor of chemistry at Wheaton. Mr. Wright was a janitor, and 

Mrs. Wright was unrefined. Their house was always quite dirty, and it smelled. Once, Margaret and 

others went over to the Wright house for some reason, a week after Thanksgiving, and there stood the 

carcass of the turkey, still on the table. Nothing of the Thanksgiving dinner had been cleaned up! 

9 

32:43 So Kenneth graduated and went off to Princeton, entering as a junior—the term for a firstyear 

student. Margaret's senior year is mostly gone from memory. Kenneth was gone. A.D. was ill. 

It wasn't a very good year. Kenneth and Margaret wrote quite a bit, of course, several letters a week; 

but all her letters were later burned. She would try to turn Kenneth on to poetry, but he just couldn't 

get it. He comments at length on this. 

Margaret wrote "The Spirit of Wheaton" that year, a piece that has been used often at the 

college since then. Kenneth was always a great admirer of her ability to write. She reads us the 

essay. 

10 

37:18 Margaret secured a position for the following year teaching at Bear Lake, Michigan. 

Interestingly, the sermon for her Baccalaureate program at the time of her graduation in 1925 was 

delivered by Das Machen (J. Gresham Machen) of Princeton, Kenneth's teacher. It was quite a coup 

for Wheaton. Margaret graduated June 17, 1925. 

11 

39:10 That was the last summer of A.D.'s life. There was a man in Wheaton named Rufus Park, an 

art teacher, who in the summer would take a bus called a caravan and lead an evangelistic tour. That 

summer, he took A.D. Mortenson with him. They drove up into the northern peninsula of Michigan 

and stopped in little towns to hold services. This was a joy for A.D., although he was too reticent to 

be a good preacher. There were people afterwards who wrote Adelle, expressing appreciation for 

things he had done. Margaret has always been glad that he went on that trip because it made the last 

weeks of his life so happy. He loved it. She has many pictures from the trip. 

Adelle and the girls were at Stony Lake when they received the word August 15 that A.D. had 

died. It was sudden when it happen, at Ontanogan (SP?), Michigan. The funeral was in Racine, 

Wisconsin, in Uncle Chris' house, and the burial was in the Oakwood Cemetery in Somers, 

Wisconsin. Margaret does not describe the events. 

138


Later, in 1953, Adelle had his body moved to Wheaton. 

All too soon after the funeral, Adelle took Margaret up to Bear Lake to start work there. It 

was a difficult time. 

12 

43:17 After his summer school the summer of 1924, Kenneth went first to Brooklyn and visited 

with family there. Then went down to Princeton and a got a room on the third floor of Alexander 

Hall. He roomed with Harry Coulter, in a nice, big room that looked out on the quadrangle. His first 

day was a warm day, and the windows were open, and he was sitting there looking at Margaret's 

picture and thinking of her and of their engagement, when all of a sudden a lovely tenor voice came 

up from below, "Oh Darling! Oh Darling!" Kenneth's heart did a flip flop. "Oh Darling!" Kenneth 

heard the window overhead open up, and this rich, fruity baritone answered, "Yes, Love!" And 

Kenneth thought, Oh God, what am I into?! He went over to the window and looked up, and here 

was this great face peering down, looking like a bloodhound—he always looked like a bloodhound, 

and had the most mellifluous voice Kenneth had ever heard—and then he looked below, and there 

was Love down below. They were roommates, Eddie Love and Ding Darling. 

Darling was an incredible preacher in the use of words and tone. He had an enormous church 

in Pittsburgh. All of the students had to preach sermons at Princeton, even in their first year, with 

faculty listening and evaluating, and Ding Darling delivered one of his Pittsburgh sermons, with all 

the enchantment of language, and everyone was simply enthralled. The man who was evaluating that 

night stood up and said that it was easy to see that Mr. Darling was going to be one of their most 

famous preachers; it was a pity that he had nothing to say. 

13 

47:27 The juniors started off studying Hebrew and Greek, and they were informed that at 

Christmastime the top ten of the fifty studying Greek would then go into a special class with the 

famous Robert Dick Wilson. Kenneth was the last one to make it. He worked his head off to do this, 

and it drove Harry Coulter crazy because Kenneth studied out loud. And very much so. The 

Kenneth of today gives us a dramatic demonstration, sounding like a priest chanting in Greek. It 

tended to drive Harry out of their room to the library. 

The study was so intensive that they were soon reading the Hebrew in the Old Testament. 

The teacher was very pedantic and methodical and put them through an incredible regime of study. 

14 

49:38 The first time Kenneth met Robert Dick Wilson, a man in his eighties. Wilson had laid out 

his life in sequences of fifteen years. Fifteen years he was going to study. Fifteen years he was going 

to write. Fifteen years he was going to teach. Forty-five years of career. He did just as he intended, 

and then didn't know what to do with himself, so from then on he did all three types of work 

simultaneously. Wilson came into Kenneth's room in the evening—there were four or five of them 

there—introduced himself and asked, "Any of you boys got a little bit of tabaccy?" He pulled out 

this huge calabash pipe, a great big calabash pipe, and put it in his mouth. One of the fellows pulled 

out his pouch, and Robert Dick Wilson took that pouch and began packing tobacco into his pipe, 

packing in more and more until the thing was entirely full. He handed the depleted pouch back, put 

the pipe in his mouth, took a match out of his pocket and looked at it for a while, then took his pipe 

and put it in his pocket. All of sudden he pulled out another pipe, a little pipe with a tiny little bowl 

full of tobacco, put it in his mouth, and lit the match. That was his idea of a little joke, and of course 

they all howled. 

139


Robert Dick Wilson was married and had a huge house. 

15 

52:00 Das Machen lived on the fourth floor of Alexander Hall. A bachelor. Machen would come 

around to all the buildings and go up and down the halls wailing, "Nobody loves poor Das! Poor Das 

is all alone! But if anyone VKRXOG love poor Das just a little bit, or even just OLNHG him, they FRXOG 

come up to his room, and they might find some dates and figs and apples and nuts and oranges!" 

And then he would go upstairs on his hands and knees. He leaned forward and more or less fell up 

four flights of stairs that way. The students would follow him up the stairs, and there in his room 

would be a table filled with things to eat, just as he had said, and they would all sit around and talk. 

The scholarship was excellent. One brilliant professor after another. Charlie Erdman, a great 

homiletic professors of the day, who was pastor of the Princeton Church there. Everyone would go to 

hear him preach. 

On what a great institution Princeton was at that time, "before it fell apart." 

Kenneth's major at Wheaton College was philosophy, he tells us. Professor Bowles was the 

philosophy professor, but he was actually a geologist, and Kenneth knew more philosophy than he 

did. 

Session #18 February 14, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

16 

56:20 Kenneth reads the first letter he wrote Margaret from Princeton. He comments on how 

expensive it was there. "Every time I breathe, it costs a dollar." 

He speaks of learning from reading his letters of the time that he and Margaret only became 

engaged on September 22, 1924, not the previous spring, as he had thought. In his letters he referred 

frequently "to that memorable occasion." He wrote that his address was Room 32 in Alexander Hall. 

By October 2 he was already deep into Hebrew, and in a letter he wrote the alphabet into his 

letter to Margaret. He lists his classes. 

140


HOUR 23 

Session #18 continued February 14, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IVA1117) Kenneth and Margaret continue on their engagement in September. She was 

astonished when he whipped out the engagement ring that he had ready. And it fitted! He knew it 

would because he had fooled around with her rings and had learned that one of her rings, which she 

wore on her ring finger, would just fit around the little finger of his left hand. Not his right hand, 

which had been ruined by baseball when he slid into first base. He had bought the ring from Wilson's 

jewelry store in Meadville, setting it aside at first until he had paid so much on it. He paid for it from 

his tips at Rodin's that summer of 1924. 

2 

1:28 On how Kenneth got into Robert Dick Wilson's Hebrew class. Not one Wheaton boy at first 

made that top group of Hebrew scholars. Kenneth did not make it either in his first try. Professor 

Allis, the regular Hebrew professor, had apparently taken a shine to him, and called around 

personally to tell him that he hadn't made it. He was impressed with Kenneth's ability and wanted 

him to try again. 

That class of Kenneth's, the class of 1927, was the most brilliant that Princeton had had in half 

a century, and the competition was an incredible scramble to be top dog. Every last one of the class 

went on to become successful in one way or another. Because of the unusual quality of the class, 

Wilson decided to expand the original ten to twelve in the first division. So Kenneth tried again, and 

the second time succeeded. 

Das Machen declared a big quiz on the Tuesday that started vacation, which he did 

deliberately to stop students from leaving school early. 

Kenneth reads a letter to Margaret in which he told her he had made the first division in 

Robert Dick Wilson's Hebrew class. Professor Allis informed him as before. "So tonight I went to 

Dick's class and had a circus." Wilson was forever cracking jokes and making funny remarks. He 

had a trick that Kenneth adopted in his own teaching and found very effective. He would walk into a 

class, pick out one student, put his face right into the student's face, and ask him questions. The 

dialogue would go on eyeball to eyeball, and it was very effective. It held the entire class riveted. 

The poor guy who was the victim—oh boy. It meant that they all knew they had to have their stuff 

prepared in case they were the one! 

Kenneth became his favorite student. He was the only one in the entire class that Wilson 

invited to go to Germany for three years on a special scholarship to take advance studies in Semitics 

with a view to returning to Princeton as a professor. 

3 

8:45 Kenneth met Das Machen in the hall, one day in March, who asked him to announce that there 

would be a meeting of the Checkers Club in his room that night at 8:30. He did, and he went, and a 

big gang was there. The room was not very big, and the twenty students filled the place, eating the 

food Das had put out for them, and playing checkers and chess. Every now and then Das would 

come out and say in a mock-sad tone, "Don't be tightwads, fellows. Remember? My room, number 

39." That was typical Das. 

141


In March, Kenneth was still looking for a church to lead. 

4 

10:12 Kenneth tells of hearing a missionary from Japan called Reischauer—the father of the 

present-day Ambassador Reischauer to Japan. Reischauer was the "big man" in missions to Japan, 

and Kenneth was impressed. 

The annual banquet of the Seminary Club that March, WKH affair of the year. Kenneth was a 

sick boy that morning. He felt so bad that he went out for a long run to feel better. Typical of him. 

Went to all his classes that day. Decided to go to the banquet anyway, though he didn't feel like 

eating. Once there, he ate his head off, naturally. Everybody got to singing, and he began singing 

too. He felt better and better. 

Princeton did not have "Greek" fraternities. They had eating clubs, four of them. 

Putting on the rope-skipping stunt. He was quite a rope-skipper. Had all sorts of tricks. 

He writes that he has the "agency" for Eerdman's books for the following year. 

The day "Dick" called him to review an entire chapter in Hebrew, parsing all the sentences 

and verb forms—for which Kenneth was unprepared. But he did it all perfectly. 

5 

15:45 One day, Kenneth was going across the campus, about noontime, and Robert Dick Wilson 

was coming along at the same time. They stopped to talk. Wilson was a very friendly man. He 

looked at Kenneth "owlishly" and said to him, "Do you drink tea?" Kenneth promptly answered 

"Yes." He would have answered \HV to anything Wilson asked. And Wilson said, "Then come to tea 

today." "What time?" Kenneth said. Wilson was walking away by then, turned, and threw over his 

shoulder, "Ten o'clock," and continued on his way. 

Kenneth describes Wilson's program for his life, and the period he was in at this time, in his 

eighties. He was working on his masterpiece, which he expected to be the capstone of his life, to 

disprove modernism. He was against it. He was very conservative. Not truly a fundamentalist, 

though he was a favorite of fundamentalists. Once President Blanchard of Wheaton came to 

Princeton and sat in on Wilson's class, the only time in Kenneth's memory that Wilson did not bring 

out his pipe and smoke. 

He was about five-nine, a little stooped, very active. And he was always challenging the boys 

to a footrace. He claimed he could outrun any of them at a hundred yards. Run them right off their 

feet. No one ever took him up on it. "We didn't want him to drop dead!" He had a full head of long 

hair, down over his ears and onto his neck. He always had his pipe, and he had extra pipes in his 

pockets here and there. Sometimes, he would stick his pipe in a pocket still lit. Kenneth thinks he 

did it as a stunt. 

So, the invitation to tea. It didn't hit Kenneth for a moment. Ten o'clock? Today? Why, it 

was past ten already! Then he thought, That joker. He wants me to come round at ten tonight! So, 

Kenneth got himself ready and went over to the house. 

It was a huge, old, brick mansion with the third floor occupied where they had a daughter who 

wasn't "quite right in the head." Wilson's wife was very brilliant and eccentric, and the two of them 

had eccentric children. When Kenneth arrived, the house was all dark. This huge, brick mansion 

with windows that looked to be ten feet high. The windows came down almost to the verandah and 

went all the way up to the top of the porch. 

Kenneth couldn't find a bell, but he found a knocker and gave it a whack. Nothing happened. 

What to do? He whacked the knocker again. Nothing happened. He reached out a third time to 

whack the knocker, but it wasn't there. The door had opened, quietly. And there, standing in the 

142


door, was a ghostly looking girl, who said, "Yes?" There was almost no light behind her at all. 

Kenneth explained himself, and she seemed to understand and invited him in. The only light he 

could see inside the house was coming from under two doors. The girl directed him to one of these 

and told him to go in, which he did. 

The room inside was lit. He looked back, and the girl had disappeared. There seemed to be 

no one in the room, which was as long as a living room. There were books from the floor to the 

ceiling on all four walls, and the center of the room was all blocked off with rotating bookcases, 

many of them. Then Kenneth saw a cloud of smoke coming up and realized that it had to be coming 

from Wilson's pipe. He dodged around and found his way to the great man, who welcomed him 

enthusiastically and invited him to sit down. There were four or five chairs around, but every one 

was stacked high with books. You couldn't think of just clearing a chair of books. They had all been 

put there with a purpose in mind, all within the professor's reach. The only place to sit was the floor, 

and so Kenneth sat on the floor—literally sitting at the great man's feet. He leaned his back against 

the desk, and talked over his shoulder to Professor Wilson. 

"Glad you came!" Wilson said, then reached over, grabbed a book, and handed it to him. 

"Here's a word. You don't know it. You go all through that book and hunt for that word, and every 

time you find it, you identify where it is." 

"What language is it?" Kenneth asked. 

"Assyrian," he answered. 

"Thank you," Kenneth said. 

So Kenneth sat at his feet with a pad of paper and went all through the book hunting for that 

word. "Don't you dare miss one!" Wilson asserted. He was going to build his "argument" on how 

many times that word appeared. He needed a lot of occurrences, but he needed to know exactly what 

the number was. 

Kenneth thought, "Gee, where's the tea?" 

He chased that word in that book and in several other manuscripts. And in this way, Wilson 

got him started on a Semitic language other than Hebrew. The two of them worked together in 

silence until midnight, with Kenneth wondering what in the world was going to happen. 

At midnight, all of a sudden, the door opened, and in came the girl pushing a big teacart. 

"Oh," Wilson said. "Well, this is real fun," he said. "I guess we'll have to stop." The daughter wasn't 

bad looking, but strange. The other children were strange too. 

There was food of all kinds on the cart. The girl left, and Kenneth stood to have his tea and 

cookies. He was tired of sitting on the floor. After twenty minutes or so, Wilson announced that that 

was enough; the girl appeared again and wheeled away the teacart; and Wilson handed Kenneth more 

books. 

Kenneth thought, My gosh, I want to get to bed! 

At two a.m., Wilson announced that he guessed it was about quittin' time. He said that he had 

formed a lifetime habit of studying from ten to two a.m. The best time to work. Whatever social 

occasion he had to go to, he always left early enough to have his study time at ten o'clock. He had to 

put in his four hours a day. He had been doing this for many years. 

Wilson escorted Kenneth to a side door, pushed him out, and said, "That was real fun, wasn't 

it?!" And invited him back for the following night. Kenneth of course said \HV. And he did. It 

started a relationship that ran from then on. 

Unfortunately, Wilson's daughter decided that Kenneth was for her, and pursued him for some 

time. 

There was another child who was "absolutely insane." And a boy who died of brain fever. 

143


6 

30:10 On riding the train to Princeton. Kenneth suddenly breaks into song, 

Rain or shine, I'll pay my fine. 

Rain or shine, I'll pay my fine. 

Rain or shine, I'll pay my fine, 

Riding on the dummy, on the dummy dummy line. 

Margaret describes meeting a couple of the Wilson daughters, arriving on the train from a concert 

they had gone to, both greatly overdressed. 

Kenneth describes the day he and other students arrived and found that the prettiest of the 

daughters had gotten herself all "spiffed out as though for a ball." She had some fudge half made for 

them to beat. The girl joined them in the study, but the students' entire focus was on the professor. 

Neither of them were interested in her, to her disappointment. 

Wilson told them that he had written on and settled every mooted question on philology in the 

Old Testament. His explanations were accepted world wide. When he completed the article he was 

writing, he said, he would be ready to die. His work would have been done. 

After Kenneth got his church, he had to prepare sermons, which limited the time he could 

spend with Wilson. Wilson didn't like this at all. He could be a very jealous man, and when he 

wanted you, he wanted you. 

7 

33:53 March 22, 1925, Brad was visiting Kenneth, and decided to take him out to Frenchtown, New 

Jersey, to see Uncle Ed. They rode the train, arriving about ten a.m. Ed was about sixty, a bachelor, 

living in the old home. The two men often fought like children, and Brad would go to great lengths 

to try to avoid this. "The only time I've ever seen Dad with a modest, unassuming, withdrawing 

nature and a diffident manner has been in Frenchtown with Ed. Oh boy, is he meek! He wants to 

make Ed happy and not rub him the wrong way, and he does anything, any way Ed tells him." 

Kenneth got a real kick out of this because his father was normally a lion. Fortunately, Ed was in 

good humor that day. Brad says it was good "training" to be with him. 

7$3( ,9 6LGH 

8 

35:45 Kenneth describes how dirty the house was. Every dish in the house was dirty. The house 

was a mess. Ed made dinner for them, but unlike Brad, he seemed to be disorganized. Forgot half of 

what he was doing. He had the dinner all cooked and served when he remembered the meat! They 

went for a walk afterward, and Kenneth remarks on how beautiful the country was and how much he 

enjoyed meeting the simple folks who lived in the town. 

Ed had grown within himself, Kenneth writes, a bit of a nut. Very peevish. But Kenneth 

writes that he liked him very much. The house wasn't really as bad as he had made it sound in his 

letter, he says. 

9 

38:05 A man named Van Cleave, who was a member of Kenneth's club and who had a church in 

Columbus, New Jersey, approached Kenneth and asked him if he would like to take over the church. 

144


Kenneth said \HV. Van Cleave had been asked by several of the fellows for the position, but he was 

offering it to Kenneth because of what he perceived as Kenneth's spiritual qualities. While in school, 

Kenneth would get $18 a week. The full-time position was $1500 a year. 

Kenneth reads letters on his class work. Setting the record for number of verses translated in 

one class session with Robert Dick Wilson. 

10 

41:34 On the sermon Kenneth prepared for his April 5 tryout in the Columbus church. He could 

summarize its point in one sentence. "I always felt that I had to be able to say what I was going to 

say in the whole sermon in one sentence. If I couldn't say it in one sentence, I felt I didn't know what 

I was talking about." 

The seminary was torn by the controversy between the modernists and the fundamentalists. 

Charlie Erdman and President Stevenson were on one side, and Machen and Wilson and the faculty 

were on the other side. Erdman was ousted by the faculty. He had been the student advisor for 

eighteen years. 

11 

43:36 April 5, Kenneth's first sermon in Columbus. He got up at five and arrived shortly after 

seven. He taught a class of women in Sunday school. About thirty-five people came for worship. 

The people were country types, and he liked them very much. He was invited to return the following 

work. 

Lawyer Hutchinson drove up after the service to take him to a second church in Plattsburg, 

which was physically larger but had only nine elderly women, plus Mr. Hutchinson. Kenneth 

preached on Martha and Mary to these nine elderly women. They told him afterwards that it 

appealed to their sense of humor, this young man preaching to nine old women on Martha and Mary. 

Hutchinson took him off to his home nine miles away, and a large dinner ensued. From then on, 

Lawyer Hutchinson would always meet him with his daughter Gertrude. Had his eyes on Kenneth 

for Gertrude. But Kenneth kept talking about Margaret until they got the idea. 

As a person new to the job, he didn't know what was expected of him except to preach. He 

knew the order of service. He could recite the Lord's Prayer. But he still to this day cannot recite the 

Apostles' Creed, probably because he never liked it. He knew where it was in the book, though, so 

that he could read it—because they liked it. 

He returns to that first morning. As the people came in for the service, a Mrs. Bruce came up 

to him, the daughter of a Mrs. Ridgeway, who was a wealthy woman with a big farmhouse there. 

Mrs. Bruce was a heavy woman with a heart of gold. She asked him to pick out the hymns, and so he 

quickly did that There was a small adult class, and they asked him if he would teach it, and he did 

that too. 

In the adult class it happened that there was a very heavyset woman with a very slim, younglooking 

boy with her, and Kenneth suggested that her son join the young peoples' class. The woman 

burst out laughing, and the "boy" did too. The "boy" was the woman's husband, Joe Wright, and he 

looked much younger than his age. She was Agnes Wright, and she looked much older than her age. 

The Wrights were Quakers, and this was their first Sunday at the Columbus church also. The Quaker 

church had died. And they wanted a church that had a Sunday school for their children. Joe felt 

flattered that day because, when he arrived, Mrs. Bruce walked up to him and invited him to choose 

the hymns. She thought he was the new pastor, and it took a moment to clear up the confusion. 

Kenneth and the Wrights "fell in love" from that day on. They have remained friends all 

through the years to this day. 

145


Kenneth speaks of Wiley Young, a dramatic and powerful preacher, who wanted the 

Columbus church. Kenneth didn't think he had a chance, but as it worked out, the church was his. 

12 

51:36 More on the modernist controversy. The scandal of Erdman's ousting made the newspapers. 

It was all the talk of the seminary. Kenneth was disgusted by the whole thing and didn't understand 

how grown men, who shared the same Christian convictions, could behave in such a way. It typified 

something that Erdman himself said, "Presbyterians are like hickory. They split easily," a saying that 

became widespread. 

Clarence McCartney was the one who started it all, abetted by Das Machen, Robert Dick 

Wilson, and others. These were brilliant men, absolutely sure of their position on every subject. Men 

of that sort are always strong-minded, Margaret says. But they had gotten along well enough without 

a president. It was when J. Ross Stevenson came that the atmosphere changed. Everything he 

touched, he split. Machen left the seminary and died within a year or so. Wilson also left, going to 

Westminster. 

Kenneth's class was the last class before this tragedy. 

13 

56:30 Bernie Green was so old that he was like parchment. He had a high falsetto, and he would 

come walking across the campus as though he was drifting in the wind. He would walk into class, 

slowly ascend the podium, and then he would sit down on the platform in front of the class to lecture. 

One of his commonest sayings was, "Well boys, there's a little life in the old man yet." Kenneth 

speaks in a high, tremulous falsetto. "Now, if you pay attention, I think you can all hear me." And 

he would begin. Kenneth himself had not taken Green's class, and as yet did not know who the old 

man was. But he had heard other seminarians imitating Green's saying and had picked it up himself. 

Toward the end of the first year, they had a school picture, and everyone was out on campus, 

the faculty sitting on chairs, then a row of students standing behind them, and then another row and 

another on stands—300 or more in a long semi-circle. They had one of those huge, panoramic 

cameras that chugged around the circle taking them all in. So here Kenneth was, standing right 

behind Bernie Green—but without realizing it. Just as the camera started to go, with all of them 

standing very still and deadpan, Kenneth said, in a high, tremulous voice, "There's a little life in the 

old man yet. If you pay attention, boys, I think you can hear me." And Bernie Green slowly, slowly, 

slowly cranked his ancient body around to look, and Kenneth stood there, unconcerned. Everyone 

burst into laughter. It took them a half hour to get the picture set up again. 

After the age of ninety, Bernie Green decided he needed to do something to brighten his 

mind. So he took up the study of Hebrew and proceeded to write the definitive Hebrew grammar, 

which they used at Princeton. Green was 94 and 95 when Kenneth knew him. 

146


HOUR 24 

Session #18 continued February 14, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IVB130) Kenneth continues on Bernie Green. 

He tells of the time the official class picture was being taken, with the panoramic camera, and 

of how he rushed from one end to the other so as to appear in the picture twice. 

In his letters, he often commented on how awful his tennis was. And it was. He was forever 

going on long walks and runs. 

He describes the second week at the Columbus church, Easter Sunday. All the children who 

gathered around him. There were about a hundred in the congregation. He sang a solo at their 

request. He was astounded that they wanted him to sing a solo, but he did it! Then he preached his 

sermon on the resurrection. All he did was paint the picture in the most powerful and simplest 

language he could, and then showed how well authenticated the resurrection was, and how all our 

lives depended on its veracity. He outdid himself! When he was through, he felt like crying, he 

wrote, he had put himself into it so. Many people were moved. One man said he had "seen" the 

resurrection for the first time through Kenneth's sermon. Others commented that they had never 

experienced church like this. 

He talked with the head elder after the service, who told him they were eager to have him. 

Kenneth said he would need a car and had no money to buy one. But the elder said they could take 

care of that. 

2 

5:30 The "riot" at the eating club. They had a wild water fight, and also a few pickles and chunks 

of bread were hurled. There was a great rush of those at the upper tables to get out, and they threw 

glasses of water as they set off. But they all got jammed up at the door, and the remaining 

seminarians retaliated with glasses off water of their own on the whole lot of them. Kenneth got a lot 

of fun out of it. 

Sunday at Columbus church. The usual thirty-five older people, and an unexpected thirty 

young people. They were new, a surprise to the regular members. It was the beginning of "the gold 

rush." 

The Deacon family that he stayed with near the church. Mrs. Deacon announced that Kenneth 

would conduct a funeral the following day. He had been given no warning of this, but he was not 

intimidated and quickly worked out the thoughts he wanted to share at the service. That began his 

career of attending funerals. He was always invited to participate in the funerals, and he asked 

someone eventually why this was. "Well, you're always so cheerful," the answer came. 

It was exam time; everyone studying like mad. Kenneth writes that a particular day was 

church history day for him. "I'm so loaded up with heresies, if I bit anybody, I know he'd die." On 

the great big June bug that "was roaming around my head and making a noise like an old maid with 

false teeth. It bothered me after an hour or so and I began to chase it. After a few minutes, I let out a 

yell and made a wild pass at it. It just curled up its wings in fright. I never touched it. It fell dead 

into the wastebasket and lay there. I think a little patripassian, modal monarchianism had ended its 

years, and when I yelled, it went the way of all heretics." 

147


3 

9:45 Kenneth gets a room for the following year, #109 Hodge Hall, with Billy Irwin, a postgraduate 

with a fine big room filled with sunlight all day. He had a wife and kids in town and 

wouldn't be there much. 

Kenneth stayed there that summer to pastor his new churches. It had been a great year in his 

life. He made "Aleph Division, rah rah rah!" 

Robert Dick Wilson was a great scholar. He may not have proved everything he thought he 

proved. But he was still a great scholar. He took every controversial word and traced it to its origins, 

through forty languages. His idea of a vacation was to have somebody give him one or two pages of 

a language he had never seen before, with no dictionary, no hint of what the language was. By the 

time he came back from his vacation, he would have the language analyzed. He could read the pages. 

He could identify the words. He could give you his understanding of the grammar. Margaret 

comments that there have only been a few like this in the history of the world. Genius. 

She comments on a paper she heard the previous weekend by John Slocum of the Literary 

Society. An expert on the Middle East. He was discussing coins found in a city called Hatra in Iraq, 

which was abandoned long ago. A question was put to him after his talk about the Aramaic 

language, which Jesus spoke, and he answered that there were still two areas where it was spoken. 

Margaret had thought it was a dead language. 

4 

13:54 Margaret remembers little of her senior year, and yet she was the president of the Aels—the 

Aeolian literary club—and won an essay contest, which she has completely forgotten. She played on 

a winning basketball team. A busy year. 

Kenneth tried during that year to find a job for Margaret in the Meadville schools. As it was, 

Margaret got her job at Bear Lake on her own. Graduated from Wheaton. Went up to Stony Lake 

with her mother and sisters. A.D. went on his evangelistic trip with Rufus Park. And then word 

came that he had died at Ontonogan, Michigan, August 15. 

Kenneth at that point was going great guns at his Columbus, New Jersey, church, and 

especially in his work with the youth. "It was really nip and tuck to bring them on into the church." 

He had a communicants' class, with fourteen kids who in the end actually joined the church. It was 

just then that Margaret's father died, and he was torn. He was afraid to leave the church at just that 

moment. Everyone in the church was watching him to see what would happen. They felt that when 

it really came to it, none of the kids would show up. Maybe the girls; but not the boys. Kenneth 

already had the kids involved in building a tennis court. They were all farm kids, country kids. One 

boy, a great big kid named Calvin Lippincott, came over with a tractor and plow, leveled the ground, 

and then harrowed it, which helped them get started. Reluctantly, Kenneth did not go to the funeral. 

All fourteen of the young people joined the church. They all came into the session meeting, 

and Mr. Deacon was so moved by this that the tears rolled down his cheeks. In the Sunday service, 

all the elders were bawling. It was a very emotional time for that church because it had been so 

moribund. Then all of sudden, all of this fresh new energy coming in. And most of them have gone 

right on in the church through the years. Some became missionaries, and one a minister. The 

Poinsett girl became a home missionary to the Indians out in the West. Another went as a missionary 

to India. 

5 

22:34 Margaret tells again what a happy time A.D.'s last summer was, traveling with Mr. Park. The 

"caravan," which was like a panel truck of today. They went to small places that didn't even have 

148


churches. Park had done this a number of times, in the summer. Martha Park, his daughter, was in 

Kenneth's class at Wheaton. Mary Park married Earl Windsor and went as a missionary to Africa, 

where she died. There was a son who later became the janitor of Betty and Wayne's church in 

Milwaukee, though he was an educated man. 

The funeral in Uncle Chris' house. The burial in Oakwood Cemetery, outside Somers, 

Wisconsin. 

6 

26:17 Uncle Chris, an engineer, had a company called the Stover Company. Margaret shares with 

us a page from a Sears catalog of the time, and there is the Stover Safety Signal, a stop signal made of 

heavy steel and brass for 98 cents. Stover was the inventor. Chris had always worked in a bank, but 

he left it to go in with Mr. Stover on what was literally the first company making directional signals 

for cars. Chris begged Adelle and A.D. to invest in the company. He was undercapitalized. He 

knew they had a going thing. They had a headlight too by which you could read easily in the light 

200 feet from the car, though as the car approached you, the light seemed to dim so that it didn't blind 

you. Margaret wonders what ever happened to that because there is nothing like it today. When the 

Mortensons sold their house in Evanston—for $12,000—they put half of this into Chris' company. 

The company failed in the end because it couldn't raise the necessary capital. The banks 

wouldn't give them the loans because they didn't recognize the value of Stover's products. It was too 

soon. They were on the brink of making millions. This happened about the time of A.D.'s death, and 

so his newly widowed wife lost the $6000 they had put into Stover, a very large sum at the time. 

Earlier, she and A.D. had bought two lots, one on Irving Avenue the block above the house 

they rented—so the 700 block—the second on Cross St. After A.D.'s death, Adelle went ahead and 

built the house they had dreamed of on the Cross Street lot. There was a professor at Wheaton named 

Bowles who had gotten into building houses, and Adelle contracted with him for approximately 

$6000. The house was completed by 1927. Adelle herself went into the real estate business in 1925- 

6. The roof Bowles put on the house was defective, and Adelle had to pay for a whole new roof. The 

final cost was thousands of dollars over the estimate, none of which Bowles absorbed, and she could 

not pay it, though for years she tried. In the end, she lost her home and all the money she had put into 

it. The Depression contributed to this, making it impossible for her to get the financing she needed. 

She took it all with great courage, the loss of her husband, of the $6000 to Uncle Chris, of the house. 

Margaret remembers the house. In 1927, the last months before leaving for Siam with 

Kenneth, she returned to Wheaton to have a couple of months with her family, and stayed in that 

house. 

Adelle held onto the lot on Irving Avenue for years. Many years later, probably in 1953, 

Enoch Dyrness bought it from her, paying her about half what it was worth. Margaret comments on 

how very angry Charles Schoenherr was with him for that. Adelle put her trust in these fine Christian 

men, one after the other, and each one betrayed her. Uncle Chris paid everyone else back what they 

had loaned him except for Adelle. And yet she was never bitter. 

7 

36:30 After A.D.'s death and funeral, Adelle drove Margaret up to Bear Lake, Michigan, which was 

a good bit farther north than Stony Lake. It was hard for Margaret to go. Evangeline still had two 

years of college. Elizabeth was thirteen, a big, gangly girl. But Margaret knew she had to go. 

She stayed with a couple, Mr. and Mrs. William Richmond. Very kind people. He was a 

rural deliveryman. Her salary was $150 a month, which was good. She had a bedroom, and had her 

meals with the Richmonds. But the house had no inside bathroom; they were in the process of 

149


building one. All fall she wrote about their working on that bathroom. The outside toilet was 

attached to the old barn. Margaret had to have a slop pail in her room to use as a toilet. The only 

way she had of taking a bath was a sponge bath—this refined young lady from Evanston! 

Her first letter from Bear Lake. Rearranging her room. 

Margaret bought paper napkins, she tells us, to use instead of toilet paper. No toilet paper was 

provided at the Richmonds'. Instead, there was just an old Sears catalog, and everybody was 

expected to get along with pages they ripped out of it. "I wasn't used to that, you see." The outhouse 

was fifty feet from the house, and on a cold, snowy night in winter, it was no pleasure! How she 

longed for the completion of that new bathroom! The inside part was completed that fall, but they 

didn't have a septic tank and so couldn't connect it. 

She lists out her schedule. English 3; Latin 1; Assembly; Caesar—"Two dumb ones in this 

class and that's all."—English 4 and American literature; English 1; English 2. The rest was left to 

her discretion. In addition to this, she was expected to coach the debating team and coach the 

basketball team. A heavy load. 

The Richmonds were taking care of three small children, whom Margaret enjoyed. 

8 

45:00 While he was at Princeton, his first and second year there, Kenneth got jobs ushering at the 

football games in order to get in and also to make some money. He sold programs as well. Iv y 

League teams were still important in those days. Everyone would come in their racoon coats, with 

flasks and luncheons. In one of the games, a Harvard man got himself on the wrong side of the 

stands and was surrounded by all the Princeton people, all of them cheering wildly for Princeton. He 

was slightly drunk, and periodically he would stand to his feet, wave a little flag that he had with 

"Harvard" written on it, and cry, "Fight fiercely, Harvard! Harvard, I say, fight fiercely!" Sounding 

very British. Everyone would laugh and pull him down, and he would stagger up to his feet again 

and shout, "Harvard! I say, Harvard! Fight fiercely!" Kenneth remembers it vividly. 

They charged $5 to go to the game. It was expensive. Margaret remembers, the year she was 

there, saving every penny so that, when Muriel came down, she had enough to buy them tickets. 

Session #19 February 21, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

9 

48:00 May, 1925. On the three-hour exam that Kenneth completed in forty-five minutes. He had 

everything clearly outlined in his mind and knew exactly what he was going to write. The professor 

was astonished. 

Kenneth found a new room for the summer in Columbus, New Jersey, with a Mrs. Townsend. 

His dismay at how small the room was. Asking for places to put things. Mrs. Townsend went off, 

and when she returned, offered him a full-sized room. Whew. "The Lord works in a wonderful way 

his mysteries to perform!" 

His walk in the country. Everyone greeted him as if they knew him, but look puzzled at his 

walking. No one there walked if they didn't have to. Out in the countryside, Mrs. Wright drove up in 

her car and invited him out to her place for dinner June 7. 

Mrs. Townsend was "an awfully nice person." She thought Kenneth was too skinny and fed 

him richly to put a little meat on his bones. 

Argument with his head elder, Mr. Rigg, as they drove in his big car. Rigg invited him to a 

church service in Bordentown which was being given especially for the Masonic Lodge. They would 

150


attend without uniforms. Kenneth felt it wouldn't be right and said no. Figured it was an implicit 

invitation to join the Lodge, which it was. Rigg didn't like his refusal a bit, but there were no 

repercussions later. 

10 

56:10 The expression much in vogue in Columbus, "How 'bout that?" It was used for everything. 

Everyone said it. 

Kenneth speaks of Evangeline as "Wangy." She had the longest name in the Mortenson 

family, and yet she was the smallest of them. As a little child, her name overwhelmed her. 

Evangeline Renata Mortenson. She had all sorts of nicknames. Eve. Kenneth called her "Wangy," 

which Margaret calls "horrible," with laughter. Some people called her Vangy. 

On the show Kenneth put on at the church. The various acts. Playing the balalaika and 

singing between acts. 

151


HOUR 25 

Session #19 continued February 21, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IVB500) Kenneth reads letters from the summer of 1925. July 23, riding the train, waiting 

for dinner in the dining car with his mother, Mae. Hundreds of people all waiting. Margaret 

interjects that she went to Gull Lake that summer with the Landon family, which invited her down. 

Kenneth tells of the wonderful meal of fresh Kennebek (SP?) shad roe with spinach he and Mae 

shared on the dining car, with their favorite hard biscuit rolls, with lots of butter, and french vanilla 

ice cream. "Ma" kept saying she wasn't hungry, and when he ordered shad roe for her, she almost 

"popped" and asked how much it cost. She hadn't had it since she was married, and Kenneth thought 

it was about time she did. "She nearly wept when she started eating it for it brought back memories 

of happy girlhood when she had had shad roe at home in Brooklyn." Imagine feasting on a railroad 

dining car! But in those days you could. 

They arrived in Chicago—from where, he doesn't say—and Mae went to bed exhausted. The 

next morning, Kenneth gave her breakfast in bed. 

2 

2:19 Kenneth's first funeral, at the Deacon's. A big funeral, with crowds of people from all over 

Pennsylvania. It was all new to him, but he didn't make any mistakes. Even at the grave. 

He started in at eight in the morning to paint the car the church had got him. When twelve 

o'clock struck, he finished. He had mixed together paint and enamel, he says here, which gave the 

car a gloss like a mirror. Margaret tells of the time at Lawyer Hutchinson's house when she went out 

into their huge garden and discovered that he had all the "insides" of his car RXW. Couldn't do that 

with a modern car. 

Kenneth reads his letter to Margaret after learning of A.D.'s death. 

The day the fourteen new young members joined the church, there were eighty-six members 

present. 

August 27, Kenneth drives out to Joe Wright's place. Joe had a Ford sedan that he had 

borrowed from the butcher, and the two of them took off in it. Memory is vague on what this was 

about, but it was a trip to somewhere. Kenneth and Joe took a number of trips together, the most 

memorable of which was in 1932, years later. 

3 

7:25 Kenneth hops in the car at 11:00 a.m. and takes off for Brooklyn, New York, arriving at 2:30. 

No cars on the roads, he comments. The only ones home were his Grandmother Fletcher (Agnes 

Robinson Fletcher), 83, Aunt Edith Coe, and her son David. David was all filled up with being a 

man, smoking, drinking, dancing. In the night his grandmother was sick and carried on. She was 

very frail and died the next year. This was the last time Kenneth saw her. 

"How we zipped over the Brooklyn Bridge, nothing under forty, going four abreast!" 

Then Kenneth drove out to visit his father. He tells of going with Brad to pick up a man 

named Trumbull, the master mechanic of the Erie Railroad. He was doing what Kenneth had 

originally started working toward. Making substantially more money than Kenneth was likely to in 

religious work. Trumbull greased his hair. Kenneth loved to get behind him and sniff the aroma. 

152


4 

10:07 Donald Gray Barnhouse comes to visit the Columbus church. He had been at the church 

before Kenneth. September 27, 1925. 

Kenneth moved back to the seminary campus, in Hodge Hall. He had studied all summer in 

preparation for the coming year. Billy Irwin was his roommate. He had a wife, a house, children, 

and a big car. He was "100% defective physically" because of being gassed in the war. 

Kenneth found a big stack of mail awaiting him addressed to "The Manager of the 

Bookstore." His standard procedure was to auction off the books he received. He kept 10%. 

He thought he was going to work toward an M.A. in Semitics, but the Dean looked down his 

nose at him and discouraged him from this goal. 

5 

13:27 Margaret tells of cleaning the trunk room in the basement of 4711 Fulton St. with Kenneth. 

She had been seeking the date of the dinner establishing the East-West Association by Pearl Buck, a 

key event in Margaret's life because at that dinner Kenneth sold the idea of what became Anna—it 

didn't have a name at that point—to Elsie Weil, the editor of Asia and the Americas. In cleaning 

the trunk room, Margaret found all the material from that dinner. 

Margaret digresses to discuss when the Mortenson cottage at Stony Lake was built. She then 

goes back to discuss the first stroke that A.D. Mortenson suffered, the fall of 1921. She reads a letter 

from him written from Stony Lake in September, 1922. He had stopped working nine months before, 

at the end of December, 1921. He wrote that he was getting ready to go back to work. He also said 

that the house was "about done." 

Margaret digresses still further to speak of Alex Gale and his coming to visit. The family was 

staying in a cottage called "Cedar Lodge" in which there was no privacy. The bedrooms were like a 

loft. So Margaret and Evangeline decided to solve the problem by putting up a tent they owned. 

They owned the lot for the cottage, of course, and the lumber was on the site. There was the lake, 

then a level area, then a steep hill, then some woods, and finally a sandy road with deep ruts. The 

two girls went down to the lot, carried the wood up to their cottage, made a rough floor for the tent 

with it, and put up the tent. Margaret was exhausted the rest of the summer from this great effort, she 

tells us. The tent was for Alex, of course, so that he could have some privacy. 

So now Margaret knew at last when the Mortenson cottage was built, the summer of 1922, 

culminating in September. 

A.D. GLG go back to work that fall. Margaret describes his work as the credit manager for the 

advertizing department in The Curtis Publishing Company. The high standards of the department. 

He also hired the office pool of workers. 

Octavus Roy Cohen, a popular writer in those days who wrote funny stories about black 

people, something that could never be done today. This man found himself without money one day 

in Chicago and called up the office. A.D. went over to the hotel with some money and met him, a 

memorable experience for him. 

The time a group of Catholic girls in the office pool set up a cabal that caused problems. A.D. 

found this out. All the girls were quickly fired. 

6 

29:17 December 7, 1924 Margaret reads a letter from Kenneth in which he comments on A.D.'s 

illness. "My, how I feel for your father." The heavy load that came down on Adelle. 

A.D. was very melancholy. He couldn't sleep. Didn't feel well. On the time when Betty, 

standing at his door, heard him crying inside. He was able to get around, though. 

153


The Mortenson family moved to Wheaton on September 13, 1923, just in time for Evangeline 

to enter her freshman year at the college. 

Margaret reads from a memo of A.D.'s the June before, when 2400 Harrison St. in Evanston 

sold. They had been there since Betty was a year old. Margaret describes the layout of that house. 

How they put in the fireplace. An attic and a basement, which A.D. kept very clean even though they 

had coal down there. They all "had a feeling" for the house. 

Margaret tells again of Rufus Park who took A.D. on the evangelistic tour. Margaret's visit in 

Gull Lake with the Landon family. A lovely lake in those days. She shows a picture of the van in 

which Park and A.D. traveled. "The Shantymen's Christian Association" was their sponsoring 

organization. Margaret reads a tract concerning it. The aim was to reach with the Gospel men in 

lumber, mining, and construction camps in out-of-the-way places. That is, as Kenneth says, a 

mission to men who lived in shanties. The van was called a "Gospel car." Rufus Park was one of the 

officers of the association. The van was marked "Wayside Gospel Mission." 

Margaret comments on the change in names over time. "The Home for Incurables" over on 

Van Ness St. An awful name from the past. 

A.D. was taken ill Sunday, August 9, and went immediately into a coma. He died August 15, 

and the body was brought down to Racine, to Uncle Chris' house at 1652 Michigan Avenue and 

buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Somers. 

7 

41:45 Margaret's contract to teach at Bear Lake, for $1350. She had thought it was for $1500, but 

the contract says $1350. Adelle drove her up at the end of August. Margaret's room with the 

Richmonds. The woman's name was "Emma." They had taken in two little children, Alfred and 

Marjory, who were orphans. Not grandchildren, but perhaps a great niece and nephew. Margaret 

found them delightful. They called the Richmonds Aunt Em and Uncle Will. There may have been a 

fourth child, named Dorothy. She is not sure. 

Session #20 March 1, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

8 

44:33 Margaret tells how hard it was to leave Adelle and her sisters so soon after A.D.'s death. 

They all drove her up to Bear Lake, on M11, the big route that ran up beside the lake. It was not at 

that time all cement. Near Bear Lake, it was not. A two-lane highway. The Richmond house was RQ 

M11, west of the center of town and the high school where she was to teach. Her room was on the 

second floor. It was the last house in town. 

The school was a fast ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from the house. The principal was a Mr. 

Thomas, who was "quite lazy but very amiable." 

The Richmonds had no children of their own. They were in their late 50's. He was tall and 

spare, and she was on the plump side. "I was charmed with the children." They were lovely, and 

very bright. 

Mr. Richmond was a rural mailman. He was bald. Margaret remembers the time little Alfred 

wondered out loud why the barber had cut off all of Uncle Will's hair. Everyone howled with 

laughter. 

On her birthday September 7, Margaret studied all day to prepare for the classes she was to 

teach. "Of a making of books there is no end." She was twenty-two. Adelle mailed her a cake. 

There were eight for supper, and they had two quarts of ice cream. Mr. Richmond had three huge 

dishes of ice cream, four pieces of cake, and all the crumbs, which he ate and scraped up with his 

154


knife. She watched this with fascination. 

The woman who did the washing for Margaret lived nearby. There was no running water in 

the Richmond house, and Mrs. Richmond had arranged with this woman to do Margaret's laundry. 

She was Jane Melks' mother. Jane Melks was the most fascinating and unusual girl in the whole high 

school, and she and Margaret became good friends as teacher and student. Jane's mother was a 

withdrawn, almost timid person. Had several children, all by different fathers, none of whom she 

married. Everyone knew this in the town, of course, though it wasn't talked about. Jane was striking. 

Jet black hair. Beautiful high color. Very bright mind. A very strong personality. Born to be a 

leader. Excellent in everything she was interested in doing. She must have gotten it from her father, 

whoever that was. Margaret did not know who he was. The mother, by contrast, was almost a blank. 

9 

55:10 Margaret's first paycheck. $74.72. Her Latin class; all girls; all bright. Only two or three 

had any trouble. The English classes were hard to teach because the children spoke such poor 

English. 

As far as Margaret knows, Adelle was living on capital. Possibly life insurance. There was 

no continuing pension from Curtis. She was still living at 610 Irving Avenue. 

Miss Torrey, the Bible teacher [at Wheaton College, I think], who was slender and very tall, and 

who had extremely acute senses. She would bring with her a collection of sweaters and shawls, and 

as the temperature changed, she would rearrange them. She was what in England they would have 

valued, eccentric, brilliant, devoted, a splendid teacher. There were two boys, called "dorm boys," 

who worked in the dorm and who were caught with two of the girls in their room. It was a Christian 

school, and so of course, all four of them had to go. Zoe Landon's sister was one of them. She 

became a very respectable person later. The way the four of them were caught was odd. Miss Torrey 

had painfully acute hearing, but almost no one knew it. The two boys were sitting in the back of her 

classroom, discussing in a whisper their affairs with these girls, and Miss Torrey heard every word. 

They never knew how they were caught out. 

She was the one who said that, if it were possible to give a grade of a hundred and something 

plus, she would have given it to Margaret. She was the only one who ever said that! 

155


HOUR 26 

Session #20 continued March 1, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IVB990) Margaret continues on Miss Torrey. She needed a place to stay during the day. 

She had a place of her own, but it was too far to walk during the day. So she arranged to rent the 

room in which A.D. had stayed, and she would come to the house for lunch—which was nice for 

Adelle. 

Miss Elsie Dow was a person of such knowledge in her field that she should have been 

teaching in graduate school. She was absolutely brilliant, the most famous teacher at Wheaton. She 

seemed to know every Shakespeare play and every poem in the English language by heart. When her 

sister Thurza (SP?) was away, she came to lunch with Adelle too. 

Adelle was looking around for something to do, and what she thought of doing was starting a 

restaurant. It was hard to find a place to eat in Wheaton. The bakery where Kenneth's friend had 

worked so long and hard had closed, and Adelle decided that it would be a perfect place for a 

cafeteria. She knew of a woman, an excellent cook, that she could get to take care of the cooking. 

She would start on a small scale. Evangeline was excellent with decorations. Adelle had it all 

worked out. But the owner would not spend the $300 plus to put the place in shape, and so she gave 

up that idea, and later was glad that she had. 

Margaret tells of a reception during which the minister's wife, who was leaving, offered her 

the Queen Esther club of young girls. The girls had told her they thought the new teacher would be 

good for the position. It met on weekdays, and was interested in missions, and so forth. Margaret 

felt honored and took it on. 

Then she was elected "patron" of the freshman class, and her first duty was to chaperone their 

outings. They all left Bear Lake one night in a large truck and succeeded in eluding the watchful 

upperclassmen who were planning to apply shoe blacking, charcoal, and stove polish to the faces of 

the freshmen. They drove to Chief Lake, where they built a fire and played games until ten. Just as 

they were about to eat their refreshments, they saw the lights of two cars coming round the lake. 

They all ran for the truck with their food, and then ambled around the countryside with two and 

sometimes three cars following them. The eleven frosh managed to pelt their pursuers with apples, 

but little else was accomplished. Margaret's clothes were marred and in disarray when she got home, 

which distressed her. 

2 

9/29/25 Adelle writes about building the house. She had a bit of insurance money, and Professor 

Bowles said the job could be done for $3000. Her idea was to build a nice little house and then sell it 

at a profit. Bowles taught philosophy, geology, and Bible. Kenneth "thought he was the dumbest 

guy I ever met." 10/7 Various lots Adelle considered buying, and the houses she thought of 

building. 

Wheaton was an hour by train from Chicago. The electric train ran out that way, the Chicago, 

Aurora, and Elgin, and it had two trains an hour both ways. Commuters were beginning to move to 

Wheaton, and there was a demand for houses. Adelle's idea was good, but her partner was not. The 

first house she built, at 824 Cross St. 

Margaret had a great desire to go home for Homecoming at the college, and she made the trip. 

156


But unfortunately she didn't get back to Bear Lake until noon Monday, so that she was docked a half 

day's pay. 

Margaret became the basketball coach for the girls. Practice started in October, and the 

season ran until May, so it meant a lot of work. The first game was with Elberta at Elberta, twentytwo 

miles away. The court was terrible. The ceiling was very low, and there were two posts in the 

middle of the floor. The crowd was rough as well. But her team handled itself well, and won 32-14. 

The school colors were red and white, but the girls had no uniforms. So they worked to earn 

the money to buy some. 

3 

17:20 College Chapel—now Pierce Chapel—was completed in Wheaton at that time. It did not 

have the balconies it has now. College Church had always met in the chapel in Blanchard Hall, but 

now it had collaborated with the college to build the new chapel, which both would use. Margaret 

remembers walking over to see it during the construction with her father on a number of occasions, 

but he did not live to see it completed. Adelle, Evangeline, and Betty went to the dedication 

ceremonies, which ran much of the day. The first event in the new Chapel was the marriage of Earl 

Windsor and Mary Park. 

The girls' basketball uniforms were made of bright red flannel. The merchant had purchased 

the finest quality of material, which made it much more expensive than anticipated. The team was 

selling candy at the games to raise money for the cloth and hoped to pay it off after four or five 

games. Margaret herself did a lot of work on the cutting and sewing. The top was a blouse, and the 

bottom was bloomers. Jane Melks was the outstanding player on the team. 

11/1 Margaret was "snowed under," and she enlisted the help of Jane Melks to correct some 

of the papers, for which she paid her. 

Dinner at Mallisons'. 

On Jane Melks. People said she was wild, but Margaret had seen only the attractive side of 

her. Margaret wanted her to be "saved," and Jane was thinking seriously of going to Wheaton. 

4 

23:56 Margaret tells of the defective roof on the house Dr. Bowles was building for Adelle. He was 

responsible for this, but he refused to pay for it. Adelle had to pay for a new roof, which doubled the 

price of the house to $6000. And then the house did not sell, and in the end, she lost the it in the 

1930's. Bowles made a lot of money before he left town. As for the lot on Irving Avenue, it became 

quite valuable. Enoch Dyrness bought it from her, at a time when Adelle was working for him. He 

persuaded her to sell the lot to him for half its value. It was the last valuable thing she had. She was 

very trusting, especially of the people at Wheaton, this Christian college. 

5 

28:16 Margaret was always trying to fix up her room in Bear Lake. In November, she "calcimined" 

her room a golden tan. Mrs. Richmond gave her two little rugs for the room. 

After Christmas, on her trip back to Bear Lake, she made the last leg of the trip on a sleigh. 

There was much snow in northern Michigan. Two- and three-foot drifts. Most cars hibernated for 

the winter. 

The Onekama game, which Margaret's team lost. They played Friday night. The hall was so 

small that the center circle was only four feet from the free throw circle. And the hall was dimly lit 

by five gasoline lanterns. The ceiling and the baskets were low. The Onekema forwards were very 

157


tall, and Margaret's girls could not reach the ball when they held it even when they jumped! 

A wedding ring from Kenneth arrived in the mail. "Isn't he hopelessly forehanded?" It was 

delicately carved, but over the years since then the carving has been worn off. Margaret tried it on, of 

course, and one day by mistake wore it down to breakfast and then was terrified that someone might 

have noticed. But nobody said anything. 

6 

34:48 The main town fifteen miles away was Manistee, and every third house was empty. It was 

strange to see. 

That part of Michigan was the area of the great forests, and at Stony Lake there was one tiny 

section of that primeval forest, the only one Margaret had ever seen, the forest the first settlers had 

seen. "Oh, those magnificent trees! Unbelievable! They went up so high, and they were so large. 

Pines, of course, most of them. I used to like to walk through it as a child because it was so hushed. 

You couldn't hear the wind when it was so high. And there was literally nothing under it except 

layers and layers and layers of pine needles. And the only thing that would grow under it was a little 

white flower—I don't know if you've ever seen it—called 'Indian pipes,' snow white like a little pipe." 

That whole area around Bear Lake and Manistee had been a lumbering area, and tremendous 

fortunes had been made out of it. The logs were shipped to Chicago and other cities around the lakes. 

But the companies cut ruthlessly, leaving nothing, and moving on. And then it was over, so that in a 

city like Manistee, one-third of the houses were vacant. It was strange. Around Bear Lake, it was 

much the same. 

The Mallisons had two sons in the high school. They ran a restaurant in the summer in their 

home, and made a specialty of serving chicken that was just delicious. Margaret was constantly 

hungry, and she was so thin then that she could eat everything in sight and not gain weight. Mrs. 

Mallison went down to one of the universities to cook in the winter, and their daughter Irma went to 

Chicago to work, probably as a waitress. Margaret knew of this and asked Adelle to invite her out, 

which they did. Irma wrote home in lyrical terms of her visit in Wheaton. 

Margaret comments on the clothes Kenneth purchased and especially the frock coat for the 

wedding. He was going to go all out. Ministers commonly wore formal frock coats in those days. 

They did not wear gowns at that time. This was only done by Catholics and Episcopalians, Margaret 

says. 

7 

39:40 Margaret, in January, 1926, has one of her knock-down, drag-out colds. Unfortunately, she 

had to drive eleven miles with her girls in an open sleigh to play at Calleva. They lost the game. "It 

was tragic." They lost by one point. The girls had played the best they had ever played. It was on 

towards two in the morning when they arrived home. 

She was taking quinine for her cold. Kenneth comments that whenever he came down with "a 

real bad fever," he would go out and run for three or four miles, come back and have a hot shower, 

some hot lemonade, and go to bed. He always felt better. In those days, he did not come down with 

pneumonia. That was later. 

Margaret comments on the way the townspeople criticized the high school teachers. Mrs. 

Ousley was "one of the howlers," and Margaret was one of the objects of her scorn. One day 

Margaret heard a perfectly innocent word of hers taken and twisted into something monstrous. So 

she decided to avoid any comment on anything to avoid being misunderstood. 

Margaret had no personal friends other than Mrs. Thomas, the wife of the principal, in Bear 

Lake. She found none of the other teachers at all congenial. 

158


Vic Hicks, a fine basketball player at Wheaton at one time, and now a coach, wrote her a 

helpful letter on coaching. He urged her to pray before games with the girls. He said that this had 

been his first experience of prayer and had turned his heart to Christ. Margaret followed his advice. 

It wasn't easy to do, but she did it. "I never have been a very good hand at talking to people about 

their souls, but I do want to reach these girls somehow." 

Basketball game with Onekama, with their tall forwards. Margaret had devised a strategy for 

overcoming the Onekama advantage, and it worked. Bear Lake won! 

8 

48:05 Kenneth was having trouble in Princeton with Robert Dick Wilson's daughter, Ann, who kept 

writing him letters. He had answered only the first of these. 

7$3( 9 6LGH 

9 

49:05 Continuing on Kenneth's problem with Ann Wilson. She was confiding in Kenneth 

concerning a man who had been interested in her. She invited Kenneth to come over to her house. 

But he did not respond. 

Margaret reads letters from Adelle on the building of the house in Wheaton. A professional in 

real estate told them they should be able to get $13,000 for the house. 

On January 31, Bear Lake beat Calleva 49 to 6. "We'd begun to go!" 

Geneva Bond, a girl on the basketball team, and a boy named John Cermak both came down 

with pneumonia. Cermak was the most outstanding boy in the school. He was related to Mayor 

Cermak of Chicago, the first good mayor Chicago had had in memory. Mayor Cermak was killed in 

Florida by a shot intended for President Roosevelt. Margaret thinks he was John's uncle. She has a 

beautiful letter written by John many years later. Margaret went to call on him at the time of his 

pneumonia. 

After Christmas, Margaret counted the days and realized she had one hundred teaching days 

to go before the end of the year. Various dates for the wedding were contemplated, and Adelle 

suggested June 16, which they adopted. Kenneth's vacation didn't begin until July, so that the plan 

was to go directly to Columbus after the wedding. 

Margaret kept inviting her family and friends to come up to visit her in Bear Lake, but the 

only one who ever came was her friend Lois. 

Kenneth's father had rented a cottage at Gull Lake for two weeks, which provoked Margaret. 

It was the same old one, a ratty place that lacked most of the amenities. Kenneth comments that he 

probably rented it again because it was cheap. 

Adelle was a very warm person. Kenneth comments, "I would have been perfectly willing to 

have her on our honeymoon. She was a delightful person. I always liked her." It was only in the last 

years of her life that she became difficult. Margaret says, "She went through a very tragic chan ge." 

Adelle felt she should not have bridesmaids. There was a feeling in the culture of the time 

that, after the death of a close relative, like her father, you did not marry for a year after. Margaret 

wanted the bridesmaids to give her moral support, all walking down ahead of her down the aisles. 

Also, she felt Muriel and Lois would be very disappointed if they were not asked. So bridesmaids it 

was. Elizabeth would have enjoyed being in the wedding too, but Adelle would not allow that. 

"I was so wrapped up in those girls," Margaret says, speaking of her students at Bear Lake. 

Especially the girls on the basketball team. 

159


HOUR 27 


1 

0:00 (VA60) Margaret tells of the time she was docked $3.75 from her pay. Mr. Luke Keddie was 

the one who did this because she had been late in getting back to the school that one time. And this, 

after all the extra time she had poured in! 

[The recording stops, then resumes with all of us laughing because Kenneth has been 

trying to read a letter and Margaret has interrupted him repeatedly, albeit inadvertently. 

"She blew me right out of the room!" he laughs.] 

She tells of the cold that was so terrible, with such a terrible cough, that she just felt weak. 

The doctor gave her something with codeine in it, and that stopped the cough. 

Margaret tells of a letter she received many years later from Mr. Keddie, who went blind 

within the last ten years. He wrote to tell her of Jane Melks' death, and of what a fine person she had 

become. "That was a great joy to me," considering the background out of which she came. 

Kenneth starts trying to read his letter, when Margaret inadvertently interrupts him again. 

2 

3:30 More uproarious laughter when Margaret once more, inadvertently, interrupts 

Kenneth. "Well, good night," Margaret says weakly—weak, that is, from laughter. She goes 

off to bed. 

October 16, 1925—Kenneth weighs himself. 138 pounds. 

He had savings of $136 at that point. He hoped to have over $600 by spring, money to get 

married on. 

November. The queerest thing happened. As he came out of class, there was Ann Wilson. 

She said she had something to ask him, but that she had put it in a note, which she handed him. They 

walked along together for a bit, but she did not speak. Then she asked him to forgive her for being so 

forward. Kenneth sent this note to Margaret. How lonely Ann must be, living alone with her parents 

in that big house. She didn't seem to be all there. Her attention worried him. She was concerned 

about her relationship with a man which she thought was immoral, and she said she wanted advice 

about it. Kenneth responded by writing her a note. 

Kenneth's parents come down to Princeton to visit him in late November, 1925. Mae's naps in 

his room. Running into Ann Evans and Ralph Varhaug. 

3 

11:04 The doctor tells Kenneth he has low blood pressure. Kenneth says he had had it all his life. 

The doctor was convinced that he should be having headaches and dizzy spells and be "pepless." He 

told Kenneth he had everything to indicate the sickness except the symptoms! He was baffled. 

"I must have been a very difficult person for Margaret because I always had everything 

arranged well in advance." 

Kenneth took his mother to Columbus for church, and he preached "better than usual." Took 

her to the Plattsburg church—the country church that was just out at a crossroads. Friday, December 

14, he decided suddenly to take Mae to Brooklyn to visit the family. It was a spur-of-the-moment 

thing, typical of him. Mae seemed to take on new life the moment she saw KHU mother. Kenneth 

160


worked on his sermon Saturday; he always took his typewriter around with him. That afternoon, he 

went over to New York City, left his mother there with Brad for their return home, and wandered 

around Times Square and 42d Street, watching the crowds. Then he returned to Princeton. 

4 

14:22 Jan 6, 1926 Kenneth went downtown in Meadville, where he was visiting, and bought the 

wedding ring from Mr. Wilson. Wilson smoked cigars constantly; bought 10,000 at a time. The 

design of the ring was "orange blossoms," and it had no stones. Kenneth sent it to Margaret for her 

opinion. 

His visit with Elizabeth Bates, whom he had once dated, and who had married an "old man" 

who was actually only a couple of years older than she. A very nice person. 

Each seminarian had to preach a sermon before the students and the faculty, and he preached 

for thirty minutes. Everyone seemed to approve. Felt he had the possibilities of a good preacher. 

However, he was so nervous that his hands kept popping around all the time, and he was criticized 

for that. 

On procuring the marriage license in Wheaton. They could do it WKH day of the wedding, and 

only one of them needed to appear. 

5 

18:11 Kenneth tells us how often Margaret would suggest that they "just be friends." Three times 

that he remembers. "Well, you can't do that with me." He wouldn't settle for this. 

Their first address was to be 21 Edwards Place, Princeton, NJ. Hot dog! Five minutes' walk 

from the seminary, just off the university campus. $45 a month. Kenneth was always preparing 

ahead for whatever was to come. "I'm hopeless, as Margaret says. I'm doing this all the time." 

Adelle warned her that she was always going to have problems with Kenneth. He was going to be 

way ahead all the time. 

6 

20:50 Kenneth prepares for evangelistic services. He tells of walking soberly along in the hall at 

seminary, when he encountered another seminarian who told him about Dad Hall, a prominent 

Episcopalian evangelist. Kenneth went right downtown and sent a fifty-word "night letter" to Hall, 

who responded the following day. "Glad to come. Name the date. Philemon 22." Kenneth had not 

yet broken the word to his church that they were going to have two weeks of evangelistic services. 

Kenneth kept working on what he should wear for the wedding. 

He arranged for a special pianist for the services. A quartet. A chap from India who had a 

marvellous testimony. The special services were to start in late February. 

He had also started a parish paper. 

Kenneth decides to preach on the Second Coming as being "pre-millennial." 

7 

24:25 Kenneth writes Margaret in February 12 about his two classes on mission work. They had 

stirred something in him. He says he is starting to think about becoming a missionary. "This I know. 

If the Lord wants me abroad, and I stay home, I'm a rotten failure." This disturbed Margaret very 

deeply. It was the very beginning of the idea to go into mission work. Until now, he had thought 

only of working in the United States. 

Kenneth preaches his sermon on the Second Coming. Preached an hour or so "and then was 

only half way through." 

161


Kenneth had his parishioners holding prayer meetings in their houses, to prepare for the 

evangelistic services. 

8 

27:20 February 22 Dad Hall arrived, and Kenneth took him to dinner at a Ku Klux Klanner's 

house. Kenneth told the man what he thought of the Klan, which of course went down hard. The 

church that night was packed; more people than anyone had ever seen there. Claude Thomas and his 

wife were there; they later became missionaries to China. Hall preached powerfully. Dave Rigg, the 

elder, was outside on the sidewalk afterwards, in tears, feeling he had wasted his life. He was 

sobbing on Kenneth's shoulder, he was so moved by Dad Hall's preaching. 

Monday night, there were about a hundred in the church. Kenneth was carrying on his studies 

at Princeton, then driving to Columbus for the evening. The next night, Hall caught a cold and felt 

pretty badly, and after his talk, he almost collapsed. Kenneth sent him home to Philadelphia for the 

rest of the week, to recover, in the hope of his returning for the second week's services. 

The services had been advertized, and so Kenneth had to find replacements. He took Chris 

Jensen, a man he picked up on campus. He was a remarkable person, a great big Swede, six foot four 

tall, who had been a seaman and had been converted. He was very earnest, a good speaker. Kenneth 

found other people from campus and took them down to lead the meetings. One night, an incredible 

fog came down on the area so that Kenneth could hardly see to drive on the way to Columbus. Only 

forty-five people or so came that night. 

"I never knew so many things could go wrong. But we pulled through." 

9 

33:30 Kenneth wrote to Margaret, "I'll bet a peanut to a plugged hat that you'll be broke when the 

wedding is all over." He listed out what he understood he was to pay for at the wedding. He had 

gotten a book of Emily Post and was reading that for guidance! 

Rev. Hall GLG make it back for the second week of services. 

Kenneth tells of the incident in the Methodist church in which the congregation fell into two 

separate camps. Kenneth talked to their pastor, Rev. Sherman, about the problem, and then, in his 

own church, presented the problem to his own congregation during one of Hall's evangelistic services 

and invited them to go down en masse to the Methodist church. No one dared say no, and the whole 

mob set off. All the way over, the evangelist, Rev. Hall, kept hitting Kenneth in the back with his 

fist, exclaiming, "You little devil! You little devil! You've started something now!" When they 

arrived, Rev. Sherman turned the Methodist service over to Kenneth and Dad Hall. Kenneth started a 

chorus, "I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky, praise God!" In a few minutes they 

had them all on their feet, praising God. "I had a lot of fun in Columbus." 

A wonderful meeting with Dad Hall. Ten young people consecrated their lives. 

Kenneth discusses the money he and Margaret had saved. 

10 

39:20 Kenneth continued his studies with Robert Dick Wilson. He didn't go over at exam time, or 

during the evangelistic services, but he had a standing invitation to go, and regularly did. His normal 

practice was to get up at 5:30 in the morning, not later than 6:00. Which meant that, if he studied 

with Wilson until 2:00 in the morning, he had almost no sleep. "But I was young, and it didn't 

matter. I mean, I never bothered about sleep. As I've often said, I don't think I ever felt tired—really 

tired—until I was over fifty." After the first visit, Kenneth would enter the great house through 

Wilson's side door. "I had a lovely relationship with him." He would usually pop in about three 

162


times a week and do research work with him. Whatever Wilson was working on. It was a privilege. 

Wilson would set aside certain projects especially for Kenneth, knowing he would be coming. 

Sometimes the work would be in languages Kenneth did not know. Sometimes in Hebrew, with the 

writing on leather, without the Masoretic pointing. 

11 

42:55 The Big Chief. One day Mrs. Wright stopped her car by Kenneth as he was walking in the 

country near the church and invited him out to dinner with her family. Kenneth usually ate with 

members of the church on Sundays. The Big Chief was the patriarch of the family, Joe Wright's 

father. He was an enormous man in every way. His appetites were enormous. He had beetling eyes. 

And he had a look almost of madness in his face, but it was an eccentricity, really. And he had an 

enormous voice, the voice of a bull. If he could scare you or frighten you, he would. But he had a 

gentle heart. Kenneth took to him right away. The Quakers all used the first name. So he was 

"Walter." But Kenneth just didn't feel like calling him "Walter," so he said, "You know what you 

are. You're the Big Chief, that's what you are. I'm going to call you the Big Chief." The man 

thought it was funny, and from then on he called Kenneth "Kenneth," and Kenneth called him "the 

Big Chief." Surprisingly, it caught on. By the time Kenneth had been in Columbus a year, everyone 

in town called Walter Wright "the Big Chief." It caught on. It fit. 

The Wright home was a gracious home that was completely ramshackle, the most ramshackle 

thing you could imagine. These were people who were really the salt of the earth. Some of the finest 

people Kenneth has ever known. Joe Wright and Agnes to this day are friends. Joe was the kind of 

person who could walk into the White House with common shoes on his feet and his hair in disarray 

and not know that he wasn't completely acceptable. He felt in no way inferior to anybody. He was 

that kind of a human being. And he was just being natural, not a show off. 

When Joe came to D.C. for Carol's wedding in 1956, he didn't have any pants. He had come 

out of a cow barn, and packed a shirt, but he had forgotten pants. He had a shirt and string tie and a 

jacket of a nondescript nature. But he had to go rousting around town to find a pair of pants for the 

wedding. 

When the Big Chief ate corn, he would eat a dozen ears. If he were eating strawberries, he 

wouldn't bother with anything less than a large bowl. If you offered him ice cream, you needed to 

offer at least a quart. Otherwise, he wouldn't bother with it. If he sat down to eat a turkey, he would 

eat a turkey. He was just big. 

Joe, by contrast, was as slim as a boy, about Kenneth's size. He was the finest boy of the 

whole Wright family. Another son, Truman, became vice president of the Waldorf Astoria in New 

York, and later managed the Greenbriar for many years, entertaining Presidents and Senators and 

congressmen. But he wasn't a patch on Joe. Walter is one of the leading electronics systems experts 

in the U.S. There was a quality of genius in the family. But Joe was the finest of all, and he just 

milked cows. 

12 

48:45 In his church Kenneth had organized the youth into a club. He once had them all up to 

Princeton for a big do. None of them were college types, or had ever been to the university. Many of 

them were of college age. He got them involved in helping him produce the parish paper. He had all 

sorts of projects going with them. 

For almost two years, Kenneth and Margaret rarely saw each other, from the fall of 1924 until 

the summer of 1926, when they married. Kenneth would like to have married a year earlier. He felt 

sure he could have supported her. As it was, they mostly communicated through letters, with which 

163


he "besieged her daily." 

Again, he mentions that he never really felt tired until he was fifty. He remembers how, when 

he got tired as a young man, he would always do something vigorous, go out and run, play a hard 

game of basketball, and end up feeling better. 

Session #21 March 7, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

13 

52:05 Margaret corrects some of her earlier statements. The school at Bear Lake opened in late 

August, not in early September. The full name of the school was "The Bear Lake Rural Agricultural 

High School." The superintendent of the school was Mr. W. F. Thomas. The president of the school 

board was Mr. Luke Keddie, who published The Arcadia Argus twice a week, covering rural 

Manistee Country. Margaret attended the Bear Lake Methodist Episcopal church. Rev. Prosser 

pastored the church. 

Prof. Bowle's serious operation for mastoid, in Wheaton. Evangeline was working on The 

Tower at the college; she was the art editor that year. 

The rough game the basketball team won. Didn't get home until 3:30 a.m. 

Adelle's letter on her going into the real estate business with another woman. She had bought 

two more lots on Irving Avenue, with a small down payment of $25 on each. They faced east and 

were one block south of the athletic field. By that time, she had four lots, all of them good ones. She 

was an able person. 

Mrs. Richmond was ill and could not get over it. Margaret was worried because she feared 

she would be sent away. 

164


HOUR 28 


1 

0:00 (VA445) Margaret discovered that where her basketball team was playing was called the 

Maccabees Hall. Mr. Richmond acted as the janitor, earning a little extra money 

Her team beat Brethren 55-11, the worst team in the league. 

Kenneth tells us that at about this time he received a letter from Margaret saying that, if he 

were unable to provide for her adequately, she could always go home to her mother and find a job! 

He wrote back, What utter nonsense! He said that if they did go broke, he would just get a job. 

The ride to the Brethren game in the sleigh took a number of hours in the cold. But as cold as 

they were, they performed beautifully. Margaret borrowed Mr. Richmond's fur coat—the one he 

wore while delivering mail—for the trip to Brethren and back. The roads they followed were the 

country roads, not the main roads. 

The biggest snow that winter was on April 3. It was discouraging to Margaret, because she 

had thought that spring was arriving. The ice had begun to melt in the lake. She woke up that April 

morning—she was a heavy sleeper in those days—and found that the snow had come in her one open 

window, which was in line with the door. The snow was on the floor all the way across from the 

window to the door, the only time that happened. 

2 

7:34 February 26. Adelle writes concerning her real estate business. The desks she bought, and 

other furniture she intended to use. She had an office, with an alcove in the back for a cot. 

Margaret's basketball team beat Copemish 30-2. Their sixth straight victory. They had 

climbed all the way up from the bottom of the league. The girls had worked very hard. 

Adelle's desks arrive, and she describes them, oak, very good-looking. She was setting up in 

business with another woman, a Mrs. Reebe (SP?). 

3 

11:40 James Oliver Buswell, who conducted special services in January at Wheaton, was chosen 

the new president of Wheaton College. One of four sons. He was tall, well-built, "nice teeth," 

according to Adelle. He was married and had three children. She described him as sweet, lovable, 

and humble—terms Margaret finds incredible, knowing what was to come. She tells us that he came 

into an amicable company, the way President Stevenson at Princeton did, and his coming destroyed 

the equilibrium of the institution. Dr. John Wallace Welsh, the father of Evan Welsh, had been the 

acting president of Wheaton. He always claimed that Dr. Blanchard had promised him the position, 

which may be true, though Blanchard had no right to do that. The Blanchards tended to regard 

Wheaton as their property, practically, since they had started it. The Welsh's never forgave the 

McGills and Mr. McShane, who were on the board of trustees, for bringing in Dr. Buswell and letting 

Dr. Welsh go. Evan told Margaret many years later that his father had had Dr. Buswell "looked up" 

and had found out that he had split every church he had ever served. But because Dr. Welsh was 

personally interested in keeping the position, the trustees didn't respect his judgment. 

College Church of Christ had been a Congregational church, an old-style church, before there 

began to be divisions because of the theological rift between fundamentalists and modernists, so- 

165


called. There were a good many people at the college from the Moody Bible Institute, and they were 

all fundamentalists. Dr. Buswell inclined toward them. A rift began developing in College Church, 

and by 1929 he had split it. He demanded that College Church move out of College Chapel, which 

was an enormous blow to the church. It had been instrumental in getting the Chapel built in the first 

place. The college had to reimburse the church, of course, and the church then moved across the 

street. The larger number of people from the college then went to the Wheaton Bible Church with 

Dr. Buswell and all the people from Moody. College Church just had a shred left. That was when 

they invited Evan Welsh to come and pastor the church, which he did. And he did a magnificent job 

in building the church up. He was very well liked, more than his father ever was. 

Dr. Clyde Kilby credits Dr. Buswell with raising the standards of the college so that it was 

able to get accreditation. There was a positive side. But still, he was divisive. Evangeline told 

Margaret later that he would not even use the name of College Church if he were asked to make an 

announcement concerning it. He would speak of it as the "church across the street." Ultimately, to 

his astonishment, he was asked to leave. He thought he was there for life. So he himself in the end 

was a victim of what he had done. 

4 

19:30 March 8, 1926 Mrs. Richmond was being hard on the children, and this disturbed Margaret. 

Mrs. Richmond was a nice person, but she wasn't well, and was extremely irritable, often lashing out 

at the little ones. 

The basketball team beat Arcadia 35-9, and now were tied for first place in the league. 

The Thomases were very nice to Margaret. Mrs. Thomas had a serious fall at this time. 

Jane Melks was a brilliant player, a game player, who raised her play when things were on the 

line. She had a lot of experience, and always had a trick or two ready for her guard. She had a 

tremendous pivot, often faking one way then taking off the other way to the basket. 

There was a fad of drinking milk in Bear Lake, and Margaret joined in. 

Earl Hunt, a man of about 30, appeared in town in a fine sedan car with his young bride. That 

afternoon, Cap Williams, who lived next door to the Richmonds, and who was the sheriff, received a 

call instructing him to detain Hunt. When he started to take Hunt to Manistee with his bride, Hunt 

drew a revolver on a lonely piece of road, which caught Cap by surprise. They were old friends. 

Hunt's offense was that he had married a girl who was underage, just sixteen. She had known Hunt 

just five days when she married him. Hunt fled, leaving her behind. The car was stolen, and in its 

trail were a series of bad checks. Hunt was wanted on charges of forgery, embezzlement, and grand 

larceny, and was supposed to have been a companion of two famous criminals, Dutch Anderson and 

Gerald Chapman. The whole town just buzzed at the news! 

5 

23:33 March 17. Kenneth reads a letter on putative plans for the wedding and honeymoon. 

Margaret tells how Red Grange had bought the Sykes house in Wheaton for $18,000. A lot of 

money. 

March 19, Margaret received a letter from her mother written on her business stationery. The 

first one. The Wheaton Realty Company, Room 2, Smith Building. Adelle called Margaret "Peg." 

Almost everybody did. 

There was some talk of setting the wedding in the evening. Kenneth responded, "Let's not get 

married at night. I think we ought to do it in the daylight so we can see what we're getting." In the 

end, though, they ZHUH married in the evening, at 6:00 p.m., because June 16 was Commencement 

day at Wheaton. 

166


Margaret speaks of Kenneth's beginning to talk in his letters of the mission field, "to my 

consternation. I won't read that. I wept buckets." 

More on plans for the wedding. Invitations; announcements; the date and time; concerns 

about people leaving rapidly after Commencement and so not coming to the wedding. 

Adelle approved of Kenneth's desire to go to the mission field. She said she and A.D. had 

always prayed that one of their children would be a missionary. And it looked as if Margaret was 

going to be the one! "I don't know why they had to do that to me," Margaret laughs. 

6 

30:15 A man named Van Ness, a missionary to Arabia, spoke at Princeton, and spoke powerfully. 

"As usual, it gave me an awful urge to go," wrote Kenneth. "Well the Lord knows I'm ready to do 

whatever he wants me to do. The thing I'm anxious about is that I may be certain of his will." 

April 19, 1926, was the day that Kenneth would go to Meadville to be examined for 

ordination by the presbytery. He didn't have to graduate from seminary in order to be ordained. He 

tells us that it was an unforgettable experience when it happened. He knelt in front of the church, and 

all the men of the presbytery put their hands one by one down on top of his head. It felt as if they 

were about to push him into the earth. "I was just hanging on till they got through!" He knew 

something was happening!! 

Margaret tells us that Adelle wrote to say that she had felt strongly the call to go to the 

mission field when she was about nineteen or twenty—she had a great desire to go to India—but 

there seemed no possible way open to go. From the time she was eighteen, there was always 

someone dependent on her financially, and this took precedence over everything else. 

Kenneth wrote Margaret March 24 on the pros and cons of the missionary life. Van Ness was 

once more at the seminary, and Kenneth went to his room and chatted with him for hours about the 

life of a missionary. The hardest fields were in north China and in Mesopotamia. Kenneth then 

wrote to a man named Speer of the Presbyterian mission board, telling him what was on his mind, 

and asking to meet him the next week in New York. Boom. Kenneth was off and running. Margaret 

comments, "Poor me wasn't even consulted. Well. I resented that, too, deeply, for a long time." 

7 

34:08 Margaret found an "excuse" for one of her students. "Dear Sir, Excuse Mary for abscence 

[sic]. She mumps. Mrs. Alice Churchill." Margaret saved this because she found it so delightful. 

The debate team Margaret had been given responsibility for won their debate. 

Adelle writes that her new company had not sold anything yet. It was an off-season. 

Dr. Welsh was deeply affected by his ouster from Wheaton College. The whole family felt 

the hurt. Didn't know who their friends were any more, wrote Mrs. Welsh. Mr. Welsh was not an 

attractive person, Margaret and Kenneth say. He just seemed to disintegrate. Never recovered from 

the experience. And he ultimately went insane. 

Margaret slaps Bill, Mrs. Thomas' little boy. This led to a bit of a "dust-up" with Mrs. 

Thomas. Little Bill needed it, Margaret said. He wasn't properly disciplined at home. 

More on wedding plans. Evening or afternoon. How to decorate the church. The cost of the 

invitations. Bridesmaids. Ushers. Ultimately, Elliott Coleman was the organist for their wedding— 

the poet who later founded the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. 

8 

45:09 The latest issue of Kenneth's parish paper stirred up a "rumpus." All over the countryside all 

the hard-boiled farmers were talking about nothing other than how to be square with the Lord about 

167


their money. A whole bunch of them gathered to talk about it. 

Kenneth had told the congregation that he was going to be a missionary, which set the church 

buzzing. Many of them told him they felt he should be a missionary right there in Columbus. 

Margaret, April 24: "Well, nine rahs, and sixty-eleven hurrahs! We won!" The score was 24- 

20, Bear Lake over Onekama. 

Lois McShane visited. Margaret had a bad cold, with cough for over a week. The doctor 

gave her something with codeine in it. In spite of her cold, it was very refreshing to have a friend 

come, Margaret says. 

College Chapel (later Pierce Chapel) was now formally secured for the wedding on June 16th. 

The time was definitely set for 6:00 in the evening. 

Adelle did a lot of work in the house she was renting, painting and such. 

9 

53:53 Margaret wrote that she was "dreadfully shabby." Kenneth cannot imagine it. Her one poor 

hat was wilted; she could poke her finger through the brim. The ribbon was tattered. She had only 

one nice dress, with a button here and there missing. 

A Mr. J.J. Payne, a cowboy and Texas ranger for years, and now an evangelist, came to Bear 

Lake and led meetings. He dressed in a cowboy outfit, leather trousers—which is to say, chaps— 

outside khaki ones. He wore a cartridge belt, a sombrero, a checked shirt, neckerchief, and fancy 

leather cuffs. He even wore a belt with a fancy six-shooter. Margaret said she had never heard a 

more interesting speaker, "an earnest, consecrated speaker, too." Margaret actually worked at the 

meetings. 

She wrote, "God has given me the privilege, which I in no way deserved, of leading two of 

my high school students to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. Last night at the 

close of the meeting, Florence Anderson was saved, and tonight Mary Churchill. None of the credit 

is mine, but I am thankful." 

Margaret ordered a five-pound box of Fannie Mae candy for her girls. She was downstairs at 

school, and when she came up, she was astonished to hear nine rahs for her issuing from her room. 

The girls asked her to formally present the candy to them in person. "How much did you eat?" 

Kenneth asks Margaret. "Oh, you can be sure I had my share!" [Margaret ORYHG candy.] 

Margaret had a long talk then with Jane Melks, after which she was convinced that Jane was a 

Christian. 

168


HOUR 29 

Session #21 continued March 7, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (VA850) Jane was a very fine person. "I was really so concerned about her." 

At the evangelistic meetings, one of the teachers, Mrs. Ousley, was converted. Here was a 

woman who really needed this. Her husband had failed to support her. She was considering divorce. 

She had lots of problems. She was a very attractive woman in many ways. But something horrible 

happened. The cowboy evangelist tried to seduce her. Margaret was so shocked. It was the first 

time she had ever met a person who was as convincing as he was, so that the whole town was 

impressed with him, and then this. The town never knew of it, Margaret thinks. She knew of it 

because Mrs. Ousley told her. The two of them were friends. "It was horrible for me. Just horrible. 

I think hypocrisy always is." 

May 11. Adelle sold one of her lots on Irving Avenue. The girls had bought the material for 

their bridesmaid dresses. Men were working all through Adelle's house, painting and such. This was 

in preparation for the wedding in June. Much on the preparations. There were to be three attendants, 

Evangeline, whom Margaret was calling "Eve" and who was to be the maid of honor, and Muriel 

Fuller and Lois McShane, the bridesmaids. 

Margaret finally bought a new dress. It was ERLV GX URVH JHRUJHWWH Sadly, it had a 

tendency to collect spots. She had two already! 

May 14. The school year was ending. Margaret is correcting many papers. Social occasions. 

Sunday evening she would lead the Eppworth League for the last time. Then Mrs. Ousley and 

Margaret were to sing at the baccalaureate program. "Can you imagine?" "NO!" Kenneth says 

emphatically. "No, I can't." Margaret says, "Well, my voice wasn't so quacky in those days." 

Margaret was the alto to Mrs. Ousley's trained soprano, and Margaret subordinated her voice to hers. 

Mr. Thomas had invited the two of them to sing at graduation as well. 

Mrs. Ousley lost her job and had very hard feelings against Mr. Thomas for this. 

Margaret wrote that she had been driving the Thomas' car. Twice. "I can turn it around and 

everything." 

2 

12:10 Kenneth imagines Margaret's shock as he went so rapidly into the mission business. "But 

this is the way I have done things all my life. Whenever I decide to do something, then I go ahead 

and do it." March 28, he announced in the Columbus church that he was going to be a missionary. 

He went in to New York March 29 to see Robert E. Speer, one of the most prominent heads of the 

Presbyterian mission board. Kenneth had been talking to Ralph Varhaug, his friend, about mission 

work, and Ralph too had become interested. So the two of them went into New York together. They 

called on Speer and talked to him for about fifteen minutes, at the end of which Kenneth concluded 

that Speer wasn't the one to see. A Miss Reed was in charge of the Near East section, and Kenneth 

and Ralph spent a half hour with her. Kenneth discovered that he was very much wanted, and 

practically "took his field," which was a very unusual thing. He focused on Hilla, a town of Muslims 

"on the road to Babylon" that had no Christian mission. It would be pioneer work. It was a strategic 

place in the Muslim world, Kenneth says, and his imagination was stirred to think of working there. 

Kenneth and Ralph then went to see Dr. Chamberlain, the secretary of that section, and he 

169


also expressed interest in Kenneth's going to the Near East. 

Ralph and Kenneth then walked across Brooklyn Bridge and went on up to visit Kenneth's 

relatives at 382 8th St. for an hour. Then returned to Princeton. 

Kenneth never had any doubts Margaret would go where he went. Indeed, he received a letter 

from her during this period in which she quoted from Ruth. "Where you go, I will go." She declared 

her willingness to make the sacrifice. 

He passed his twenty-third birthday that spring. "I do feel grown up. If you don't like my 

figger, wait till I grow a little bigger." 

Kenneth comments that Dad Hall was a sort of negative type who spent most of his time using 

the congregation as a whipping boy. He was that kind of evangelist. His approach got the 

congregation all stirred up. But this served Kenneth's purposes, because he could then calm them 

down "in the right direction." 

In late March, six more of the young people joined the church. 

Then Kenneth preached a sermon on tithing. The church was absolutely jammed with people. 

When he started the sermon, he asked how many were presently tithing, and six held up their hands. 

When he completed the sermon, he asked how many were JRLQJ to tithe, and eighty held up their 

hands. "I really had that church on fire. They were really going." 

Kenneth gets ahead of the story and tells of the evening he and Margaret were married. 

Going into Chicago after the wedding. The dinner at which Margaret became so upset that she 

couldn't eat. So Kenneth paid the bill, left a tip, and they left. The manager became terribly upset 

and followed them out onto the street. The newly married couple spent their first night in a hotel 

room in Chicago. The following day they caught a boat to Racine. Kenneth is vague on the details, 

but assures Kip that Margaret will have them all in hand. 

"Well, Margaret's the historian. It's the way she writes. She has the whole scene. You get the 

atmosphere. If you can find Margaret in it, why, there she is." 


3 

21:30 Kenneth sings—dramatically—his rendition of "Romeo and Juliet," which he used to 

perform with his balalaika: 

Come now and listen to my tale of woe 

of Romeo and Juliet, 

cribbed out of Shakespeare and reeking with woe, 

of Romeo and Juliet. 

Never was tale so mournful as this one. 

He who has a handkerchief, prepare to get at one. 

Romeo's the fat one, and Juliet's the thin one. 

O Romeo and Juliet! 

[In high falsetto:] 

Oh, I am the heroine of this little tale, 

I'm Juliet, I'm Juliet. 

I am the baby that vamped Romeo, 

I'm Juliet, Juliet. 

Locked into prison, no pickax to force it, 

170


nasty old hole, scarcely room to stand orce it (?). 

I up and stab myself right through the corset, 

I'm Juliet, Juliet. 

[In forced baritone:] 

Now I am the hero of this tale of woe, 

I'm Romeo. I'm Romeo. 

I am the lover who fell for Juliet. 

I'm Romeo, Romeo. 

Never did lover do just as I did 

when his best girl to return it deslided (? slighted?) 

I took cold poison, and I suicided. 

I'm Romeo, Romeo. 

Now this my tale is the short and the long 


This is the moral of my little song 


Lovers, I warn you, always be wary. 

Don't buy your drinks of an apothecary, 

Don't stab yourself in the left pulmonary, 

Like Romeo and Juliet. 

They took the balalaika to Thailand, and it fell apart. Margaret kept everything. He didn't 

want to take it, but Margaret did. On the other hand, he was always getting rid of things, even an 

expensive Christmas gift she gave him, a special set of bookends with tigers on them—reminiscent of 

the Princeton tiger. And Kenneth threw them away. She was so hurt; she went and got them out of 

the wastebasket and has them in her room to this day. "You threw away my ironing board, and it 

took me four years to get another, five really. Yes. You can see that we started out on opposite 

ends." Kenneth laughs, "I'm a giver-outer, and she's a keeper." Kenneth was just thinking of all that 

weight and getting the stuff all the way to Bangkok. "Ah well," Margaret says. "I finally learned a 

few things," says Kenneth. "Not many, but some." The amount of luggage they moved around with 

was dismaying to Kenneth. He was used to travelling with nothing but a toothbrush and a collar. 

4 

26:03 Margaret arrived home in Wheaton May 22, 1926. More on preparations for the wedding. 

Kenneth arrived for a visit, carrying a wedding present. The Margaret of today expresses her 

puzzlement at his gift of the time. Does Kenneth remember what he gave her? "Not a clue," he 

answers. It was a beautiful fox fur. Ah, now Kenneth remembers. Margaret wasn't sure what use 

she would get out of it in the tropics of Siam. Why did he get that? "Because it was there." He 

figured they were going to be living in Princeton for a year before going to Siam. But in her view, a 

fur was something you wore for twenty years. A friend of Kenneth's had actually shot the fox and 

had fashioned the fur piece. 

On the bridesmaids' dresses, georgette over satin. 

Uncle Chris was a very busy man. He called himself "Daddy Longlegs." The joke was that 

he was so short. He was going to give Margaret away; he was her favorite uncle from childhood. 

Margaret writes, "I'm so excited I can hardly sit still long enough to write a letter." 

171


It took her three trips to Chicago to find a dress she liked. June 5 she and Evangeline finally 

found something. Heavy white satin trimmed with lace. It had a train. The veil was white tulle. It 

was becoming, but not elaborate. 

Ralph Varhaug was Kenneth's best man, and he paid a visit to the Mortensons too. 

Mrs. Reebe handled refreshments after the wedding. 

June 12 Muriel gave a shower in Margaret's honor. Lois also gave a shower for her. 

Things Margaret bought in preparation for marriage, and their cost. Napkins, a dining cloth, 

sheets and pillowcases. 

Margaret shows us the invitation and the announcement that went out at the time. 

5 

41:22 Kenneth was involved in final exams during this period, along with his church work and 

church services, and when he arrived for the wedding June 15, he was totally exhausted. 

Evangeline had a gift for being chic and dressing well. She knew how to wear a hat, how to 

set the angle. 

There was no good photographer in Wheaton. Most of the college photos were of poor 

quality, and the photographs taken of the wedding party were so poor that Adelle did not order copies 

made. Margaret did like a snapshot someone took of Adelle and her just before the wedding. 

Margaret does not describe the wedding itself, but instead reads the account from the local 

newspaper. The Episcopal service was used, read by Dr. John Wallace Welsh, pastor of the College 

Church, and Dr. George H. Smith of the college faculty—that is, Greek Smith. Margaret liked the 

formality of the Episcopal service, and the beauty of the language. The best man was Ralph 

Varhaug. The ushers were Archibald McKinney, John Welsh, Jr., Evan Welsh, Peter Wall, Everett 

DeVelde, and Wesley Ingels. While the number of people invited was limited, the church was 

practically full. Kenneth was astounded. Every pew was occupied. People were free to come; it was 

that kind of occasion; and of course the event was widely known in town. The chapel was decorated 

with palms and peonies, and the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the long windows made 

a perfect setting. Wendell P. Lovelace sang "Savior, like a shepherd lead us," and then Elliott 

Coleman played the "Wedding March" from Lohengrin. A rainbow effect was carried out in the 

costumes of the bride's attendants, with the two bridesmaids dressed in apricot and seafoam green 

respectively, with large hats to match, and bouquets of pink roses and lavender sweetpeas, and the 

maid of honor, Evangeline, in orchid georgette, in hat and bouquet to match. Margaret carried a 

shower bouquet of white roses and lilies of the valley. 

The reception afterward was at the Mortenson house. The article said they would spend their 

lives in missionary work, probably in Turkey or Palestine. 

Carlton Fisher was the organist for the church at that time. But Elliott Coleman was a fine 

organist. His mother was a guest at Adelle's house many times. Elliott was a year or two behind 

Margaret and Kenneth at the college, and was a great pal of Henry Coray, the younger brother of 

Eddie Coray. Henry had the unusual ability at any moment of blowing a bubble off the end of his 

tongue, according to Kenneth. Kenneth says, sadly, that he has never been able to do it. In any case, 

the Mortensons, including Margaret, knew Elliott well. 

Once, years later, Elliott took Muriel and Margaret out to dinner in New York, and he was 

unable to pay. They had to scrounge for the money to pay, which embarrassed him deeply. She saw 

him only once more, when he came down to Washington with a woman who was a writer, but 

something had changed in him. He wasn't unfriendly; just uneasy. (Kip, Margaret's fourth child, 

later spent a year in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, which Coleman created and 

headed. Coleman was instrumental in providing Kip free tuition for that year. Coleman never 

172


married.) 

6 

54:00 Margaret and Kenneth remember little from the ceremony. Margaret does remember going 

down the aisle on Uncle Chris's arm. Dr. Welsh was rather pompous. Dr. Smith was very gentle. 

Kenneth remembers clearly Wendell Lovelace singing "Savior, like a shepherd lead us." His voice 

just soared. He sang it beautifully. Margaret had wrestled long and hard on what music to use, and 

had finally chosen this simple hymn. After that, it was often used in weddings. 

Margaret remembers leaving down the other aisle—the chapel had two aisles on either side of 

the main, central pews—on Kenneth's arm, walking through that sea of people. Alex Gale's face 

came out to her. She was amazed to think that he had stayed for the wedding, since school was out. 

The reception afterward was just a blur. 

Kenneth remembers how very firm Margaret's responses were, which pleased him 

enormously. So often you can't hear what "the girl has to say." 

Margaret remembers being in the reception, and then the next thing was the two of them 

standing on the platform at the train station, waiting for the train to come in. "It was a very odd 

sensation," Margaret says. After all the crowds, all the events, suddenly there were just the two of 

them, alone. "We were on our own," says Kenneth. 

They took the train in to the LaSalle Hotel. They had forgotten some key thing and 

telephoned Adelle about it; they can't recall what it was; Muriel came into Chicago with the item the 

next day and brought it to them at the hotel. 

The day after the wedding, they spent in Chicago. They had to wait a day for the boat that 

would take them across Lake Michigan. Kenneth recalls that they window-shopped. Had lunch at 

the LaSalle Hotel. Then went over to have an early supper near the dock, where they were to board 

the boat. The restaurant was dimly lit and had an Italian atmosphere. 

173


HOUR 30 


1 

0:00 (IVA1520) Margaret and Kenneth continue telling of the second evening after their wedding. 

In the little Italian restaurant they went into, the troubadours came out immediately. Kenneth ordered 

a nice dinner, which was served. But Margaret began to feel sick to the stomach. The more the 

troubadours played, the more upset she became. So Kenneth called for the bill and prepared to go. 

The management was shocked and tried to find out what was wrong. Nothing, Kenneth said, we just 

want our bill. Margaret says that the troubadours were leering, and it just made her sick. Those 

leering faces poking themselves at her, with their instruments. She just got up and walked out. She 

didn't wait for Kenneth to pay the bill. She was standing out in the street while he took care of things 

inside. So that night they went without dinner. 

7$3( 9 6LGH 

2 

1:30 Both Margaret and Kenneth were very happy with the wedding. Adelle's dress was dark blue, 

with panels of lace in cream. The girls looked lovely; the dresses had a floating quality, and the hats 

had a transparent look. 

Kenneth's mother wrote Adelle when she returned home. She asked for an account of the 

wedding to put in the Meadville newspaper. "Don't you think you and I held up pretty well? We 

were pretty brave, I think, not to give way once." A lovely letter. She signed it "Mrs. Landon," very 

old style. 

The two newlyweds slept like logs on the boat crossing Lake Michigan. They got off at 

Muskegan and took the bus to Shelby, Michigan, and from there rode out to Stony Lake for their 

honeymoon. 

Adelle wrote a note to the couple asking Margaret to pay Mr. Holtz for looking after the 

cottage during the winter. His fee was $1 or perhaps $1.50. The Margaret of today is charmed to 

think of it. 

The cottage was very dirty. They were both tired and slept a lot. In fact, Kenneth was so 

exhausted that he slept and slept through the week, and Margaret, left with little to do, cleaned the 

cottage. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. She enlisted Kenneth as much as possible in this 

mighty labor. "I bet that was about the cleanest cottage at Stony Lake." She also had about seventyfive 

thank-you's to write, and so she worked at those. 

The air smelled good and fresh and piney—as long as the wind was in the right direction. If 

not, there was the persistent smell of a "polecat," that is a skunk, and after a few days, they found its 

"very defunct remains" beside the woodpile. They didn't want to bury him that day, because it was 

Sunday, but the following day they planned to bury him "with all due rites." 

Margaret washed all the curtains and all the windows. 

Kenneth "relaxed," Margaret tells us. He would eat a meal and then he would say, "I think I'll 

go lie down." Three or four hours later, he would wake up, have another meal, then say, "I think I'll 

lie down." She had never seen anyone sleep so much. 

After a week, they returned to Wheaton on the 27th of June, where they packed up all their 

174


gifts and things. They then went up to Gull Lake to be with Kenneth's parents during the Bible 

conference, staying at the cabin owned by Kenneth's father, and eating dinner at the summer hotel 

there. 

Kenneth talks about his sense of shock on seeing all of Margaret's baggage—though this was 

a little later, when all of the things arrived in Princeton. Trunk after trunk, box after box. His idea of 

baggage was a gladstone bag, "and it was seldom full." 

Adelle writes July 6 to say that she had gone up to Racine with the girls and visited A.D.'s 

grave twice. Aunt Mary had set out pansies and another plant on the grave. There was no stone on it 

because the kind of stone Adelle wanted would cost $300, which she couldn't afford at that point. 

July 14, Margaret writes that Mr. Landon went to New York to preach a few days before. He 

was the official "errand boy" while he was there, and he did all the grocery shopping for the family. 

While he was gone, Aunt Clara and Paul appeared—she was Uncle Chris' wife, and Paul his son. It 

was a total surprise for them all. Uncle Chris was there too, the three of them staying at the hotel. So 

the family had an unexpected visit. 

In the end, Margaret wrote over a hundred thank-you's. 

3 

20:30 Kenneth and Margaret visited Niagara Falls, and Margaret wrote to describe it. They started 

out by loading up Kenneth's canoe at Gull Lake with the few things they had with them at that point, 

and took their time going down the lake. Kenneth paddled them all the way down the lake, and then, 

before turning in the canoe—they had an hour and a half to wait—they made a pilgrimage in the 

canoe to Lover's Lane, which was a canal, really, an inlet. They then floated on down to the rental 

place, turned in the canoe, and went by "electric" to Battle Creek, that is, by the electric train. They 

boarded their train for Niagara that evening. During the night, they heard a loud crash of breaking 

glass and in the morning learned that a passing freight train had smashed a number of windows on the 

other side of the car. Fortunately, no one was hurt. 

There were many people at Niagara. Kenneth and Margaret walked around and viewed the 

falls from various perspectives. Everything was quiet except for the thunder of the water dashing 

against the rocks. There was a beautiful rainbow above the falls. They took "the Great Gorge" trip. 

There were many possible excursions to take, all of them charging a $1 apiece. They didn't go on 

these. But then Kenneth heard of "the cave of the winds," and they set out for that until they 

encountered a cabdriver, asked him if "the cave" was worth the trouble, and received an emphatic 

NO! in reply. So they didn't go. But "the Great Gorge" trip ZDV worthwhile. The view of the 

Canadian falls was magnificent, finer than the American falls. They rode down into the gorge, and 

stopped off at various places of interest. Niagara Glen was quite beautiful. Margaret was so hot and 

tired that she took off her shoes and stockings and rested her feet in the water. She had walked 

completely through her stockings! 

Margaret describes the marvellous dinner they had at that point, for $1 apiece. "And Kenneth 

had a glass of beer, but I don't tell Mother that." [She is reading from a letter to her mother.] This was 

during Prohibition in the U.S., so it was illegal on the U.S. side of the border. But in Canada, it was 

legal. And Kenneth said that he liked beer, and took advantage of the opportunity. He has no 

memory of this. 

They then crossed the gorge back to the U.S. and came up to the falls again, another 

impressive sight. They were both so exhausted at the end of the day, they didn't even feel like eating. 

They just had some ice cream cones. 

They had to wait a while in Buffalo to catch a train to Trenton. 

175


4 

28:40 As it drew toward train time, Margaret noticed that Kenneth had disappeared. She had been 

reading, and realized he had been gone for some time. At the last moment, Kenneth reappeared, 

looking very white, and seeming to be unconcerned about making the train. "My heart sank for a 

minute." Kenneth just stretched out on one of the benches and lay there. This was an early 

experience of "ptomaine poisoning," which was going to trouble him from time to time from then on. 

He wonders if it was something in the ice cream. When he was very tired, as he was then, and if he 

ate something "just a little off color," he became deathly ill. "And then I have explosions from every 

orifice. I throw up, and have diarrhea. I was just pea green." 

The first time this had happened was on his first visit to Stony Lake with the Mortensons. "I 

went unconscious at the top of the stairs and fell all the way down—the whole length of the stairs." 

This had been at a hotel, about a year before. 

Kenneth gave Margaret the tickets, and she located the train and gate and got a redcap to help 

them. He was a black man, and he was a gentleman, a real gentleman. When he saw Kenneth, he 

immediately assumed that the young man was inebriated. He was very helpful, very kind. He and 

Margaret managed between them to get Kenneth up and onto the train and into the compartment. 

Margaret doesn't know how she would have managed without him. 

It was an all-Pullman train to Atlantic City. In their compartment, Margaret helped Kenneth 

get undressed and lie down in the lower berth. The compartment was like a stateroom on a boat. 

Two berths, a long mirror, lavatory, water cooler, chair, and a toilet disguised as a bench. Margaret 

worried and worried that someone else would be using the upper berth. She just sat there, most of the 

night, as Kenneth lay unconscious, swaying with the train, feeling she could not use that upper berth. 

She didn't know that it was illegal for the company to put anyone else in there. Finally, in the middle 

of the night, Kenneth woke and was promptly his usual self again. Margaret then felt free to go to 

bed. 

They changed trains in Philadelphia, going on to Trenton, then caught the trolley to 

Bordentown, New Jersey. Lawyer Hutchinson and his wife lived there and welcomed Margaret and 

Kenneth to their home. 

5 

36:54 It was hot, in the 100's. Margaret reads letters from Adelle. 


6 

40:55 The Hutchinson house was at 25 Farnsworth Ave., Bordentown, NJ. There were two 

daughters, Cecilia and Gertrude. Margaret comments that the kitchen was the worst she ever worked 

in. It was too big. Nothing was near anything else. 

Kenneth's church in Columbus was called the First Presbyterian Church. As for the church in 

Plattsburg, there would often be no more than two or three congregants, but the church was endowed, 

and so survived. 

Kenneth fell sick again their first week in Bordentown, and a homeopathic doctor was called. 

By the next day, even though Kenneth was very weak, he was able to go to church and preach—and 

preach with power. It was another experience of "ptomaine poisoning," which they say now doesn't 

exist. Kenneth tells again how he went unconscious at the head of the stairs in a hotel at Stony Lake 

and fell the full length of the stairs, ending up at the bottom. He came to, lying on the floor at the 

176


bottom, and his back looked as though "it had been beaten with a hundred stripes." That would have 

been about 1924. These severe attacks lasted until 1928 or 1929, when Kenneth finally got over 

them. They were violent, but they tended to pass quickly. 

Three generations of Hutchinsons had lived in the house. It probably started as a small house, 

and then additions had been built. You had to go up stairs or down stairs to and from almost every 

room. The house was gray, with shutters everyplace, like most other houses in the area. Every night, 

at the Hutchinsons' request, they had to make the rounds of the shutters in all the rooms downstairs 

except the parlor. They had to raise the window, then the screen, then lean far out to unhook the 

shutters and pull them to. There was nothing to hold up the window and screen, so these rested on 

their necks while they were pulling the shutters closed. Then they reclosed the window and screen. 

It was a bit of an ordeal! 

The house "bulges and oozes." Three generations of a family had collected a great deal of 

stuff, and everything was full of it. 

Kenneth and Margaret were staying in two rooms upstairs. There were several rooms on the 

third floor as well. The Hutchinsons had left when Kenneth and Margaret arrived, for their annual 

trip to Atlantic City—possibly Ocean City. The Landons were housesitting for them. So they had 

the run of the house. 

7 

48:03 This was when Lawyer Hutchinson taught Kenneth the difference between chicken eggs and 

duck eggs. The only thing Hutchinson asked, he said as he and his wife were leaving, was that 

Kenneth collect the eggs and put them in the ice box. Then he added, very solemnly, that Kenneth 

should be sure to take only the chicken eggs, not the duck eggs. Kenneth was baffled. Well, he 

began collecting the eggs, as he had been asked, and he said to Margaret that he just didn't know the 

difference between chicken eggs and duck eggs. They all looked the same to him. Margaret didn't 

know either. The chickens ran wild. They were all over the yard, and up in the lumber, and Kenneth 

had to hunt everywhere for these darn eggs. When Hutchinson came back, Kenneth told him of his 

quandary. How could he tell the difference between the two kinds of eggs? Well, I'll show you, 

Hutchinson said. He took a pot of water and began putting the eggs into it, one by one. The ones that 

floated were "duck eggs." In other words, they were rotten. The eggs had been laid all over the 

place, and you never knew if you were getting a new one or an old one. 

8 

49:28 Margaret's first trip to Atlantic City and her first glimpse of the ocean. Aug 6, 1926. Sunday 

after church at Plattsburg, they stopped for dinner at Mrs. Ridgeway's. 

Margaret suspends the story and asks Kenneth to tell about Mrs. Ridgeway. She was the 

widow of a man of great wealth in Philadelphia. He had not necessarily made his fortune in honest 

ways. But she herself was a very honorable and church-going woman. She had a son whom 

everyone called "Ridge," a daughter, Mrs. Bruce, and an older son, Jake, who never came to church. 

Jake was a bit of a rake who was having an affair with his neighbor's wife, a Mrs. Bishop. A 

handsome woman. Ridge was a bachelor. Mrs. Bruce's husband was a professor at Columbia 

University. After Kenneth had been at First Presbyterian for a while, Ridge began coming pretty 

regularly to church. 

Mrs. Ridgeway was quite a character. Like so many rich people, she was very parsimonious 

in some ways and very generous in others. She and Kenneth began to hit it off when she discovered 

that he was not intimidated by her. He enjoyed her, and would kid her. She was the kind of person 

177


who tried to enforce her will. She tried to tell him how to run the church, but he responded that the 

matters in question would be decided by the elders. "I'm always consulted on this," she said, and he 

answered, "Well, it isn't that way now, Mrs. Ridgeway." He kidded her along, and the two of them 

got along famously. She really enjoyed having someone that she couldn't run or shove around. She 

began to invite him out to the house and load him up with all kinds of goodies. When he got his car, 

she would tell him to come to the house when he needed gas—she had her own gasoline pump at the 

barn—and fill it up and be sure to get the last drop in that he could. 

She discouraged Kenneth from getting married until he had graduated from Princeton and was 

well-established. But of course he did it KLV way. 

She would have her cook prepare a duck for them, sometimes two. But she was very 

autocratic. She had a big, sprawling house, and a huge farm. She had a house in Philadelphia as 

well. And Ridge had a farm of his own. 

Mrs. Bruce, the only daughter, married late and had no children. And neither son married. So 

incredibly, they left this very substantial estate to their chauffeur. His wife always had a dirty neck, 

Kenneth tells us. It bothered Agnes no end to see Mrs. Ridgeway's magnificent diamond necklace— 

several strands of diamonds—around the woman's fat, wrinkled, dirty neck. You could see the dirt in 

the cracks of the neck! Blazing with diamonds!! 

In any case, Sunday after church at Plattsburg, Kenneth and Margaret stopped at Mrs. 

Ridgeway's to say good-by to her, as she was leaving the next day for Swanscoat, where she spent her 

summers. She probably had a home there too. Mrs. Bruce was there. The fact was mentioned that 

Margaret had never seen the ocean, and Kenneth remarked that they were going down to Atlantic 

City as soon as the car would run fast enough so that it wouldn't take all day. The car would only go 

about eighteen miles an hour at that point! The next Monday, their "play day," the Landons lay in 

bed wondering what to do, when there was a loud ring at the door. Kenneth heard Mrs. Bruce's voice 

calling, and when he stuck his head out the window, she asked him if he and Margaret would like to 

join her and her family on a trip to Atlantic City. As they were prepared to depart, Mrs. Bruce 

slipped a five-dollar bill into Kenneth's hand, saying Mrs. Ridgeway had given it to her to pass to the 

young couple for their day at the beach. 

They arrived about noon and went down to the boardwalk. Margaret's first glimpse of the 

ocean looked not unlike the lake. Greenish gray waves; sandy beach that looked a bit dirty. Lots of 

stores. Piers with commercial exhibits and various kinds of amusements. After lunch, they took a 

stroll. Then they went swimming. "I don't like the taste of the water," Margaret wrote. 

9 

57:50 Kenneth and Margaret entertained the "Klique," his youth group. Which reminds Kenneth of 

the famous occasion at about this time when they had the Klique over and served them two ducks. 

Here were these big husky farm kids, who were big eaters, and fast eaters, and here Kenneth was 

carving two ducks. They were coming back for seconds while Kenneth was still carving, and as it 

turned out, he never got a piece of the duck himself. They did it on purpose, and they thought it was 

so funny. They sat there just howling with laughter, eating as fast as they could and sending their 

plates back for more duck until it was all gone. Kenneth had other things to eat, but no duck! 

Margaret was learning to drive. Practicing on a country road, stopping, turning. In 

Pennsylvania, you had to have a license, one of the first states in which this was true. 

Margaret tells us that they had not had "even one altercation" so far. 

178


HOUR 31 


1 

0:00 (VB350) Kenneth and Margaret say that their "period of adjustment" to living together was 

perfectly natural. They had gone to school together for two years. Sat in the same classes. In the 

dining room. Visits back and forth with their families. Kenneth was often in the Mortenson home in 

Wheaton. They had written many letters back and forth. 

Kenneth on Margaret's baggage. "The baggage? Ohhhh!" He reads a letter from Margaret. 

At the end of their summer in Bordentown, Kenneth borrowed a truck from Mr. Deacon and drove to 

Princeton with their first load of baggage. "First load, mind you!" Trunks, boxes of books, and 

whatnot. The young couple drove up the most fashionable and beautiful streets of Princeton, proudly 

viewing the city from the truck. It was Margaret's first view of Princeton. "My biggest surprise," 

Kenneth says, "was all the stuff that came with her. I had QR idea. I was absolutely stunned." 

Margaret was a fine cook. Her mother had made sure of that. 

Margaret describes Kenneth's work in the church. He paid calls on many of the parishioners. 

Wrote his paper. Worked with the youth. Prepared sermons and held services. There was always 

something. And Margaret ran the Hutchinson house. 

Evangeline, and Elizabeth came to visit them for a week at the end of August, and Evangeline 

wrote a description of the house. There were seven or eight bedrooms, they couldn't decide which, 

since there was one door on the third floor they could not open. There were eight entrances to the 

house. And there were no two rooms on one floor. It was always up or down. Closets, cupboards, 

stairs, and antiques everywhere. The closet for dishes was a large room, with shelves solid with 

dishes. It was like a maze. There was no plan; it had just been put together. One little bedroom was 

reached by a private stairway off the bedroom. There was no other access to it. Most of the beds 

were fourposters, some reaching almost to the ceiling. 

2 

9:10 Late August. A lovely electric iron came as a belated wedding present. Evangeline wrote that 

when she was visiting with Kenneth's mother, Mae told her that her sister, Kenneth's Aunt Maude, 

was "crazy about Margaret." She was a darling. Kenneth's favorite aunt. Kenneth remembers her 

coming to him and saying, "I hope you don't mind my saying this, but Margaret is OXVK!" 

Margaret on the Wrights. They lived on a farm, and when she and Kenneth went up there 

for the Wrights' 50th wedding anniversary, the old house was still there, but going to ruin. A shame, 

because it was the Tory headquarters in the Revolutionary War, a historic building. The Wrights 

were Quakers, of course, so they used "thee" instead of "you" in normal conversation. They didn't 

use "thou." It was always "thee." Their household was a two-level family, the Walter Wrights and 

then their grown children who were married and with children of their own. They all used first 

names, but Kenneth could never bring himself to call the patriarch—this huge man, who was older 

than Kenneth's own father—"Walter." So he got around it by calling him "the Big Chief." 

Joe and Agnes—who was from Maryland—lived with them, and had three children of their 

own, Alice, who was five, Joe, who was four, and Ruth, who was about two. They had this big old 

ratty house. They had a modern bathroom, but the water would just trickle in when you wanted a 

bath. They were very hospitable. The Landons were always welcome to spend the night. On one 

179


such night, there were so many guests staying at the Wrights that the blankets ran out. So Kenneth 

and Margaret wound up with an old bullhide for a blanket. It was, in fact, the hide of a bull that had 

inhabited the farm. "The thing was as stiff as a board," says Kenneth. "It just stuck straight out over 

the bed, and we were huddled together under it." It was an incredible night. The thing weighed 

about a ton! Kenneth tells us. 

There was a tremendous warmth in that household. The Big Chief, if he were eating chicken, 

he would eat the whole chicken. If he were eating watermelon, he would eat the whole watermelon. 

The six veal cutlets Margaret asked Kenneth to buy at the butcher's, thinking he would come 

back with something like porkchops. But what he returned with were cuts, each of which weighed 

several pounds and would "feed a multitude." 

Margaret tells of going swimming in the "cedar water." Joe and Agnes took them out to the 

spot. The water was called "cedar water" because it came out of the cedar swamps and looked rather 

like ice tea. It was very buoyant and refreshing. They had a terrible time getting dressed because the 

bathhouse was closed! 

3 

16:47 The Wrights made cottage cheese in the dish pan. They used two quarts of cream to make 

ice cream, and then would eat a gallon in an evening. It was unbelievable to Margaret to watch food 

being prepared and eaten on that level. The Big Chief would pick a dozen ears of corn from the field, 

bring them in and prepare them, and eat them all at a sitting. 

The reason the Wrights were living in that shabby old house was because of something that 

had happened between the elder Wrights and Walter's brother Charles. They had an unwritten 

agreement with Uncle Charles that they would work a dairy farm that belonged to him for a number 

of years, at the end of which he would give it to them. He would pay them nothing. They worked for 

nothing. They had just the food off it. They lived in a beautiful brick house on the farm that had 

every convenience. And then, in the end, Uncle Charles broke the agreement and simply turned them 

out. All they could do at that point was to get the shabby old place they now had and start over with 

a herd of golden guernsey cows. These cows produced a milk so rich that they earned a premium for 

it. 

Sadly, Adelle had to sell the cottage at Stony Lake. It had meant so much to them all that 

Margaret felt real distress over loss. 

Mr. Wills' funeral. 

4 

24:08 Evangeline and Betty's late-August visit to Kenneth and Margaret. Their ride on the 

Wolverine, the train, and the man who did his dressing and undressing in his seat across the aisle. 

Margaret reads their letters. The big meal Margaret prepared for them when they arrived. 

Kenneth tells how he prepared his sermons. "Lying down with my eyes closed." Sunday 

morning, he would wake very early and lie warm and cozy under the covers and preach his whole 

sermon through, two or three times in his mind, and then get up. Boom. Had the whole thing. 

On Kenneth's visit to the old lady who belonged to the church and who made her living 

washing and ironing. She had prepared a wonderful angel food cake for him. She was a very 

touching person. She would slip Kenneth a dollar, and she herself had nothing. 

Margaret reads Elizabeth's letter on their trip on the train. Watching as they went across the 

St. Lawrence River and how pretty it was at night. All the trees against the sky in the country. Every 

once and a while passing through a village in the night, everyone asleep. The mountains they rode 

through. Eve said they were foothills, "But I think they were mountains because they were high, and 

180


all full of trees, and were made of rock." They had to be mountains! 

Elizabeth was fourteen. 

On little Ruth Wright and her kittens in the barn. 

5 

35:23 Evangeline's letter on the first Sunday. Her impressions of Kenneth's preaching. There was 

a congregation of thirty-seven, including all the Landons and Mortensons. Kenneth preached on the 

book of Esther, and preached very well, too. "I was surprised at how easily he talked. There were no 

notes, and his talk lasted an hour. Kenneth has a vivid imagination, as you know. In fact it is the 

kind that sometimes fools him about the actual truth, when he is telling stories." The theme was the 

unseen guidance of providence in our lives. 

They went to dinner at the Wrights. Little Ruth was two, and the little kittens were just nice 

furry things to her. She would grab them by their tails, shove them into shoes. 

They then went on to Plattsburg for the second church service. Down in the woods behind it 

was the cemetery. Evangeline describes a striking old table in the church. The congregation was 

"diminutive, to say the least." There was only one congregant that day. Kenneth says that several 

times, when he came, there was only one person in the church. 

This reminds Kenneth of a famous story when the preacher arrived and found only one person 

in the church. The preacher asked the person if he thought they should go ahead and hold the service. 

The man said that he was a farmer and was used to feeding cattle. And if only one cow came to be 

fed, he would feed her. Okay, said the preacher, and so he went up to the pulpit and went through the 

whole shebang, the whole rigmarole, all the hymns and prayers and everything. At the end he came 

down and thanked the man for coming. And the man said, "Preacher, remember I said to you that if 

only one cow comes, I would feed her. But preacher, I don't dump the whole load of grain on her!" 

That day, Kenneth didn't preach his Esther sermon again. He preached a new sermon from 

the Song of Solomon, and this impressed Evangeline too. 

6 

42:25 Elizabeth was called "Snooks" or "Snookie," and signed one of her letters that way. 

Kenneth's mother Mae had come to visit at the same time. 

Margaret reads a letter to Adelle from Kenneth on the visit of her daughters, and Margaret 

comments that it sounds just like him. "I never improve," he answers. "Oh," she says, "you can't 

improve on that, can you?" 

Mae's mother was in her final illness by now, and that was why Mae had come East. 

Kenneth's old Ford gave up the ghost, so he took it to a dealer and traded it in on a new Ford 

coupé. Got $150 for the trade-in. They used the last money that was Margaret's own and put it in on 

the car. Owed $295 more, and had one year to pay it in. It was a bitter disappointment to Margaret 

to lose the last of her money, the last that was her own. She had had dreams about what she would do 

with it. And it would be many years before she had money of her own again. 

7 

47:50 Margaret never became a Presbyterian, never joined a Presbyterian church. She remained a 

Methodist, as she had grown up. But she was completely involved in the churches Kenneth pastored. 

[At this moment in the recording, there was an electrical power failure, and recording could not be resumed.] 

181



8 

48:15 Margaret continues on the visit of Evangeline and Elizabeth. Betty's letter on the farmers' 

picnic. Margaret and her sisters go on Saturday to the Sesquicentennial in Philadelphia. The replica 

of historical High Street in 1776. 

Adelle became fairly heavy in the years after A.D.'s death. 

Real estate firms in the Wheaton area were failing. For Adelle, business was still very "slow." 

The Landons' summer was coming to an end. September 17. Margaret was cleaning the 

Hutchinson house. Washing curtains. Washing windows. 

Margaret took her driver's license in Trenton September 15, her first driver's license. 

They moved to 23 Edwards Place in Princeton October 1. 

The girl at Wheaton who looked remarkably like Margaret. Adelle writes of seeing her and of 

how her heart almost stopped on sight of the girl. 

Margaret describes all the problems with the old car. The new car was a dark green Ford 

coupé. 

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HOUR 32 


1 

0:00 (VB770) Margaret reads her letter on driving to Princeton in the big farm truck they borrowed 

from Mr. Deacon to take their first load of baggage. 

Adelle writes that Evangeline went to a party at the dorm in Wheaton during which the 

engagement of Evan Welsh to Betty Sherk was announced. "I may as well admit to you it gave me a 

heartache from which I have not yet recovered. I have always so loved that boy." Betty Sherk was a 

lovely person and later married a very fine man who was a missionary to China. But she came from a 

rather uncultivated family, and the way she dressed and did things did not please Mrs. Welsh. Evan 

was a rascal in those days. Full of fun. Always up to something or other. He was very well liked in 

town. The only member of his family that was. A lot of the merchants disliked the college because 

the Blanchards were very anti-Mason, and it was a Masonic town. There was a lot of antagonism, but 

never any for Evan. 

Margaret describes Mrs. Welsh. She set out to break up the engagement, but she was wise 

enough to know that that wouldn't be enough. She had to replace Betty. So she set her heart on 

Evangeline. And Adelle worked with her. But what Mrs. Welsh wanted was, not Evangeline, but the 

end of Evan's engagement to Betty. Evangeline was useful to her until that was accomplished. After 

that, Mrs. Welsh's possessiveness of Evan turned on Evangeline. "This is to get way ahead of the 

story, but Evangeline told me that her wedding day was one of the saddest days in her life. Because 

as soon as it became apparent that Evan was really going to marry Evangeline, . . . Mrs. Welsh began 

to put on an act" of having heart trouble, even heart attacks. And as the day of the wedding 

approached, she went into such a state of distress—"I can't go. I can't possibly go. I just can't bear it, 

losing my son. I can't bear it!"—that all Jack and Evan Welsh's attention became focused on her, 

"what to do about Mother." It went on and on, and the effect was that Evangeline was shut out. That 

was just the beginning of what was to come. Mrs. Welsh never intended to let go, and never did. She 

demanded that Evan either call her or write her every day when they were in Minneapolis. It was an 

unnatural relationship. 

Finally, she said she would come to the wedding if there were no music. 

2 

7:22 At the end of September, Kenneth and Margaret moved to Princeton to live in an apartment. 

In every letter, Margaret asked Adelle how soon she was coming. She had promised to visit. 

The Mortensons were a close family, and Adelle and Kenneth had an excellent relationship. When 

the Margaret of today read all these letters and found herself saying in practically every one, "How 

soon are you coming, Mother?" it reminded her of the Roman senator who ended every speech with, 

"Carthage must be destroyed!" 

Kenneth's parents decided to help them pay for the car, and sent them $20 a month for the 

next year. 

Their apartment was on a little side street between the seminary and the university. 

"We have sent our application to the Presbyterian Board. Must take physical examinations." 

Dinner at Kenneth's Club, to which she was invited. Kenneth was called on to make a speech. 

They went to the Princeton-Washington & Lee football game, which Margaret found 

183


distressing because there was so much drinking. She had never seen that at the Big Ten games in the 

Midwest. Here people were drunk. 

3 

12:10 Margaret tells of the Gospel preacher who was invited to address the chapel at Princeton by 

mistake. The students booed him lustily. Originally, Princeton had been a Presbyterian school, and 

right on into the beginning of this century, it continued to be a Christian school. But all that was 

gone now. It was like a country club, and it was called "the best country club on the East coast." It 

became so good that parents whose interest was in the excellence of the education but who cared 

nothing about the Christian faith began sending their sons. The evangelist retorted effectively, 

silencing the students, and proceeded with his speech. But it was an experience no one soon forgot. 

Dr. Welsh came unexpectedly to Princeton and dropped in at the Landons' for dinner. (When 

Adelle moved into her new home on Cross St. in Wheaton, Dr. Welsh moved his family into the 

house at 610 Irving Ave.) 

The green double slicker coat that Kenneth and Margaret bought—for both of them to use. 

The Wrights were giving many vegetables to the Landons, which helped Margaret on the cost 

of groceries. One thing they gave them was a keg of sauerkraut. Margaret has never been able to 

face sauerkraut since. "I can't get it down." She has problems with shad too. 

4 

19:48 Kenneth writes Adelle, "After almost five months of Margaret, twenty-four hours a day, I 

still think I have the finest wife in the world, and all the rest of the fellows got left pretty badly. I 

think I love her more now than when we were first married. And that's going some." Kenneth added 

that he especially enjoyed the walks he and Margaret were going out on, every day. The Margaret of 

today laughs, "All my life he's been dragging me out for these walks!" They took the Scripture to 

talk about. Kenneth was working on his sermons all the time. 

Kenneth talks about how much he loves walking. 

More vegetables from the Wrights, and one whole, baked duck. 

Margaret tells us that the Mortensons were all members of the College Church of Christ in 

Wheaton, which was a Congregational church at that time. That was her church, then. 

Adelle writes about the leaks in the roof when there was rain, damaging the plaster and 

flooding the basement. 

Kenneth planned a new series of evangelistic services at his church, to begin November 29. 

Adelle writes of new leaks in the bathroom, around the tub, which damaged the room below. 

The place was poorly built. Prof. Bowles came and declared that there must be a clog in the pipes. 

His own house was magnificent. 

The cornucopia of fruit and vegetables on the altar at Thanksgiving, pumpkins, oranges, 

apples, dates, grapefruit, grapes, bananas, cabbage, nuts, gallons of cider, and fruit candy—all of it 

for the Landons. 

5 

28:40 Miss Abbie Farwell, a delightful older woman who was behind the altarful of fruit and 

vegetables. They had pheasant for dinner with her. She was a very dignified, slim little woman, 

quite elegant, and an intimate friend of Mrs. Ridgeway. She was poor, and lived in a little house all 

by herself. She was very faithful in the church, and she and Kenneth became great friends. When 

there was a church picnic—before he was married—he generally loaded Miss Farwell in with him. 

She was a "safe date." He had a bit of a problem with some of the girls in the church, who kept 

184


putting themselves forward. 

Kenneth presented the Gospel to a sixteen-year-old boy in his church, and led him to Christ. 

"Kenneth is a perpetual revival all his own," wrote Margaret. 

Adelle writes of listening to a musical program on the radio at Mrs. McShane's house in 

Wheaton, her first experience of that. Very exciting. 

6 

34:38 Margaret begins planning for Christmas. Since she had been a child, she had always put a lot 

of thought into it. She decided to buy Kenneth a Remington portable typewriter. $60. She would 

have to buy it on time. Her food allowance for the week was $7, and it was hard to squeeze money 

out, but she had managed to save $13. And Ralph Varhaug had an account at the bookstore and 

could get the typewriter for $54 instead of $60. And she could get $15 on the old Corona. So with 

Ralph's help, she got it, and hid it in her trunk. She was so afraid Kenneth would figure out what she 

had gotten. 

Marian Morrison, Evangeline's friend, who had so much money. Evangeline had nothing; 

worked for 35 cents an hour. 

A call came from Dr. Erdman's secretary inviting the Landons for dinner. He was a very nice 

man, very gracious. An important figure at the seminary. 

Elizabeth goes on her first date, a bit to Adelle's dismay. She was going to "the Academy" 

there in Wheaton. 

7 

40:37 Kenneth runs into a Mr. Lindsay Hadley on the university campus quite accidentally. It was 

evening, just coming on toward supper time. The two of them met as they came from opposite 

directions and fell into step. Kenneth was "always a friendly guy and saying hello to everybody," so 

he asked the man where he was going, and the answer was that he was going to Renwick's to get a 

sandwich. "Hah!" Kenneth responded. "I am going home to roast chicken." He invited the man 

home with him on the spot, and Hadley accepted. Kenneth had no idea who he was. Hadley said he 

was visiting on campus, and Kenneth assumed that he was a parent. So they sat down, and Hadley 

"lolloped into that roast chicken. I was astounded at the way he ate." He especially liked the apple 

pie. Naturally, in conversation they learned who Mr. Lindsay Hadley was, the candidate secretary of 

the Presbyterian mission board. A happy coincidence. They spent the evening talking about the 

missionary life. Hadley told them there was practically no hope of Kenneth and Margaret's going 

anywhere they wanted to go, particularly to Hilla. Mesopotamia had no funds for sending out any 

missionaries this year. There were to be no appointments to Syria and Persia. The meeting of the 

board was to be the following Monday, when they might possibly be assigned to China. 

The chicken Margaret roasted was a gift from Mrs. Ridgeway. People were always giving 

them gifts. One Sunday Mrs. Ridgeway gave them a roll of bills that amounted to $42. Someone 

gave them a large capon. Someone else gave them a substantial amount of cranberries. 

Kenneth wrote out all their Christmas cards by hand, to every family in the church. It was a 

beautiful card. Margaret reads the message Kenneth composed, concluding, "Then, pausing for a 

moment before the thought of the Christ child, the greatest gift of the great Giver of gifts, say with us 

in the words of Paul, 'Thanks be unto God for his wonderful gift!'" Kenneth opines that he must have 

had writer's cramp by the time he got through writing all those cards! 

"Well, it was a great love affair," Kenneth says. "It was my first church." 

185


8 

46:18 Kenneth's description of their first Christmas together, in a letter to Adelle. One of his gifts 

to Margaret was a gold wrist "doojag" for her wristwatch. (No explanation.) But his main gift was a 

"Parker duofold set all done up in green" that he bought at the bookstore. He got a big packing box, 

put the set in the bottom, and filled the box with magazines until it weighed a ton. She was 

completely fooled. 

What Margaret did was to present Kenneth with an elegant little box of dates for Christmas, in 

which he found a note telling him to go to the garret, which he did. There he found a peppermint 

candy cane with another note telling him to go to the cellar. In the cellar he found a ten-cent package 

of figs with a note telling him to go back to the living room, where he'd started from. By this time, he 

knew the chase was hot, for there were no more rooms to send him to! "And there, with my breath 

whistling like the Tunerville Trolley for a crossing, I found my Christmas present, and I am writing to 

you with it." The typewriter! Immediately, he began calculating where in the world Margaret got the 

money to buy it with. 

Adelle's Christmas present from Evangeline was a three-minute telephone call to Kenneth and 

Margaret, a great luxury in those days. She put in the call at about 9:00 p.m. and then had to wait for 

the phone company to put it through and ring her. She and the girls sat and waited until midnight, 

then had some food and got ready for bed. The girls actually went to bed, while Adelle lay on the 

couch in the living room. Then at about 3:00 a.m. the phone rang, and the girls came running. The 

call had gone through! Evangeline was in a daze from waking so soon after falling asleep. The 

Mortensons and Landons could hear each other perfectly across all that distance. "It seemed almost 

as though we could see you." They hardly knew what to say on such an important occasion. But the 

thing was just doing it, talking on the telephone to loved ones so far away. It was a thrilling 

experience. 

9 

52:50 When Margaret was in high school, there were little recitations that the kids had made up 

among themselves and would recite as fast as they could. The game was to see who could say it the 

fastest. There were several of them. Margaret does one for us, "My mother sent me to the 

apothecary shop quicker'n blazes. Bud's home sick with the picken chox. She wants five cents' 

worth of paregoric in this tin dipper. The wine bottle's full of sweet bitters in it. Got any?" She then 

takes us through the words slowly, and then recites them at speed a second time. 

Kenneth speaks of the evangelistic services in early December, which ran three weeks. 

10 

56:27 Kenneth talks about his last year at Princeton. His studies. His church. Preparing to go to 

the mission field. His new wife. It was a great year in his life. He tells how they learned that 

Margaret was pregnant, another great event of that year. She was vomiting. Ill. They went to the 

doctor, who decided that she had appendicitis. This hit Kenneth hard, because he had lost his brother. 

Now he feared he was about to lose his wife. But the doctor didn't think it was serious enough yet to 

operate. Margaret kept vomiting, though, and finally the doctor sent them to a surgeon, who 

examined her. The surgeon burst into laughter. "Young lady," he said, "your case of appendicitis 

will be a boy or a girl." She was pregnant, and the child would be born in September. 

Margaret continued to be nauseous, vomiting. She was really sick. So Kenneth did much of 

the cooking from then on. He had lots of nursing to do. 

He was a firm believer in pastoral calling, so he did a lot of pastoral calling. And he had his 

youth group, which took a lot of time. "I was spinning," Kenneth says. 

186


Kenneth speaks of how he almost won the sermon contest at Princeton without knowing he 

was in it. He had no idea there was a contest. No one had told him. And there was a money prize 

too. He was told to preach, and so he did, in a casual but what seemed to him effective way, 

preaching from the floor of the chapel rather than from the pulpit. Doing that cost him considerable 

criticism from the judges, so that he lost the contest he didn't know he was in. 

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HOUR 33 

Session #24 continued March 29, 1977 Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth at this point 

1 

0:00 (VB1350) Kenneth continues on the sermon contest at Princeton. They all had to preach 

sermons before the faculty. He could preach off the top of his head for an hour at any moment, on 

any one of dozens of texts. He memorized the Scripture; didn't even have to pick up a Bible. So he 

preached that important sermon extemporaneously. And still almost won! 

Session #25 April 6, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

January, 1927, "a tremendous year in our lives." Adelle and the girls went to the church 

dinner at the college on New Year's day. It was a tradition then. They stayed for a concert afterward, 

and then went to call on the McShanes. Mr. McShane told them of the plans to build the east wing of 

the main building, later called Blanchard Hall. The stone for it was to come from the same quarry in 

Batavia that the original stone for the building had come from. They were going to renovate the 

original section of the building, the tower and the central part. It was in very bad repair. 

Evangeline had gone with Archie McKinney since her freshman year. He was a tremendous 

basketball player, and a very fine man. 

Margaret tells us that, ever since childhood, she has had colds that were almost as bad as the 

flu. 

She reads from a letter she wrote her mother that January, after Kenneth's parents had come to 

visit her and Kenneth. "Kenneth's mother is still in very poor health, and probably always will be, I 

guess, unless God sees fit to perform a miracle for her. It will be hard on her if Kenneth leaves this 

country. She has less to live for than almost anyone I know. For weeks at a time she will be sick, 

alone in the house. She has few neighbors, and those she has are not congenial. Her church 

relationships are not very pleasant. Then when Kenneth's father is away on trips, she is completely 

alone. I don't see how she stands it. No wonder Kenneth is her biggest interest." 

Margaret tells of feeling cold at Princeton and wearing Kenneth's old bathrobe, though "it 

smelled so, I didn't like to wear it." She adds, laughing, "I've always had a sensitive nose. That was 

one thing that made the tropics very difficult for me at first. My nose was offended!" One of her 

Christmas gifts from Adelle was a bathrobe of her own. 

Kenneth bought Margaret a black satin dress and a blue Bolivia coat as an after-Christmas 

gift—probably using a gift of money from someone in the church. 

2 

7:20 The story of Ned Stonehouse, the bright young man in Princeton seminary. When Kenneth 

and Margaret applied to be missionaries, someone told Ned this, and he exclaimed, "Not WKDW jazzy 

dame!" Of all the things Margaret never was! But she did love beautiful clothes, and she figures Ned 

must have seen her in her black satin dress. 

In early January, the Landons learned that they had been accepted as missionaries, if they 

were willing to go to Siam. They were given several weeks to decide if they wished to go there. The 

decision rested with them. Margaret reads a long letter on their meeting with the authorities of the 

mission board in New York City. The man in charge of Siam and the Philippines was named Dr. 

188


Arthur Judson Brown. Mr. Hadley, the candidate secretary, joined them. 

(Muriel Fuller dropped in. She was living and working in New York, and Margaret had 

written to ask her to drop by if she could. She could only stay a short time. Her family lived close to 

Central Park. Her grandfather had a seat on the stock exchange and was a very wealthy man. Her 

mother had alienated him by marrying the family dentist. Muriel and Otis were supposed to have 

received a substantial inheritance from their grandfather, but they were cheated out of it. Muriel was 

the one friend of Margaret's who was totally faithful to Margaret through all those years in Siam, 

sending her letters, magazines, books, gifts. "I'm still grateful to her.") 

7$3( 9, 6LGH 

3 

13:26 Margaret continues reading her long letter home. Dr. Brown questioned Kenneth about a 

statement he made in his letter of application to the board, "I don't believe in this popular 

'brotherhood of man' and 'fatherhood of God' stuff." Stuff? Stuff? He went on to speak of these 

beliefs as widely held in the church. How could Kenneth look compassionately on the Siamese if he 

did not regard them as his brothers? Kenneth explained that he did not count anyone his brother who 

did not have the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior, and that he felt sure that God was the 

Father only of believers. He said that this belief, however, would not make him look down on the 

Siamese, as he saw the Siamese as his neighbors and that Christ had commanded us to love our 

neighbor as ourselves. 

Dr. Brown then turned to Margaret and asked her about a statement in her letter of application 

that she saw Scripture as dictated by the Spirit. She knew nothing of the dictation theory of 

Scripture. 

Margaret speaks of the controversy at Princeton between the "fundamentalists" and the 

"modernists." Kenneth had taken no part in the fuss. But he and Margaret were on the conservative 

side. The Presbyterian board tended to be on the liberal side. 

Kenneth's parents were strongly opposed to Kenneth's going out under the Presbyterian board 

because of the controversy. They felt he should go under a "faith mission." They were especially 

concerned because the board had members who did not hold to the pre-millennial coming of Christ. 

Mae tried to come East for a visit with family, but had to turn back because of illness. 

4 

23:38 On John Anderson Eakin's cutting out work with the Chinese in Siam in the nineteenth 

century. He was determined that the Presbyterian missionaries should work only with the Siamese. 

This was foolish because the Chinese in Siam were thoroughly Siamese by the second generation. 

Chinese women were prohibited from coming into the country, and so the men took Siamese wives. 

They might have a Chinese wife back home, of course. They were so able and hard-working that 

they soon became the leading citizens in towns all over the country. They were practically the ruling 

class, and certainly the wealthy class. They were completely open to the missionaries because they 

were separated from their home country. Eakin's stopping work with them was a great mistake. And 

it did not resume until 1918 or so, when Graham Fuller came out. 

Someone ran into Adelle's car, damaging the fender, so that she had to walk three miles to 

work. She also wrote that the old Evanston Township High School building had burned. 

And also that Dr. J. Frank Norris was on trial for murder. He was Lillian Norris Weaver's 

father. He had the biggest church in the U.S., down in Dallas, Texas. In fact, he had a second church 

in Detroit, which was also enormous, and he moved back and forth between the two. He was a 

189


powerful, eloquent speaker. He was threatened by the sheriff of Dallas, Texas. His son had been 

stabbed, up under his shoulder, a very serious injury. Norris was denouncing this, that, and the other 

thing down there, and people took issue with him and swore to take his life. The sheriff called him 

and told him he was going to shoot him. So when the sheriff walked into J. Frank Norris' office, 

shortly after that, Norris shot him dead. Norris, of course, alleged that he was in fear of his life and 

acted in self-defense. He was charged with murder, tried, found not guilty; but his influence was 

"dented" from then on. 

5 

30:40 Margaret and Kenneth read a book by Dr. Arthur Brown. Miss Reid, of the board, was a 

charming woman; she had been a missionary herself; and she gave them a warning. "The worst 

trouble you will have will be with some of your fellow missionaries on your station." And she was 

right. "I've often said," Kenneth tells us, "I had nothing to learn about dirty politics when I came to 

Washington. We'd already had it all. There were no novel experiences!" Margaret adds that the 

isolation of the station had a "curious psychological effect" on people who were a little difficult. 

They became more so. And the Landons were pitched in with some of the more difficult 

missionaries out there. 

The cost to the mission of supporting the Landons in Siam was $3000 a year. The large 

amount was horrifying to Margaret. 

The sermon Kenneth had to deliver at the seminary. Margaret helped in the preparation, and 

tells of the theme. This turned out to be the competition Kenneth didn't know he was in. There were 

three preachers that night, Kenneth being the third. The first two went up to the pulpit and were quite 

remote from the audience. The fellow before him, Lowry, was very formal and rather dull. Kenneth 

decided to be less formal, and preach from the floor of the chapel. He asked if there were any 

objection, and no one objected. The sermon went off well. When he was done, the "judges" declared 

that they would now confer and then announce the "winner." "Winner?" Kenneth thought. It turned 

out that this was the final of the competition for preacher's prize of the year. No one had told him. 

The prize was several hundred dollars. If he had known, he would have done differently. The money 

would have meant a great deal to them. As it was, he placed second to Mr. Lowry. 

Margaret entertained the Klique. Only seven or eight came because of the bad weather. 

Calvin Lippincott had a good time; he ate from the time he arrived until the moment he left. He was 

known for this. His sister Virginia later went to Wheaton and served as a missionary in India for 

many years; she is now living again in Columbus, NJ. 

6 

41:32 Kenneth writes his parents on January 19, announcing Margaret's pregnancy. "And Mother, 

if you have loads of good advice for Margaret, I know she'd appreciate it!" 

Margaret on sauerkraut. The Wrights had given them a pail of sauerkraut as a gift. She got 

the pail down to see if the stuff had properly "krauted," as Kenneth put it, and it most certainly had! 

Margaret cooked it with the door shut to the kitchen and could hardly wait to get out of the house. 

Kenneth ate it, of course, not Margaret. He ate and he ate until he couldn't stand any more. 

Adelle writes that College Church had called a pastor, a Dr. Page. 

Margaret reads the list of things the board told them they needed to take to Siam. Blankets for 

cool weather; and clothing for ten months of hot weather. White duck suits for men. Buy a pith hat 

in Hong Kong. White canvas shoes. Raincoat and hat, rubbers and umbrella. All your wedding 

presents. An evening suit for the men. Music and songs. Kenneth bought a "monkey jacket" out 

there, a short white jacket like the ones waiters sometimes wear. This was "semi-formal." For all 

190


this, the board gave them $250. They also helped them buy their furniture. 

They couldn't find any information on Siam. Dr. Brown's book was entitled, The 

Expectation of Siam. They found only one other. 

Kenneth recalls their incredible conversation as they lay on their deck chairs on that tiny, 

ninety-ton steamer that was carrying them to Bangkok. Margaret asked him, "Kenneth, tell me all 

you know about Siam." And he answered, "I understand most of the people are twins." And then he 

added, "I believe a great many of the animals are white elephants. And it rains a whole lot, because I 

saw a picture of the king sitting under an umbrella with nine layers to it." They just couldn't find 

anything on Siam. Kenneth had prepared in Semitic philology so that he could work in the Near 

East, but couldn't get there. Margaret points out that Kenneth never liked to wait. If he had been 

willing to wait two years, he could have gone to the Near East. But he decided to plunge out into the 

unknown. 

7 

49:02 In February, Kenneth wrote that he and Margaret had been officially appointed to Siam. The 

plan was for them to depart in August. The board didn't know yet that Margaret was expecting a 

baby the month after that. Kenneth feared there would be a delay of a few months to a year once they 

learned of it. 

Adelle received a letter from Mr. Luke Keddie of Bear Lake to the president of Wheaton 

College. He asked to know the cost of sending a student there. He said that the people of Bear Lake 

had become interested in Wheaton through their experience of Margaret Mortenson. "If she is a 

sample Wheaton product, we want some of our Bear Lake young people to share in its advantages." 

The day Kenneth got "most gloriously stuck in the mud." The car was down in the mud so far 

that the car body was touching the ground. The only way he could break the car loose was to set the 

wheels running, get out, and bodily pick up the rear end of the car. Then, when the car started to go, 

he had to dash madly to jump back in. Sunday was his unlucky day. He slipped and fell twice, once 

in a puddle of muddy water at the Wrights' house. 

Mrs. Deacon shares with Margaret her two copies of Gothe's (SP?) "ladies' book" from 1864 

and 1865 which gave her a great deal of pleasure. 

The Landons visited with several missionaries staying at the seminary who were familiar with 

Siam and learned something about the country from them. They advised the Landons to take very 

little with them. Any furniture they needed could be made of teak wood there, in any pattern they 

desired. Margaret later concluded that this advice was incorrect, that the board's advice to take as 

much as possible was better. 

8 

54:35 The board's not preparing them for their work in Siam. "I was supposed to be prepared," 

Kenneth says. "I was a graduate of Princeton!" 

Margaret comments on the way the Presbyterian missionaries valued the Thai culture and 

worked to preserve it. The Thai themselves were of a mind to jettison everything. At the same time, 

the Americans were strong representatives of their own country because they believed in it so deeply. 

They "exuded" this rather than professed it. They exemplified it. 

Training programs for missionaries came in after the Second World War, Kenneth says. The 

Presbyterians had instituted a language school in Siam by the time the Landons got there. It was 

relatively new at that point. This was in Bangkok, the capital. 

1926-27 was Evangeline's senior year in college. She was preparing to teach, though she was 

not enthusiastic about teaching. Jobs were already getting hard to find. Evangeline had been going 

191


with Archie McKinney for years, and everyone took it for granted that she would marry him. 

192


HOUR 34 

Session #25 continued April 6, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (VIA280) On Evangeline and Archie. He was a fine young man. The process Mrs. Welsh set 

going to put a stop to Evan Welsh's engagement to Betty Sherk also put an end to Evangeline's 

relationship with Archie. "It determined Evangeline's life and ultimately her death," Margaret tells 

us. Mrs. Welsh set about cultivating Adelle, who was lonely and vulnerable. Furthermore, Adelle 

greatly liked Evan. She felt a deep "pang" when Evan's engagement to Betty Sherk was announced. 

Adelle didn't feel she was influencing Evangeline. But both Margaret and Betty did. Evangeline was 

such a lovely person, a really charming person. She had to endure so much because of the marriage 

that eventuated. 

Adelle prepared a dinner for the advisory board of Wheaton College, for seventy-five people. 

Kenneth reads a letter of his from February, 1927, on Margaret's "appendicitis." Margaret 

talks about the experience. The opinion of the doctors. She was terribly sick, and the doctor came 

every day of the week. She could hardly lift her head. All she ate for a couple of weeks was a little 

orange juice and toast. She was steadily losing weight. Kenneth was trying to cook for her, but he 

was "a very poor cook," he tells us. He produced food that even he didn't like. 

Margaret wrote that Kenneth was "a fine nurse," who said he had gotten lots of practice taking 

care of his sick mother through the years. He had even braided Margaret's hair. And done the 

ironing, including his own shirts. "Kenneth has proved himself to be a good cook. . . ." She was 

trying to be cheerful, she tells us. 

2 

7:57 Kenneth writes that Dr. Brown of the mission board had consulted with a Dr. Salisbury and 

with another medical missionary advising that the Landons sail for Siam in May and have the baby in 

Bangkok. This would mean sailing in Margaret's fifth month. Kenneth promptly consulted with a 

doctor in Princeton, who concurred, and then made the decision to depart in May. Thus, Kenneth did 

not stay for his graduation. He finished his studies, took his exams, and departed. Margaret planned 

to go home for about six weeks to visit with her family before May. 

Margaret was terribly depressed about this development, and wept over it. "Psychologically, 

it was for me a very bad thing and had a permanent effect on my whole feeling about Siam and about 

the whole mission bit. It wasn't that I didn't try. It was just a very bad way to start." Her deep wish 

was to stay until the baby was about a year old and then go out. This was what Adelle wished too. 

And Margaret and Adelle were aware that Kenneth's mother might not live until the end of their first 

term and so might never see her grandchild. This in fact is what happened. She never did. 

The names the Landons were considering for their baby were the ones they did use with their 

first two children, "Peggy" and "Billy Brads," as Adelle put the nicknames that Margaret Dorothea 

and William Bradley might be given. 

The plan was to leave the country May 21 from San Francisco on The President Wilson, cabin 

#38. They had their passport pictures taken. 

Kenneth worked to get Margaret out for a walk every day. They were going farther and 

farther, and she was growing stronger. He kept after her about it, and kidded her about it, because 

she really didn't want to do it! (We laugh because this is still the pattern in 1977. Kenneth works to 

193


get Margaret out for walks all the time, and she resists. "I guess I'm incorrigible," Kenneth says once 

again. "I never improve.") 

3 

15:36 Kenneth tells of the time that spring of 1927 that they were driving back at night after 

church—he had his arm around Margaret, boy and girl fashion—when all of a sudden a big car 

coming at high speed in the opposite direction swung out into their lane, headlights on. With his one 

hand on the wheel, Kenneth made one terrific heave on the wheel and whipped his little car off the 

road. He had no idea what he was going into, but there was no time to worry about that. Clipped 

past a telephone pole. Careened up a bank. And that huge car just missed them, actually making 

contact with their rear fender. Kenneth maneuvered back onto the road after the next telephone pole, 

and drove on as before. The two of them sat in the car perhaps for four or five minutes without 

speaking. They would surely have been killed. "I still remember that as though it were yesterday." 

Margaret seems to have no memory of it. 

Kenneth had a tailor in town making clothes for him. "The tailor is a Jew," Margaret reads 

from her letter, "and so is Kenneth when it comes to buying clothes. So the two of them get along 

fine. . . ." He needed a suit for every day of the week because of the extreme heat and humidity; also 

the dirt. 

A picture was taken that summer of all the new missionaries the Presbyterians were sending 

out around the world that year, a large group of them. Only Kenneth and Margaret had been sent on 

ahead and so did not appear in the picture. Kenneth and Margaretta Wells appeared in the picture, 

and went out to Siam six months after the Landons. Ken took a teaching position up in Chiang Mai. 

Mrs. Stevenson, the seminary president's wife, invited Margaret to tea, and particularly asked 

her to spend "a long time" at her home—most of the afternoon. She seemed to take a particular 

interest in the Landons. Margaret did not wear her hat, and found herself among women more 

formally dressed and wearing their hats, which made her uncomfortable. But later, when she looked 

her hat, she was rather glad she hadn't worn it! (Kenneth booms with laughter at this.) It was the 

first time Margaret had had tea in years. 

4 

22:20 Names Margaret was called. Kenneth always called her "Margaret." Adelle called her 

"Peggy" or even "Peggotty." She would start a letter, "Dear Peggotty." 

Ralph Varhaug candidated for Kenneth's position at First Presbyterian, and just as Kenneth 

had done two years before, came to preach at the church to show his stuff. Did pretty well. 

Margaret's birth certificate came, and gave her a bit of a shock. It said she had been born 5:30 

a.m., September 7, 1901, and it called her "Female Mortenson." Needless to say, this was 

unacceptable to the passport officials. Adelle had to make an affidavit confirming that Margaret was 

who she said she was. This went to the passport office, which kept the original. The Landons have 

only a copy. 

Margaret departed to spend a few weeks with her family before leaving the country. In mid- 

March Kenneth closed out the apartment and moved back into Brown Hall at the seminary to save 

money. 

Margaret went to New York to visit with Muriel before her trip to Wheaton, and the two of 

them went out to the Statue of Liberty and climbed it. 160 steps of a spiral staircase. They didn't feel 

like doing much of anything the following day. 

Margaret comments that she is "following the whole Welsh thing" in her letters but not 

putting it into this taped record. She has her own record. 

194


Mrs. Ridgeway presented Kenneth with an envelope filled with $256 in it from the church as 

a gift to help take the car to Siam. She tried to make a speech, but suddenly her voice left her and she 

began to weep. "Here, take it, honey. We love you," she exclaimed. Others began to weep too, 

women and men both. So Kenneth was able to pay the note off on his car, completing payment of it, 

and sent $50 to Margaret to buy clothes. 

More on the problem of Margaret's birth certificate and Adelle's affidavit. 

Muriel's grandfather was named John Muir. 

Kenneth had wanted good pictures of his father and mother since he went to college, and for 

his birthday that spring of 1927, they sent him pictures, which he had specially framed and which he 

kept the rest of his life. 

Margaret sent him a big orange cake "with three handsome belts to hang her husband up with 

in the middle." 

5 

32:25 Kenneth and Margaret went to Meadville in early March, and Kenneth preached the evening 

service in the Presbyterian church March 13. From there, Margaret set off for Wheaton. 

Kenneth was continuing his preparations for the mission field. That was when he bought his 

straight razor, which he used for many years until recently. He describes shaving with the thing on 

the train. "Never lost a lip!" 

In early April, Kenneth was called in to New York because in his final physical examination, 

the doctor thought he had heard a heart murmur. The board wanted him undergo a thorough 

examination by two cardiac specialists. They found the heart murmur all right, but laughed and 

pronounced that it was the kind of murmur the strongest hearts sometimes have. The board's doctor 

was still skeptical, and Kenneth had a long conversation with him, persuading him that in spite of his 

slow pulse, low blood pressure, low temperature, and heart murmur, he was NOT pepless, that in 

fact, he seldom felt tired. So, reluctantly, the doctor passed on him. 


6 

38:34 Kenneth's letter thanking his parents for the pictures they had sent him. 

The people of First Presbyterian in Columbus were sad about Kenneth's going. He was down 

to his last two sermons. He too was sad to be leaving them. "I can surely look back on my first 

church with satisfaction and peace in my heart." 

Kenneth declares in a letter that he is ready to go. "I could leave for Siam on thirty minutes' 

notice. And not be rushed." 

The anecdote Kenneth told in church concerning the quarrelsome nature of the churches 

among themselves. "Let it not be said that our churches could only agree on an undertaker. You 

might say they could only get together on a dead issue." Ridge Ridgeway found this so funny that it 

convulsed him. He had to put his head down to hide his laughter. 

The Bible conference that ended Kenneth's time at Columbus. This was something he had 

started his first summer there, so this was the third conference. He had a number of speakers come. 

In late April, Kenneth cleaned the car and took it to New York to be boxed and shipped to 

Siam. When he got home from this, he found a registered envelope with the railway and steamship 

tickets for their trip to Siam. Nearly $1000 worth. 

As usual, Kenneth exhausted himself studying for exams. He studied virtually twenty-four 

hours a day, he tells us. 

195


7 

45:00 Kenneth's ordination. [In hour #28, index 6, Kenneth told emphatically of his ordination in Meadville 

April 19, 1926. Here, it is clear that his ordination occurred May 10, 1927. I cannot explain the discrepancy. 

KPL Jr.] Kenneth reads the account of his ordination from the Meadville newspaper, a long article. It 

describes the hymns, the sermon, the charge given to the Rev. Landon, and the rite in which all the 

ministers present came forward and lay hands on the kneeling ordinand. Thus Kenneth became a 

member of the Erie Presbytery. 

The Landons rode the Northwestern Railroad across the country. In those days, the crosscountry 

trains were magnificent. The steam engines were particularly impressive, and the trains had 

a kind of romanticism that trains have lost since then. The train stopped in Wheaton just for the 

Landons. A lot of people had come down to see them off. They brought Margaret a bouquet of 

flowers. Also nuts and candies. Some people threw rice, as if it were a wedding. The train was 

called The Gold Coast Limited, and it left Chicago at 8:30 at night. When they got on, it was still 

light. It was May 16, a Monday. 

"It seemed to me I couldn't bear to leave home," wrote Margaret during the trip. Time seemed 

to have stopped on May 16. "It seemed almost like a day of execution." But time was indeed 

moving on, and already she was thinking of when she would see her family again. Her last visit 

home had meant a great deal to her, she wrote. 

Margaret reads her description of riding through the Sierra Nevada mountains. The snow. 

The little towns. The pines and firs. Streams and rivers, cascades of water over the rocks. The 

valleys below. Then coming out into the Sacramento Valley. Kenneth had an orange for breakfast 

almost as big as a grapefruit. Then came the Rockies. "They looked so remote and cool and still, so 

different from the people on the train." 

Her description of the people and their faces on the train. The two Presbyterian ministers they 

met. 

They arrived in San Francisco and checked into a hotel. They found a wonderful place to eat 

at a cafeteria nearby. 

196


HOUR 35 

Session #26 continued April 19, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, and later Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (VIA700) The cafeteria had a special 50-cent dinner! And a seven-course dinner at that! And 

they had a good orchestra! The Landons went back to the hotel and slept from 8 p.m. to 7:45 a.m. the 

following morning. They were both dead tired. 

"This town is certainly clean and tasty," Kenneth wrote. speaking of San Francisco. "I am 

impressed with the fresh air, even in the business district, and how polite people are." 

The ship was scheduled to leave Saturday the 21st of May at 4 p.m. 

Margaret comments that there was a place on the train where you got a bath. Very 

impressive. Kenneth asserts that he didn't get one. 

She also remembers all the letters from Wheaton people that were sent to them on their 

journey. Someone in Wheaton had organized this. She still has the letters in her files. 

Each Mortenson had given the Landons a parting gift. Adelle had made them cookies. 

Elizabeth gave Margaret her most-loved string of beads. Evangeline gave her some handkerchiefs of 

the kind she liked. 

They had to go to the steamship office to have their order for tickets exchanged for the actual 

tickets. 

The hotel was very nice. A spacious lobby. Their room was on the seventh floor, and was 

clean and airy. Things weren't fancy, but they were comfortable. The price was $3 a day. The 

mission board told them to stay there. The Hotel Larne. 

Margaret shares more about the train they rode across the country. Eight Pullmans. Diner. 

Observation car. Flocks of sheep and herds of cows in the fields. Very little cultivated ground. The 

cows all had white faces, and were shaggy. "The sheep looked like flecks of foam on a green sea of 

sagebrush, and quite often there were wobbly new lambs trailing their mothers. All through the West 

there were bleak little villages along the tracks, in which every building was painted the same shade 

of yellow. There were seldom any trees or grass. Just a few buildings and perhaps a water tank." 

She remarks on "the desolate loneliness of the rest of the scene." 

On Wednesday, they had crossed Salt Lake. About thirty miles of track went across it, much 

of it on a trestle. 

The Club-Observation car was new to Margaret. In it there was a bathroom. 50 cents for a 

bath. A barber. Men's and women's lounges. A small writing room. And at one end, large glass 

windows, comfortable chairs, and a table of magazines. 

2 

7:19 Margaret continues with their visit to sites in San Francisco. They visited the Golden Gate 

Park. There they saw the Pacific for the first time. They saw a monument where the first Christian 

service on the shores of the United States was held by Francis Fletcher, the chaplain of Francis 

Drake, in 1579. Kenneth thought this Fletcher was probably one of his antecedents, so Margaret took 

a picture of him at the foot of the monument. This seems to be lost now. 

Margaret found the park very beautiful. They walked through miles and miles of it and never 

did see it all, even though they went back Saturday morning. 

Then they went to see Chinatown. Everything was quiet and almost deserted. A few little 

197


children playing. Men in American dress. 

Kenneth reads his letter on boarding the steamship. It was May 21, 1927. There were sixtyone 

first class passengers. A half hour before departure, all the visitors were told they must leave the 

ship. There was a bride and groom on board, from a wealthy family. The bride threw her bouquet to 

those on the dock just as the ship pulled away. Great packages of colored streamers were given to the 

passengers to throw—Margaret still has some—and Kenneth threw a dozen or so, each one seeming 

to snag a girl on the dock. As the ship pulled away, it almost seemed that the streamers were binding 

them and the people on shore to each other. But these were soon "snapped asunder" as those on 

board set sail for their distant port. Kenneth wrote, "I thought it a beautiful picture of the Christian 

parting from loved ones for a time and going to be with Jesus in a distant port before reuniting again." 

They went to their cabin, and soon Kenneth realized that he was dizzy, and then faint, and 

then sick. Margaret and he were both seasick that first evening, but they slept well in spite of it. The 

next morning, while she stayed in the cabin, Kenneth explored the ship. He was feeling much better, 

though still not quite right. He became acquainted with a Mr. Alexander Kennedy, a Christian 

Scotsman who owned a big leather house in Colombo, Ceylon. He later burned his own store down 

to collect the insurance, and then was imprisoned. But he was a nice man. 

He also met a Miss Johnson who was going to Singapore to marry a missionary. 

By afternoon, Kenneth managed to get Margaret out of the cabin. They both continued to feel 

"funny" and so had their lunch served on deck. Everybody was seasick at first. Kenneth said he was 

never seasick again the rest of his life, but certainly was that first time. They read their Bibles a bit. 

And had dinner on deck as well. By that evening, Kenneth felt fine. 

Margaret describes the bride and groom. He was quite fat, the son of a prominent figure in 

the Bethlehem Steel company. 

She describes the departure from the dock. The beauty of the streamers that seemed to bind 

them to the dock. In their room, they found a big box of red roses. Some long-stemmed blue flowers 

from Uncle Chris. A basket of fruit from Mrs. Bruce. And a basket of fruit from Muriel. And of 

course, the numerous letters from Wheaton. 

They had hired out their own deck chairs and blankets for the journey. 

Most of the crewmen on the ship were Chinese. The waiters in the dining room wore long 

blue gowns that came almost to their feet, with white cuffs to the elbow. They wore white gowns for 

dinner. 

Malcolm Fenwick, missionary to Korea for 37 years, with whom they visited. 

3 

19:08 One of the most interesting people Margaret met was a Miss Marie Winther (SP?) of Falster, 

Denmark, a schoolteacher who during the past year had toured the United States. She was now 

completing her journey home by going the rest of the way round the world. She recognized 

immediately that Margaret was of Scandinavian descent. She became part of the Landons' group on 

the ship. 

The Landons' day started with a salt water bath every morning. Then a wonderful, elaborate 

breakfast of fish, eggs, waffles, toast, cereal, marmalade. After a couple of hours of Bible, they went 

on deck to play quoits or shuffleboard. Then came lunch. The fresh salt air and the exercise and 

sleep made one very hungry. Margaret still has all the materials from the trip in her records. The 

schedule of the ship. The passenger list. 

The boat was usually filled to capacity, the Landons learned. But this time, it was only half 

filled. The reason was the trouble in China, so that few were going to the Far East. It was a civil 

war, though Kenneth and Margaret cannot recall what. 

198


Margaret recalls reading an article in The Atlantic Monthly by a woman who had escaped 

from the war in China. 

One energetic lady of eighty was traveling around the world entirely on her own. Mrs. Mary 

Hoffert, a memorable character. She asked Kenneth how old he guessed she was, and he answered, 

"Eighty," because he knew, and she nodded her head vigorously and said, "Yes! Eighty, and a yard 

wide!" She seemed to know everything about the ship. She was very proud of the fact that she had 

made all her plans, gotten all her tickets, all twenty-two of her visas, at $10 apiece, without letting her 

relatives know a thing about it. She spent much of her trip writing to those relatives and sharing with 

them every detail of her trip. Do you remember her? Margaret asks Kenneth. "You bet I do. She 

counted the nuts, the bolts She was down in the engine room. She went all over the place. Why, the 

people way down in the hold, they'd see these fat legs coming down and this yard-wide bottom, down 

these ladders—they're straight-up-and-down- ladders, you know—she was counting everything!" 

She figured she'd lived her life, and she wanted to do this. She didn't care whether she got home alive 

or not. "There wasn't a gayer person on the ship," says Margaret, and Kenneth concurs. 

In steerage, there were many American sailors on the way to Honolulu. There were also a 

number of elderly Chinese on their way home to China to end their lives. One died during the trip. 

The Landons learned that this ship never made a trip to the Far East without one or more of the 

Chinese returning home dying during the trip. They were in fact going home to die and be buried. 

Those who died were not buried at sea. This would have caused a riot. They were embalmed and 

taken on to China. 

Among the regulars at the Landons' table there was a Mrs. Claude Gilson, a prominent 

lecturer on political movements throughout the world. She had just finished a year lecturing at 

Wheaton, in Massachusetts. 

There was a rather poor jazz orchestra on board, and only a few rather poor dancers, says 

Kenneth. They were not of Meadville quality. 

Their stateroom was spacious. There was a full-length couch, just beneath the porthole. And 

at the end of that, a substantial closet for their clothes. The chiffoniers were quite large and had little 

brass rods to keep things from slipping off. They had a wash bowl, and a nickel thermos decanter 

filled with water that was fastened to the wall with a bracket that let it swing. The doorsills took 

some getting used to because they were all several inches high. There was also a big electric fan in 

the room which helped to make things comfortable. 

Margaret describes the experience of taking a bath. She felt the salt water refreshing, but it 

simply would not lather. She goes in detail through the daily routine. When they left their room, 

ship staff went into their stateroom and cleaned for them. 

The ship averaged a little more than three miles per hour, and it was capable of about twenty. 

They were just "loafing" along. It took a week to get from San Francisco to Honolulu. 

Those Dollar ships were going both ways round the world, one almost every week. 

Wonderful ships. 

4 

30:54 When the ship arrived in Honolulu, Kenneth expected to disembark, ride around the city on a 

streetcar with some their shipboard friends, and "loaf around." They had one day there. But as they 

stepped into the street, there was a jam of people in cars to hire who began to shout and dance. Mr. 

Kennedy hired a big Packard car, driven by a Chinese-Hawaiian, and for $25, Kennedy, the Landons, 

and several of their friends drove all day around the city. The car was a seven-passenger vehicle of 

the "open style." (Margaret speaks of how nice Mr. Kennedy was. She has always doubted that he 

burned down his business. She recalls that Kenneth's Uncle Arthur was sent to prison for something 

199


he didn't do. [Uncle Arthur?!!]) 

They visited the original mission houses made of board imported from the U.S. Margaret 

found the city beautiful, with all the flowering plants, trees, and shrubs. It was like a garden. Even 

the poorest shacks were beautiful with trees and flowers. The city seemed like one continual park. It 

was distinctly an American city, though. Much of the population was Chinese and Philippino. The 

real Hawaiians were scarce. 

Then they drove out into the countryside and were struck by the tropical vegetation and 

flowers. Great tracts of cactus, bamboo trees, banana trees, palm trees of various kinds. 

That evening on the ship, Kenneth was asked to conduct the Sunday service the following 

morning, which he did. He became the ship chaplain. Quite a few people came to the service. 

There was a Jew on board named Mr. Hahn, who was a criminal lawyer, and who had 

defended a Mrs. Seeloff in the Aimee Semple McPherson case. She was McPherson's secretary. 

Hahn came at Kenneth "with blood in his eye" and tried to tell him how useless a missionary was. 

He was loud-mouthed about it, and Kenneth was very quiet. Some of their friends were standing 

nearby. Hahn thought Kenneth was just a kid and could be made a fool of. But he tackled the wrong 

fellow. Kenneth spoke in return, in low, cool tones, and showed him from Scripture that he didn't 

know what he was talking about. Then, instead of Hahn's doing the attacking, Kenneth started in on 

him. Hahn quickly realized that he could not take advantage of Kenneth, and so turned and began to 

attack Margaret. Much to his surprise "he bit on barbwire and was no better off," and so he just 

became "loud-mouthed" and went off. 

Margaret tells of his boasting of bribing witnesses in a trial to win a case. He was given to 

know that he had better get out of California if he were not to go to jail. Margaret also remembers 

that he once had a case representing some wealthy Chinese. They gave him a gift of a pigeon's-blood 

ruby vase. He didn't recognize its value, but a connoisseur who saw it informed him in astonishment 

that they had given him a gift of museum quality. 

Margaret talks of the McPherson case. She was a florid evangelist, and she claimed to have 

been kidnapped. Seeloff had put up a front for McPherson during the "kidnapping," so that she was 

tried on conspiracy. But Mr. Hahn got her off. 

5 

37:32 At one place, the road was under construction, and they had to get out of the car and wait for 

an hour. They were near the beach, and so they sat under a tree and watched the ocean. They have a 

picture of the group under the tree. 

Later they stopped at the Mormon Temple, which they found quite beautiful. 

They had lunch at the Haleeva Hotel (SP) about half way round the island. They had actual 

pineapple that had ripened in the field. They saw fields of pineapples growing in the countryside. 

They watched the whole process of processing sugar. 

They finally ended up on Waikiki Beach, the famous beach. 

The ship sailed at 9 p.m. A young man came on board to depart Hawaii, and his friends put 

one lei after another around his neck until you could hardly see him. The leis were lovely. 

The ship sailed to Kobe, Japan, where they had one day. The Landons spent the time with 

their usual group, consisting of themselves, Mr. Kennedy, Miss Johnson, and Miss Winther. They 

hired a Studebaker for the day at a cost of $58. They drove slowly out through Kobe. Everyone was 

Japanese, of course, with a rare white face. There were few cars. Most people road in rickshas. The 

roads were tiny, and the car was large. The city was very quiet and orderly. There were streetcars. 

Kenneth was struck by the Japanese girls, who were so neat and attractive and pretty-looking. The 

car turned into what looked like an alley to Kenneth, which happened to be the main business street 

200


in the town. All the shops were very small. The turns in the streets were "weird." The Japanese had 

a superstition that an evil spirit must go straight, and so to stop him, they put sharp winds into the 

streets. The driver tooted his horn constantly, and just missed people "dozens of times." 

They drove out into the country on the Osaka highway for about four miles, when the car 

stopped. Wouldn't go. The driver found a hole in his "dashboard connection," and Kenneth filled it 

with a paper wad. They had no further trouble. They drove along the main road to Kyoto, a very 

narrow road on a ridge, with a straight drop on either side, and fields of rice growing below. They 

met several laborers' carts drawn by the laborers, and it took much maneuvering to get by. Kenneth 

was struck by the smallness of the farms and fields and by how many people were at work in each 

patch. The country was overpopulated, and living was highly competitive. There were rice, barley, 

beans, tea, all extremely neat and orderly, under cultivation. They passed through village after 

village on streets so narrow that they could reach out and touch the houses if they wanted. The 

children would line up like a parade when the car went by. The Japanese had so little traffic going 

through their villages that they had laid out beans, tea, rice, and straw and other things to dry in the 

street. Some people were actually out in the street working. 

They arrived in Kyoto and had their "tiffin" in the hotel. Kenneth noticed a number of girls' 

pictures with their names and numbers to be hired by men by the hour or night. 

6 

44:08 Margaret writes on June 16, 1927, their first anniversary. The trip from Honolulu to Kobe 

was uneventful. There were not many passengers. One night a party was given for a girl named 

Wilma, and everyone was asked to come dressed as children. It was a bit overwhelming for poor 

Wilma. 

"Although this is supposed to be a dry ship, there is enough liquor in the punch and egg nog to 

make the party very lively. . . ." 

Kenneth rolled up his knickers and bared his socks, and Margaret shortened a skirt and 

braided her hair. This was their "costume." In a suitcase race, Kenneth won a ukulele, which he later 

traded in for a fountain pen. 

Another night, there was a mock trial. 

When they arrived in Kobe, and before they could enter the harbor, the boat stopped, and four 

Japanese quarantine officers came to look them over by way of a stairway down the side of the ship 

to their launch. The crew lined up on one side of the ship, and the passengers on the other. The 

doctors counted the passengers, twenty-seven. Two people were missing. "Aunt Mary," Mrs. 

Hoffert, was one of them. After a frantic search, she was finally discovered counting the crew. The 

temptation to count was so strong that she couldn't resist it with all those crewmembers lined up so 

neatly. She had counted the hatches on the deck, and the windows on the promenade deck. She 

knew the length of the ship, its width, and its carrying capacity. 

Japan was a "land of red tape." They next had to fill out a questionnaire on their reasons for 

entering Japan, length of stay, and so on. Margaret observed as the steerage passengers appeared and 

were processed. Several men. One poor little woman with three tiny children whose husband had 

died three days before they reached Kobe. 

Margaret found the boats in the harbor odd-looking. The three-sailed sailboats struck her as 

picturesque, "especially those that we saw early in the morning fading into the blue mist as silently as 

phantom ships." They passed many rowboats. 

When they docked, Margaret realized that the crowd on the wharf was the first truly Oriental 

crowd she had seen. There were men in gray or black-and-white kimonos and narrow belts, and a 

few women in dark kimonos and bright sashes. A few of the people wore Western straw hats, which 

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seemed out of place, but as the day passed, it became clear that the straw hat had taken hold there. 

Some of the Japanese wore Western clothes. 

The Japanese women were particularly lovely in kimonos, bright obis, flowered parasols, 

clattering along on their wooden shoes. 

Margaret described much more that she does not read into the record. 

She was intrigued by great piles of what appeared to be hair in showcases at a particular 

temple. When she inquired about it later, she was told the story that at one time in Japan there was a 

shortage of rope and that faithful women had cut their hair to be made into ropes for the temple bells. 

7 

51:05 Kenneth was impressed by the "abominable sewage disposal." The Japanese used human 

manure to fertilize their fields. As the car drove into Kyoto, during one five-mile section, Kenneth 

counted at least 300 two-wheeled carts loaded with five heavy tubs "of such slop" drawn by a man 

who was pulling it home to fertilize his field. "As I saw that terrible array, I had to think to myself 

that this seemed like a nation, one half of which has an eternal diarrhea, the other half spends its time 

pulling and carting it away for field use." There were huge pits where they kept the stuff hoarded up, 

and it "smelled to high heaven." 

They boarded their ship again that evening, and twenty-seven new passengers joined them. 

Kenneth was getting to be a regular pastor to them all. 

Kenneth met a Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, missionaries to China for twenty-five years. Before 

that, the man was a missionary in Siam for seventeen years, and Kenneth learned quite a lot from 

him. 

Session #27 May 24, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

8 

53:45 Kenneth speaks of the disturbance in China that started in March of 1927 and filled the 

country. It was civil war between the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai Shek and the various 

warlords of the country. There were communists all through the Kuomintang, which had been 

founded by Sun Yat Sen in 1921. Sun's wife was a communist. She was the sister of Chiang's wife. 

As that year proceeded, the communists began working to undermine Chiang, discrediting him in the 

hope that he would be displaced. They meant to take over the Kuomintang entirely. Chiang turned 

on them and purged the KMT of them. One young communist staff member who was later to be 

known as Ho Chi Minh fled to Bangkok, arriving about six months after the Landons. He didn't stay 

there long, because of the heat and humidity, going instead to the northeast of the country, posing as a 

Buddhist monk, and organizing there. It has been a guerrilla area ever since. 

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HOUR 36 

Session #27 continued May 24, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (VIA1230) They sailed from Kobe on the President Wilson, the largest ship in the Dollar line. 

There were again very few passengers because of the troubles in China. Margaret notes that, when 

they sailed from San Francisco, May 21, they departed at 4:00 p.m. And on that day, Charles 

Lindbergh landed in Paris at 9:00 p.m. Paris time, meaning that he had landed shortly before the 

Landons sailed. 

The trip from Kobe to Shanghai took from Saturday noon until Tuesday morning. 

Kenneth had another argument with Mr. Hahn about religion. Hahn said that, if only people 

would give up all religions, the world would soon be at peace. He also declaimed on the Chinese 

troubles. Mr. Hahn was in the unfortunate position of the man Emerson described in the pithy words, 

"What you are speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say." He really was something! 

They sailed over the bar that marked the mouth of the Yangtze River and anchored in the 

mouth until the next morning. They took a pilot aboard. There was a pilots' association in Shanghai, 

whose members hired out to guide ships in the river. 

They could take no bath that morning because the water in the river was so dirty. Shanghai 

was about forty miles up the river, and it took all morning to sail there. They turned into the Wang 

Poo River The river was full of boats. Rice fields on either side. The Dollar dock was about five 

miles above the main business section of the great city. The company operated tenders between the 

dock and the customs jetty. At the dock, to the Landons' amazement, there were Claude and Ruth 

Thomas. They had both gone to Wheaton with the Landons, and Claude had been a fellow 

seminarian at Princeton. Kenneth brought them on board the ship for lunch, then disembarked with 

them. 

Shanghai was unpleasant, partly because of the weather. It was a Tuesday. "The sky dripped 

and oozed. It was hot. The air seemed thick. Breathing was difficult." They took the streetcar out to 

the Thomas' place. The Thomases rode third class, with all the Chinese, and so the Landons did too. 

There was no second class. 

The Thomases were with the China Inland Mission. 

Shanghai was dreary. It wasn't the dirt or smells that impressed Margaret so much as the 

faces. "Such bestial, degraded, stupid faces I never saw before. It was one of the most depressing 

experiences I ever had, just to walk down a few streets and ride on the streetcars. It made one's heart 

ache with pity while at the same time one understood the efficacy of the gunboats on the river. . . ." 

The city was awash with refugees. 

Margaret rehearses again the dates of their journey. They had left Wheaton on Monday, May 

16, 1927, at about 9:15 p.m. on the Gold Coast Limited, arriving in San Francisco Thursday, May 19, 

at 2:30, where they stayed at the Hotel Larne at 210 Ellis Street. They sailed on the S.S. President 

Wilson, largest of the Dollar line steamers, at 4 p.m., Saturday, May 21, arriving at Honolulu May 28. 

They arrived in Kobe, Japan, June 10, and sailed from Kobe June 11. They arrived in Shanghai June 

14 and sailed from there June 17. 

They celebrated their first wedding anniversary with the Thomas' on the ship. 

During their stopover at Shanghai, the crew cleaned the entire ship inside and out. 

They arrived in Hong Kong June 21 and sailed from there June 23. They arrived in Manila 

June 24, where they were sick from something they had eaten. They didn't even go ashore. They 

203


arrived in Singapore June 28, a Monday, about 2:00 in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and 

left there on the Kistna, a coasting steamer, Thursday, June 30, at 4 p.m., arriving in Bangkok 

Monday morning July 4, 1927. 

2 

10:54 Hong Kong was pleasant. There they received a whole packet of letters from home. 

They sailed from Manila on about June 25. 

There was in Singapore a young woman from Meadville, Pennsylvania, who had married a 

man who worked for Standard Oil in Singapore, and her mother had especially asked the Landons to 

look her up when they reached there. Her name was Dorothy Richard Starling. Kenneth had not 

known her very well in Meadville, and so did not expect the royal reception that he and Margaret 

received. She was a handsome brunette, with olive skin, slim, and was a professional violinist. She 

had a beautiful and expensive violin, possibly a Stradivarius. She played professionally in New York 

City for a time. She took her violin to Singapore where, to her horror, she discovered that the 

instrument deteriorated rapidly. She had to send it home to save it. There was a Chinese violinist 

there who allowed her to use one of his instruments, which was adapted to the climate. 

When the boat docked in Singapore, "a regular fleet of diving boys came out to meet us. 

They paddle along swiftly in narrow wooden canoes which they skillfully bail out with a shove of the 

foot as they paddle along, calling all the time for the passengers to throw them money. As a coin 

flashes through the air, they dive from their boats frogwise and catch it almost as soon as it hits the 

water. As nearly as I could tell, they catch it with their teeth while they swim. Then up they come, 

retrieve their paddle from wherever it has floated to, climb into the boat, and bail it out quickly with a 

hand or foot. In one larger canoe there was a little boy, a gray-haired man, and a monkey. One time 

the man was in such a hurry to get a coin that he dived with the monkey. Another man who was 

smoking a cigar would quickly turn the burning end around in his mouth before he dived and when 

he came up, simply reverse it and go on smoking." 

The Starlings met them at the dock and invited the Landons to their house. Mr. Starling went 

back to his office. Margaret describes the house. There was no basement. The house stood on 

cement pillars, three feet from the ground. Everything was on one floor. The house had shutters 

which could be thrown open for ventilation. No screens anywhere. They had mosquito nets that they 

lowered around themselves when they went to bed. They had a tub where they could take a bath, 

something most unusual. There were bedroom suites, and a dining room in between. The kitchen 

was twenty-five feet from the house in a separate building, with a roofed walk in between. They 

were renting the house from an English couple. They had a number of servants, a gardener, a cook, a 

houseboy, a cleaner, a laundryman who came once a week, a chauffeur provided by Standard Oil. 

The Landons spent several days there. 

Kenneth went to a cane shop and bought a malacca cane, with Mr. Starling's aid. The shop 

was tiny, no more than ten feet square, with walls lined with canes. The true malacca cane was made 

from a root that ran along the ground. The cane was pliable and could be bent considerably without 

breaking. The ones with bent handles all in one piece were the best ones. Kenneth paid $2.75 for his 

cane. 

Starling took him to a tailor where Kenneth ordered six suits. The measurements were all 

taken, and the next day all six suits were ready. They duplicated the suit he was wearing. 

Thursday, June 30, the Landons sailed for Bangkok. The Kistna was of the British India SN 

Company (Steam Navigation Company). The ship was a hundred to two hundred foot vessel. The 

Landons' stateroom was not as large as the ocean steamer's, but adequate. It was immaculately clean. 

The Landons had two large portholes. Two narrow berths, one above the other. Two camp stools. A 

204


wash bowl. 

The officers were all Englishmen, and very nice. The Landons met them at dinner. 

The captain was a handsome old man with a Van Dyke beard. 

They had tea the first afternoon, served by a tall man who looked like an Indian, though they 

later learned he was of Portuguese descent. 

The next morning they had their introduction to early morning tea and fruit, a British custom 

in the Far East. The steward brought a tray in at 7:00 a.m. with four pieces of toast, a pot of tea, 

some little tangerines, and bananas. Breakfast wasn't until 9:00. Another new thing was a stand-up 

bath. There was a tub in the bathroom of unusual proportions, nearly waist high. But there wasn't 

enough warm water for an ample bath, so they each tried a new system. First, they had to buy a pair 

of wooden bath shoes for ten cents. There was a drain in the tub, but they were told they must not 

stand on it in bare feet because of the danger of catching a common disease called "Hong Kong foot" 

in Singapore. Many of the natives had it. Hence, the wooden bath shoes. The other necessities were 

a basin of warm water, a bar of soap, and a dipper. Step one: throw water all over oneself. Step two: 

lather up with the soap. Step three: wash off the soap with water from the dipper. "It really is an 

amazingly satisfactory bath," wrote Margaret. That was the beginning of the kind of baths they were 

to take the next ten years. 

3 

24:51 One of the crew stuttered. He introduced the Landons to "Bang, bang, bang, Bangkok!" with 

exclamatory pointings as he pointed to a long, low, dark line on the horizon. 

The crew was part Malay, part Chinese. What the Landons thought were Indians were the 

descendants of Portuguese settlers in India. They were very tall, handsome men, not like any other 

Orientals the Landons had seen. Many of them had curly hair. There was a name for them that 

Margaret can no longer remember. 

7$3( 9, 6LGH 

4 

26:22 As they approached Bangkok, Margaret and Kenneth were lying in their deckchairs when 

suddenly Margaret lifted up her head, looked at him, and said, "Kenneth, what do you know about 

Siam? and Bangkok? Tell me all you know." Kenneth thought and said, "Well, I know that an awful 

lot of the people are twins. Maybe most of them." "Yes," she said, getting into the spirit, "and what 

else do you know?" And he answered, "Well, I think a great many of the animals are white 

elephants." "Oh?" she said. "What else?" "Well, it must rain a lot," Kenneth said. "I saw a picture 

of the king sitting under an umbrella that had nine layers on top of it, like a fountain." The two of 

them just sat there and howled with laughter. It was about what he GLG know. 

When they came into the port at Bangkok, Margaret said, "Well, where are we going to go?" 

It struck Kenneth that he did not know. Didn't have a clue. Didn't know the name of a single person 

in Bangkok. The mission board had not given them the names or addresses of anyone to contact in 

Bangkok when they arrived. They didn't even know where the mission offices were. Kenneth 

thought to himself, "My gosh, we may be out here under a coconut tree!" 

The boat pulled in and docked, and the hotel runner came on board, and Kenneth grabbed him 

and said, "Tell me the names of some Americans in Bangkok." Dr. Ellis, the man replied, a famous 

man. Kenneth was astounded. Dr. Ellis had owned the farm adjacent to the Landon house in 

Meadville, Pennsylvania. Kenneth used to hunt rabbits on his farm, and pheasants. So Kenneth had 

a name to contact. He figured they would go to a hotel and work from there. 

205


At that moment, a great moon-faced, heavyset man with no neck—his head sitting right 

smack on his shoulders—came beaming in, saying, "Landon?!" Kenneth answered. It was Al Seigle, 

a fellow missionary. He had come to meet them. 

Margaret reads from her letter of the time describing their arrival. That morning, they peeked 

from their porthole for a first glimpse near at hand of their adopted country. What they saw were the 

banks of a fair-sized river, thickly grown with tropical vegetation. As the boat drew to the dock, a 

flock of smaller boats came alongside, the owners shrieking and calling like magpies. The Landons' 

first impression of the Siamese language—or so they thought—was that it sounded like crows 

squabbling. But in fact, those were Chinese in the little boats. 

Al's son Jimmy was with him. Al had his Ford car waiting for them. The Landons' car had 

already arrived, and Al had driven it up to his house to wait for them. They drove through the city on 

fairly wide streets, arriving at the Seigle house. Margaret had worried that she would be put in 

charge of a house right away, with servants whose language she did not know and customs she did 

not understand. She was greatly relieved to learn that, for the time being, they would be with the 

Seigles. "The cup overflowed when we made the discovery that they were fundamentalists of the 

fundamentalists, and besides perfectly charming people." The Margaret of today explains that the 

fundamentalism of that time was not today's fundamentalism. It was the fundamentalism that clung 

to the old creed, that thought the Bible was the Word of God. The split into the extremist element 

came later and took fundamentalism over. 

The Seigles had two children, James, who was ten, and Margaret, who was five and a half. 

All the Seigles were easy to get along with. Later that year, a terrible tragedy struck the Seigles. 

There was an American advisor named Raymond Stephens who had a son David Stephens—who in 

1977 is a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C.—of Jimmy's age. Jimmy was up there playing 

with the Stephens boy and fell out of a tree. He broke his arm severely, suffering a compound 

fracture; the bone of his arm actually drove into the ground. They could not save his arm. It turned 

to gangrene, and they had to amputate to save his life. Jeanette Seigle was pregnant at the time, but 

so rotund that no one knew. 

The Seigles were both from California. Mr. Seigle had attended the Los Angeles Bible 

Institute. The Seigles were some of the finest people Kenneth and Margaret were ever to know. 

Their welcome was so kind. 

The house was large and quite adequate for two families. The first floor was not used except 

for an office and storing purposes. Across the front of the second floor was a large verandah with 

wicker furniture. The first morning, as they sat there, a man arrived named Rev. John Anderson 

Eakin, who told Al that he had just come from paying for the funeral of his son's and daughter-inlaw's 

first child, who had been born dead. Here Margaret was within a couple of months of her first 

delivery. It was a shock to her to hear something like that. "He was a regular sourbelly anyway," 

Kenneth opines. Eakin should not have said it in front of Margaret. 

The center of the house went straight through and was the living room. In the back it opened 

up into a porch as big as the front. The Landons' rooms were on one side of the living room and the 

Seigles' on the other. The "wagon run and hay mow" form of house. 

5 

37:05 The next day, Kenneth set out to find a teacher of the Siamese language. He learned about 

Kru Tardt and immediately went and called on her. Her response was that she didn't want to take the 

Landons on because she was already teaching a class in the morning for three hours. Teaching the 

Landons would mean another three hours of work in the afternoon, the worst and hottest time of the 

day. But Kenneth implored her, and then she objected that she couldn't manage the transportation. 

206


Kenneth answered that he would come after her. Then she said that, after teaching them, she would 

be faced with the long trip home again. Kenneth answered that he would take her home again. In the 

end, she couldn't say no. They started right in the next day, bang. 

The head of the language school was Paul Eakin, and Kru Tardt was the number two person. 

She was the more able of the two. She was unusual in that she was so accustomed to Americans as to 

be unafraid to tell the Landons when they were wrong. The ordinary Siamese tutor was so 

ingratiating that he wouldn't correct you. He or she might say to a student who had been there three 

months, "Oh sir, you speak just like a Thai!" when in fact the student didn't at all and didn't realize 

that he didn't. Kru Tardt had grown up in the old Wang Lang School, which was Miss Edna Cole's 

school. 

Edna Cole had gone out in 1879 and was the actual founder of women's education in 

Thailand. Other people had started it, but she was the one who made it go. She was the right person 

at the right time. She captured the upper class, and in a society that was just emerging from 

feudalism, as Siam was, unless the upper class does it, nobody else does it. The ranking royal prince, 

His Royal Highness Prince Damrong, was the— 

Margaret digresses to speak further of Edna Cole. 

Edna Cole was the one Margaret wanted to write the book about when instead she wrote 

Anna. She couldn't get Miss Cole to give her her letters. She wrote letters home for forty-five years, 

an incredible collection of letters. She let Margaret read them, but she wouldn't let her take them. 

She liked Margaret; she wanted her to do the book; but she wanted her to come down where she was 

living in St. Joseph, Missouri, which Margaret could not do. She wouldn't have given Margaret a 

free hand, Kenneth says. "She would have vetted every paragraph you wrote." But Margaret asserts 

that he could have gotten around that. 

In any case, Edna Cole was a very, very remarkable person, and Kru Tardt had been one of 

her pupils and had grown up with American teachers. She was proud of the fact that Miss Cole had 

been more insistent on the Thai keeping their own customs than the Thai were. Early this century the 

Thai took to everything that was new. Neon lights, for instance. One thing they were doing was 

melting down all the beautiful old, hand-made gold jewelry to have it made into jewelry that was 

exactly like the French. Along came Miss Cole who insisted on respect for their own culture. 

Miss Cole had established standards in teaching that Kru Tardt expected the Landons to carry 

on in their language training. Another important thing was that she began to tell them about good 

manners in the Thai sense. This was very hard to find out. 

Every day Kru Tardt would come dressed in a differently colored panung, appropriate to the 

day of the week. You knew what day it was by the color of her panung. This was an old Thai 

custom. And yet she was modern too. She was a combination. 

6 

43:37 Mrs. Seigle ran the house, seeing to the preparation of meals and so on. The Landons just 

paid their share of the costs. This left Margaret free for her language studies, which took six hours a 

day. There was a Chinese woman who did the cooking, and her daughter, who waited on the table 

and cleaned the house. There was a coolie who did the heavy work caring for the compound. He 

scrubbed the front porch with a coconut shell so that it was absolutely white. There was a wash 

woman who came three times a week and who did everything except the silk stockings. The men's 

suits went to the GREL or laundryman for cleaning. Mrs. Seigle's servants were not "number one 

servants," but they were spotlessly clean and honest. "Number one" servants dressed in white and 

wore shoes. Mrs. Seigle's did not. But such "frills were expensive and not necessary." The 

missionary pocketbook could not afford them. The "number one" servants also spoke English. 

207


The day the Landons arrived in Bangkok had been July 4, and accordingly the American 

Legation had invited all Americans in the area to come for an informal tea. The minister himself had 

just arrived two weeks before, and this was to be a get-acquainted party. He had made a strong 

impression on the missionaries because he had attended church his first two Sundays there. 

Kenneth started right out with Al Seigle to get a license for his car, for which he had to take a 

driver's examination. This was also their very first day in Bangkok. While Kenneth was busy with 

this, Margaret unpacked some of their things until it was time to go to the Legation tea. There were 

sandwiches, tea, ice cream, and cake. The Landons were able to meet many of the Americans and 

fellow missionaries living in the area. 

And the next morning, the Landons began their language training. Kru Tardt was a young 

Siamese woman, and her name sounded like "Dot." .UX meant "teacher." It was her title. The very 

first afternoon, in the heat of the day, the Landons had to learn all the consonants of the Thai 

alphabet. Margaret recites some of them for us. The following day, they learned the vowels. The 

third day, Kru Tardt produced primers and announced, "Now we will begin to read." 

They studied with her for three hours, then studied three hours to prepare for the following 

day. The first phrase Kenneth learned from Kru Tardt was "Tao rai?" "How much?" And the second 

was "Pang!" "Too much!" As soon as he had dropped her off at her home, he rushed into the market 

place, rushed into a shop, looked around, picked up something, and said, "Tao rai?" The man 

answered, but Kenneth had no idea what he had said. Then Kenneth said, emphatically, "Pang!" 

And the man said something else Kenneth could not understand. But in a week, Kenneth had the 

numbers, and he would go out and have a lovely time bargaining. Margaret explains that he had this 

advantage over most people, which was that he didn't feel any more embarrassment than a child does 

in using the language. As soon as he got a word, he used it, with the result that he learned very fast. 

They had class every day except Thursday and Sunday. On Thursdays, Kru Tardt would take 

them all over town, sightseeing. Or some of the other missionaries would. Then on Sunday, they 

would go to church. They couldn't understand a word, but it was one of the ways they learned the 

language, by going and listening. One Sunday they went to the Chinese church. 

One time there was a program at the church, and Al had gone out of town for some reason, 

and Kenneth was asked to do something to entertain. So he put on his jumping rope act. Obviously, 

he couldn't talk to them. But he had his jump rope, and he could do some fancy jumping, criss 

crossing the rope, double skips, running backward. "You should see me run backward, in a circle, 

chasing myself, while my arms are going this way with the rope around me!" 

Kenneth remarks on what a marvellous historian Margaret is, referring to the way she is 

taking us through their lives, using their letters of the time and the records she kept. "Isn't Margaret a 

wonderful historian? I tell you, I've never known any professional historian to compare with her, 

because she's a natural, which is the finest kind. An absolute natural." Margaret stops him to speak 

of what a stable era it was after the First World War. One had a sense of "things have always been 

this way and they will always be this way." Actually, the Landons were seeing the end of a whole 

way of life. One of the things that struck them both in their reading through the years has been the 

descriptions by travellers, century after century, all seeing very much the same things in that part of 

the world. Life didn't change much. It was a slow process. But the Landons were there at the end of 

all that. 

208


Session #28 May 31, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

7 

52:23 Kenneth tells us that the license he bought for his car July 4, 1927, cost seventeen tekals. He 

purchased five tins of gasoline and a tin of oil, and went out and drove all over town. "And I like it a 

lot." When he got his license, a Siamese official stepped into his car and said, "Drive off and show 

me." So Kenneth started out, trying to remember that traffic and its rules were opposite to what he 

was used to. He had to drive on the left. The only criticism was that he didn't blow his horn enough. 

In Bangkok, they blew their horns all the time "in crazy fashion." The traffic on the streets included 

bicycles, bullocks, ponies, motorcars, streetcars, men pulling carts, and pedestrians. All of them! So 

to drive through, you had to blow your horn all the time! 

It was the custom for well-dressed Siamese to wear a certain color panung on each day of the 

week. Kru Tardt's colors were red on Sunday, bright yellow on Monday, pink on Tuesday, green on 

Wednesday, orange on Thursday, blue on Friday, and purple on Saturday. 

The compound where the Landons and Seigles were living had two houses, both owned by 

the mission. There was the street, Sathorn Road, then a canal, large enough so that good-sized boats 

traveled on it. A bridge joined the street to the compound on the other side of the canal. There was a 

fence around the compound. 

The Landons learned that two pythons had once lived in the compound, eight- to ten-foot 

ones. The Chinese had caught one by putting a noose around its hole, and had dragged it away to 

make food or medicine. They pulled it along as if it were a "balky horse." The other python got 

away. 

The valuable china that Mrs. Seigle had found, with blue dragons on it. 

Mrs. Graham Fuller, who was rather large, was riding in a ricksha once when a bicycle almost 

ran into the ricksha man so that he let go the poles. Mrs. Fuller was so heavy that the ricksha rocked 

back, with the poles sticking straight up in the air, and her feet sticking straight up in the air too, her 

dress down over her face. The poor ricksha man got hold of the poles but dangled helplessly in the 

air as he kicked vainly in an effort to pull them back down. He couldn't do it until the man on the 

bicycle came and helped him. Mrs. Fuller, of course, was immobilized in her undignified position. 

Mrs. McClure said that the huge crows in Bangkok were so bad that they would carry away 

food and even silver spoons. People were telling Margaret things, and she would write them down. 

Twelve years ago, the block they were living in had burned on three sides—everything except 

the mission compound. There had been another bad fire several years ago, and a number of fire 

scares. At the last fire, the local Chinese had said of the mission houses, "Those houses won't burn. 

Their God looks after them, and he won't let them burn." The Landons were there one night when a 

fire started nearby, and they quickly packed their belongings to flee if they had to. The fire came 

right up to the compound, and then stopped. The wind changed. 

The Landons began receiving mail from home. 

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HOUR 37 

Session #28 continued May 31, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (VIB180) Ah Mui (SP?), who was Mrs. Seigle's cook, bought a girl who came to be called Ah 

Chi (SP?) for $10 Hong Kong from her parents, who were too old to care for her. She was big 

woman, very nice, who proved very valuable. She worked in the Seigle household also. Ah Oi (SP?) 

was part of a motherless family who was bought for 110 tekals. She was just a little girl, and they 

were teaching her how to work. This was something that was just taken for granted there. Ah Yu 

(SP?) was a man who worked for them also. Kenneth speaks of the prices men had to pay for their 

brides. The price depended on the going rate for that particular race. A Thai girl would be so much, 

a Chino-Thai would be a little more, and a Chinese girl the most expensive. 

Ah Oi was cleaning out shelves and helping out in other minor ways. Margaret comments 

that the selling of women was one way the "green light district" was supplied with women too. 

The American minister, Mr. McKenzie, who had arrived just before the Landons. Some time 

after his arrival, he was entertained by His Royal Highness Prince Damrong, who was the highest 

prince in the kingdom—well, Margaret says, there was another prince of equal rank, but Damrong 

was the most influential and the most highly respected. (Kenneth interjects, "And of him Dr. Cortes 

(SP?) used to say, 'His name is Prince Damrong, but he's generally damn right!'") He was an utterly 

aristocratic prince, and a marvellous person. Kenneth saw quite a bit of him in his Siam years, and 

both Landons got to know him later, when he was in exile. In any case, he had entertained the 

American minister, and so, naturally, Mr. McKenzie wished to reciprocate. He had heard that the 

Prince was very fond of Chinese tea. So he sent out his "boy," which was what you called someone 

who worked for you, his "number one boy," with instructions to buy one pound of the best Chinese 

tea. This would be served in a tiny little cup, hardly bigger than a thimble, and you would savor it. 

Now this was 1927, and $1 then might be worth $25 today. 

Margaret digresses to say that the U.S. representative there was a minister, not an ambassador, 

and the Legation was so small that there was just the minister, a second secretary, a consul, and 

perhaps a naval attaché. Margaret and Kenneth are not clear on that. She is sure there were never 

more than three people there. 

So anyway, Mr. McKenzie was going to entertain with a pound of the best Chinese tea. The 

boy set out after breakfast, but did not come back. The hours passed. The minister grew increasingly 

nervous as tea-time neared. At last, the boy came back to say that he had found the best tea. It had 

taken him all day to scour the town. But he wanted to check with the minister to be sure of what he 

wanted to buy. The "number one" tea would cost him 160 tekals for the pound, which was $72. The 

"number two" tea was 120 tekals a pound, which was $54. The "number three" tea was 80 tekals, 

which was $36 a pound. In light of this, the minister decided on a half a pound of the "number 

three," and thought it was a good joke on him! The boy promptly bought the desired tea, and the 

occasion went forward. 

Kenneth tells us that this is the kind of tea that is very carefully hand-picked. It grows high in 

the mountains in China. Women put a sack on their backs and walk literally days and days before 

they pick enough leaves of a very special type to make a pound of the "number one tea." 

John Eakin, another missionary who had married a year before he Landons did, told of a 

young man who was at the Legation and who was invited to go to a dinner which the King would 

intend. The man was talking to a Siamese prince and some other people, when the suggestion was 

210


made that the prince make a speech in English at the banquet. He said that he would if the American 

gentleman would reciprocate with a speech in Thai. The American said that he had only been in 

Siam for a month and couldn't speak the language. But if the prince would speak in English, he 

would do his best. The American went to another Siamese prince and had a speech written in full in 

high Siamese. Then he took it to his language teacher and learned it verbatim. At the banquet, the 

prince was asked for his English speech, and he responded that he would only do so if the American 

gentleman gave his Thai speech first. He did not believe the American could do it. The American 

was then pressed for his speech in Thai, and after some reluctance, he gave in and made it. Of 

course, everyone was dumbfounded, and the King was absolutely delighted. The poor prince then, 

who had made no preparations, could only say a few little English words and phrases. To this, the 

American said. "Mai paw! (SP?)" which meant, "Not enough!" But that was a phrase that should 

never be used in front of the King. Fortunately, the King just slapped his knee and said, "Mai paw! 

Mai paw!" He was greatly amused. 

2 

9:53 The Landons had dinner with a family named Elder. As they were leaving, Kenneth went to 

turn the car around to pick up Margaret, and as he was doing so, the wires on his horn broke 

somehow, shorting out, and almost immediately the wires were on fire and Kenneth had a lapful of 

burning rubber before he could scramble out. His hands were burned. He warned everyone away 

from the car. The flames leaped and danced inside the car. He feared that the gas tank would 

explode. "Well I ran for a fire extinguisher, and I guess Margaret prayed, which is a good 

combination." But the rotten fire extinguisher wouldn't work. Then suddenly the fire ceased for 

some reason. Kenneth approached cautiously, got his pliers, cut the wires out, and looked the car 

over. The only thing that had burned, it seemed, was the horn wire. Nothing else even seemed to be 

scorched, except for Kenneth! The car was fine. It seemed almost miraculous. 

The story of Kenneth's silver tekal buttons—a set of heavy, solid silver buttons and cufflinks 

for formal wear made from Siamese tekals. Some Chinese boys came and asked if they could play 

basketball. And the Landons started to make arrangements. Then the boys asked Kenneth if he 

would help them play, and he said yes. They were a very polite bunch. When they bumped into each 

other during the game, they would say, "Excuse me." Kenneth enjoyed it and hoped to play some 

more with them. Kenneth became a sort of coach to this group of boys. One of them, the leader, 

offered to get Kenneth some tekal buttons. The real, old-fashioned ones. They were almost 

impossible to get. A solid lump of silver. This young man was able to get them because he worked 

in a bank, and they still had some. The Thai had begun to have modern coinage as early as King 

Mongkut's reign in the mid-nineteenth century, and the older type of money ceased to be used. Most 

of it was melted down for the silver. 

Kenneth began taking long evening walks. Each night he would go five or six miles. One 

night, as he walked, he explored a street about ten feet wide that was simply "infested" with Chinese 

shops. It had begun to seem quite natural to Kenneth already to walk and walk and see nothing but 

Chinese and Siamese. He would carry his malacca cane. Each street vendor would have a different 

noise—"I've always loved noises." One man went along selling soft drinks and rang a bell. Another 

man sold Chinese noodles, hot, and ready to eat, and had a bamboo tictac. That is, he had an oblong 

piece of highly burnished bamboo with a slight curve in it ; on the other side of the curve there was a 

small hole, half way through, to fit one finger. He set this on his left hand and hit it in a musical way 

with a stick of bamboo with the other. "It really makes an enchanting noise. Very attractive, for he 

can hit two notes with it." Kenneth decided he wanted to get one, and he started looking for where he 

could. He tried shop after shop. Of course, he couldn't converse with the shopkeepers, but he would 

211


draw out the form of the instrument and imitate the noise it made and point up and down the street to 

indicate the vendor who played the thing while walking about with his wares. They usually 

understood, but no one had what he wanted. So finally, he just went up to one of the vendors and 

began dickering with the man to purchase his instrument. The man said no, but Kenneth insisted. A 

substantial crowd gathered and began laughing and jostling to see what would happen. In the end, 

the man refused to sell his tictac for any price, but Kenneth went away impressed that here was a 

great opportunity for street work, preaching and evangelism. He could gather a crowd so easily. 

"And I did a lot of street work, too. I did street preaching all the time I was out there." 

3 

15:24 The second week, Kenneth preached in a Siamese church to a white congregation. 

One Thursday, the vacation day, the Landons went to visit a snake farm. It was one of two in 

existence, Kenneth wrote, the other being in Brazil. It had three big pits, one for vipers, one for 

cobras, and the third for hamadryads. The last were so vicious that a bite meant death in about fifteen 

minutes. The snakes were kept to make the anti-venom serum for snakebites, which were frequent 

there. The keeper was a young Siamese, and he was cleaning the place when the Landons arrived. 

They watched him in the cobra pit for about twenty minutes. He walked in, turned over one after the 

other of their little houses, which looked like beehives, and would find about ten of the cobras 

underneath. With his foot he would shove them into the water around the pit. He was met by a big 

king cobra and calmly smacked it on the head when it tried to strike him. He held the king cobra and 

other snakes up for people to take pictures of him. 

Part of the snake handler's pay was a special, additional payment whenever he was bitten. So 

he would try to get the snakes to bite him, because he had the serum, and he had become immune to 

snakebites. They would bite him, but he didn't care. He would just take another injection, and then 

they would have to pay him another five or ten bat or so. It was incredible to watch the way he 

handled those snakes. 

The owners caught on to what the handler was doing eventually and turned things around, 

docking his pay a certain amount every time he was bitten. This naturally made him furious. 

Then the Landons drove to Wat Po and followed an old man who was guide around the 

temple. 

Margaret shows us pictures from their visit to the snake farm. One of a cobra swallowing a 

frog. One of the man holding a hamadryad. The king cobra would attack without provocation. 

Paul Fuller invites the Landons to his house to tea to meet Prince Bidialongkorn (SP?) and 

Princess Sat Si (SP?), his daughter. The princess was an expert tennis player and wanted Margaret to 

play as her partner in an upcoming tournament. The tournament would be in February, months after 

the baby was born. They also invited Kenneth to join the Windmill Club to play tennis, which he 

wanted to do—except for the expense. 

The Landons were learning about thirty new words a day, so each week of study was a 

significant advance. Then they would memorize a couple of verses of Siamese every day out of the 

Bible, the New Testament. 

August 21. Kenneth bought Margaret her birthday present, a piece of hand-worked Siamese 

silverware, a bowl the size of a finger bowl seated on a pedestal. They still have it. 

Margaret describes her birthday. Kenneth's gift. Other gifts, a small black lacquer tray from 

the Seigle children, and a larger tray and a little blue lacquer bowl from Al and Jeannette. Chicken 

for dinner, ice cream, sponge cake for dessert. Some people came in to play rook in the evening. 

212


4 

21:41 August 28. There was to be an auction at the Danish Legation, which was going out of 

business. The Landons went to the Legation and saw a costly set of Copenhagen royal blue china, 

known as Royal Copenhagen. It was their best ware, Miss Christiansen—who was from Denmark— 

told them, and it cost about $250 U.S. gold a set. This was an overful set, having fourteen of 

everything rather than twelve, 137 pieces in all, so it would probably cost nearer $300. Margaret 

loved it, so Saturday at 2 p.m. Kenneth went to the auction. When the auctioneer came to the dishes, 

someone bid forty tekals. Someone else said forty-five. Kenneth bid fifty. It went by fives to sixty, 

until it was down to Kenneth and one Siamese gentleman, raising each other by one tekal a bid, until 

they reached seventy-six, at which point the gentleman declined to bid further. Kenneth got the 

entire set for seventy-seven tekals, or about $30 U.S. gold. He could hardly believe it. So the 

Landons bought the finest dishes from the Danish Legation. And they have used them ever since. 

You could not buy a single platter today for what the entire set cost them in 1927. 

Kenneth packed the set in barrels to send home to the U.S. years later, and not a piece was 

broken except one—perhaps a teacup. 

September 5, the Landons completed their first quarter of study, which they had done in two 

months. As it turned out, Kenneth did three years of study in one year. He wrote at the time, 

"Margaret has an exceptional mind, so she keeps up with me." The Kenneth of today howls with 

laughter at that sentence. "Wasn't that modest?" On the exam, she scored 97, and he scored 96 7/8. 

Session #29 June 20, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

5 

26:10 (VIB355) Kenneth tells a story of a later period in Siam, from the Trang years, I believe. 

Whenever they went around at night in the house, they always carried a flashlight to be sure to see 

where they were going and what they might be walking into. The house was not lit by electricity. 

They had only kerosene lamps. And since the house was a half mile out of town, the night was 

totally black unless there was a moon. One night, Kenneth went to use the toilet, and when he 

walked in, there, coiled on the toilet seat, was a cobra. If he had not been carrying his flashlight, 

Kenneth would have sat down on him! The flashlight temporarily blinded the cobra, and Kenneth 

quickly backed off. The snake had come into the damp, bathing area, probably, up the down spout, 

and he went back the way he had come. That was the only time the Landons had a deadly snake like 

that in their house. They had just about everything else, ants, lizards, and so on, but not snakes. 

The wife of a Mr. McClintock, who was Chilean, was a fine shot with a gun. McClintock was 

ambassador to Cambodia. One day Mrs. McClintock was taking her siesta when she looked up and 

saw a cobra weaving among the open latticework at the top of the wall. She cried, "Boy! Bring my 

gun!" which he did, and she shot the snake as she lay there. Then she thought to herself, "Well, 

they're always in pairs," so she kept the gun with her, and a day or so later, she got the other one. 

Margaret's nurse was a Miss Christiansen, and she was going to see her regularly for checkups. 

Kenneth saw to it that she got exercise, insisting that she go out and take walks with him. 

Kenneth tells again about their language training, his doing three years in one, Margaret's 

doing two in one. She kept up with him! "Oh, it was agony!" she declares. 

It was a few miles across the city to Miss Christiansen's, so Kenneth made sure to keep the car 

in prime condition, to be ready for the "crisis" to come. 

Kenneth was having long conversations with Kru Tardt, and finding that he could understand 

her well. He told her the story of John 9 in Thai, and she understood him! She was well pleased with 

the Landons' progress. 

213


Kenneth went to his first Chinese wedding, a civil ceremony, not a Christian one. Mrs. Seigle 

played the wedding march. There was a twelve-course dinner, consisting of shark fins, abalone and 

crab, fish, chicken, mushrooms, oysters, birds' nest soup, soft-boiled rice, sweet lotus seeds, ginger, 

egg, and some other thing. "Quite a feast! I enjoyed it all!" Everyone sat at a round table. The 

current dish of eatables was placed in the center of the table, out of reach of everyone, and at a given 

sign by the eldest person at the table, everyone stood up and dived in with chopsticks to grab a hunk 

out of the bowl. Kenneth was getting the hang of chopsticks. 

But he had gone down from 140 to 131 pounds since arriving in Thailand. The heat was 

affecting him. 

6 

32:42 Margaret speaks of learning the mechanics of living in the tropics. They had to find a stove. 

Charcoal was very expensive, so they wanted to find a wood stove. But stoves were expensive. The 

Thai had small stoves that were close to the ground and squatted to use them. Everybody seemed to 

squat quite a bit in the Thai culture, she noticed. Not exactly her style. She describes the cook and 

her assistant squatting on the floor to make doughnuts, with the board between them, rolling and 

cutting and cooking on a stove that was a foot high. They would do their vegetables that way too. 

People in the mission were talking about moving the Landons to another compound, but the 

Landons resisted this. At the time, a Miss Alice Shaefer (SP?) was living in the second house on the 

compound where the Seigles lived. She was going home on furlough, and it was arranged that, when 

she left, the Landons would move in for the rest of the year. Kenneth bought a stove for the house, a 

meat safe, water pots, and also found a houseboy, a cook, and an amah for the baby, as well as taking 

a half-share in the coolie. So they were all set to begin housekeeping when the baby was born. 

Margaret had a fever, and Miss Christiansen came daily to see how she was. She brought 

medicine that brought the fever down, and also medicine that took away her backache. 

Margaret tells again of the gifts she received for her birthday. The beautiful sponge cake. 

Mrs. Welsh wrote to say she had been praying about their language training. At this point, 

she was still friendly to them, Margaret says. It was only after Evan married Evangeline that she 

turned against them. "So her prayers were still okay," opines Kenneth. "Fine." The prayers were 

answered. Kru Tardt told Alice that the Landons were her best language students. Margaret made an 

average of 97, and Kenneth made an average of 96 and 7/8. He laughs, "She beat me!" and adds, 

"She always does!" Kenneth did get 100 in tone, a rare accomplishment. Kru Tardt said that she 

thought Kenneth would in time sound truly Thai, when he could speak faster. 

Kenneth tells again of going out to the market, using his "Tao rai!" and "Pang!" to bargain 

with the shopkeepers. He enjoyed it, and was a good bargainer. He had no shyness about the 

process. 

7 

40:32 In their adjustment to the culture: At first, everyone looked the same to them. They would 

see various kinds of Chinese, and thought they were the same as the Thai, and as each other. But 

with time, they learned to distinguish Chinese from Thai, and with more time, Kenneth learned to 

distinguish different kinds of Chinese, Hainanese from Cantonese from Swatow Chinese. He could 

hear the difference in dialect. 

At first, Margaret found many of the smells disturbing. She had an acute sense of smell. The 

odors were strange, unfamiliar, and so they were troubling. The Landons, of course, smelled 

different from the people of Thailand, so that they noticed the Landons even as the Landons noticed 

them. But the Landons adjusted fairly quickly. 

214


Margaret tells of Kru Tardt's teachings on Thai culture. She took them into a Thai house and 

instructed them exactly on what to do. First, they must never touch a child's head, or anyone's head. 

In Thai thinking, the spirit was there. Such a touch dishonors the person, and can be dangerous to 

him or her. And they must never speak of feet. The Thai would speak very freely about other parts 

of their body that Westerners considered private—speaking casually about sexual parts, for instance. 

But when it came to feet, if they felt they had to speak of them, they would always apologize. 

Another thing was never to point your toe at anyone, or to cross your legs so that the bottom of your 

foot showed. An American minister before the present one had violated this custom, sitting on a 

platform at some ceremony with some high Thai, crossing his legs with the bottom of his foot waving 

at a prince. It was seen as extremely insulting. 

Every Thai house had a high doorsill. The Thai were nominally Buddhist, but also in practice 

animist, and tended to see spirits in everything, spirits in rock, in trees, and so on. You might see a 

tree with a red rag like a ribbon tied around it and maybe a bowl with offerings in it at the bottom, 

given to the spirit of the tree. Margaret remembers a really intelligent woman once pointing to a line 

of mosquito bites on her skin and telling her that the spirits had been at her. The spirit of a house 

dwelt in the doorsill, so Kru Tardt warned the Landons never to set foot on that. 

The Landons had a British friend who had come out to Thailand in 1903 to electrify the 

palaces for King Chulalongkorn, and when he arrived, knowing not a word of Thai, he was promptly 

taken to the king's palace. The palace gates were large, large enough for elephants to pass through, 

with sentries, of course, and a very high sill, almost knee high. When he arrived at the gate, the 

Westerner naturally put his foot on the sill to climb over, and the two guards lunged at him with fixed 

bayonets. His interpreter pulled him back and railed at the sentries. Surely, they must realize that 

this barbarian didn't know what he had done! He was seen to be endangering the king by offending 

the spirits in the sill. 

There were fifteen first-person pronouns for "I" or "we" in Thai, and a large number for 

"you." Several for "he" and "she." This was because the relationship of people was such that certain 

pronouns were correct for one sort of person and not for another, reflecting the hierarchy of persons 

in the Thai culture. "Gu" (SP?) was the most insulting term for "I," and "mung" (SP?) for "you." A 

man had a different first-person pronoun than a woman. Thai culture was emerging from feudalism, 

and many things reflected the old culture. Kru Tardt would always be aware of the rank of people in 

the culture by signs that the Landons could not recognize and that mystified them. Kenneth has often 

remarked since in his lectures that "in Thailand, all people were born unequal." In our culture, they 

are theoretically born equal; perhaps not in practice, but under the law. In Thailand, they were 

literally unequal from birth, depending on their karma. They were the result of their previous 

incarnations. 

In the past in Bangkok, there were few roads. Mostly canals. Where there were paths, they 

tended to be so narrow that it was difficult for two people to pass each other. One day a missionary 

was complaining of this to a Thai friend, who explained to him, "But you know that no Thai can walk 

together, because no Thai are equal. Therefore one goes before, and one goes behind." The Landons 

would see this when a husband and wife walked together. She would always go behind. And if there 

were any baggage, she would carry it. 

When two Thai get together to this day, Kenneth explains, they have to immediately sound 

each other out to see how polite or how rude they may be to each other. It's automatic. "What's your 

name? What's your family name? What's your job? Who are your relatives? Who's your wife? 

How many children do you have? What money do you earn?" All kinds of things to determine your 

rank, position, importance. Finally, they figure out which one is superior to the other. "It happens 

right here amongst the students," that is, the young Thai who come to America to study in our 

215


universities. They can't get away from it. 

Margaret comments that this is breaking down, but slowly. 

Along with this, in Thai culture, personal questions were considered polite. Here, they are 

not. The questions showed an interest in you—beyond the matter of determining rank. 

The Thai are a charming people, Margaret says. But there again, it took some work to 

understand their system of values. Truth ranked very low. Courtesy ranked very high. Good 

manners. Margaret says she never knew a Thai, even an educated Thai, who believed there could be 

such a thing as a cultivated Chinese. They found Chinese manners so offensive. The Chinese would 

"hawk and spit." They would use loud voices! Very rude. The Thai value system produced 

problems, because if they could figure out what answer you wanted, then, when you asked a question, 

that was the answer you got. The truth hardly mattered. This too was a carryover from the feudal 

era, in which one survived only by being able to respond to the needs of someone more important. 

Their kind of flattery was so subtle, and so smoothly developed, that to this day it takes in foreigners. 

They have been at this for centuries and are masters of it. 

Kenneth tells of being asked recently to testify before a congressional committee concerning 

the Thai government, and of telling the person on the other end of the phone how skillful the Thai 

were in ingratiating themselves with Westerners. "You want human rights? You'll get all the human 

rights you could possibly want." [Human rights was a key concern in the Carter era of 1977.] The man 

said he didn't understand that. If they didn't practice human rights, how could this be true? Kenneth 

explained how skillful they are. He gave an illustration. The Nixon administration declared that no 

American government would provide aid to any government that did not co-operate in the 

suppression of the heroine and opium traffic. One of the main lines of this traffic was through 

Thailand, out of the Golden Triangle. So the Thai had a little problem. They had to satisfy Mr. 

Nixon, keep him happy, in order that American aid would continue flowing. They knew that Ne Win 

of Burma was very unhappy because U Nu, the former leader of Burma, was working out of Thailand 

to try to overthrow the Ne Win government. They knew that the U.N. people were trying to get into 

Rangoon to fight the opium trade, and Ne Win wouldn't let them in. Ne Win was under some 

pressure to satisfy the U.N. So the Thai contacted Ne Win and said, Why don't we get together on 

this? You can make the U.N. happy, and we can make Mr. Nixon happy. You want to get rid of U 

Nu. Suppose we agree that we'll export U Nu to New York, and for your part, you go up and capture 

a heroine factory. You capture the kingpin, turn him over to us, we'll bring him down to Bangkok 

and turn him over to you, and you can try him, and that will make everybody happy and show them 

we're co-operating. And that is exactly what they did. The drug trade continued to flourish. The aid 

continued to flow. 

Kenneth declined to testify. He would talk reality. What they wanted was someone who 

would "wring his hands a little bit." 

Margaret says that Thai society was not a nation in the usual sense at all. Everybody was 

attached to somebody. Any kind of progress was through this funnel, as it were. People learned how 

to do what they called bati-bat (SP?). It translates "serve," but it's much more than that. It's 

ingratiating. It's anticipating the desires and needs of the person. They are expert at it. In Europe at 

one time, and England, it was probably the same. It would have been a matter of survival. 

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HOUR 38 

Session #29 continued June 20, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (VIB600) Margaret continues on the Thai system of values. Young missionaries would arrive, 

study the language for a few months, and their teacher would compliment them extravagantly. How 

wonderfully they spoke the language! And it wasn't true at all. 

It's no accident, says Kenneth, that the Thai were the only Asian state that survived the 

colonial period in southern Asia. They really knew how to get on with Westerners. They were 

diplomats. "I've often said they were intuitive in anticipating the threat to their security and adjusting 

to it. They've been intuitive." They knew by the early 1930's what a threat the Japanese were going 

to be and began to prepare for it, carefully crafting their foreign policy accordingly. 

Margaret talks about how hard it was to learn to get the truth on anything. 

Kenneth tells us that one of his funniest conversations was when Kuriapaiwan (SP?) was 

Prime Minister, and Kenneth went back to Bangkok—this would have been in the 1950's? 1960's? 

The Prime Minister was in his office, dressed up in a panung, prancing up and down in his office, 

giving Kenneth a lecture about the situation out there, now and then glancing over at Kenneth to see 

how he was taking it. Finally, he stopped in front of Kenneth and said, in Thai, "Do you believe me?! 

Do you believe me?!" And Kenneth just sat there. The man exclaimed in disgust, "You don't believe 

a word!" Kenneth echoed him, "I don't believe a single word you said." The PM laughed his head 

off. "Aw nuts!" the PM said, in Thai. "To hell with it." He knew he couldn't fool Kenneth, and he 

just sat down. After that, they got along beautifully. 

Kenneth talks about how skillful Margaret was in the school she headed in Trang. She knew 

how to handle the teachers and the girls. She explains that, again, she had people who would help 

her. Without that, she couldn't have done it. And she always listened. 

Kenneth wrote in a letter of September, 1927, "Tuesday night, Margaret and I went to bed at 

9:15, and she went right to sleep and slept well until 6:45 in the morning. Then she awoke with the 

first slight birth pain and told me about it." They waited a while to see if this were the real thing, and 

it was. So he got the car ready, told the folks good-by, and by 9:30, he had her at Miss Christiansen's, 

in bed in the delivery room. Kenneth returned home to take care of a few things, then returned to the 

clinic at noon to find Margaret in hard labor, with the pains coming every couple of minutes. They 

got stronger and stronger until they were a minute and a half apart. By mid-afternoon, she had 

brought the baby all the way to "the exit," and they could see that it was the breech and not the head. 

Miss Christiansen pulled Kenneth out of the delivery room, where he had been with Margaret, and 

told him to go across the river to the hospital and get Dr. Theobald, who was a specialist in this sort 

of thing. This, Kenneth expeditiously did. Theobald was able to deliver the baby without 

instruments. The baby didn't have a mark on her. Margaret had a fairly substantial tear, but not too 

serious. At 3:55, September 14, the baby was born, a girl, who weighed seven pounds. 

Margaret remembers the awful moment when Miss Christiansen told her that the presentation 

was a breech and that Margaret wouldn't be able to deliver her. She was a wonderful woman, and she 

sat down beside Margaret and took Margaret's hands and simply held onto her. "It was an amazing 

experience. It was a matter of the spirit. It was really wonderful." The doctor didn't get there for 

quite a while. 

It was hard for Margaret to go out to Thailand, leaving her mother, carrying her first child. 

But she has often thought that this was in God's plan because this doctor was one of the finest 

217


specialists in the world, Dr. Geoffrey Theobald of Harley Street. He had been brought out by the 

Rockefeller Foundation to teach. He was not taking private patients. Miss Christiansen said he was 

"absolutely incredible," that he just manipulated the child and brought her out feet first. "So we were 

both alive. And we might not have been otherwise." 

Kenneth adds, "And I never will forget the baby lying there, discarded in a tub, yelling her 

head off, with eyes about this big around—pansy blue, great big eyes—kicking, yelling." And 

Kenneth thought, She's just like me. She's got strong lungs. 

Sometimes, with breech, the baby was born dead. 

Session #30 July 11, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

2 

8:03 Kenneth once again tells the story of Peggy's birth, filling in more details from a letter he 

wrote to Adelle. The first birth pain at 6:45. Margaret came over to Kenneth and told him, and they 

lay in bed, talking and planning and waiting to make sure it was no false alarm. Kenneth packed 

Margaret's bag as she directed and took it to the car, and then they enjoyed breakfast as usual. Every 

now and then Margaret would bend over as if wishing to inspect the table cloth a little closer, and 

then would grin at Kenneth. They drove to Miss Christiansen's clinic, and events ensued until about 

2:45, when the baby had come down to "the exit" and it became clear that the birth was a breech 

presentation. Miss Christiansen sent Kenneth off across the river to get Dr. Theobald. 

Kenneth drove like mad in his little Ford coupe to the riverside, where he hired a sampan to 

cross over. The boatman rowed with his leg wrapped around the single oar. It was slow going 

because of the stiff current in the river. Kenneth went up a long walk to the hospital, Surawat (SP?) 

Hospital, which was the center for the Rockefeller activities there and which was headed by a Dr. 

Ellis, who owned the farm next to the Landon house in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was a 

pathologist, as Kenneth recalls. The first person Kenneth saw as he approached the hospital was a 

very tall, slim, dark-haired man with cavernous dark eyes, and Kenneth dashed up to him saying that 

he was looking for Dr. Theobald. The man replied that KH was Dr. Theobald. "Good!" Kenneth said, 

and latched right on to his upper man. "You're coming with me!" And he explained about Margaret 

as they went. Theobald did not resist. As he said later, "I wasn't prepared to argue." 

As Kenneth recalls it, Theobald had a little bag of instruments with him and went straight off 

with him. They crossed the river on the sampan, then rode in Kenneth's car to the clinic. Theobald 

commented on the way to the clinic that he hadn't realized a Ford coupe traveled so rapidly. 

Once there, Theobald set right to work. "Ghastly!" Margaret interjects. It was 3:30. 

Theobald didn't use any instruments. Just his hands. The baby wasn't even scratched or bruised. 

Margaret was so excited by the whole thing that she couldn't sleep all that night. But the 

second night, she slept heartily. 

The baby looked like him, Kenneth wrote, adding, "Poor thing!" But Margaret thought she 

looked like Evangeline. Peggy did have Kenneth's foot, he wrote, with the second toe longer than the 

big toe, and had square hands like his. "I feel quite capable as a nurse. I've visited around quite a bit, 

and I play with all the babies and hold them." 

"I know one thing about it, and that is it's like me in this respect: it has good lungs. You 

should hear that kid weep!" 

That same day there was a meeting at which it was determined that the Landons' would take 

Miss Schaefer's house for the rest of the year. Kenneth talks about his preparations for moving in. 

Fortunately, he could take two weeks' vacation. 

218


3 

17:45 Margaret tells the story from her side. There had been a big dinner party out at the Wattana 

Wittiah Academy (SP?), which at that time was the finest girls' school in Asia and which was run by 

the Presbyterian mission. In those days, the road didn't go out all the way to Wattana. You took the 

tram or your car as far as you could, then a boat on a canal. For this reason, the Landons decided not 

to go. 

Margaret tells again of her birthday celebration on September 7. Her gifts. The cake. Ice 

cream. The people who came to play rook. But Margaret had picked up some sort of fever which 

stayed with her for a number of days. On September 6, Margaret remembers being down on her 

knees cutting out the fabric for a slip, crawling around on the floor. 

In any case, the baby began to come the night after that big dinner party. The clinic was not a 

hospital. Friends have commiserated with her over this, because three of her children were born 

there. But her room was washed every day, every piece of furniture in it, and the floor. She would 

ask her friends, Did you get homecooked food every meal? Did the nurse come dashing in constantly 

to see that you were all right? Those nurses were darlings. The clinic was a house which Miss 

Christiansen had taken over. 

She had come out in 1912. She was in Trang, where the Landons went later, and she was 

horrified by the maternal death rate. The midwives would literally walk on a woman to help push the 

baby out. Miss Christiansen estimated the infant mortality in the first year as in excess of 33%, and 

the maternal death rate was very high. She was a surgical nurse, and she had gone out for a short 

term, not expecting to stay, sponsored by Dr. Bulkley of New York—the father of Dr. Lucius 

Constant Bulkley, who became the Landons' doctor in Thailand. But she decided to make her life's 

work there. She went to England and took a course in midwifery, where there was a special hospital 

that trained midwives. And then she returned to Bangkok, with the mission's consent, and started 

what she called the Maternity Home. It was on Pla Pla Chai Road, right next to a famous monastery, 

Wat Tapesarin (SP?)—named for one of the queens. She had a big old house, and on the ground 

floor she had the delivery room. The nursery was in that room too. There was a private room, and a 

ward with about three beds. She had just that year succeeded in getting modern plumbing. She 

created a lovely atmosphere, and she was herself very capable. She had deliveries under all sorts of 

conditions. She would be called into homes that were just filthy. She had 1200 deliveries before she 

ever lost a mother, and in that case, she had known in advance that it was almost hopeless and so had 

called in a doctor. 

When Margaret came in, there had been a delivery in the middle of the night. Miss 

Christiansen had been up all night. She had a bottle of "4711" cologne there by the bed, one of many 

little touches. 

Margaret says there's no use describing the delivery. "It's pain and it's pain and it's pain, and 

that's what it is." There was always one nurse with her, a lovely woman named Simuan (SP?), who 

was from Trang. Miss Christiansen had chosen her girls very carefully. She worked with Miss 

Margaret McCord, who had a Bible training school, and the idea was to train these girls both as Bible 

women and as midwives. They would be useful to the church as well as to the community. The girls 

were of high quality. Jeanette Seigle told Margaret that Miss Christiansen was better than any doctor 

resident in Bangkok and urged Margaret to use her. She was so good that the government invited her 

to come over and work with them. 

Margaret comments that this was a pattern. The mission never was in a position, because of 

small numbers, to work on a large scale. But what they did do was to do what they did very well and 

so set a pattern that could be followed by others. They did this with the first leper home, building a 

beautiful community of houses up in the north, which was then emulated by others. Miss Edna Cole 

219


did the same thing with women's education. The mission set the pattern for all modern education 

there. They never asked for anything in return, and no credit is given to them in Thai history. 

Miss Christiansen decided against going over to the government because she felt it was 

essential in the beginning to have girls that she chose, of a very high caliber, that is, people of 

character as well as ability. She did take some non-Christian girls. As far as Margaret knows, there 

was no problem with any of the girls Miss Christiansen selected to work with her. What she did with 

her maternity clinic made a revolution in the country, and the government took it up. 

4 

29:42 So anyway, Kenneth went for Dr. Theobald. The man subsequently became a friend of the 

Landons. He and his wife had the Landons for Christmas dinner, and Margaret played tennis with 

him. "We didn't win, though." 

The actual agony of the labor Margaret remembers well because there were two or three hours 

in which she was undergoing heavy labor and unable to deliver the baby. It was an awful sinking 

feeling when she realized that the presentation was a breech. Miss Christiansen came, sat by the bed, 

and just took her by the hands and held on, and it was as if something of her inner strength came into 

Margaret. She would wipe her face with the "4711" coloqne. 

As soon as the doctor came, they gave Margaret chloroform, so she had no memory of what 

happened next. Then the baby was there. Theobald was quick. Kenneth tells us that Theobald sent 

him out of the room but that he didn't go all way, staying at the door to watch. It was a fast 

manipulation. He had that baby out in no time at all. He got her feet down and pulled her out feet 

first. He was what was called a "Harley Street physician." The Rockefeller had chosen him because 

he was the best. Margaret has often wondered if the kind of doctor she would have had in America— 

in Wheaton, or Chicago—would have been able to save her life. But Dr. Theobald did. 

Miss Christiansen had done the same manipulation as Theobald, many times, dealing with 

breech presentations. But she would not take a chance with a member of the mission. She had even 

done a transverse presentation, where one arm is out. 

Because Peggy had been born breech, her head was not distorted the way a newborn's usually 

is. They laid her beside Margaret, and she had huge, dark blue eyes, a little pug nose, a rosebud 

mouth, and "she looked so adorable to me, my heart just swelled with so many thankfulnesses." 

In those days, you didn't get up and walk around the way you do now. You had two weeks of 

rest. 

Kenneth tells of a later incident in which Dr. Bulkley used chloroform on little Peggy, and 

used too much. She "died right there under his hands." Bulkley had to give artificial respiration to 

bring her back. "I saw her die. She turned completely white. She was gone." 

5 

34:32 Kenneth sent a cable from the mission office to the board in America, which was supposed to 

send word to both sets of parents. It took six weeks' for letters to come in those days. At the end of 

five weeks, Margaret began to expect letters from home, but none came. Week after week passed, 

and nothing. Finally, a letter came from Adelle. She had not received a cable. Instead, six weeks 

after Peggy's birth, she had received a letter from the Landons, and when she opened it, a picture fell 

out showing Margaret sitting in bed holding the baby. Adelle burst into tears because she had come 

to the conclusion that the baby was dead. That was why no word had come. She had been carrying 

this anxiety for weeks. 

On further checking, it was learned that no cable was ever sent by the mission in Bangkok. 

Mr. Dunlap had done nothing with it. 

220


Al Seigle and Kenneth went to the Legation to register Peggy as an American citizen, and also 

to the local police station to register the birth and get a birth certificate. The police, of course, did not 

speak English, and Al didn't speak any Thai. Only Chinese. Kenneth, of course, only had a few 

words by then. But they managed to get the certificate. Only years later did Kenneth realize that 

what was written on the certificate, in Thai, was "Baby Seigle." The police knew it was about a 

baby; and they knew Mr. Seigle. Ergo: "Baby Seigle!" So Peggy's Thai birth certificate is useless. 

The servants were going to cost the Landons about $35 U.S. gold a month. 

Kenneth wrote to his mother, "I can tell from your letters, Mother, that you do not feel sure of 

seeing me again in life here." She was already ill enough that she knew. She died in 1929. The day 

she died, almost the minute she died, Kenneth said to Margaret, "My mother just died." 

Kenneth had bought a teak bookcase, a baby bed, three little tea tables, a set of glasses, the 

china, of course. He was working to get the house ready. Ma Cham (SP?) came and declared, upon 

seeing the Schaefer house, "Sokabroke!" (SP?) "Filthy!" She set about cleaning the house, and when 

she was done, the place was spotless. Ma Cham had worked for a Mrs. Allen, and helped to raise her 

children. 

After two weeks at Miss Christiansen's, Margaret came home late one afternoon. Peggy had 

already gained weight steadily. Ma Cham was waiting when Margaret and the baby arrived home, 

and she took the baby and undressed her. Kenneth had everything arranged so that Margaret need 

worry about nothing. But Peggy proceeded to demonstrate the health of her lungs, and howled her 

way through the evening. 

6 

44:07 Kenneth describes his normal day during that period. They got up at 6:30, exercised, 

dressed, and had breakfast at 7:30. At 8:30, Peggy was washed, and they had a play time with her. 

They then spent the morning studying Thai. At 12:30, they had tiffin, that is, lunch. For breakfast, 

they had fruit, just as pomelo, bananas, oranges, and many others; oat meal, porridge, cocoa, t oast, 

jam, eggs. For tiffin, soup, meat and potatoes, three kinds of vegetables, and pudding. At dinner, 

they had a real meal, a couple of meats, perhaps several vegetables, fruits, desserts. They were 

always hungry. They perspired heavily all the time, even if just reading a book, or sitting typing a 

letter, and it left them very hungry. In the afternoon, they had school from 1:30 to 4:30 with their 

teacher. In the evening, they had visits with friends, and rested. Life seemed slow to Kenneth, 

because he couldn't go "rushing around" as he had done before. 

In Thai, there were two words for "wash." One was to "sak pa." To "sak" was to "jerk it up 

and down in the water," as you would with a cloth or shirt. The other was to "lang" it. If something 

was solid and immovable, like a wall, you would "lang" it. So Kenneth one day told his coolie to 

"sak" the car, and the man was simply overcome with laughter. He never explained. He just laughed 

and laughed. Kenneth had to find out for himself what he had said wrong. 

Kenneth and Margaret gave their first dinner party, to be prepared by their new cook, Ah 

Chuan (SP?). The guests were a Mr. and Mrs. Palmer and a Mr. Stewart. Ah Chuan worked hard all 

day, and his wife came to help him. She was a demure little Chinese girl with a pigtail and Chinese 

trousers, and she arrived walking about twenty feet behind him. The table was beautifully set, with 

Margaret's chrysanthemum tablecloth and a bowl of Honolulu creepers for decoration. Ah Chuan put 

a doily for each plate on the tablecloth. As soon as the guests arrived, Ah Chuan served orange juice 

and tiny open-faced sandwiches in the living room. The soup was clear with a vegetable in it. The 

second course was a large fish stuffed and baked, with not a bone in it, and it was delicious. It was 

decorated with slices of lime. The main course was chicken pie with vegetable in it. It had a crust 

that broke in flakes. The dessert was spiced apple dumplings. "It wasn't a very elaborate dinner," 

221


wrote Margaret, "but everything was perfect, and the service could not have been better at the 

Blackstone," the most posh hotel in Chicago at the time. 

Ah Chuan had cooked for two years in a Chinese hotel in Canton for 1000 people. He had 

cooked in Bangkok for a Mr. Prager. He was a fine, imaginative cook. He also kept the floors in the 

dining and living room clean, and waited on the table. And for this, Kenneth paid him forty tekals a 

month. So little. 

Then they gave a second dinner party, and Ah Chuan worked just as hard for that one. The 

table was elaborately set, as if for a true banquet. (Ah Chuan would make a daily market account to 

Kenneth, and one item kept coming up mysteriously, something called "flit." Margaret had difficulty 

understanding anything Ah Chuan said; Kenneth did somewhat better, but he had no idea was "flit" 

was. There was a "flit" that the Landons knew, something they sprayed on themselves in "the eternal 

warfare against mosquitoes," but needless to say, it was not a food. Finally, Kenneth consulted Mrs. 

Seigle, who suggested that Ah Chuan meant "fillet" and used the term indiscriminately for all kinds 

of meat. And so it was.) 

The program for tonight's dinner was as follows, according to Ah Chuan: "People come. I 

bring in orange juice and sandwich. Go table. Have soupee. Big fishee. Chicken jelly. Vegetables. 

Icey cream. Coffee." Everything was done with style. The little sandwiches were open-faced, and 

the bread had been cut in shapes and fried in deep fat instead of butter. The fish was huge, about two 

feet long. There were fancy little cookies to go with the ice cream. Ah Chuan was an artist, wrote 

Margaret, in the form of a cook. 

Ah Yu, the coolie, was an artist of his own kind. Every Thursday he scrubbed all the porches 

and the bathroom floors, and when he was through, they were white enough to eat off of. But he did 

not scrub the kitchen. Neither did the cook wish to do this. Ah Chuan asked Kenneth to have Ah Yu 

do it, but Ah Yu refused. That was the cook's job. He had never done it in other houses, and he 

wouldn't do it here! Kenneth offered him more money, but he refused. That was not his job!! In the 

end, Ah Chuan relented and did the kitchen floor. 

The Eakins were famous for their biscuits, and people would ask the recipe for these fabulous 

biscuits. Then the people would try to make the biscuits and find they never came out the same way. 

Finally, Mrs. Eakin took the guests out to the kitchen, and insisted on having every detail of the 

cook's preparation. Everything he did. So he explained it all, and what came out was that, once he 

had the biscuits all made at night, he laid them on the side of his bed, lay down carefully beside them, 

and put a blanket over them so that the biscuits and he were close together under the blanket. This 

made the biscuits rise with a lightness that no one else was ever able to achieve. He had neglected to 

mention in his recipe that he slept with the biscuits! 

7 

55:02 Kenneth went to an auction of a man named Prinz (SP?) and bought his dining room suite, 

consisting of a table, eight chairs, and a sideboard, all of teakwood with a walnut finish. 126 tekals or 

about $50 U.S. gold for the lot. He also bought two fine oil paintings and a big Chinese brass tray 

and a Chinese wood stand. 

There was a lot of entertaining among the Westerners there. People dressed formally, men in 

white monkey jackets with black trousers, women in their long dresses. 

Margaret tells of another dinner party, which again she describes as their "first dinner party." 

There were place cards at each person's seat. The guests included the four new missionaries, Dr. and 

Mrs. Horst (SP?) and Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Wells. In addition, there were the Seigles and the two 

Fuller families. Paul Fuller and his wife were a young couple just finishing their first term. Margaret 

was beautiful, very tall, slender, with black hair, an Irish kind of look, with blue eyes. A fine 

222


musician, a pianist. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory of Music. She was the soloist with the 

Royal Orchestra at a command performance for the king and queen. Margaret remembers going up 

on their verandah once that year. Mrs. Fuller was wearing a dress of a gold color that was stunning 

with her black hair and flashing hair. She had some sheets of music in her hand, and she waved them 

with a laugh and said, "Our dinner ticket!" She played, and Paul sang. The other Fullers were the 

Graham Fullers, who had four children. 

At this dinner, three Chinese boys served the table. To begin, there was orange juice and 

decorative sandwiches. Then soup. And then the fish on a huge platter. Then the chicken jelly, 

daintily molded, and served with mayonnaise. Pigeons or squabs followed, twelve of them, toasty 

brown, on delectable little petals of toast, with a froth of potatoes around the edge of the platter. A 

mixture of vegetables and potatoes made into the shape of peanuts and fried in deep fat. The last 

course was ice cream turned out of a large mold into a circle of half peaches. 

223


HOUR 39 

Session #30 continued July 11, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (VIB1090) Margaret tells us how much fun it was to be able to put on fancy dinners with their 

special cook, Ah Chuan. They didn't do it very often because of the expense, though. That year was 

the only time in their Siam years when they had such a cook. Once they left Bangkok, they would 

have a "country type" cook. 

Their house was large and comfortable. It had a screened porch. 

In a month, Peggy weighed nine and 3/4 pounds. Kenneth remarked on his own health. He 

felt terrific, and he slept soundly at night. He didn't even wake up when Peggy cried and Margaret 

got up to feed her. "I sleep like a railroad tie!" 

Thanksgiving evening, the Landons had dinner with the Palmers. There was a real turkey, 

and even "cranberry sauce" made of a Siamese fruit. At dinner, Mrs. Seigle moved "rather hastily" a 

number of times, Kenneth noticed, and about an hour after dinner, she gave birth to a baby girl. 

"Yeah," Margaret says. "She did it the easy way." Mrs. Seigle had to tell people that she was 

pregnant or they wouldn't know. 

The baby's name was Jeanette Josephine Seigle, and she was called J.J. 

There were a number of shops across Sathorn Road from their house. Their compound was 

fenced, so that when you crossed the little bridge from the road, you came to a gate to enter the 

compound. The two houses were identical. In her house, not long after the baby's birth, Margaret 

heard a woman screaming, and she ran outside and realized it was Jeanette. Margaret ran over, full 

tilt, and found that J.J. was having a convulsion. Just by chance, Margaret knew what to do, which 

was to get hot water and put the baby into it, as hot as the baby could stand. Kenneth went to get Dr. 

Horst, but J.J. had come out of the convulsion by the time the doctor arrived. J.J. went through these 

convulsions three or four times while the Landons were there. Ultimately, she grew into a very 

healthy woman. She is now married and lives in California. Al has died, and Jeanette lives near J.J. 

in a mobile home. 

2 

5:10 Kenneth writes that "this morning, as usual, I taught my Bible class in Siamese." This was in 

November, after slightly more than four months of language study. The Siamese pastor was taking 

an interest in Kenneth and passing along to him idiomatic phrases from his sermons. The Thai 

Kenneth was learning was the high language of the Bible, not the common, colloquial language. It 

made him sound rather formal to ordinary people. Many years later, when he was talking in Thai 

with Prime Minister Sarit, the man commented on this. "You use scholarly language in your ordinary 

conversation." He said the Thai found this amusing. "You talk like the Bible." That was how Kru 

Tardt had taught him. In classical, scholarly Thai you never used a single word if you could put two 

together which would support each other. Kenneth gives an example of a series of words each one of 

which says the same thing but with different nuances of meaning. He gives another example, 

"Bulabulong" (SP?), "comfort," in which you say "comfort" twice. So all through the years, in his 

talks with Thai diplomats, Kenneth would rattle along in his high biblical, scholarly sounding Thai! 

After their year in Bangkok, the Landons were to go to their first post in Nakhon Si 

Thammarat. Only many years later did they learn that the Siamese in Bangkok had wanted the 

224


Landons to continue there with them. But there was already resentment against them in the mission, 

particularly in the person of Paul Eakin. Eakin resented the way Kenneth ripped through the 

language training, three years of study in one year. Kenneth went faster and faster as time went on. 

"I just sopped it up." He could read all the stuff they handed out. He would take a whole year's 

books and go through them in five weeks. 

There was some talk of the Landons going north, but the Wells went there. The Siamese in 

Bangkok wanted the Landons for Bangkok Christian College. But the missionaries decided to get 

Kenneth out of Bangkok. They didn't want this young arrogant fellow there. He ZDV an overconfident 

kind of guy, he says. "I suppose I ZDV impossible, if not at least difficult." So they sent 

him down to work with one of the worst missions in the field with a fellow named Snyder. Snyder 

had made such a mess of things when he was the bigshot in Bangkok that they had to send him out to 

the boondocks. It was the only way they could keep him in the country. 

Nakhon Si Thammarat is right across the peninsula from Trang, in the south. The Landons 

spent one year with Snyder there, and then, when the Knox's left Trang, the Landons were sent over 

to replace them there. 

It turned out to be a blessing, because it opened up to Kenneth all sorts of opportunities that 

he would never have had in Bangkok. In Bangkok, the mission already had Al Seigle as a special 

missionary to the Cantonese Chinese, and Graham Fuller as a special missionary to the Swatow 

Chinese—the two big Chinese communities. Kenneth would not have been permitted to do any work 

with the Chinese if he had stayed in Bangkok. And there were no Chinese to work with up in Chiang 

Mai, of any quantity. The large groups were in the south. So when he was sent there, Kenneth 

naturally, on his own, began to work with them. He learned their language—"the language where the 

money was, and where the able people were, which were the Chinese." He got so that he could 

lecture and preach in Swatow Chinese, understood Fukien, and got along in schoolboy Mandarin. If 

he had gone to Chiang Mai, he would have had various senior missionaries treating him as the new 

boy and holding him down. Whereas in Trang, he was solely responsible for a parish that ran from 

the Kra Isthmus all the way to the Malay border, "and I could just freewheel, and that suited my 

spirit." He had a natural affinity for the Chinese. He was building Chinese schools, Chinese 

churches. He had two Siamese churches, on both sides of the peninsula. There were 2,000,000 

people in his parish, which ran all up and down the peninsula, with its rubber plantations and tin 

mines. He worked especially among the Chinese, traveling by every means you could imagine, 

sampan, motor scooter, oxcart, bicycle, elephant, on foot, train. 

Session #31 July 18, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

3 

13:10 October 31, 1927. Margaret writes home to describe her life in Bangkok. "I surely am living 

the life of Riley these days. I have just risen from a nap which commenced as soon as lunch was 

over, and now I am dressed for tennis. After a little exercise and a bath, I shall be ready for dinner, to 

which I have not given a thought. By the time I reach the states in a few years, you can expect to see 

me fair fat and looking forty!" 

The Rev. E. Stanley Jones came to Bangkok, a famous preacher of the day. 

Dr. George McFarland was a dentist, the first modern dentist in Siam. His parents had been 

early missionaries, in the 1860's. He was not with the mission, but was friendly with it. His first wife 

died, someone everyone thought was lovely. He then married a woman that Margaret very much 

disliked, Bertha Blount. Miss Christiansen told Margaret that Bertha had pursued Dr. McFarland 

even as his wife was dying. She was very aggressive. She was a "powder pigeon shape", Margaret 

225


says. "Whatever she had," Kenneth adds, referring to her bosom, "she pulled it away up high so that 

it came up thin here and stuck straight out. It was really something to see." "Just like a powder 

pigeon," repeats Margaret. 

Dr. McFarland had a typewriter business, and Bertha was involved in running it. 

She was a missionary, and she continued to be very active in mission councils after her 

marriage. She tried to take over Wattana Wittiah Academy. Miss Edna Cole, who headed the 

Academy, told a friend of Margaret, "Bertha knows exactly how to put her hand in and tear the 

strings of your heart." She maneuvered Miss Cole out. Miss Cole was not only a very choice person, 

but she was highly respected all over the country, by the highest class. That was extremely important 

in a recently feudal country. 

Mrs. McFarland's home was beautiful; they had plenty of money. She could be very gracious 

if she wished to. The Landons went to dinners at her home. 

She was important to Margaret because she played a role in the Landons' history in Siam. She 

was the one who arranged to send Kru Pakai as a teacher down to Margaret's school in Trang years 

later. 

So anyway, all the missionaries were invited to a community dinner at the McFarlands' to 

meet Dr. E. Stanley Jones. Among those present were half a dozen people from country stations. 

They looked like lovely people, but it was very depressing to see them. They were so badly dressed. 

They stood out like sore thumbs. If they had anything they thought was nice, it was years out of date. 

Kenneth comments that, when they were in the country, he would shop for Margaret in 

Bangkok when he got up there, to make sure that she never looked like that. 

4 

20:16 Albert and Kenneth laid out a tennis court behind the two houses. They had lots of fun on 

that tennis court. 

Dr. Theobald preached in church. His father had been a missionary in India. Some time ago, 

an article had appeared in the paper saying that laymen should preach from the pulpit, and the writer 

was Dr. Theobald. So, when it was Graham Fuller's turn to preach, he simply asked Theobald to 

preach, and after what he had written, Theobald could hardly refuse. He gave a message on the 

Gospel of grace and salvation, closing with the "glorious hope of the Second Coming of our Lord." 

For a Harley Street specialist, it was amazing. 

James had had his operation to remove his arm by now, and Kenneth lent the boy his trumpet 

to practice on, since he could no longer play the piano. He could play the horn with one hand. 

The Thai were great lovers of festivals. They would join in on anybody's festival. They had a 

word, "sinook," which meant "fun." If it was "sinook," they loved doing it. They had taken on 

Christmas by the Landons' time. 

The King's birthday was a great event, of course, a public holiday. It was November 8. His 

name was King Prajadhipok, and the celebration actually ran three days. The Landons went out with 

Al in his car to "see the illumination," and the next day they went out to see "the golden mountain" 

and the many little stands and sideshows that formed a large part of the fun. 

Bangkok was an alluvial plain. You couldn't have a basement there, because just a few inches 

down there was water. At high tide time, the water might actually be up in your front yard. Often, 

when they wanted to build a house, as the city moved out to the rice fields, what they did was to 

simply dig a sort of lagoon and take the earth and pile it up. One of the kings of the Chakri dynasty, 

before King Mongkut, decided that he wanted to build a "mountain." Kenneth explains that this was 

a Hindu concept, "the center of the world," phra Meru, which the Thai pronounced "pra main." The 

problem was that the thing kept sinking, and the king gave up on it after a while. It was King 

226


Mongkut who finally finished it. The "mountain" stood about 150 feet high. The Landons climbed it 

many times. It was made of a tremendous pile of brick. There were trees planted on it, and at the top 

was a temple, or shrine, with what was supposed to be a relic of the real Buddha, a piece of bone. 

Margaret reads from the guidebook which explained how the Buddha's bones were discovered in 

India and how parts of them were distributed among Buddhist countries, Siam's piece being received 

in a solemn ceremony and in a great procession taken up to and placed in the shrine on the "golden 

mountain." 

The "illuminations" were beautiful, even more than a Chicago street at Christmastime. Some 

places, it was as light as day, and everywhere there were strings of colored lights. Thousands of 

Japanese lanterns were hung. There were Siamese flags made of electric lights. The Landons saw 

the King's boat on the river, completely outlined with electric lights, looking like a "fairy boat." 

There were great crowds in the streets. 

The Landons climbed the "mountain" during the festivities. There was vegetation growing all 

over it. Worshippers were taking turns striking a huge bell. On the way up, Margaret had noticed 

incense sticks for sale with pieces of paper attached to the top of them. The paper contained tiny bits 

of gold leaf. There were several images of the Buddha, and one especially at the highest point, near 

the temple, and the people were making merit by gilding these with the bits of gold they had brought. 

The gold leaf was incredibly thin, and when a bit of it was applied to an image, it would stick as if it 

had been glued there. 

At least three small native orchestras were playing in the temple. The main instrument looked 

like a child's boat, three feet long, and resembled a xylophone. 

Beggars were out in full force, some of them "too horrible to look at." 

There were also dozens of nuns dressed in dirty white and with shaved heads, each with a 

bowl to receive alms. 

Margaret describes the kind of clothes people wore. The funny hats on many of the children. 

5 

31:00 Mr. Wong came to get Kenneth to play basketball, and it happened that he was carrying some 

tennis balls with him. Margaret asked him if he played tennis, to which he answered yes. She 

mentioned that she had once played tennis too. A week later, out of the blue, Kenneth announced to 

Margaret's shock and dismay that Mr. Wong wanted Margaret to go on a certain afternoon to the 

Seelong (SP?) Club and meet a certain princess with whom she was to play doubles in a tournament! 

Kenneth had been talking Margaret up, describing what a champion she had been in college. Poor 

Margaret; she hadn't played in two and a half years. Mr. Wong worked in a chartered bank where 

there was also a young Chinese named Mr. Boon, who was a fine tennis player at the club. Mr. Boon 

was planning to play doubles with Princess Satsi (SP?) in the national tournament in February. The 

cups would be awarded by the King and Queen. Margaret subsequently met the princess at some 

occasion, and explained that she had not played for a long time, and also that she never played on 

Sunday. She thought this would end the matter. 

Margaret describes the various peregrinations of the whole thing. On Prince Bidia (SP?), a 

poet, who introduced tennis to Siam and who was a splendid player. A match took place in which 

Mr. Boon and Kenneth played doubles against Princess Satsi and Margaret. The women won 6-4. 

The setting was entirely "deluxe." The grass of the court was perfect, smooth, closely clipped. There 

were backstops all the way around, and three men who did nothing except chase balls for them. Then 

Prince Bidia and Mr. Boon played against Princess Satsi and Margaret and beat the women easily, 6- 

2. After this exhibition, Margaret hoped she would be allowed to fade gracefully out of the picture. 

Prince Bidia was actually Prince Bidialongkorn (SP?). 

227


6 

38:28 Margaret learned that Ah Chuan's "flit" was not "fillet," as they had thought, but yellow 

persimmon. The mystery had finally been solved. "Flit" must have meant "fruit"! 

7$3( 9,, 6LGH 

7 

39:05 White elephants have always been venerated in Asia. In a book the Landons have about the 

myths of India and southern Asia—much of Thai mythology originates in India—white elephants 

were closely connected with water, and clouds. They looked sort of like clouds. White elephants 

were not actually white or pink, like an albino. There ZHUH true albinos. But white elephants were 

not like that. There were various grades of them. 

More on the cable on Peggy's birth that was never sent. Dr. Dunlap had actually persuaded 

Kenneth to send it through him instead of the post office, and then had done nothing with it. 

From Chiang Mai in the north of Siam came word that a "true white elephant" had been born. 

"All pinkly pristine." Priests flung garlands over the baby elephant, and poured lustral water on its 

"quivering trunk," and performed complicated rites over it. Experts from Bangkok traveled north to 

examine the elephant and verify its "whiteness." When the elephant arrived in Bangkok on the train, 

it was a great occasion. The Siamese had a superstition that a white elephant, a white crow, and a 

white monkey were born in the reign of every successful king. They were the symbols of the arrival 

of the king's power. In the reign of one Siamese king, there were seven white elephants born. This 

so alarmed the neighboring government of Burma concerning the evidently growing power of the 

king of Siam that it started a war on Siam—which it lost. Margaret and Kenneth went out to see the 

procession, but could not get anywhere near the railroad station. There were great crowds. After 

some hours, the procession finally approached in the street. The nobles and officers began coming by 

in their parade dress, which included a kind of white, gauzy garment like a kimono trimmed with 

gold over their panung. It was a modification of the "baba" jacket developed by the Malayo-Chinese. 

It was King Mongkut himself who took it up. It was filmy white with a gold border. The higher 

officials also wore a headdress that was like a crown. 

The procession had actually begun with a troop of boy scouts, "tiger scouts," as they were 

called there. They wore short black trousers, khaki shirts with yellow scarves, and rakish hats. The 

Dutch had introduced those sweeping hats to the East. Each scout carried a red banner with a white 

elephant on it. There was one of the "queer old bands," playing native drums and shrill instruments 

like a fife. A band of what looked like priests in ceremonial robes, some of them carrying gifts for 

the elephant, came by—Brahmins. Then came the elephants, in the sort of trappings you see in 

picture books of circuses. The little new elephant was almost lost among the more gorgeous older 

ones. He was trotting along in the great procession, apparently quite happy. 

There was also a white monkey, crouching down on a white palanquin borne by two men. 

Margaret never did see the white crow. 

The elephant wasn't really white, "just an albino," but the monkey was perfectly white. 

The next day the King gave a big celebration for all the people. The festivities continued for 

some time. 

Plays were put on in the evening. Certain motions of the hand and feet had meaning. The 

actors did not speak. Two people on the sides of the stage told the story being enacted in an artificial, 

high-pitched voice. In the plays there were always wars between the people, representing "good," 

and the giants, representing "evil," and sometimes the monkeys would be persuaded by one side or 

228


the other to help them. When they wished to express speed, the actors would run up and down in the 

same place. An actor indicated his victory by putting one foot on the knee of the vanquished. The 

costumes were very beautiful and very old, some of them 200 years old. The plays were the 

Ramayana, and they proceeded very slowly all through the night. 

Later on, Kenneth sat through the night many a time to watch such plays. 

8 

51:22 A crowd was going to a large platform, and so Kenneth went with them. Then a man on the 

platform said something to the crowd, and they all promptly squatted on their haunches, as they were 

so used to doing, leaving Kenneth standing there, right up at the front of the crowd. People began 

calling, "Farang, nan long!" "Foreigner, sit down!" Kenneth shouted back, "All right, I'll show you!" 

and he squatted. They all laughed. They thought it was wildly funny that the foreigner was caught 

up there at front. 

Two days later the Landons went to a Siamese wedding for the first time. They did not know 

either the bride or the groom, so they didn't get a regular invitation. But Kru Jaroon (SP?), the pastor 

of Second Church, invited them at the request of the couple. All the missionaries were invited. The 

wedding was at eight. Ah Chuan had a terrible stomach ache, so bad they feared he might have 

appendicitis. So they were delayed, and almost late. The courteous ushers had the Landons write 

their names in the guest book. Then one of the ushers extended two bowls in which were 

handkerchiefs, one for men, one for women. There were flower petals scattered all over them. The 

Landons were each to take a handkerchief as a souvenir. The bride and groom were Christians, so 

this would be a Christian ceremony, not the usual Siamese wedding. It was the custom for the bride 

and groom to give small gifts to their guests. The guests did not bring gifts to them. The bride had 

made all the handkerchiefs herself, and had been working on them for months. There seemed to be 

almost 200 people at the wedding. 

There was a little organ, and the organist came in with three girls who sang in perfect English, 

"Once in the dear dead days beyond recall." The wedding began, and the first bridesmaid came in, 

dressed in a robin's egg blue pasin and a pretty blouse. That shade of blue was popular among the 

Siamese. She had a pink satin rose pinned on her blouse. She walked very carefully and slowly, 

perhaps because she was wearing very high-heeled shoes several sizes too big for her. The Siamese 

usually bought shoes too big. A second bridesmaid processed down, followed by four little flower 

girls in yellow taffeta dresses. They were wearing white socks and shoes. The bride came last, on 

Kru Jaroon's arm. Kru Jaroon was wearing black trousers and a monkey jacket The bride wore a 

pink satin dress. White was the color of mourning in Thailand if you were younger than the person 

who had died. If you were older, you wore black. In the case of a king, everyone would dress in 

white. So a bride would not wear a white wedding dress on such a happy occasion. She did wear a 

white georgette veil with a little lace cap. Her shoes were high-heeled pink satin or kid. Her bouquet 

was of satin roses. In a country where flowers were so abundant and therefore inexpensive, satin 

roses were more choice. The groom was in the customary blue panung and white coat. 

After the ceremony, everyone went outside where there was a pavilion set up with a table for 

the bridal party. It had an immense, handsome bridal cake on it. Except for the cake and ice cream, 

the refreshments were Siamese. Very peppery. Little meat cakes, some saccharine sweet 

confections, and something else that tasted like egg yolk, raw, with sugar. That last in fact was a 

confection introduced 300 years before by the Portuguese, and it is still made in Portugal, Siam, and 

probably very few other places. Kenneth and Margaret debate the name of it in Thai, but cannot 

recall it. 

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HOUR 40 

Session #31 continued July 18, 1977 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (VIIA150) Margaret continues describing the Siamese wedding. A native orchestra 

entertained the guests, and a woman sang. "Such weird, half-barbaric music as it is, too." It was on 

the pentatonic scale, very different from the Western sound. A drum, a small cymbal, two primitive 

stringed instruments, a thing played with a pick and the name of which, when translated, was 

"crocodile" because of the way it looked, and a "tinkly thing beaten with a stick that sounded like a 

very old piano." 

The Landons were having trouble with Ah Chuan. He was beyond their means, really, used to 

cooking beyond their means. And he was taking his "cut," too, his "gum rai" (SP?). 

The Landons learned a new use for macaroni. They got it about once a week baked as a 

custard for dessert! Ah Chuan thought it was great. They also had pineapple, cut in spiral fashion. 

At the Golden Mountain, Margaret saw a man roll up the leg of his panung for a moment, and 

there was a set of drawers, with wide embroidery, similar to the garments proper women used to wear 

in the West. It was a striking sight. She learned that there had been a time when very gay young men 

would let the lace or embroidery hang down a few inches below their panungs. 

The man was also wearing a coat that buttoned up to his throat, and Kenneth tells us it was 

called a "ten-to-one" coat. That is, "ten-to-one" he wasn't wearing anything under it. 

As a rule, ordinary Siamese do not wear stockings or shoes, but there are some who wear 

shoes who do not wear stockings. At the recent white elephant celebration, there had been a line of 

police at the entrance to the grounds delegated to see whether people had shoes or stockings on or 

not. The custom was that one must either wear both shoes and stockings or neither on the King's 

grounds. Those wearing shoes but not stockings were required to remove their shoes and carry them. 

Babies without clothes were not admitted at all, although they were all over the city 

otherwise. Margaret tells of the little boy whose mother had found an odd garment for him to wear 

and who didn't like it. Too hot! As soon as mama looked away, off would come the garment, that 

useless thing. When she saw what he had done, on it would go again. 

The rule on shoes and stockings applied to foreigners as well as the Thai. The guard didn't 

know what to do about Kenneth because his trousers were so long that they prevented the guard from 

telling whether he had socks on or not. Two men approached him in such a way that Kenneth 

realized they were about to bump into him in order to look and see his ankles. But at the last 

moment, he stuck out both arms and knocked them down. The guard followed him a long way but 

finally gave up in despair. 

There were some odd-looking cars in Bangkok, usually European. Baby Austins flitted about 

like mosquitoes. As you stood in the street, they were so small that you looked down on them. They 

were like children's toys. There were also two cars in town that had only three wheels, one in front, 

two in back. And there was a two-seater, one seat behind the other, and each seat so small that it 

didn't look as if a large person could get in at all. (That was the kind that Ho Chi Minh provided 

Kenneth during his time in Hanoi in 1946.) 

230


2 

8:53 At the concert [otherwise unidentified], the King and Queen arrived during the intermission. 

Their big cream-colored Rolls Royce with a closed hood in the back, the royal seal, and trim in red 

slipped up to the door with several cars following. An empty car always followed the King's car in 

case there were any trouble with his vehicle. The Landons saw the King and Queen get out and go up 

the stairs to their box. When the people were all seated again, everyone including the orchestra rose, 

turned to the King and Queen, and bowed to them, who bowed to the people in return. At the end, 

this was repeated, after the playing of the national anthem, during which all stood facing them. 

Margaret got a good look at them then. The King was wearing a white uniform trimmed with gold, 

and the Queen wore a very simple dress of lavender crepe. Both were short but very regal looking. 

They looked like attractive, intelligent people. 

Kenneth adds that the King was a little man, just five feet or five feet one tall, and he loved to 

smoke huge cigars. He happened to travel south when the Landons were in the south, later on, and 

was going to visit a certain tin mine. The white, tin mining community there was concerned about 

the mine manager, because he was virtually incapable of speaking without using cuss words of all 

kinds. These were his regular descriptives. He was embarrassed by this, but he couldn't talk without 

them. He was the chief man, and he had to receive the King and take him about. Someone passed 

the word to the King that this fellow had this curious problem. The King was an educated man who 

had gotten his education in England and spoke "English" English. So the tour began, and the poor 

mine manager was utterly tongue-tied trying to describe for the King what they were seeing. The 

King then proclaimed, "Well, this is a god-damned, bloody good show, man! It's a helluva good 

show! Now tell me more about it!" Everyone broke up. The fellow just let loose then, and they said 

it was one of the most hilarious descriptions they had ever heard in the King's presence. And the 

King was thoroughly amused. 

Margaret had stopped her language study. The strain had become too much. But Kenneth 

tore onward, and took his second-year language exam. He met Dr. Eakin at Mrs. McFarland's house 

at 8:30 in the morning and took the exam for the next three hours. It started off with reading in 

Siamese books and then translating. They picked the easiest books, much to Kenneth's surprise, and 

never touched the tougher stuff. Then they came to the story-telling, and Kenneth told them the story 

of Paul's shipwreck, in Thai. They didn't ask for the stories of the books at all, and he knew them all. 

He was thoroughly prepared. Then a Siamese girl came in and gave him dictation. And after that, he 

made conversation with her. At first, he pretended that he was buying clothes from her, and that she 

was a "Kak" (SP?), an Indian. Then she was a girl who didn't know Christ, and Kenneth had twenty 

minutes to convert her. That went over best of all. Everyone agreed that his vocabulary was 

unusually large, though he missed an idiom here and there. When it was all done, they told him that 

if he had passed this examination on the basis of how long he had actually been in Thailand, and not 

on the basis of two years in country, they would have to give him the highest mark possible. But 

since it ZDV on the basis of two years' residence in the country, his mark would have to be judged on 

that basis. They would have to mark him down accordingly. 

$IWHU D VHYHQ PRQWK EUHDN LQ WDSLQJ Session #32 February 19, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona 

Beth 

3 

15:22 Kenneth tells us of his first experience of "graft and corruption." He was about eleven years 

old, and he was with Jimmy Trace, who was about four years Kenneth's senior, perhaps fifteen. 

Jimmy had told Kenny to meet him at a doctor's office where he was the clean-up boy. He emptied 

231


the cuspidors, among other things. Jimmy wanted Kenny to go with him to the movies, but when 

Kenneth arrived, he told Jimmy that he didn't have any money. There was a movie on that they 

wanted to see, The Perils of Poor Pauline. It cost a nickel. Well, Jimmy said he didn't have a nickel 

either, but he didn't need one. So they went across the street to the theater, and there was a handsome 

young lady sitting in the ticket office selling tickets. Jimmy walked up to her, spoke to her, put his 

hand inside, held hands with her for a while, and talked some more, and then she looked around and 

handed him two tickets. So the boys went inside and handed over their tickets. They had hardly 

gotten inside when the girl came around and took the two tickets away from the fellow who had taken 

them. Kenneth asked Jimmy how he worked it. "Oh," he said, "I never pay. She likes me." 

Kenneth returns to the matter of the grade that he received after his second-year language 

exam. He was on a "dinky" trip to Papadang (SP?) when he learned his grade, and Margaret was on 

vacation at Nong Kha [SP?. Sounds like Nong Khai, but apparently was on the seashore], where he wrote 

her. His grade was between 84 and 85. Kenneth tells again how the language exam was conducted. 

The purpose of the exam was to determine whether he was ready to go on to the third year of study. 

If he had not passed, he would have had to do more work in the second-year program. 

Margaret tells us that when the mission first went out, they of course had no language school. 

They simply plunged into the culture. Within the last few years before the Landons arrived, the 

mission concluded that they needed to give new missionaries a concentrated course in Thai. 

Bangkok Thai was considered the standard, and so Bangkok was the ideal place to learn. 

We digress on the matter of people who can't sing a tune. Kenneth had Chinese in churches 

he started who didn't seem concerned about melody. But sang heartily nevertheless. The Thai 

thought singing in parts, soprano, alto, tenor, and so on, was hilarious. They had never heard 

anything like it and found it very strange. 

Margaret returns to the language school. Paul Eakin was born in Thailand and spoke the 

language as a native, and he taught the first class. Kru Tardt took over when he was gone. The 

Landons studied morning, noon, and night during their first months in Thailand, having no domestic 

responsibilities. "Here was I. I've always felt that I was the one that was trailing a block behind 

because here was Kenneth just galloping through the language." They took their first year's exam in 

February; weren't supposed to do it until June. She describes the exam, which was similar to the 

second-year exam Kenneth described. They had Ah Chuan make them ice cream to enjoy during the 

break. Kenneth scored 97, and Margaret 91. She was penalized in her grade for having taken time 

off when the baby was born. "She was gestating as well as articulating," Kenneth says. 

4 

33:20 Kenneth's first sermon in Siamese. He had been asked a month before to preach at the 

conference that preceded the yearly presbyterial meeting. He was to preach on the subject, "A Friend 

of Jesus." It was quite an honor. He worked the sermon out in English and translated it into Siamese, 

then went over the whole thing phrase by phrase with Kru Tardt to make sure he had the idioms 

correct to the Siamese ear. The memorizing of it seemed like an impossible task. He must have put 

in forty hours on it. Margaret wasn't able to go the morning he delivered the sermon, so she had to 

depend on reports. "And for days it came in in rhapsodies." Kenneth said that, when he began, he 

was very much frightened. "I like that idea," Margaret says, "that for once in his life he was." Old 

Mrs. Dunlap was so overwhelmed that she sat there afterwards and kept repeating, as if stunned, 

"Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful." Kru Pluang (SP?), the principal Thai pastor in Bangkok, told 

Kenneth there was only one error in the whole thing, a slight error in pronunciation. Several of the 

Siamese told Kenneth that his accent was perfect. One Siamese even told him that, if he had closed 

his eyes, he wouldn't have been able to tell Kenneth was not a Thai. 

232


Kenneth recalls that the whole ceremony was in Siamese. 

Margaret lost her tennis match. She was put up against the best woman player there, a Mrs. 

Craig. In the doubles, she and Dr. Theobald played Mr. and Mrs. Craig, and she played well. But 

they did not win. 

The Landons had a furniture allowance, and they were beginning to discover the Bangkok 

House Furnishing Company. Most of the furniture made there was ordinary. The Landons came to 

have a special friend at the company, Mr. Ming For (SP?), who would always say, "Oh, that is much 

more better!" When they said what they wanted, he would say, "Oh, that is much more better!" They 

wanted to buy there because the furniture was very well made. To this day, they own a number of 

pieces made by that company, a chest of drawers, three Windsor chairs, and one little table. Carol 

Landon Pearson has a gateleg table too. 

Kenneth's father offered to pay the freight on their car, which amounted to $287. Both 

Kenneth and he thought the arrangement with the mission board was that he would pay it at $25 a 

month. Then suddenly, out of the blue, came word that the board could not possibly assume such a 

large obligation. Kenneth's father could not assume it either. So the Landons had to pay the whole 

thing immediately. It took what was left of their outfit allowance, their small savings, their tithe, a 

little money of Margaret's own, in fact everything they had. By the end of the month, they were left 

with $5. Their first goal then was to pay back their tithe. 

This loss meant that they could not buy the furniture they wanted. But they were able to buy 

a dining room set—which they did not bring home from the country later—two small cabinets, a 

buffet, a dining room table, and six chairs to go with it, two overstuffed sofas, the three Windsor 

chairs. So they did get some things, Margaret says. The furniture was made of teak and rosewood. 

Kenneth recalls that the varnish was applied, not with a brush, but with a cloth wrapped around a wad 

of cotton tied with a string. The Chinese workers would rub it on and rub it on, polishing the finish 

to a gloss. It was fascinating to watch. They worked on coat after coat of varnish, building up the 

high gloss. [The furniture was a glossy black.] 

5 

44:38 Margaret writes home asking Adelle to buy them some bathing suits. They were going to 

have a vacation. Kenneth ultimately went off with Paul Fuller for KLV vacation, to Papadang (SP?), 

while Margaret went off on her own to Nong Kha. She had half a house with Geraldine Fuller, a 

lovely woman who had a small daughter with whooping cough who Margaret feared would infect 

baby Peggy. Kenneth sent money to Adelle for the bathing suits, three one-dollar bills, a check to 

her, and a check made out to him, which made $15.07 altogether. They were down to nickels and 

dimes at the time because of having to pay for transport of the car. 

Kenneth wrote Margaret in Nong Kha, "Dearest Friend Wife, I've been enjoying all the 

experiences of a kid out for a good time. I've cut my finger, fallen in the river, had a belly ache, 

bumped my head, and eaten like a furnace hungry for coal, and slept like those not with us." He got 

the cut while eating a mango. He was enjoying the fruit. "The fruit keeps us moving. I mean, 

moving." He was enjoying swimming in the salty river. He had fallen in one morning with all his 

shaving equipment, much to the hilarity of the people watching him. He and Paul were doing some 

evangelizing of the populace. "I'm not only having a glorious vacation, and getting healthier every 

day, but I'm preaching off and on all day long too, and it makes my heart very happy. These boys are 

good to work with." Kenneth was speaking of young Thai Christians, two of whom later became 

ministers. 

They were eating rice and curry twice a day. At noon, Kenneth and Paul would go to the 

market, buy food, get some hot frittered bananas, fresh off the burners. 

233


Kenneth wrote about the Mon boy—from one of the ethnic groups in Thailand—who had 

taught him a love song in Thai which was very pretty. The boy said he would come each night and 

teach Kenneth another song. 

Kenneth had seen this young fellow looking like a young god, sitting up on the river bank, 

with a frangipani flower up over his left ear, singing to the moon. Kenneth had gone up, squatted 

beside him, told him how much he admired his song, and asked if the boy would teach KLP to sing. 

The Mon boy was startled to think that Kenneth wanted to learn the song and further that Kenneth 

thought he FRXOG. Kenneth asked him if the songs he sang were good songs. Oh yes, the boy said, 

they were the best. They were the songs that all of the young fellows liked to sing. He was naked 

from the waist up, beautiful torso, frangipani over the ear, hair coated with cocoa butter, slick as 

could be, obviously one of the young Beau Brummels of the village type. He had a gold chain 

around his neck. Kenneth was very much impressed by him. 

So the Mon boy taught Kenneth the first song, and then the next night came and taught him a 

second song, and the third night, a third song, and so on, until Kenneth knew eight songs. To this 

day, Kenneth can sing three or four of them. He proceeds to sing the first song he learned, in Thai 

[which I can't reproduce, of course]. Kenneth translated them into English at the time, and the translation 

sounded all right to him. The first one went, "Here I am, I'm stuck. It's raining a little bit. I whom 

the elder brother just can't go. (??) Lend me your umbrella until the rain stops, and I'll stay with 

you." And that's all it says. It seemed innocent enough to Kenneth. 

The second song went, "Oh fate, my beloved girl, you're a cake that I would just love to 

swallow. Now save it for me, this piece of cake. On the other hand, young sister, you're a person, 

not a piece of cake. I have to perhaps not entirely swallow you." The Kenneth of the time 

understood nothing of the implications of these little songs. 

The trip lasted a little more than a week, and Kenneth and Paul returned to Bangkok. Before 

going down to Nong Kha to meet Margaret, Kenneth went to a church social, a young people's social, 

mostly, but with some older people too. Kru Tardt was there, a single lady and a "sainted teacher" at 

Wattana Wittiah Girls Academy, and she decided that this gifted pupil of hers ought to show off. So 

she got up during the social and said Mr. Landon—using an honorific in Thai, "Ajong" (SP?), a 

glorified word for "teacher"—would say a few words in Thai. Kenneth thought to himself, Okay, 

teacher, you want me to show off, I'll show off. "I've been a showoff all my life." So he began to 

speak to the Thai kids, announcing that he wouldn't just say a few words; he would VLQJ a few words. 

And thereupon, he sang the first song he had learned from the Mon boy on his vacation. There was 

stunned silence. He was probably the first missionary ever to learn a Siamese song. Even among 

those born there. Then followed crazy applause, and cheers, and shouts, and cries for more. So 

Kenneth sang a second one, and there was great applause, and laughter, and backslapping, the girls 

screaming. Kenneth thought, "Gee, I'm making a hit here! I bet my teacher's pleased!" So he sang 

another one, and another, and another. He went through his whole repertoire of eight songs, and with 

each one, there was loud cheering and shouting and exclamations. Finally, he got all through and 

thought, "Gee, I'll bet my teacher's proud of me." And he looked around, and she was nowhere to be 

found. 

Kenneth went looking for Kru Tardt and found her out behind the church, all by herself. Why 

had she left? he asked. "Oh," she said. "Ajong. Oh, Ajong. Where did you learn those DZIXO 

songs?" "Awful songs, Kru? What's wrong with those songs?" "Oh," she moaned. "They're the 

songs that young men sing to young ladies when they want them to come out and make love, and 

they'll think , taught you!" She was so embarrassed. 

All the songs had double meanings. Every phrase. As a farang, he of course did not realize 

that. Now that he had been told, he had to learn what all those double meanings ZHUH! 

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HOUR 41 


1 

0:00 (VIIA480) Kenneth's second language exam was in April, 1928, and so the incident with the 

salacious lovesongs took place at the same general time. He had done the entire second year of 

language study in two months, from February to April. He went on to complete the third year of 

study within the tenth month from starting, which is to say, over about another month's time. He was 

just racing through the stuff. He didn't find it arduous at all. 

Ah Chuan's wife was going to have a baby. "Ah" simply meant "Sir," or "Mr." The Landons 

are not sure of the correct spelling of "Chuan." Kenneth thinks Al Seigle found him for them. 

Margaret was fortunate to get as Peggy's nurse a girl who had worked for Mrs. Allen, Cecil Allen's 

wife. This was Ma Cham (SP?), who also kept the house. The coolie worked for the whole 

compound, a very powerful man. He could carry 200-pound rice bags on his shoulders. There was 

also a watchman. As for the Seigles, their servants were all women, all Chinese. 

Ah Chuan was a young man. His baby was born at the end of 1927. He and his wife had lost 

one baby before, and so the Landons recommended that his wife go to Miss Christiansen. The wife 

tended to be listless and anemic. Miss Christiansen recommended medicine, and it worked. Ah 

Chuan raved about the change in his wife. Kenneth told him that, when labor began and the pains 

grew hard, no matter when, to alert him, so that he could go after Miss Christiansen. Ah Chuan could 

not believe that Kenneth would get up in the middle of the night to go. It was beyond his 

comprehension. As for waiting until the pains became bad, he took that literally. They began at six 

in the morning, and he waited until eight at night before he felt they were bad enough to come and 

tell Kenneth. The Landons were sitting talking to the Seigles when he arrived, "looking slightly 

green." Kenneth and Al set out promptly and brought Miss Christiansen. At 10:30, Ah Chuan burst 

in and exclaimed, "Fat little piecee boy!" Ah Chuan gave the baby a biscuit to eat that first night 

when he thought it was hungry. A bit of education was in order. Ah Chuan's wife was up the next 

day, and when the Landons went to see the baby, she was standing up holding him, a very cute little 

Chinese boy. The baby was completely clothed, even to some make-shift diapers tied with a string. 

2 

7:06 Margaret speaks of the card the American minister left, with the black border because he was 

in mourning over the death of his mother. Kenneth tells us that when he first joined the State 

Department in 1943, he was strictly ordered whom to "drop cards on." And how many. One for 

every woman in the family. It was all a part of protocol. 

The Landons spent exactly one year in Bangkok, from July to July. A year of language study. 

Learning the culture. Visiting the sites around the city. Endless dinner parties and social occasions. 

Getting to know the various members of the mission. 

Everyone had servants. Margaret refers to a writer who attacked the missionaries who went 

out because in places like Siam they could have servants, which they couldn't have at home. The 

idea, of course, was to free the missionaries for what they were supposed to do. Most Europeans and 

Americans found it impossible to do the housework that was required. In Bangkok, the Landons had 

electric light and running water, but not in their other stations. People just couldn't carry the 

housework, Margaret says. Learning to use servants, in any case, was an aspect of their lives, 

235


communicating with people who spoke a different language. 

Another thing they had to learn was how to be a foreigner. It was quite a different thing than 

to be a native, and one had to adjust to it. 

The dominant community in Siam and Southeast Asia, in fact, in all of Asia, was Great 

Britain. They were still the great power. It was still "Pax Britannica." Only with World War II did 

that end. The largest number of foreigners were British. British shipping companies. British firms. 

The British minister was the primary diplomat in the country. The British embassy was the largest 

embassy. The British staff the largest staff. And they were very conscious of their primacy, too. 

Later, when the Landons lived in Trang, Margaret sometimes had to go down to Pinang. As soon as 

Margaret would arrive, she would have to go to the police station with her passport. She would be 

asked where she came from, how she came, when she arrived, where she was staying, how long she 

was staying, when she would leave. She was talking to the officer one time, an absolutely typical 

John Bull. He was like a cartoon. She said to him that she didn't understand the necessity of one's 

reporting in like this. It wasn't required of Europeans. Only Americans. His answer, "Because you 

are the most dangerous people on the face of the earth." He truly believed that America was just 

sitting there on our side of the Atlantic waiting to supplant the British empire. "Isn't that ridiculous?" 

Margaret says. "We did," says Kenneth. "But we didn't ZDQW to," says Margaret. "But we did it," 

says Kenneth. "I know, but we didn't want to. They did themselves in." 

3 

14:03 The British people the Landons enjoyed the most were Dr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Theobald. 

One day in late November or early December, the Landons were out in the back playing tennis on the 

court Kenneth and Al had built—a rather rough court, of course, because they couldn't afford to have 

it rolled and properly cared for—when Margaret saw a woman's legs going up the steps of the house 

in front. The house stood on ten-foot pillars up off the ground, protecting it against flooding. 

Underneath their house, a school for mission children was run, and Mrs. Graham Fuller taught the 

children, six to eight of them. In any case, from the back of the house, Margaret saw these legs going 

up the stairs. She rushed around, and there was Mrs. Theobald, who had come to call on Margaret. 

The two of them struck up a sort of friendship. 

At Christmastime, the Theobalds invited the Landons to dinner on Boxing Day, that is, the 

day after Christmas. It was the first time the Landons had been inside a British home. This was an 

unusual thing altogether because the British community was very tight-knit and normally did not 

welcome in the Americans and others. 

Margaret digresses to speak of a dinner to which she had earlier invited the Theobalds and 

Seigles. Hardly had Margaret sent her note to the Theobalds when a note came from the Theobalds 

inviting the Landons to dinner a few days after the Landon dinner. Margaret had the table decorated 

in red, since it was Christmas. They had poinsettias. Margaret found some little chocolate bottles at 

a store and bought those for the party, tying Christmas cards to them. These made the placecards. 

They had soup, fish with sauce baked in little cups, asparagus tip salad, squabs, vegetables, ice 

cream, and cake. 

So, then came the Boxing Day dinner at the Theobalds'. Kenneth describes what he wore on 

formal occasions, a white monkey jacket similar to what waiters wear in some American hotels. 

Tuxedo trousers. Black cummerbund. A black tie. The Landons knew that most of the British 

dressed formally for dinner every night, so they dressed in full formal regalia. The British did it to 

keep up their morale, Margaret says. There were twelve people at the dinner, seven of them men, and 

all the men wore black trousers and "mess jackets." The Landons were the only Americans there 

except for Miss FitzGerald, the superintendent of nurses at Surawat Hospital. She had lived abroad 

236


most of her life and spoke English, French, German, and Italian. She was perfectly charming. All 

the English men made stiff little bows from the hips when they were introduced, and there were one 

or two pleasant Scotch burrs. The table was beautifully set with little lace doilies on a highly 

polished surface. There were two tall, old, Irish candelabra, each with three candles in them. There 

were also two pretty white and green lanterns made out of a cylindrical green vegetable, like a small 

watermelon, perhaps twelve inches high at the most. One of the servants had spent many hours 

carving them in the form of Christmas sentiments. The exquisite work of them was incredible for 

just this one occasion! Margaret says she can still see them, and the beautiful candelabra, and the 

beautiful lace. "It was an exquisitely set table!" 

The dinner was elaborate, culminating with real English plum pudding, all burning with a 

blue flame. And after that, ice cream. Margaret's spoon for eating this was so tiny that it looked like 

a salt spoon. Everyone else had small spoons, but hers was minute. She couldn't get a bit of the 

juice. 

They had games arranged for afterwards, and so it was very late when the Landons got home. 

They had a number of dinners with the Theobalds that year, in both their homes. She can see 

Geoffrey Theobald still, with those flashing black eyes of his. A striking looking man. 

4 

24:00 One of the things the Landons did was to give a lovely dinner party for the children of the 

mission school that ran under their house. 

What Warren Fuller said on the subject of marriage. He was seven years old and a hundred 

pounds heavy. Geraldine Fuller had four children, Janice and Justine, who were then about twelve 

and ten, Warren, who was seven, and Jean Mary, a baby. Justine died of cancer ten years ago. 

Warren fell in India about a year ago and was killed. Jean Mary was murdered by her husband. 

Janice is now dying of cancer. Geraldine is still living at eighty, a marvellous person who bears it all. 

Jean Mary called the police and told them of her fear of her husband. Just as the police arrived and 

she came out the door, the husband shot her in the back. 

Graham was showing Warren pictures, one of them a picture of Brunnhilde about to plunge a 

knife into the prostrate Siegfried, a scene from the German myth. On being told that Brunnhilde was 

Siegfried's wife, Warren declared, "Well, before I get married, I'm certainly going to ask a lot of 

questions." 

One day, Warren was trying to get on a tramcar, and he couldn't. The two girls had to get 

behind him and push. 

5 

27:23 Ah Chuan gave a dinner in honor of his new baby at the end of his first month of life. 

Margaret has the invitation to this day, a card with a golden edge. Ah Chuan's real name was printed 

on it, in Chinese characters and the English equivalent. Margaret reads a note Ah Chuan wrote to 

Kenneth at the time. "Dear Mr. Landon," read the note. "I begs master to ask your kindly pad me the 

salary on this 20th the Friday because Chinese New Year on the 23th. Therefore I want to get 

something for New Year. If you can, I am thanking you. Very much obliged. Yours sincerely." He 

found someone to do the writing for him. 

The invitation read, "Bangkok. 17th January 1928. Mr. and Mrs. Landon. I have the 

pleasure of inviting you to dinner at 9 p.m. on Tuesday the 24th, 1928, at Kiem Chien Hotel in honor 

of the celebration of my child birth at one month. I remain, sir, your respectable servant. Mr. 

Chuan." 

Margaret planned a dinner party for Chinese New Year's, not realizing that you never, never, 

237


never have servants on Chinese New Year's. They just vanish. So she found herself without servants 

and with guests coming to dinner, including the Theobalds. Jeanette jumped into the breach and 

helped Margaret, and they managed a very nice dinner. 

The Chinese made a great deal of the day that a baby was one month old. He didn't even have 

a name until then. If at all possible, they would have a feast on the occasion. Kenneth did pay Ah 

Chuan ten days early, as he requested, and one thing he bought with the money was a new hat. 

Saturday was the day of preparation for Chinese New Year's. On Sunday the Landons received some 

pretty flowers from Ah Chuan. That was the day for worshipping the ancestors. Monday was the big 

celebration, the day of giving gifts. "Everyone was supposed to be quiet and good from sundown 

Sunday until midnight." 

Ah Chuan's dinner was to begin at nine. The Seigles, the Fullers, the Horsts, Miss 

Christiansen, and the Landons were all invited. In a Chinese hotel, the higher the story, the more 

expensive. The party was on the top story in what looked like a private dining room. The women 

and children had been invited to come at five o'clock, as they do not eat with the men. Being foreign 

women, however, the white women were invited to eat with the men. When the Landon party 

arrived, many guests were already there, and the orchestra was in full swing—or full crash. Ah 

Chuan had told them that "pretty girls" would "sing song," but while the pretty girls sang at the top of 

their lungs, they could not be heard over the din of the orchestra. There were four singers, beautifully 

dressed in full silk skirts and short, tight blouses, "the most modern of the flapper styles." Ah 

Chuan's wife was there, of course, with the baby. The baby was wearing a little tam and a flowered 

dress. He had a shirt over his dress. At a table, four men sat playing mahjong, moving the little chips 

with lightning speed. The Landons sat and talked and amused themselves eating watermelon seeds 

until dinner was finally served, at 11:00. It was the custom to do all the talking first and to go as soon 

as the meal was ended. The placecards were actually visiting cards, with Ah Chuan's real name on 

them. The name was so difficult for Westerners to pronounce that he had made up the "Chuan" name 

for them to use. The real name was spoken from way back up in the nose, something like "Mmm." 

Or perhaps "Ng." There were two or three tables of Chinese men, and one table of foreigners. They 

had chopsticks and big Chinese spoons, but also Western tableware. They ate from small dishes. 

Everything was set out on the table in one dish, and they all dug in together. The first course was 

shark fins, and it was good. It was sort of gummy stuff with bits of fish in it, Margaret writes. There 

were courses of duck, chicken, fish, mushrooms, some sweet stuff, with delicious sauces, and more. 

There were no vegetables. 

The Landons later discovered that they had inadvertently paid for this dinner. In the same 

way, they unwittingly paid for some things with Ah Sim, another of their servants. When the 

Landons left town, she owned three shops in the marketplace. She hadn't owned anything when she 

came to them. 

One of the classic stories in Bangkok was when Mrs. Ellis fired her cook because he cost her 

too much, and she looked him right in the eye and said, "I can't afford forty bat a month." "How did 

you know?" he said. He was doing her for an extra forty bat, and he thought she had gotten on to his 

"gum sha" (SP?). 

A little baby living in the house with Ah Chuan and his family died. This frightened Ah 

Chuan because his baby wasn't well. He thought it might have what the other baby had. Miss 

Christiansen came, examined the child, and said that there was nothing much wrong with him except 

that he had been overfed. 

Ah Chuan himself became ill with a bronchial problem. Dr. Horst examined him and gave 

him a bottle of cough mixture that had codeine in it. Ma Cham took over preparing food for the 

family. But the next morning, Ah Chuan appeared in the kitchen, to Kenneth's astonishment, and 

238


declared that he was entirely well again. This seemed unlikely, and the cook seemed a bit off. It 

turned out that he had drunk the entire bottle of codeine mixture. He couldn't cough! 

The man was panic-stricken, Margaret writes, for fear that he would lose his job. With a wife 

and baby, this would be a disaster. The Landons gave him a week's vacation and insisted that he rest 

and recover. A substitute cook was found for the week. 

The Landons comment again on what an extraordinary cook Ah Chuan was. He would take 

ordinary potatoes, and prepare them so that they looked like lace around the platter. The Landons 

never really found out his background because communication was so difficult. 

Kenneth still remembers the bottomless pants on the little boy. They didn't use diapers. Just 

bottomless pants. The pants didn't get dirty because when he squatted to go, the pants would open 

up. 

Kenneth tells of encountering a man walking his dog in Wesley Heights [in 1978], when the 

dog stopped and defecated on the walk in front of someone's house. Kenneth eyed the dog and said, 

"Nasty little beasts, aren't they, still using outdoor privies!" And walked on. The man was 

apoplectic. 

Session #33 February 26, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

6 

42:54 Margaret speaks of the nicknames Kenneth has given people. "Wangie," for Evangeline. 

"The Big Chief," for Walter Wright. And "Ham Hands" for W. Walton Butterworth, Assistant 

Secretary of State, Kenneth's boss there. Butterworth went down in the Foreign Service as Ham 

Hands Butterworth from then on. 

The two couches and the big chair came. 

Jeanette Seigle's baby had convulsions in February. Margaret heard someone screaming, in 

absolute terror. She said to Kenneth, "I hear someone screaming. I hear someone screaming." And 

it was real screaming. It was an absolutely awful sound. It wasn't like a human sound. They ran out 

onto the porch, and saw Jeanette on the stairs of her house with the baby. She was normally a calm 

person, always seeming to be in control. Kenneth got there first, and Jeanette asked him to go for the 

doctor. She explained to Margaret that J.J. was having convulsions. "Of things medical I know very 

few," Margaret says, but that was one of the few. She had learned it back home because of a relative 

who had convulsions. Auntie Joy had described the experience and what was done to stop the 

convulsions, and Margaret remembered it vividly. She sent Ah Chuan flying up the stairs after hot 

water. Margaret followed him, and Ma Cham snatched the baby from Jeanette and followed hard 

behind. It did not prove to be a serious convulsion, but the baby was like a board. They got her into 

very hot water, and quickly her body relaxed. 

That happened four or five times, and dealing with it became a routine. All that year it was 

touch and go with that child. She was having all sorts of problems. But after that, she did fine. 

Grew up to be a large, healthy woman. Married. Had five children of her own. She and her husband 

live in California. Al died three or four years ago, and Jeanette is living on their farm. 

There came a crisis with Ah Chuan, and Kenneth had to fire him. A traumatic experience. 

Margaret wrote, "Well the glorious Apollo has taken his departure, and a feeling of relief has settled 

upon us." The grocery bill came in, and as Margaret went over it, she discovered to her horror that 

she and Kenneth had supposedly used twelve pounds of butter in one month! In addition, six pounds 

of Crisco. This was obviously impossible. Margaret took the bill over to consult with Jeanette, who 

had received her bill too and was concerned over its size too. But the Seigles entertained five 

239


children from the school every day at lunch, children who ate heavily, so the bill was understandable. 

Even so, they had only used about ten pounds of butter. After lunch, Margaret began to do some 

figuring over the bill. Kenneth had been taking care of the accounts because Margaret hadn't been up 

to doing it, so this was the first time she had investigated for herself. They were supposed to be 

giving Ah Chuan a tekal and a half a day for market, and Margaret discovered that not once had the 

monthly bill averaged out to that. One month it had averaged over two tekals a day, and over the 

five-month period they had been keeping house since the baby was born, it averaged 1.80 tekals a 

day. Then she discovered that, counting their grocery bills, which had averaged 73 tekals a month, 

service and fuel, it had been costing them 6 tekals a day for food. Margaret was absolutely horrified. 

A tekal was then 45 cents. By today's values, six tekals a day would be a great bargain. But that was 

then. The past month Jeanette had paid only 20 tekals more than the Landons for food, and she had 

four in her family all the time and five extras at noon. Margaret then learned that the Wells had been 

paying a total of 80 tekals a month, compared to the Landons' 140 [?]. So the Landons learned how 

Ah Chuan paid for the dinner he gave in honor of his son. 

At first, Kenneth and Margaret weren't sure what to do, but when Kenneth saw the two most 

recent days' bills, each over two tekals, he acted immediately, going for Al Seigle to interpret for him, 

and having Al tell Ah Chuan that he was to gather up his belongings and go. Now. Ah Chuan put up 

a good story, but there was not much he could say in the face of the numbers. He was a good cook, 

but too expensive for them. Al and Kenneth sat in the kitchen until he had gathered up his things and 

gone. "He came back after breakfast this morning and, the colossal nerve of him, he still had three 

tekals of our market money which Kenneth had not made him give back, and he marched in and tried 

to collect a bill for bread." Kenneth of course refused, telling him to cover it out of the three tekals 

he already had. Margaret went over her things and found that only one cake tin was missing. 

Ma Cham told them that Ah Chuan had told her he was going to ask to live on their 

compound with them so that he would not have to buy charcoal, soap, and other things which he 

could take from the Landons' kitchen. 

He just went too far. He figured they never would catch on or do anything about it if they did. 

But the Landons were down to almost nothing and had only enough money to cover their food. 

Ma Cham got someone in to help, and she and Margaret did most of the work in the kitchen 

from then on. The Landons never hired another Chinese cook of that kind again. Ah Chuan was the 

sort of cook a businessman would want. But businesses were closing down. Denmark had closed its 

Legation. Naturally, such a cook expected to make "gum rai" (SP?), that is, to be paid according to 

his special skills. Ma Cham was a very reliable person, and she did the marketing from then on. 

7 

53:18 Margaret found at last her record of the story of the American minister who wanted to serve 

the number one tea for Prince Damrong. She now knows the exact prices of the tea. "Is this going to 

ruin one of my best stories?" Kenneth asks dourly. "No, it isn't!" Margaret replies. Indeed, in some 

ways the truth is better, she said. "Well that's often the way," Kenneth laughs. He describes himself 

as being afraid of exaggerating when he tells his stories and accordingly being careful to understate. 

"Cause I always remember what the dentist told me: The tongue always exaggerates the size of the 

hole in the tooth." 

Margaret retells the story. McKenzie sent his number one boy out to find that tea, and he was 

gone all day, and McKenzie grew more and more anxious, and then the boy finally returned to say 

that the number one tea would cost 160 tekals a pound. The number two, 120. And the third, 80. 

That is, $72, $54, and $36. Kenneth explains why the cost was so great. The women would go out 

into the mountains with bags for each type of tea leaf, carefully searching for just the right leaves, 

240


evaluating them on the spot, and putting each quality leaf into the appropriate bag. It would take 

them weeks and weeks to accumulate enough to make a single pound of tea. Most of the tea 

foreigners drank grew in Ceylon on plantations and was not of this very special Chinese type at all. 

Margaret says that they had gotten the end of the story wrong all these years. She had thought 

the minister ended up buying half a pound of the number three tea. But in fact, he had made such a 

point of emphasizing the best tea that he finally bought a half pound of the best. McKenzie would 

have lost "face" if he had not bought the best tea after sending the boy to look for it. 

The tea was so delicate that it was served in a tiny, tapered cup. The pot was small, and 

Kenneth has one. A tiny brown clay pot with a gold tip on it. Two or three people would sit around, 

fill the little cups three-quarters full, and then take it, and sniff it, and savor it, and take a sip, savoring 

the taste, and slowly work down through that little pot of tea. The cups looked like doll's china. No 

handle on the cup. A fine, egg-shell porcelain. 

Jeanette told Margaret that in China there was a tea that would cost even more than $100 a 

pound. 

The Landons were impressed with the number of New Year's celebration in Thailand. It 

began with the foreign New Year, which was January 1. Then came the Chinese New Year, in 

February. That year was the year of the tiger. Peggy was born in the year of the rabbit, as Margaret 

was. The Indians had their New Year on the 13th of March. 

241


HOUR 42 


1 

0:00 (VIIA850) Margaret continues on the various New Years the Thai celebrated. The Indians 

had a grand time with their celebration. The Landons' watchman was off for three days. The 

celebration actually lasted only two, so he needed an extra day to recover. "The Indians are very tall, 

handsome, eagle-eyed men. We have almost never seen a woman." The men dressed in white. 

Kenneth says they were Sikhs. Margaret saw several of the Indians in fresh white panungs, gay and 

bright underblouses over which they wore long, sheer shirts. Their hair was curled. During the 

celebration, they splashed each other with red paint. They were fierce-looking to begin with, and 

with the addition of the paint they became fearsome indeed. One thing some did was to pile into 

trucks and ride all day in the blistering sun singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. 

The Thai New Year arrived about April 1. Kenneth and Margaret argue a bit over whether 

they enjoyed all these celebrations or not. He did. She didn't. He enjoyed all the parties. She found 

it difficult because all the servants would go. 

The Landons were returning from a dinner one night when they saw an entertainment in 

progress in one of the temple yards. It was March 20. One building of the temple was brightly lit, 

and the yard looked as though it were full of big fireflies because there were so many vendors 

displaying their wares by the light of tiny kerosene lanterns. At one side a pantomime was in 

progress. The figures were apparently small dolls, perhaps cut out of paper, and mounted on sticks. 

There was a native orchestra and some singers. In the lighted building there was a gorgeous blue 

coffin surrounded by candles and flowers, and in the background several yellow-robed priests sitting 

cross-legged. The actual cremation ceremony would take place the following night. Margaret 

initially felt, before she learned more about it, that in a country like this where there were many 

deaths by disease that cremation was an excellent custom. Later she learned that the actual cremation 

usually did not occur until long after death, sometimes three months, sometimes a year, or sometimes 

twenty-five years. Most of the temples had buildings in which coffins could be stored for about two 

tekals a month. If the relatives failed to pay the rent, the bodies were removed and buried, which was 

a family disgrace. The service of the priests, the celebration, and the entertainment cost so much that 

often the family could not raise the amount for several years. 

The relatives were given the opportunity to select choice bones from the corpse after it was 

created. Kenneth tells of Princess Poon (SP?) who came to visit the Landons at 4711 and was sitting 

in their porch when Kenneth commented that she must miss her father a great deal. He had died and 

been cremated. "Oh no," she said, and patted her pocketbook. "I've got Daddy right here." She 

reached in, pulled out a little pillbox, and there was his tooth. She had taken his wisdom tooth after 

the cremation. In Bangkok, he was driving with her once, and the chauffeur had to stop at every 

temple, and she would have to pay her respects because each temple had a bone of her father. 

Margaret and Kenneth have a pair of private little reliquaries on their hall table which were 

made in Thailand to hold small bones from the dead. "One for me and one for Margaret," Kenneth 

comments. 

242


2 

5:15 The last of their furniture came. 

That whole year was filled with holidays. The Landons were amazed at how many. But the 

Thai enjoyed holidays, and therefore often incorporated foreign holidays into their calendar too. 

They just loved Christmas. It was a lovely new holiday to add to the collection. You could stop 

working and have a wonderful time. 

The Landons were now getting ready to move south, and were concerned with getting their 

furniture. Margaretta Wells had a wicker chair she had purchased from Hong Kong for $5.25. She 

had a catalog from America in which the exact same chair cost $65. The Landons were getting a 

dining room table, six straight chairs, two arm chairs, a lowboy with a mirror, a highboy, two 

beautiful little china cabinets that matched, a gateleg table for the dining room, three rosewood 

Windsor chairs, and a tiptop table, all inlaid—all for $200 U.S. gold and their old set. The only 

pieces they brought home to the U.S. were the highboy dresser, the three Windsor chairs, a desk 

Kenneth had had made for Margaret on their tenth anniversary, and the gateleg table which Carol 

Landon Pearson now has. The same things in the U.S. would have cost over $1000. The 

workmanship was exquisite. They were having it all made so that in case they ever had to return to 

the U.S., it could be screwed apart and packed in boxes for shipment. 

That spring, the Landons began to be invited to all the school commencements. The first one 

was at school where the Wells were living. The school had girls through eighth or perhaps tenth 

grades, and some little boys in the lower grades. All the little girls wore orange pasins and white 

blouses with orange collars, looking very cute as they marched along. The audience sat on chairs and 

benches on the lawn. The Landons didn't make it through the entire ceremony, they became so 

exhausted. There were songs and speeches, the presentation of the diplomas and awards, and two 

plays. They were in the middle of a play that had eleven scenes when the Landons departed. 

Margaretta later told them that the program did not end until 1:30 in the morning. She and Ken went 

upstairs to lie down through the last couple of hours, then hurried down to say good-by when the 

program ended. The feeling of the Thai was that a play wasn't any good unless "it went on 

interminably." So it had to be done. 

When they moved south, Kenneth would go to the Nanthalungs that ran all through the night. 

He would hear the drums calling people, and he would go out to join them. The plays always ran all 

night. The people would be on mats, and there would be food-sellers, and drinks. The neighbors 

would sit together and gossip and talk through the night as the plays went on. 

Bangkok Christian College's graduation was worse than the other school's. Their program did 

not finish until 2:30 in the morning. The Landons left at midnight. 

3 

11:19 Margaret gave a tea on Kenneth's birthday, March 27, because that was the day that Wattana 

had its commencement, and they all had to go. 

One of the first concerns of the Presbyterian missionaries when they went to the East was the 

education of women. The first school for women in China was started by Henrietta Hall Shook 

(SP?), who came from Virginia. It was often a struggle to get girls to attend the school, and they paid 

some to come—and actually bought one or two, both in China and in Thailand. If a girl was being 

sold into slavery, someone would buy her and give her an education. Interestingly, those girls were 

very much in demand as wives for officials later because of their education and because of their 

contact with foreigners. From Mongkut on, foreign things began to be admired, and to be able to 

entertain in the foreign manner began to be of value. 

The first really successful school for girls was called the Harriet M. House (SP?) School for 

243


Girls. She was a missionary and was successful to the extent that she had a little school going. But 

the real push forward came when Miss Edna Cole went out in 1879. "That's the book I wanted to 

write. I still regret not having gotten the material, although perhaps I never would have written Anna 

if I had gotten it." "Lucky you didn't get it," Kenneth says. Margaret describes a suitbox, a good big 

one, with letters on onion skin paper filling that box from end to end, letters written over forty-five 

years. She saw it, Miss Cole's letters. "I can understand Miss Cole's not letting me have them. But 

in the light of history, she'd have been better off to let me have them." 

In any case, out of Wang Lang—which meant "the back palace" and was actually not the 

name of the school but of the area, and came to be associated with the school to the extent that 

everyone to this day calls the school the Wang Lang School—came a first group of girls who were 

tremendous people. They were the first girls ever to take the state examination along with the boys. 

They were drilled so thoroughly that the percentage of passage of the examination, which normally 

was never the majority, was close to 100%. 

Wang Lang was in a very constricted area. An old palace area. The Surawat Hospital was 

there. A year or so before the Landons went out, the school had built on a piece of land farther out on 

the side of the river where the Landons were. The old school had been across the river. Public 

transportation, whether road or streetcar, didn't go out that far. The school at that time was called 

Wattana Wittiah, which meant something like "fostering knowledge." What they had to do to go out 

there was take the tram to the end of the line at a canal, and then take a canal boat the rest of the way. 

In the present day, Wattana is well within the city and transportation is no problem. But the trip out 

in 1928 was not a light matter. 

The tram was a Tunerville trolley sort of thing, with first class and third class areas. Kenneth 

remembers the first time he went to the school, riding in a canoe in a hard rain. By the time he got to 

the school he was soaked through, and they had to find him a change of clothing. A woman named 

Sarah Waterson produced her Chinese trousers for him to wear, and so he wore the Chinese pants of 

this single young woman until his clothes dried out. She later married a Welshman and ended up 

living in Washington nearby. 

So Margaret invited everybody for tea the afternoon before the Wattana graduation. It was 

Kenneth's twenty-fifth birthday. Since everyone was about to go through the long trip to the school, 

a very long ceremony, and a long trip home again, Margaret provided substantial fare, chicken salad, 

sandwiches, ice tea, ice cream, and cake. She tells of the preparations. 

4 

22:05 Margaret took Peggy down to Nong Kha (SP?) with Ma Cham for a vacation. The second 

class train coach they rode down had cane seats, quite comfortable. The train was narrower than 

American trains, so there were double seats on one side of the coach and singles on the other. This 

narrow type of train was called a "meter gauge" train. Margaret had three suitcases, a basket of food, 

two other baskets, a one-burner oil stove, a charcoal flatiron, twenty pounds of rice, several packages 

of magazines, and a large steel basket to put the baby in. Everyone else was similarly loaded, so they 

looked like a group of immigrants. When it was time to give the baby's bottle, Margaret heated it on 

the stove, "and no one said boo!" At Nong Kha, they had to take off their own luggage. People 

would throw their luggage out the windows to people waiting on the platform. They would even pass 

out the babies and small children. 

Kenneth came down later, after passing his second-year language exam. He had done the 

second year in thirty-five days. Margaret was sharing a cottage with Geraldine Fuller, whose child 

had whooping cough and passed it to Peggy. Margaret also remembers someone who had a suitcase 

that the white ants got into. They ate their way straight through, making holes in every article of 

244


clothing she had. And then there was the time Margaret went into the bathroom, where stood a large 

Alibaba jar in which Margaret discovered a dead lizard, looking like a dragon, floating. 

After the vacation, the Landons returned to Bangkok and began preparing to move south. 

Everyone started entertaining them, having in mind that they would soon be gone. What the Landons 

didn't know was that there was quite a "confab" over where they should go. The Thai wanted to keep 

them in Bangkok—and later on, a time came when the Thai Christians worked to get them back to 

Bangkok. But the Americans wanted them out of the city. 

James Seigle was leaving for service in India, and the Landons paid for half of a fine tennis 

racket as a farewell gift to him. 

5 

26:48 Kenneth came down with dengue fever, "breakbone fever." "The old saying is, You get it, 

and you're afraid you're going to die, and then you're afraid you ZRQ W die." Kenneth was in that 

"parlous" state when Margaret roasted a small chicken for him and brought the whole chicken. He 

consumed it entire and was immediately well. It was dramatic. Margaret reads that after the aching 

came a terrible itching that prevented Kenneth from sleeping. He was so weak that he couldn't eat for 

the first few days. He literally could not lift a spoon to his mouth without considerable effort. 

Margaret nursed him to the best of her ability. Peggy had whooping cough at the same time. 

Margaret kept trying to find things that Kenneth could eat. She comments on how she walked her 

legs off taking care of her two charges, back and forth, back and forth all day, day after day. 

Remarkably, she did not get Kenneth's fever, though she once picked it up later on. Kenneth 

comments that you get dengue from a mosquito bite, not from someone who has it. 

Margaret had been buying fresh pineapples. Five or six cents apiece. 

The doctor told them that the climate there was hard on the blood and lowered the blood 

pressure. Even Margaret's blood pressure went down. Kenneth comments that to this day, if he were 

to return to Thailand, he would lose a pound a day for twenty days or so. Then he would level off in 

the 130's. 

Dr. McDaniel from Nakhon Si Thammarat was on the executive committee, and he was in 

Bangkok. The committee was meeting. He was a funny man. One night he was standing behind 

Margaret in a line going into dinner when someone made a comment on his bald head. "Yes, yes," he 

said, "I suppose that you will be telling me that I need a shine!" That was his idea of a joke. 

Margaret knew by then that she and Kenneth would be going to Nakhon, and that was her first 

encounter with Dr. McDaniel. 

Margaretta had the Landons and Horsts for dinner on June 18, the Wells' second anniversary, 

the Horsts' third, and two days after the Landons' second. She really did it in style. They were all 

supposed to come in their wedding dresses and veils. Margaret had her dress but not her veil. At 

each bride's place was a bridal bouquet, made of waxy white gardenias with a spray of Honolulu 

creeper. Each place had a little wedding cake. Gardenias for the men. And the dinner was delicious. 

Margaret and Kenneth left Bangkok for Nakhon Si Thammarat in July, expecting to live and 

work there for three years. They left July 4 at 7:00 a.m., riding first class on the train. They had a 

compartment, with two narrow berths, a stool, which with Kenneth's suitcase made a resting place for 

the baby's basket, a wash basin, electric fan, and a few other accessories. Each car had a bathroom 

and a shower room. "It was not so very hot, and snookie was good all the way." Peggy slept all 

through the night without a whimper in her little basket. The next morning they were still some 

distance from the junction where they were to get off, when they discovered that Dr. McDaniel was 

riding the train with them. They reached the junction at 7:00 and boarded the shuttle train that ran to 

Nakhon. 

Margaret spells Nakhon Si Thammarat: "Nakon Sri Tamarat." [I follow the spelling on my world 

245


map.] Kenneth explains that the words have Sanskrit origins. "Sri" meant "color." "Tama" meant 

righteousness, or the doctrine, or "darma." "Rat" was "the city." The name meant "the city of the 

colorful darma or doctrine." Si Thammarat was a great religious center. It had the biggest temple in 

the whole south there. It was historically an important town. The kids would run out into the streets 

and dash up and down kicking up the sand after every rainstorm picking up coins. They'd find 

Portuguese coins, all kinds of coins, some gold. Even ancient coins. 

When they arrived, they were met by nearly the entire station, only Mrs. Snyder missing 

because she was making breakfast for them. They drove up to the house in Dr. McDaniel's lovely 

Buick. 

Margaret understood the name of the town to mean "Glorious religious and ruling city." 

Missionaries had told her that. And the words did mean that, she says, but she later learned that the 

city was named for one of the kings, one of the Ayuthian kings. "The City of This King" was the 

way the Thai understood it, that is, of the king whose name meant "righteous" and "ruling" and so on. 

It was a very ancient city, with one long street five miles long. Few side streets. It was built on a 

sand spit. At one time, it had been an independent kingdom. Originally, the country had been a core, 

at Ayuthia and Bangkok, and sometimes its feudalities were many. There was a time when it 

controlled all the little kingdoms down the peninsula all the way to Malaya—all the way to Malacca, 

says Kenneth. They paid tribute. They had their own princes to rule them. At times when the 

monarchy in Ayuthia or Bangkok was weak, each of the cities was likely to break off. Nakhon had 

been a powerful center, usually independent of Bangkok, and with its own feudalities. Margaret 

believes it went back to the third century A.D., and is the oldest continuously inhabited city on the 

peninsula, she feels sure. But the recorded history went back only to the eighth century. It was a 

walled city, as were all the cities. The old walls were being destroyed even as the Landons lived 

there. 

As late as the time Anna went to Bangkok, it was still a walled city. Margaret has a full 

description of the wall, even to the names of the gates. Now the most you can find is a tiny piece of 

the wall. Chiang Mai was a walled city also, and when missionaries first went there in the nineteenth 

century, the wall was standing. Hanoi was a walled city, says Kenneth, when he went up there in 

1946; but by 1950, every brick of that wall was gone. The same thing happened to the walls of other 

cities, like Nakhon. The bricks were useful, and so people took them off for building purposes. 

There were ruined pagodas all along the main street that ran through Nakhon, making one 

aware of the great age of the city. There were many temples, some in good repair, some in ruins. 

Inside the city wall there was a temple with a memorial area of the kings, who had been cremated, of 

course; there were bones from each of the kings. These were housed in a kind of pagoda, Margaret 

and Kenneth say, shaped like a bell, standing perhaps seven or eight feet high with a spire on top. 

The names and reigns of all the kings were forgotten. Margaret went to that temple many times. 

There was an ancient courtyard right in the middle of that temple with a bo tree, a sacred tree. "It 

was so quiet; you'd go up there; and those bo leaves just fluttering in the wind, you know. You just 

had such a sense of the past." Allegedly, Kenneth tells us, this tree was grown from a cutting of the 

original bo tree under which Buddha was enlightened, up on the Nepal border. 

There were inscriptions in that temple that even the most learned of the monks couldn't read 

in those days. They were in some ancient form of Pali. Since then, scholars have deciphered them. 

6 

42:53 Dr. McDaniel was of the present; he couldn't be bothered with the past. So he knew nothing 

about Nakhon's past. There seemed to be no way to find out anything. Nobody knew anything. The 

Thai interest in their history was just beginning. It hadn't yet reached Nakhon. The British, when 

246


they came out, brought with them a great respect for the past, and for records. The Chinese had this 

too. In Bangkok there was a beginning of a desire to save what could be salvaged of their history, but 

that was all. 

Margaret and Kenneth were quartered with Miss McCague in Nakhon, who ran the girls' 

school, and who lived just out of town. They were to have had the Eckels' house, because the Eckels 

were retiring. But Mr. and Mrs. Snyder decided that they wanted that house, which meant that the 

only place for the Landons was in a half of the brick house in which Miss Mccague lived. The school 

was on the first floor. It was quite a large house. Miss McCague's quarters were one side, the 

Landons' on the other, with a shared living room in between. They shared the porches and so on. 

Margaret again explains that the city was along a sand spit, and the main road went along the 

ridge. The sea, the Gulf of Siam, was perhaps five or six miles away. The city had been a port at one 

time. Kenneth tells us that his car came down from Bangkok by ship, and he went rushing off 

without his topi on to get it. He would never have done that if the shore had been far to go. Then he 

found himself at sea with his car in a little boat. He had imagined there would be a dock for 

unloading. But in fact, the car was unloaded about a mile offshore, picked up by a crane on the ship 

and set down on a barge riding alongside the ship. And the passage on that barge from the ship to the 

shore seemed interminable, with the tropical sun beating down on his head. They chugged along at a 

very slow pace. At the beach, planks had to be put down to drive the car off the barge onto the beach, 

which took still more time. Finally, Kenneth was able to drive home. His memory of the experience 

is vivid to this day. 

Margaret repeats that the city had been a port. But the port had silted up and become 

unusable. Both the Dutch and the Portuguese had run trading stations there in the seventeenth 

century. 

So back to the girls' school in Miss McCague's house, which was on a good-sized compound. 

Across the street, there was a temple, a rather simple kind of building. Margaret learned that only a 

few years before 1928 an ultra-conservative Buddhist had been made governor of Nakhon, and he 

had discovered that this temple had in it some strange frescoes and statues that were not Buddhist, 

and so he had had them all destroyed. Mr. Snyder was delighted to get all this material from the 

temple and used it as filler for a cement pavement he was building under the girls' school. When 

Prince Damrong found out about this—he being the "great prince" that everyone listened to and a 

man very much interested in archaeology—he was absolutely livid because he knew that the building 

was probably either a Dutch or Portuguese chapel dating from the seventeenth century. This was a 

typical example of how careless the Thai were about their history. 

Kenneth shares a vivid memory of moving into Miss McCague's house, with all their property 

in a huge pile in one of the rooms, and Peggy feeling absolutely frantic, climbing back and forth over 

these belongings, shrieking and crying at the top of her lungs because she was disoriented. These 

things were familiar items, and she just crawled back and forth over them like a child over a sand 

pile. She would not be comforted. Mr. Snyder was about to go on a tour and instructed Kenneth to 

go with him. The Landons weren't even settled in the house. And Snyder orders him to go on a tour 

the next day. Kenneth was the new boy. He didn't want to leave Margaret with all this mess and this 

frantic baby. But Snyder said go. 

Snyder took all his cooking equipment with him, pots and pans and everything else. He had a 

cook with him. He also had some sort of evangelist. And Kenneth. They went to two or three 

places, Phatthalung being one, and Sengora (or Songkhla) being a second. It was there that the Lord 

Lieutenant had his headquarters—where he controlled three provinces. He was greater than a 

governor and was called a Tesa (SP?). Snyder was a bulky man, and Kenneth was a skinny man. 

And Snyder immediately began to warn Kenneth that he shouldn't eat any of that dirty native food. 

247


So the first day and the second day passed, and all they got was coffee. Or tea. Or Ovaltine. No 

solid food. 

7$3( 9,, 6LGH 

7 

52:38 Snyder had this cookboy, with all these pots and pans, but wouldn't "unleash" him. They 

would go into a coffee shop, and he would have a cup of coffee. He wouldn't order any food. He just 

kept warning Kenneth against the dirty native food. Kenneth could smell food around, but he didn't 

get anyway! On the third day, they were at some Thai house where the people were friendly with 

Snyder, and all they served was again tea and a few cookies. Kenneth was getting desperate, and he 

just took off, pelting down to where he smelled the food. He came to a Chinese cookshop and went 

tearing into this place. He spoke no Chinese, and they spoke very little Thai. His Thai was still 

elementary, and he had a terrible time trying to tell them he wanted something to eat. They finally 

got the idea that he wanted to eat, but what did he want to eat? He couldn't tell them. He had no 

language for any of their food. Well, finally they just started bringing him food, and he ate bowl after 

bowl after bowl of rice and various other things they had in bowls. He didn't ask the price or 

anything else. "I just was ready to die." And he got all that good food down into him, and belched 

properly, and began to feel like a human being again. Then he said to himself, Well, this ends it for 

me. He wouldn't travel with any cookboy, or with any pots and pans. When he went out into the 

country, he would eat in Chinese restaurants. The food was great. And he went back feeling very 

comfortable and looking at Snyder with a very jaundiced eye. 

Snyder was a street preacher, who would preach on the street corner. He had quite a big 

crowd, watching him and listening. He had a very loud mouth, and made a big noise, and finally he 

realized he had his audience absolutely spellbound. He turned to Kenneth and said, "These people 

are hungry for the word of God. They're hungry for the Gospel. Look at the way they're listening to 

my message." He went on, and periodically there would be a gasp, and a wave of admiration and 

comment from the crowd. And he would turn to Kenneth and say, "See how they're hanging on my 

words." Snyder told Kenneth to go out into the crowd and stand among them to hear what they were 

saying. So Kenneth did, and stood on the edge of the crowd. As Snyder was preaching, every now 

and then he would make a great gesture, his mouth would be wide open, and his teeth would close. 

"Aaah," the people would say, with admiration. And Snyder NQHZ he had his audience spellbound. 

This went on for quite a while, and finally Kenneth went back to Snyder's side, and the great 

evangelist signed off. 

"What were they saying?" Snyder asked. 

Kenneth answered, "They were full of admiration!" Which, naturally, was what Mr. Snyder 

had hoped to hear. 

Years later, in 1946, in Hanoi, Kenneth had an experience with Chinese food that was similar 

to his experience with Snyder, when he landed in the city and was desperately hungry. He shared a 

meal with a Chinese soldier, eating out of the same bowl with the same pair of chopsticks, which they 

passed back and forth. Kenneth could talk to that man, knowing Chinese by that time, and they made 

conversation as they shared their meal. 

Snyder went most of a week without eating, and didn't seem to suffer at all. 

The first tour Kenneth made after that, he GLG take a cook, an ex-soldier, following Snyder's 

pattern. But the cook was no good, and Kenneth never did that again. 

Kenneth called on the Buddhist monks and met the head monk, Phra Kru Hame, probably the 

most important and most influential monk south of Bangkok. He was a member of the ruling council 

248


in Bangkok, when he went to Bangkok, ruling the monks in the order, the Sengha (SP?). Kenneth 

went frequently to visit and talk with the monks and said that he would like to teach them. This 

would have been toward the end of their year there, because he remembers Peggy toddling by then. 

Just barely, but toddling. And he said to Phra Kru Hame that he would like to teach the monks 

something about the Christian religion, and he said they would be delighted to have him do it. So 

they set up times when his monks would come, and they would sit on the verandah—a high verandah 

up off the ground. [Story to be continued.] 

249


HOUR 43 


1 

0:00 (VIIB35) Kenneth continues the story of the monks who came to learn of the Christian 

religion from him at his house. They would all sit in ranks, very orderly, on the high verandah. 

Peggy was a very sociable child from the beginning, and she saw all these people in all these lovely 

robes, when she came out one day, and she began running at the robes, which flowed away from in 

front of her. The more she moved, the more frantically the monks dodged away because they didn't 

dare let a member of the female race touch them. That was contrary to Buddhist law. Some of them 

actually had to climb over the railing of the verandah and hang outward in their attempts to avoid her. 

And some of them in desperation jumped and dropped to the ground below, which was easily ten 

feet. 

Kenneth cannot recall how many sessions he had with the monks except that there were quite 

a number of them. And at the end, he gave them an oral examination, and awarded them with 

Scripture portions—not New Testaments, but a substantial compilation of John and Acts and a few 

other books. He made their last session something like a graduation at which he presented these 

compilations as gifts. Then one of them stood up and made a very pretty speech. He was their 

spokesman. He thanked Kenneth for teaching them all about Christianity, and he knew that Kenneth 

would be pleased to know that they had all decided to become Christians. Kenneth asked him if that 

meant they would now give up their Buddhism to live as Christians, and he answered, "Oh no, we'll 

be Buddhists too." Kenneth thanked them, and they thanked him, and they went off to be Christians 

and Buddhists too. Margaret comments that this is very Thai. 

It was a happy experience for Kenneth, he says. It started a long and friendly relationship, 

and he often called on Phra Kru Hame when he went back to Nakhon. He always remembered 

Kenneth. Once Kenneth met him on the train. He was always friendly and warm and enjoyed 

talking. 

It was a peaceful era, between the wars. 


2 

3:15 Margaret makes corrections on Kenneth's first two tours. His first tour started July 21, 1928; 

he made it alone with a cook and an evangelist; and he was gone four weeks and a day. He went up 

the line, all along the peninsula. Somewhere the Landons have a journal of the trip. Kenneth was 

taking over the touring work from Mr. Snyder, and on this first solo tour, he took with him the whole 

outfit that Snyder had used. There was a folding bed, two camp stools, a folding table, cooking 

utensils, rolls of Bible pictures, and suitcases of clothes and Gospels for distribution. Everything was 

packed in galvanized iron boxes. 

"We have such a time with insects and vermin here that I simply cannot make you 

comprehend it without making you think we must be very dirty people," Margaret wrote home. In 

their new house, they had seen at least ten different kinds of ants. But not yet the destructive white 

variety. These would riddle cloth and wood. McDaniels' house had been badly "eaten away" with 

them. Margaret especially detested the black "swimming kind" of ants. Most ants would not cross 

250


water, but these ants could swim and were even attracted by water. Margaret kept the baby's milk in 

pans of water, but even so she would occasionally find "the horrid things" crawling up on the cans. It 

was very difficult to keep them out of the food. 

Kenneth says that his first evangelistic tour cured him of travelling with all that equipment. 

According to Margaret, Kenneth's story of his first tour with Mr. Snyder is partially apocryphal. [For 

more on this, see index 3 below.] The furniture and belongings that made up that huge pile Peggy 

crawled on did not arrive until some time after the Landons did, not at the same time. That would 

have been weeks after their arrival. Kenneth went off alone on his first tour, not with Snyder. 

Kenneth went by train up the line to Ban Don [now known as Surat Thani] , stopping at Chaiya, Ban Na, 

and Ban Na San. Snyder and E. P. Dunlap had toured these towns, and there were scattered 

Christians all through the area. Kenneth had a little book that had been prepared by E.P. Dunlap's 

evangelist entitled, "Them That Has Been Talked." 

Kenneth remembers the "wretched cook" who fed him crab, which Kenneth didn't like. 

Kenneth said he wouldn't have crab again, and the next night the cook served crab. Kenneth said that 

the cook certainly should not serve crab again after that! The third night, the cook served crab again! 

At this, Kenneth picked up the plate of food and threw it at the cook, splashing him all over to make 

his point that he was not going to have crab. Kenneth fired him when they got back. 

Snyder would not stay in a Chinese hotel, or eat in a Chinese cookshop. That was why he 

took his own bed and chairs and cooking supplies. He was afraid of everything. 

3 

10:01 Margaret tells us that the tour on which Kenneth nearly starved was when the school closed. 

It was in early September, Kenneth's second tour, from which he returned September 10. Kenneth 

had not taken the cook with him, she says, and had gone almost without food the entire week. Quite 

often, all he had been able to get was rice and milk and sometimes an egg, if he got anything at all. 

He was so famished when he came home that he had difficulty eating, Margaret wrote at the time. 

Kenneth remembers now that he went on this second tour with Snyder, who took no cook 

with him at all and who was visiting Christians in Ban Hat Yai and Songkhla. Having no cook, 

Snyder wouldn't eat any food, since he was only willing to eat food prepared by his own cook. So 

that was it. Kenneth does remember the "one brilliant meal" of Chinese food he managed to get, the 

only real meal he had all week. 

Margaret tells us about Mr. Snyder. The Rev. Frank L. Snyder. Born Feb 14, 1864. Came to 

Siam with his wife Letitia Dickson Snyder in 1890 and was stationed at Bangkok. Mrs. Snyder was 

an Ulster woman, from northern Ireland, and very proud of her British heritage. She had been a 

dressmaker. They had four children in Siam, Leroy, born 1893, Walter, 1895, Mabel Frances, 1897, 

and Leonard, 1899 or so. Both Snyders were difficult people, but Mr. Snyder was able in some ways. 

Margaret tells us that their compound at 641 Sathorn Road in Bangkok was called "the Old 

Press Compound." There were the two houses, and at the end of the compound a warehouse which 

once had housed the mission press. Dr. Dan Beach Bradley had brought the first press to Siam, and 

for a long time, the mission had continued to print its own materials. But by the time the Landons 

came, it was more economical to use the Chinese presses. In any case, Mr. Snyder had built both 

houses in that compound, and had lived in one of them. One of the Dunlaps had also lived in one, but 

Margaret doesn't remember which. She suspects it was E.P. Dunlap. 

The most able person of all in Bangkok was Miss Edna Cole, the head of the Wang Lang 

School. Her constant problem was dealing with what she called "the gentlemen." An ironic term. 

To get anything done, she had to get around them somehow. Snyder was the mission treasurer, 

which made him powerful. He was the kind of person who used his power, too. He actually opened 

251


the work with the Chinese in Bangkok, though he himself did not speak Chinese. He worked with 

the Chinese through an interpreter, and started a Chinese church in Bangkok. He was a very active 

person, and did a lot of touring, evangelizing. When the Graham Fullers came, they took over the 

work with the Chinese because they spoke Chinese. 

Mr. Snyder built the central buildings of Bangkok Christian College, the boys' school. 

Margaret sees him as a very active, very able person, but with a very aggressive personality. 

Somewhere along the line, he did something indiscreet, which is surprising. The Landons, by 

the end of their first year in Siam, knew that their mail was being opened and read. Siam had always 

had heavy censorship, and there was no law against it. One reason there were no private collections 

of letters, and almost no diaries or records of the sort you'd find in every European country, until very 

recently, was that it wasn't safe to have them. The secret police might get hold of them. Kenneth and 

Margaret took it for granted that any letter they wrote to each other might be opened, and when he 

was touring, he says, every letter from Margaret to him ZDV opened. The two of them had a code 

worked out if they had anything important to say. So Mr. Snyder ought to have known of this sort of 

spying. But in any case, he wrote a letter to someone in the U.S., perhaps to the mission board, 

which was savagely critical of the Thai government. And it was opened. The government then 

instructed the mission to remove Mr. Snyder, to send him home to the U.S. He was now SHUVRQD QRQ 

JUDWD. As it turned out, the government consented to Snyder's being sent to an out-station, and so he 

was sent to Nakhon. This, for him, was like being sent to Coventry. It was one of the small stations, 

considered a very difficult station, 500 miles south of Bangkok. All his power was stripped from 

him. Naturally, this had something to do with his attitude toward his work there. He felt resentful. 

By the time the Landons arrived, he was at loggerheads with Dr. McDaniel and his wife, who 

lived across the street from him. Their two houses were about the same size. Margaret reads from a 

letter written to her by Snyder's daughter, a Mrs. Hoff (SP?), who left the country when she was 

eight—in 1904 or 1905—but who had clear memories of her time there. Near the end of her letter, 

on page 15, she wrote that probably the prettiest sight was the large cage out in the backyard full of 

fan-tailed pigeons. They nested and had young and were a continual source of delight. Her mother 

and father were very fond of them. That was in Bangkok. But the Snyders continued to keep pigeons 

in Nakhon, and it was the pigeons that caused the problem with the McDaniels. For the pigeons 

decided to roost on the roof of the McDaniels' house. They liked it better than the Snyders' house! 

Which brings us to the matter of water. 

In Bangkok, there was city water. And while the missionaries would boil the water for 

drinking purposes, it still came into the house by pipe. In Nakhon and Trang people would have 

large tanks, taller than a person, which were supplied by rain water. The Landons had two tanks, and 

the Snyders and McDaniels both had two tanks. In Trang, the Landons had only one tank, but they 

got more water there. On the top there was a manhole. The tank was kept closed until the rain came. 

When the rain came, they would wait until the roof was washed clean and then have the coolie open 

the tank to let the water run in. Margaret discovered that rain water had a dreadful taste until it had 

stood for about three weeks. So they would fill one tank and hope to let the water stand for three 

weeks while they drank from the other. And periodically, they would have to have a tank scrubbed 

out. Then, when the rain came again, they would just let the water run through the newly scrubbed 

tank to thoroughly clean out the muck. 

Naturally, they were dependent on that tank water, and they kept it locked. Kenneth 

comments that there were wells also, but they tried to use the tank water if they could because it was 

safer. They could drink it without boiling. 

The church and the boys' school were on the same side of the street as the Snyders' house. 

Mr. Snyder was actually in charge of the school for a long time after Miss Larisa Cooper died. Mrs. 

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Snyder ran the girls' school. Miss McCague had only taken over the school from her two or three 

years before the Landons arrived. 

Dr. McDaniel was a doctor and a surgeon, and the roosting of the pigeons on his roof was 

deeply offensive to him for the pigeons were polluting his water. He asked the Snyders repeatedly to 

get rid of the pigeons, which they refused to do. By the time the Landons came, the Snyders and 

McDaniels were not on speaking terms. For the doctor, it was a matter of health, of life and death. 

McDaniel raised the issue with Kenneth, who said, "Well, haven't you got a shotgun?" and added, 

"That's what I would do. I'd just shoot 'em." The doctor waggled his chin at Kenneth and said the 

thought had never occurred to him. 

The McDaniels were perhaps ten or fifteen years younger than the Snyders. They had come 

out in 1902. Mrs. McDaniel was a nurse, and the doctor was a fine surgeon—the best surgeon 

anywhere in the south. He ran a neat, clean hospital. He had become concerned with the lepers. The 

missionaries were the first to care about them. Dr. James W. McCain in the north had established a 

leper asylum in Chiang Mai. That was the first, and a model throughout the world. It was one of the 

most charming villages in all of Siam. Each little cottage was very neat. There was a school, and a 

church. It was all landscaped. It was on an island in the river. 

McCain had difficulty getting land for the project because lepers were, of course, feared and 

hated and driven away and lived on the outskirts of towns. But he had done the prince of Chiang Mai 

a favor, unwittingly. When he and his wife were about to return to Laos, to the northern side of 

Siam, and were leaving San Francisco, he realized that he had not bought any bedroom slippers. He 

needed a pair and asked his wife if she would rush out and get him a some. She did, and got him a 

very nice pair, bright red. He hadn't wanted bright red, really, but there was no time to do anything 

else. The court of the prince of Chiang Mai was a more informal court than the one in Bangkok, 

though a much older court, actually. The prince often called on people, and he may have called on 

Dr. McCain. In any case, he saw the doctor's bright red slippers and was enchanted with them. 

There was an old custom in that part of the country that if a Chao, a lord or prince, admired anything 

extravagantly, the owner had to present it to him. So Dr. McCain took off his slippers and presented 

them to the prince—who would not have taken something so lowly as a shoe in his hands; probably a 

servant took them. 

In those days, when there was a procession, and even up to King Chulalongkorn's time, all the 

insignia of office, which included many kinds of things, a spittoon, a whisk, a betel nut set, and so on, 

were carried along, each thing on a pillow. All of these items were things the prince might use, his 

betel nut set, his sword, his shoes, each thing carried by a separate retainer. The next time the prince 

of Chiang Mai went by in formal procession, there were Dr. McCain's bright red slippers, riding on a 

pillow. 

The prince of Chiang Mai had an elephant which had gone mad. It lived on a large island in 

the river. The Lao were afraid of the elephant while it was living and of the elephant's spirit after it 

died. Nobody dared to go there. Dr. McCain saw his opportunity and asked for that beautiful island, 

which was granted to him. So there he established his leper colony. 

Dr. McDaniel began to do the same thing in Nakhon. He found a piece of land well out from 

the city. It would not have been tolerated close in. He had a huge number of lepers out there. 

Margaret saw them often, because McDaniel sometimes asked her to drive him out. One time he 

asked her to take the workmen out. He had an old Ford, a Model T, which he used for work, with a 

trailer in which the workmen would ride. This is what he asked Margaret to drive, warning her that 

when he turned the wheel to the left, the car might sometimes go to the right—which in fact it 

sometimes did! 

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4 

33:12 Margaret reads a letter of July 17, 1928, on her first impressions of Nakhon. When the 

Landons first arrived, they were tired but also excited and anxious to see their new city. Everyone in 

the mission came to meet them except for Mrs. Snyder, who was preparing breakfast for them. The 

Landons rode to the Snyders' in Dr. McDaniel's Buick. They saw a good-sized business section and 

several temples before they reached the Snyders' house. 

The city was the county seat. Kenneth and Margaret took a drive into the old city a few days 

before the date of Margaret's letter and saw the remains of the wall, "overgrown now by vines and 

partially decayed." Just inside the wall were the houses of officials, and across from them a prison to 

which the prisoners of this district were sent. The Landons "heard the clank of their leg irons off and 

on all day as they pass." They did all sorts of work, such as building roads. Margaret comments on 

how heavy the irons were that the prisoners wore. The men would tie a string to the chain and hang it 

from their waists while they worked, making it possible to move around more freely. 

Margaret's first impression was that almost every other building was a temple. Most of the 

temples were white-washed and had tile roofs. There was one across the street from the Landons, 

and Margaret could see the priests in their yellow robes coming and going, followed by little serving 

boys. Some days there seemed to be quite a few worshippers, perhaps on holy days. Christian work 

had been hard and slow in Nakhon, and it wasn't difficult to see why. Buddhism exercized a strong 

power over its followers. 

Margaret returns to the first morning in Nakhon. The Landons shared breakfast with the 

mission group after they had met everybody, Dr. and Mrs. McDaniel, Miss Helen McCague, Mr. and 

Mrs. Charles Eckel (SP?), who were retiring, and Mr. and Mrs. Snyder, who had three more years to 

go. (Mr. Snyder actually died the next year, when he was sixty-five.) When breakfast was over, they 

came out to their new home in the house with Miss McCague, on the second floor. They were just 

outside the city, so in effect they were living in the country. "If it weren't for the palms and other 

reminders of tropical life, I would think it was Michigan." The soil was very sandy. In Bangkok, try 

as they would, they could not keep the house clean. Peggy would be dirty ten minutes after she had 

put on a fresh suit of rompers. But in Nakhon, she could go a half day and still not look disreputable. 

The air was cleaner too. 

Margaret commented that, perhaps because of the cleaner environment, Peggy had finally 

developed pink cheeks. She looked so pretty with her big blue eyes and pink cheeks. The first few 

days they were in Nakhon, though, Peggy actually screamed nearly every minute unless Margaret 

were holding her. She seemed to be afraid. If Margaret put her down on the floor, she would let out 

a wail and set out after her mother with an expression of sheer terror on her face. "I didn't dare spoil 

her right at the first, so I had to let her do a good deal of screaming." In the first week, she would 

hardly eat. Her screaming not only affected the Landons but the operation of the school downstairs. 

Finally, Peggy began to adjust and calm down. 

The furniture arrived about seven to ten days after they arrived. Their best furniture had been 

packed by the Bangkok House Furnishing Company, and to their dismay, every piece had paper stuck 

to it. Everything else was fine. 

Margaret was caring for the baby herself. No help at this point. 

Since they left Bangkok, they could not get the variety of fruit they had been used to. They 

would have cooked cereal, eggs, toast, bananas, and cocoa. 

There was one item about Kenneth's first tour that he left out of his account. Miss McCague 

had a carriage, with a carriage boy to drive it. One day he deposited a large basket at Margaret's feet. 

It was tightly covered and padlocked and addressed to her in Kenneth's handwriting. She had no idea 

what it was, and could not see into it, but then she heard a plaintive mewing and knew in a flash that 

254


Kenneth had at last managed to get a Siamese cat. When they had arrived in Siam, one of the first 

things Margaret had looked for was Siamese cats. There weren't any in Bangkok. She was assured 

by all the Siamese that to them the cats she referred to were QRW Siamese cats. They were 

Cambodian. Kenneth had been looking for a Siamese cat for months, and now he had found one. 

Margaret found a big knife and opened the basket. Out walked a half-grown cat. It was a beautiful 

thing. The eyes were a bright blue. A letter from Kenneth arrived about a half hour later explaining 

about the critter he was sending her. It was "an expensive, fifty-tekal cat in a basket" which a doctor 

had given to Kenneth at Ban Na San. It was three months old, a thoroughbred Siamese, still used 

milk, also ate rice and fish. He instructed her to buy a collar for it and a chain to secure it in the 

house until it started to feel at home. 

Kenneth wrote Margaret from Ban Na San that he was going to Ban Na Chi where there were 

a lot of people who had heard of his coming and were anticipating it. Thirty years had passed since 

E.P. Dunlap had been there, and no one had come since. Kenneth was doing a lot of walking, he 

said. He had met an "old saint" in Ban Na San who had been converted by E.P. Dunlap. "There are 

many such." 

So the cat came. In time, he was given the name "Leander," and he was a marvellous cat. He 

went with the Landons to Trang, and they had him for years. He had one characteristic Margaret has 

never seen in another cat. One of their endless problems was the insects. They sometimes called the 

house "the Bug House." One of the most obnoxious bugs was a cockroach that was an inch and a 

half to two inches long. These cockroaches were very destructive, and they had a horrible smell. If 

they got into a drawer, as they did once with Margaret's finest lace table mats, they would eat them 

straight through. Margaret hated those cockroaches above all the other insects. And Leander would 

kill them. He wouldn't eat them, but he would hunt them with delight and kill them. 

Kenneth tells us that they gave the cat the name "Leander" after he "swam the Hellespont." 

One day, Leander disappeared. This was at Trang. On their compound in Trang, there were 

numerous deep wells. It had once been a pepper estate, and there were all these wells for watering 

the pepper trees. Margaret objects that surely she would have named Leander before that—a full year 

after they got him. But Kenneth suspects he had another name that first year. In any case, he 

disappeared in Trang for over a week, and the Landons couldn't imagine what had happened to him. 

They feared someone had stolen him. Kenneth was all dressed up in a white suit Sunday morning, 

ready to go to church, when someone came running to the house from the rubber garden saying he 

had heard a cat crying and had traced it to a well at the back of their compound. It was a big 

compound, like a football field. Kenneth speculates that Leander had jumped at something, that the 

well was overgrown, and that the cat had gone through and fallen down the well. Kenneth went right 

out, white suit and all, and there was Leander. What the animal had done was scratch the side of the 

well and brought down enough dirt so that he had something to squat on. The water wasn't very deep 

or he wouldn't have been able to do this. 

Kenneth went for a rope and a basket, which he let down for the cat to get into. But Leander 

was too weak to get into the basket. He just meowed and looked at Kenneth. So then Kenneth took 

off his coat, tied the rope around a tree, went down the well himself, put the cat in the basket, climbed 

out, and pulled the cat out of the well. By this time, Kenneth's white pants were a disaster. Leander 

was simply fur and bones. There was no flesh left on him. He was so weak that he couldn't swallow. 

Margaret took some milk, diluted it with water, and used a medicine dropper to squirt the liquid down 

the cat's throat. She wrapped him up to keep him warm. She did that every half hour the rest of the 

day, gradually increasing the quantity of milk. By the end of the day, Leander would lick. At first, 

he had been too weak even to do that. She continued the routine through the next day until he was 

able to get up on his feet and move around. And then began to give him solid food. 

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Leander never regained his full, healthy appearance. He always looked emaciated, gaunt. 

And yet he was powerful. He regained his strength. So Kenneth called him "Leander" because he 

had swum the Hellespont. 

After that, whenever Kenneth went on a trip and then returned, Leander had a routine he 

followed. Kenneth would clean up at the well, taking off all his clothes, because he would be filthy. 

He would enter the house in a bathing cloth and take a full bath before putting on some fresh clothes. 

Then he would go to sit on the verandah, and at this point, Leander would come walking by. He 

would go right on by, then turn around and walk past Kenneth again and look at him. Then he would 

turn around a second time, come back to Kenneth, and just as he got to him, take one paw and whack 

Kenneth's pants, claws and all, WHAM! As if to say, "Where have you been?! Where have you 

been?!" Then he would sit back and look at Kenneth for a bit, then walk off. A little while later, he 

would return, walk up to Kenneth, haul off with one paw and whack his pants again, claws and all, 

WHAM! Leander would do this four or five times, welcoming Kenneth home and bawling him out. 

"Where have you been?!" 

"We were very fond of Leander," Kenneth says, and Margaret concurs. 

The sad thing, Margaret says, was that Charlie Hak (SP?) poisoned Leander. He always 

swore it was an accident, but Margaret did not believe him. Charlie lived in a little house at the back 

of the compound. Leander was four or five at the time. The Landons don't know what he used. He 

claimed to have put the poison out for something else and that it was a mistake. 

5 

53:11 Margaret was responsible for running the house. She had the Eckels' coolie, now that they 

had gone. (The Snyders moved into the Eckels' house across from McDaniels'. The Eckels had been 

in Nakhon for a long time and had provided continuity as other missionaries came and went.) 

Margaret had an unpleasant experience with the coolie in her first month. Everyone had warned her 

that she would have trouble if she took on the servants who had worked for the Eckels. The coolie 

was lazy, and he had been working for these two elderly people who asked little of him. Now he was 

working for a woman who was responsible for the care of a house in which there was a baby, Peggy, 

a schoolmistress, Miss McCague, and a school. He flatly refused to do Miss McCague's washing or 

to do any work for the school without a raise. Margaret had just finished feeding the baby one 

morning when Miss McCague said, "Li (SP?) is coming to see you." He flung open the back door 

and stood there like a storm cloud. He had worked himself up into a terrible anger. He threw out an 

ultimatum, with a few ugly looks, and Margaret realized immediately that it would be impossible to 

have such a person as coolie. But she tried to soothe him in the hope that he would not leave angry. 

She had little success and was not sorry to see him go. There was some fear that he might seek 

revenge, but he never did. He subsequently started a laundry, at which he charged 15 setangs, about 

7 cents, for a coat and a pair of white trousers. Shocking! Margaret had only paid 8 setangs in 

Bangkok. 

Then Nai Dit came to be the Landons' coolie—he who eventually became their cook and one 

day would trap the mongoose in a classic Landon story. 

Mr. Snyder was determined that Margaret should play the organ. She didn't want to, but she 

had had music lessons, and felt she had to do it. Mr. Snyder had difficulty singing the true tone of the 

hymns, so he created a peculiar dissonance. As for the congregation, they tended to "slide downhill" 

as the hymn progressed. And Margaret would pedal away and slog through the hymn. She soon 

gave up trying to follow either Mr. Snyder or the congregation, "so we all go our own ways and 

offend no one." She "tried to stay on top by using the swell steadily and vigorously but sometimes I 

make mistakes and then all my good work is lost." 

256


Another aspect of life in Nakhon was that the insane were not confined. They wandered 

about. There was a woman there who was insane, although sometimes she was relatively sane. In 

her saner periods, she dressed like a Thai, but in her insane periods, she tried to dress like a foreigner. 

She would always come to church services, and she insisted that Margaret was her daughter. Nobody 

paid any attention to her. She would wander down to the front, vacantly, looking around. Harmless. 

Miss McCague left suddenly for Bangkok, and Margaret found herself alone with the baby. 

Miss McCague was intensely uncomfortable with what seemed to be colitis and appendicitis. 

257


HOUR 44 


1 

0:00 (VIIB380) Margaret continues on Miss McCague and her illness. Dr. McDaniel was away, so 

she couldn't go to him. Margaret contemplated the prospect of having to take over the school, which 

had sixty day students and thirty boarders. "I despise teaching school and wouldn't unless I had to." 

Mrs. Snyder had run the school for years, of course, so she would probably be the one to step in. 

Nai Dit came. He knew how to wash and iron men's white suits. He was "a grand scrubber," 

and gave the house a thorough cleaning, even to cleaning out all the cobwebs without being told. 

Miss McCague's horse ran away, right out the front gate. The coolie had quite a job getting it 

back. 

Margaret's cook made mangosteen (SP?) jam, which was just delicious. It was Margaret's 

first acquaintance with it. It was made from a dark red fruit. 

Margaret also had a washwoman who was paid 25 cents a day. 

The Snyders had a number of coconut trees at their house, and one day Margaret saw the 

coconuts being picked. And a monkey was picking them. The trees were high, and the monkey was 

attached to a long rope. He worked away at a coconut until it came free and then tossed it down to 

the owner, who stood grunting at the monkey from below. The monkey's pay was one coconut out of 

every ten. 

September 12, Margaret wrote that her twenty-fifth birthday had come and gone, quietly. She 

had not had a cake, but she KDG treated herself to a bar of chocolate in honor of the occasion. 

Dr. and Mrs. McDaniel and Miss McCague returned in mid-September. Miss McCague did 

not look well, but she took over the school again. Margaret was happy to turn over her small part in 

the work. "I wish I liked school work, but I don't." 

One Friday night, during Kenneth's evangelistic tour, he had just finished preaching at a street 

meeting when a young Chinese man approached him and spoke to him in excellent English. He said 

that he was a Christian, that his father had been a Methodist minister in China, and that he had about 

thirty coolies on a rubber plantation nearby who were Christians. He wanted someone to come down 

and preach to them. Mr. Snyder could not go, but Kenneth was delighted and went without 

hesitation. He preached in English, and the young plantation owner, a Mr. Feng, translated for him. 

Kenneth learned that he was a graduate of Cornell University and an electrical and civil engineer. 

Mr. Feng had set up his establishment in "Sittiawan" (SP?). The British had moved down an 

entire village of Chinese from China to "Sittiawan" to work on a rubber plantation. Kenneth's first 

encounter with him was interesting. He came to hear Kenneth preach, even though he himself did not 

speak Thai. Only a few words. When he came up to Kenneth, he spoke in English, of course, and 

Kenneth replied in Thai. Mr. Feng explained very gently that he didn't speak Thai and would like to 

speak in English. "Wonderful man." The plantation was brand new. 

Peggy's first birthday. She had six teeth. Margaret and Kenneth made a cake the night before 

her birthday, an eight-egg angel food cake. Eggs were cheap there, a little more than a cent apiece. 

They were also small. Margaret got along well with the Snyders and had invited them to the 

celebration. She allowed Peggy to stay up until they came, and then Kenneth carried her in to see her 

one candle lighted before she was tucked into bed—a figurative phrase since she refused to have a 

single cover over her. Dinner was soup, fried chicken, scalloped tomatoes, beans, salad, ice cream, 

cake, and coffee. Mrs. Snyder had made an adorable dress for Peggy. She had been a dressmaker, 

258


and she had brought some dimity from home with little ducks on it. She made a simple dress with 

underwaist and bloomers that looked very cute on Peggy. Mr. Snyder gave Peggy a little silver 

bracelet. And Miss McCague gave her a long string of colored wooden beads. Kenneth and 

Margaret gave her two little wooden dolls, and a black, jointed cat, as well as a small gold chain. 

Peggy weighed twenty-one pounds at that time. 

Margaret returns to the Fengs, and Kenneth tells the story again [because Kip has been away 

from the table on some errand]. Mr. Feng invited the Landons to come and visit him in "Sittiawan," 

which they later did. They had Methodist missionary friends there, Douglas and Polly Coole (SP?). 

Later on, they once spent a month with them up in the mountains. Feng was a very enlightened man. 

The British needed labor to work the rubber estates, and they would bring whole villages from 

China—where starvation had set in; that's what they looked for—men, women, children, and 

preacher too. They would bring them down on a ship and settle them and underwrite their settlement 

for seven years. It took seven years to grow rubber trees until you could cut them and begin making 

rubber. Only then could the Chinese settlers begin earning. The British allowed them to grow 

vegetables. Rubber was alien to them, and they only grew it because that was the agreement. They 

grew peanuts in between the rows, and raised chickens. They could feed themselves. Also bananas. 

At the end of seven years, they would go off the payroll of the British and then would have to begin 

paying back the money that had supported them. It was a very successful operation, at least the one 

Kenneth knew about. It was the basic establishment for the city of "Sittiawan." What Mr. Feng was 

doing was a "split off" from that. His family had made so much money in "Sittiawan" that now he 

was following the British pattern, doing the same thing himself, underwriting a village from China 

which after seven years would begin supporting itself and paying him back. 

The rubber trees had their origins in Brazil, where it was against the law to export the seeds. 

They had a monopoly. But some Englishman managed to get six seeds into his pajama pocket, and 

took them to Kew Gardens in England, where they grew them. When they had seeds from the rubber 

trees at Kew, they took them out and planted them with an eye to establishing rubber plantations. 

The Landons saw two of the original trees, one at "Sittiawan" and one near Malacca, in Malaysia. 

However, when they finally had seeds to distribute, they found that they could not find anyone in 

Malaya to grow them. That was what led to their bringing the Chinese villages down. 

Margaret digresses to tell of a luncheon party many years later in Washington, D.C., at which 

a British woman was being very superior about the problems of the U.S., particularly with the black 

minority and civil rights. "Well, I didn't like that," she says, and responded. She said that the U.S. 

problems grew out of the fact that the U.S. was originally a British colony to which the British had 

imported slaves to do the work on the plantations, not wanting, naturally, to do the work themselves. 

She told how the parallel to that in Malaya had made it vivid to her, as the British had gone up into 

China and brought whole villages down to work the rubber plantations. Once again, the British did 

not want to do the work themselves. They wished to run a plantation, for which they needed lots of 

cheap labor. The thing about the Chinese was that they were a hard-working people, and by the time 

the rubber trees were grown and ready to be tapped, rubber was at a premium price. They had a 

golden opportunity, and in one generation they were no longer what amounted to indentured labor. 

They were free, and in some cases rich. They were moving out on their own. Then the British had a 

problem what to do with their rubber gardens. So they went to India, to impoverished places, just as 

they had gone to China, and brought over hundreds of indentured servants to continue the process. 

This was the British pattern wherever they went. The British lady at the party didn't like this at all. 

259


2 

19:23 Peggy learned to walk. A great development. 

The cook ran off, the cook Miss McCague had hired. He eloped with a girl who was the 

daughter of the school cook, leaving his wife and three tiny children. This sort of thing was a 

constant problem, Margaret says, trying to run an establishment with inadequate help. Margaret did 

nearly all the cooking for a week, and it seemed to go well. "I thought I walked ten miles in a day," 

she says. The kitchen was out behind the house. Nai Dit then became the cook, promoted from 

coolie. 

Margaret tells of Kenneth's adventure with the cook who insisted on preparing crab, which 

Kenneth did not dare eat. Kenneth gave it back to the cook, so the cook ate it. And liked it! In a few 

days crab appeared again, and Kenneth dared not eat it, and so the cook ate it. And liked it again! 

[He had a good thing going.] On the third go-round, Kenneth threw the bowl of food at the cook to 

make his point concerning crab. "He is a good shot, and the cook had to go and wash his clothes and 

take a bath." From then on, there was no more crab. This was in October, apparently on Kenneth's 

third tour. 

One night, Kenneth woke suddenly in the middle of the night and heard two men talking 

about him as they walked by the house. It was a very clear night, and still, so that he heard their 

voices for some time. One had been to the house and had been impressed. He told the other that 

Kenneth was glad to have people come and listen, and then explained the way of salvation as 

Kenneth had told it, concluding that he didn't believe it. It was too easy. And yet, it might be true. 

So he was urging all his friends to go and listen, because if it was true, they ought to know. 

Bill was born November 26. Margaret comments that this second pregnancy was much easier 

than the first. She was well through the whole of it, though often tired. She never lost a meal. 

Margaret weighed about 120 pounds at that time. She tells us that she had dysentery shortly after 

Peggy was born and that this had affected her weight. 

Kenneth had a tailor make five new dresses for Margaret, of different voiles and one FUHSH GH 

FKLQH, and they were all "very snappy looking." He also planned to have a silk evening dress made 

for her. He had ordered some nice shoes for her from Adelle, and had had a pair of snakeskin shoes 

made for her. "You were very, very generous," Margaret says. The clothes meant a lot to her. 

Miss Christiansen delivered Bill. The baby was due November 4, so Margaret and Kenneth 

traveled up to Bangkok at the end of October. At Dr. McDaniel's hospital, there were no nurses. The 

families did the nursing. This was a consideration in the decision to go to Bangkok for the delivery 

of the baby. In fact, Dr. McDaniel was away from Nakhon, in Bangkok for mission meeting, when 

Bill was born. By this time, the Seigles had left the house on the Press Compound. So there the 

Landons were, well in time for the due date. And then the baby didn't come and didn't come, until 

finally he came November 26. Margaret was conscious when he was born. William Bradley Landon, 

nicknamed "Bill." 

3 

30:52 Margaret tells us that recently she was talking to Margaretta Wells on the telephone about 

the dinner she gave June 18, 1928, when she and Margaret and Julia Horst all wore their wedding 

dresses. Miss Galt (SP?) was there also. Margaretta remembered it very well. Miss Galt was a 

middle-aged woman, heavyset, not pretty, but very kind and well liked by the boys at the Bangkok 

Christian College, where she taught. She lived in a house there. Margaretta wanted to invite her, but 

she had never been married. And Margaretta, in her typical graciousness, urged her to come and with 

a touch of humor said that she would be the bridesmaid for the rest of them. Which charmed Miss 

Galt, who had a wonderful time. Otherwise, she might have felt a little "out of it." 

260


The mission meeting began on Thanksgiving. Something surprising usually happened on the 

first day of each meeting, and this time it was the Landons' transfer from Nakhon to Trang. Margaret 

was completely surprised, having believed they had gone to Nakhon to stay. Trang was about five 

hours' travel from Nakhon, on the other side of the peninsula. 

Kenneth was elected recording clerk or secretary of the annual mission meeting, a hard job. 

Margaret could not go because it was just when "Billy" was born. Every motion had to be numbered 

and filed as it was made and a most complete record kept. The meeting ran five or six days. Kenneth 

says he has no memory of this. In the midst of this ordeal, he took his third-year language exam. [So, 

in fact, he did three years of Thai language study in a year and four a half months.] 

Kenneth shows us pictures of "Billy Boy" and Margaret in bed, and another of him "with a 

kid on each arm." 

Another British couple in Bangkok was the Rev. and Mrs. Cecil Norwood, and Mrs. Norwood 

was expecting a baby about the time Bill was born. She arrived two days after Margaret and was a 

patient of Dr. Theobald, who had prescribed quinine and castor oil to induce labor. The poor woman 

had sixty grains of quinine and two ounces of castor oil, but there was no effect at all. She was a 

large woman. "Fat!" says Kenneth. There was nothing wrong with her, but the doctor did not want 

the baby to get too big, so he kept dosing her up with quinine and castor oil. Margaret made up her 

mind that she would rather have a huge baby rather than go through all that, and she got her wish. 

Bill weighed nearly ten pounds. Mrs. Norwood's labor finally did start on Sunday, but it was very, 

very slow, running over several days. At about two a.m. Tuesday morning, Margaret was awakened 

by the sound of the opening of her door. The light from the hall lit up the form of Mrs. Norwood, 

who was still in labor. Much to Margaret's surprise, given the fact that Mrs. Norwood was a very 

reserved Englishwoman who never came in without a polite knock and an inquiry as to whether it 

was convenient, Mrs. Norwood came in without a word. Margaret asked her how she felt, and she 

replied quite intelligently, and began walking about the room. When a pain seized her, she clutched 

the railing until it was over. She kept walking about and mumbling to herself, sometimes sitting 

down on a chair, and sometimes sitting on Margaret's bed. Then she suddenly started to climb up on 

the bed, which was high, but was unable to make it. So she made her way around to the other side of 

the bed, where there was a stool, and climbed up, at which point Margaret hastily exited out the other 

side. Margaret sat on a stool, pulled a comforter around her, and just shook with laughter. She 

understood that Mrs. Norwood was sleep-walking. 

The woman had had two injections of a sleep-inducing drug, and was unable to fully awaken. 

The staff managed to get her back to her own room, and the next morning, when she woke up, she 

remarked on what a good night's rest she'd had. Her baby was born that Tuesday morning. 

The Landons did not move to Trang until March, 1929. 


4 

40:54 Kenneth recites a bit of poetry from his youth in Meadville. "I asked my girl to marry me 

last night, and she told me to go to father. Now she knew that I knew her father was dead. She knew 

that I knew the life he had led. She knew that I knew what she meant when she said, 'Go to father!'" 

Kenneth refers to Margaret as "the Great Punctuation Queen," who is not with us at the 

moment. She subsequently joins us. 

The address they used in Nakhon was "Sri Tammarat, Malay Peninsula via Pinang." They 

received their mail faster than if it went to Bangkok first. 

Kenneth shipped his car down to Nakhon by the Steamship Suddhadib, because it was over 

261


150 tekals cheaper than by train. According to his letter of the time, the steamship landed its cargo 

on a small, lighter boat ten miles at sea! The Chinese man with whom he had shipped the car tried to 

cheat him at Nakhon, telling a story about difficulties because of weather, but Kenneth refused to pay 

the additional money he demanded. He describes his ordeal in the sun and the terrible burn he got 

that day. 

Margaret talks about the five-gallon Standard Oil Company cans they bought their gasoline 

in. Once these had been used, people would clean them up and use them for all sorts of things, all 

over that part of the world. 

A gallon of gas went a good way in those days. It was just about impossible to drive faster 

than thirty miles an hour. You were always in competition with water buffaloes, people who walked 

right down the middle of the road, and so on. Margaret feared that one day, if she were not careful, 

she might hit someone or something, and indeed, one day, she came very close, just missing a woman 

but hitting the large basket she was carrying on her back. 

About the lowest temperature they ever saw in Thailand was eighty degrees during the day. It 

was normally in the nineties or above. 

Kenneth tells of his preaching in English to the other missionaries in Bangkok, when he and 

Margaret went north for Bill's birth, challenging the missionaries for their lack of zeal. He felt many 

of them were living too soft a life. Needless to say, the response to this wasn't enthusiastic. Kenneth 

was surprised how difficult it was for him to preach in English now. He had lost the flow of words. 

He had become used to preaching in Thai all the time, perhaps ten to fifteen times a day, a half hour 

at a time. 

5 

49:14 Christmas, 1928. All the missionary kids met at Seigles for a Christmas party, and they all 

received a present. Margaret and Kenneth went to a dinner party with the Theobalds. One of Peggy's 

gifts was a toy dog named Caesar. Margaret tells of the box of candy that came, having melted in the 

heat, flowed together, then rehardened. Margaret labored long and hard separating the precious 

pieces of candy from each other. She talks about how remarkable it was for the Theobalds to take up 

the Landons as friends. Dr. Theobald's father and mother came for the holidays. They had conducted 

a school in India for many years. Ed Stanton, who was later the American ambassador to Thailand, 

attended that school. Miss Helen McCague went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Margaret says 

here that, when Miss McCague went to Bangkok because of illness, she was ultimately operated on 

for appendicitis. She went up to Bangkok a second time with a young girl from the school who was 

going blind; a thirteen-year-old girl who had been very lively but became deeply depressed because 

of her eyes. Margaret does not know how that came out. When Miss McCague's furlough came, to 

everyone's surprise, she resigned and married a miner named Taggart (SP?), a bushy-eyed, homely 

Australian. Everyone called him Tag. They had one child named Marian who later married the 

brother of a girl Kip Landon knew growing up, Ellen Gay. Small world. Helen and Tag came to this 

country and ran a motel, and once came up to Washington to visit the Landons. [That section of our 

oral history was just like that paragraph!] 

The school Miss McCague was running had a Thai head teacher, as the law required, named 

Kru Pakai. She had been the ward or protégée of Mrs. George Bradley McFarland. "Now I have to 

go back in mission history there." The first McFarlands, the Rev. Samuel Gamble McFarland and his 

wife, came out in the 1860's, perhaps even before. They established the first out-station in Thailand. 

Originally, no foreigners were allowed to travel out of Bangkok. They had to have a permit. 

Ultimately, though, the mission was permitted to open a station at Petchaburi, some miles south of 

Bangkok [Phet Buri?], and at Chiang Mai, several hundred miles to the north, and the McFarlands 

262


opened the station at Petchaburi. The McFarlands had several children, William Hays McFarland, 

George Bradley McFarland, Edward McFarland, and Mary McFarland. Edward invented the 

Siamese typewriter. They were all bright. George studied dentistry in the West and came back to be 

the first true dentist in Siam. George and his wife had no children. She was a very lovely person. 

Everyone who remembered her spoke highly of her. Ultimately, she became ill with a terminal 

illness and began to decline. Miss Johanna Christiansen became a close friend of Margaret's. She 

delivered Bill and Carol. Margaret tells us about her and her clinic. She took care of the first Mrs. 

McFarland during her final illness. At that time, at the Wang Lang school, among the teachers was a 

young woman named Bertha Blount. Miss Christiansen had nothing but contempt for her because— 

[continued in next hour] 

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HOUR 45 


1 

0:00 (VIIB815) Margaret continues on Bertha Blount. Miss Christiansen told Margaret that Bertha 

pursued Dr. McFarland even while his wife was dying, something she found contemptible. Dr. 

McFarland would like to have married a younger missionary, Miss Alice Schaefer (SP?), because he 

still hoped for children. But she turned him down. So he married Bertha Blount, finally. She 

immediately left the Wang Lang school, where she had worked under Edna Cole—a "truly great 

person, who actually PDGH women's education in Siam and really changed the country, because if 

you change the women, you change the country too." Miss Cole had left the country about 1923, and 

really, Bertha Blount drove her out. She wanted to be number one. Margaret doesn't know all her 

tactics. "There were good things about her, but I didn't like her." She was very able in many ways. 

The McFarlands had a beautiful home. "But I never could like her. She was one of those ambitious 

people, with a kind of cackling laugh. . . ." 

There was a young woman named Pakai who apparently had been a graduate of Wang Lang, 

and she had fallen in love with a government official who was married and had a child by him. He 

would not divorce his wife to marry her, and she had no intention of being a lesser wife, which she 

could have been in that polygamous society. So she went into his office to kill him. Margaret thinks 

she took a knife, and attacked him, but did not succeed in killing him. She was arrested, of course. 

Mrs. McFarland set out to rehabilitate her, and claimed she had done so. 

The Thai government had passed a law making it illegal for a foreigner to be the head of a 

school, a law not aimed at the mission schools but rather at the Chinese schools which wanted to 

teach only Chinese and were loyal to China more than to Siam. Up to that time, the children of 

Chinese, often of Siamese mothers, were quickly absorbed into Thai society. By the second 

generation, they called themselves Thai. But as soon as the Chinese schools started to be set up all 

over the country, with Chinese teachers, the Thai government found itself with a problem it had to 

solve, that is, a large group of children growing up in its midst with a primary loyalty to a foreign 

nation. The government solved this problem by passing a series of laws, one of which required that 

the head teacher—not the headmistress, but the head teacher—had to be a Thai. The one in charge of 

the school, that is, the administrator, could be a foreigner. But the one in charge of the education had 

to be Thai. The other thing they did was to require a certain number of hours of Thai language study, 

and the children had to take the Thai government examination. It was all very wise, and the 

missionary schools were glad to do this. 

So Miss McCague found that she needed a Thai head teacher, and Pakai was sent down with 

Mrs. McFarland's approval to fill the position. Pakai had a son and brought him with her, whom she 

called Issarat (SP?), meaning "freedom." Margaret met Pakai and knew her there in Nakhon. 

Margaret tells how she and Kenneth, without warning, were suddenly transferred to Trang, 

because it had been decided to send the people who were in Trang at the time up to a northern 

mission. 

The Landons returned to Nakhon in January and stayed there until March 6, when Margaret 

moved to Trang. So Margaret had ample opportunity to form an opinion of Pakai, who was teaching 

in the school on the first floor of the house in which Margaret was living. "And I did not like that 

girl. Rather, put it this way: I didn't trust her. But I never thought I would have to cope with her." 

264


Later on, as it turned out, Pakai was foisted off on Margaret in Trang. 

When Margaret came home on furlough in 1931, she studied at Wheaton College under a 

professor of education, taking three courses under him. One was on the teaching of reading because 

she wanted to be able to teach her own children, which she knew she was going to have to do. 

While Margaret was still lying in bed in March, 1933, after Carol was born in Bangkok, "I 

was absolutely rocked" when she was suddenly informed that she was being put in charge of the 

"Anokul Safri" School in Trang, without any consultation. Here she was with two young children to 

teach, and a new baby. And then she was told that Pakai was being sent down as her head teacher. In 

other words, Margaret was being put in charge because she wouldn't get in Pakai's way. Pakai was to 

be given a free hand. 

Kenneth comments that what ensued was one of the most dramatic episodes in Margaret's life. 

"It's an incredible tale," he says, "almost unbelievable." But that was later. 

2 

10:08 Kenneth wrote home, "My aim with Margaret now is to get her to doing things outside of her 

home. I think the treadmill life of running a home is the most menial, stultifying atmosphere that one 

can encounter. A mother cannot raise her mental life above that of her children if all her interest is 

laid there. I think that is why the modern revolt of women to enter business as well as to have a 

family [sic]. Personally, I think it will be a failure for a woman to be a real mother and to run a 

business too for one is bound to suffer. But being a mother does not preclude outside interests. 

Therein lies my plan for Margaret. She has a keen mind, and a careful one, and I think it is a shame 

if it lies dormant. So I'm going to be the little needle to prick her into mental curiosity over things 

and perhaps get her to writing again as she used to do. There are innumerable fields for research out 

here in her spare time that would cost her nothing but the mental effort and perhaps would repay her 

royally if she could organize it properly and popularly." The Kenneth of today marvels over this 

prophetic paragraph. "This is an incredible paragraph! 'Repay her royally if she could organize it 

properly and popularly.' Here I was in January of '28 already thinking of Margaret and her wonderful 

mind and how to engage it in something or other there." 

Margaret on the Theobalds and Norwoods, the first English people she had ever known. They 

were all charming, both couples. "The men all make stiff little bows from the hips when introduced. 

Their voices are beautifully modulated, and their choice of words so precise. Everything that they do 

seems to be so exquisitely the proper thing to do at the moment. And in spite of what would be 

stiffness in an American, they manage to have the best time." Dr. Theobald was continually teasing 

Mr. Norwood, calling him a Papist and a Romanist and a High Churchman, none of which he was. It 

was a great joke between them. Margaret said she was having a wonderful experience in Siam 

getting to know people from other countries. 

Irene Bradley, the daughter of one of the earliest missionaries to Siam, had never been out of 

Siam since she was born. Margaret had not met her, but had heard a great deal about her. She lived 

in Bangkok on the other side of the river, the side that was "entirely native," and she had not been 

across the river in thirty years. She had never seen a motorcar. She was brilliant, read Greek and 

Hebrew fluidly, even spoke them. 

Gaylord Knox and his wife were the missionaries presently in Trang who would be going 

north, at which time the Landons would move from Nakhon to Trang. 

January 10, Margaret wrote of visiting the prison. The car had just been overhauled by a 

young Siamese who was an excellent mechanic. The prison was a mile from the Landon house, in 

the main part of town, and was the first thing just beyond the old city wall. The wall must have been 

massive enough to drive chariots on top of it long ago, but now was only a crumbling, overgrown 

265


ruin. Inside the prison was like a little city with dormitories where the men slept. A parade ground 

where they were counted every night. A grassy lawn where they took their "airings," "drank the air," 

as the Siamese say. And open workshops, where the prisoners worked on chairs and carvings, 

baskets, tables, and so on. The prisoners also did all the work on the local roads. They also worked 

in some of the officials' homes. Margaret bought some wastebaskets. Kenneth became entranced 

with a box of black wood inlaid with mother of pearl, and he ordered one when it was completed. 

"It's a good thing we are poor or Kenneth would buy out Siam." 

3 

16:36 Peggy had become fascinated with shoes lately and was working on putting them on. At 

first, she tried them backwards and upside down, but now she was getting it right. She was also 

trying to put on stockings, and sometimes her nightgown. 

Margaret started driving the car again, the first time in two years. It came right back, but she 

knew she was going to have to be especially cautious. "Sometimes there are obstructions, like a herd 

of water buffalo." Margaret was afraid of them because they were like bulls, with horns like scythes. 

One came crashing into their yard before they went to Bangkok, crashing through the barbwire fence 

as if it were paper. 

One day Kenneth saw Margaret coming home in what seemed like a crazy rush, and he 

cautioned her, "Margaret, you've got to be careful the way you drive. You came in through that gate 

like a rabbit going into a hole." And she looked at him and said, "Why Kenneth, I drive just the way 

you do." 

Mrs. Lucius Bulkley, who was at Trang, invited the Landons to come over because the King 

and Queen were coming down. But Kenneth was about to go on a tour, so they didn't go. 

Kenneth in a letter describes his dress when on tour. He was at Ban Don at the time. He 

looked like a big game hunter, wearing jungle boots up to the knee, then a pair of riding pants, a 

khaki shirt rolled up to the elbow, neck open, and a khaki-colored topi. He tells us he didn't use that 

outfit for very long. He rarely saw game in his travels, though, only people. He expected that by the 

time he ended his stay in Ban Don, there would be no home in that section of the country that did not 

have a copy of the Gospel of Luke. He had been preaching in the marketplace three times a day, with 

crowds of anywhere from fifteen to two hundred and fifty. At night he competed with movies, and as 

they liked to hear him sing, he got a good crowd each night. He would preach ten or twenty minutes, 

then sing a song, then repeat. If they didn't follow along, he would just give them a chorus. He had a 

big loud voice, and very penetrating. He held double services every night, starting in Siamese. A 

friend from the island of Samui, Ah Ti, spoke in Chinese, and preached with real fire. Kenneth 

closed in Siamese. Ah Ti owned a coconut grove, and preached when he had the opportunity. 

Kenneth spent quite a bit of time in a swamp in the Ban Don area, very much like the Florida 

everglades, overrun with serpentine canals in whose maze he would have been helpless on his own. 

About 30,000 people lived there, though Kenneth rarely saw a house. He got his Gospels to the 

homes by the expedient of giving them to the head man in the district, who in turn passed them to the 

village chiefs. He would go to the one house and through it reach perhaps 500 homes. In areas like 

this, there were people who had never seen a white man. 

Margaret speaks of sending Kenneth off on that tour in late January. He went on a train at 

5:40 in the morning. She had a little oil stove in the kitchen, in addition to the regular stove, so she 

could make Kenneth a breakfast. The watchman would come in each morning to start the regular 

stove. It was pitch dark when Kenneth went. His baggage was already at the station. They drove the 

car into town, but they didn't have any lights, just Margaret's small flashlight. The headlights were 

defective. The fear was that the two of them would be stopped by the police. It was a challenge for 

266


Margaret to drive back through those country roads in the darkness, with only her flashlight. She was 

very relieved when she made it back home. 

4 

22:26 Margaret was trying to train Nai Dit to cook. She had to watch him constantly to keep the 

kitchen clean. He tended to horde old tin cans. Trash would accumulate. Margaret describes how 

Nai Dit made mashed potatoes. His way took hours and produced a somewhat dry, lumpy result. But 

he was improving. He could make good chicken gravy. And corn starch pudding. 

Margaret had a little girl who helped care for the children, she says. 

Dr. McDaniel shot mangy dogs and cats for the Landons. In that Buddhist country, where the 

taking of life was considered a sin, there were even women who would buy cracked eggs, because 

there was no life in a cracked egg. With that attitude, the town was overrun with dogs that had never 

been taken care of, had no owners, were just disease-ridden. There was a girl at the school who was 

bitten by a dog, a little girl. The dog was still there, savage, snarling, but not apparently rabid. The 

cook killed the dog with a club. The servants took the girl off to the hospital. Dr. McDaniel was out 

of town to see the King. Dr. Chuan (SP?) at the hospital treated the bite. Ultimately, her parents took 

the girl to Sengora to get the rabies shots, a painful ordeal and very expensive for them. 

That galvanized Dr. McDaniel, and he came up and shot three cats and two dogs. Two new 

dogs arrived a day or two later. It was a constant worry, with all the school children about, and of 

course the Landons' own. 

Kru Tim, a teacher at the school, went insane the week before the Landons came down from 

Bangkok. She left the school, but recently she had returned, claiming she was well and asking to 

teach at the school again. She hired taxis and drove all over town. She began following some of the 

young men about. The Landons heard rumors that a man named Nai Nong (SP?), an evangelist, was 

having an affair with Kru Tim, and Kenneth warned him about this. He actually toured with 

Kenneth. Kru Tim's father came to take her home again, but she refused to go home with him. She 

said that Nai Nong had asked her hand in marriage, and she had consented, with the approval of the 

Landons and Miss McCague. It was a great concern. Nai Nong denied any engagement with Kru 

Tim. Margaret and Miss McCague went to see the father and told him the truth of the situation, but 

he was unable to do anything. Kenneth ended up dismissing Nai Nong and sending him back to 

Bangkok, putting an end to that aspect of things. The Landons cannot recall what finally became of 

Kru Tim. 

Miss McCague had gone to Trang and been presented to the King and Queen, and she had set 

the tea table for them. Had a lovely time. 

5 

31:31 The Landons had a new washwoman, and the coolie was threatening to leave. Endless 

problems with servants, who came and went. 

Kenneth wrote his parents while riding on an outboard motorboat, with about 2000 Gospels 

surrounding him, hunting for the district government man. He had preached to a very large crowd the 

night before, in the city square. He hung up a picture on the traffic post in the center of the square. 

The crowd started coming, and he started to sing a hymn. Then people came running from all 

directions. He stood up on the cement base of the traffic sign, with the stop and go flashing above 

him, and soon had a sea of people before him wondering what it was all about. He preached for 

about an hour, laying out the Gospel. He handed out Gospels of Luke in great profusion after the 

service. 

Miss McCague set out suddenly for Bangkok with a little girl named Darun (SP?), whose eyes 

267


were failing. Dr. McDaniel felt that one of the eyes needed to be removed, and he sent the girl to 

Bangkok for consultation. "I seem fated to be alone," Margaret wrote. On Kenneth's last tour, she 

had also been left alone when Miss McCague went up to Bangkok in her illness. 

Kenneth wrote February 21 while on tour that it had been six weeks since he had seen 

Margaret and the kids, and that it might be two weeks more if his money held out. He had just spent 

two days in "the wicked little Sodom Sawi." Hardly a week passed without a murder, and the town 

was "lousy" with bad women and men skylarking all over the place. Some town! White ants had 

gotten into a box of Scripture portions at the house in Nakhon. 

A young man came for Daniel. He had been there before for Acts and Matthew. Margaret 

could not find Daniel, but said she would have Kenneth send it. "He is not very well dressed, and he 

looks rather stupid, but he is evidently reading the books." The man took a book of sermons by D.L. 

Moody instead. 

Kenneth spent a week at Chun Pon (SP?) getting Gospel books into some 5000 homes, which 

took a lot of walking around and travelling. He was preaching two or three times a day—"preaching 

daily in the market in apostolic style, often having huge crowds who stood around for an hour to 

listen to me." Margaret comments that it ZDV in the apostolic style. These were simple people. They 

would listen as long as Kenneth would stand and talk. He would usually take one of the parables, 

some story, because they would listen to a story. And he was good telling a story, in any language. 

In Sawi, there were all these prostitutes. So naturally, Kenneth took up the stories of prostitutes in 

the Bible. He recalls two prostitutes listening to one of his sermons. At the end, one said to the 

other, "Well, you can't get him. He's against it." He tells of another prostitute at Ban Na, months 

before. She had read the Gospel, and read Matthew through. He met her again at Ban Don and 

talked with her, and she now read Luke through. But she was still a prostitute. 

In every family, there was someone who could read, and the people GLG read the material 

Kenneth gave them. The reader would read out loud to the family at night. 

February 26, Margaret wrote of "Billy," who weighed almost fourteen pounds. "Beautiful 

baby, so strong and well formed." He had discovered his feet and was looking at them in 

wonderment. 

Kenneth returned from his tour. "My strenuous life seems to agree with me." He was tanned 

and burned from the sun. 

6 

42:32 There were in the mission some figures of extraordinary ability, "giants of a kind." Edna 

Cole was one. And Dr. James W. McCain was another. He began the work with lepers and built the 

first leper asylum, in the north. He was coming to Nakhon, and it was quite an event. In 1922, Dr. 

McDaniel had begun to set up an asylum for lepers in the south. The Landons lived just outside 

Nakhon, close to the rubber gardens, with a nutmeg garden across the road. The river was a mile and 

a half farther out. Out there was a little settlement of lepers. They had only begging as a way of 

earning a living. Dr. McDaniel ultimately secured land for his asylum through Prince Damrong. The 

Prince was the brother of King Chulalongkorn and the uncle of the reigning king, and was the most 

important and the most impressively able and compassionate of the members of the royal family. He 

was concerned with many things. And Margaret believes that he helped Dr. McDaniel get a piece of 

land outside Nakhon for a leper colony. Margaret visited it many times. McDaniel's asylum never 

achieved the beauty of Dr. McCain's in the north. Margaret says that one got to the point that the 

lepers were not frightening but were still horrifying in the sense that any human being should be so 

mutilated by disease. The noses would be missing. The hands would be partly gone. 

Margaret tells of a time when she took the two children up to Chiang Mai for the annual 

268


mission meeting. This was a big event, and it was so costly that in fact, it had become a bi-annual 

meeting. Kenneth went to three of these during his years in Siam. Margaret remembers going to the 

train station to welcome some of the missionaries who were arriving for the meeting, and Bill was 

standing there on the platform in his little gray pants and a little red sweater when Dr. McCain 

stepped backward and inadvertently knocked Bill absolutely flat. He was terribly sorry, got the child 

up, looked him over, and Bill was fine. Then he said to Margaretta, "You know that little boy, if he 

ever hears my name, he's just going to remember that Dr. McCain knocked him flat!" Margaret 

found this funny, but was also impressed by the quality in the man who said it. She became curious 

about the incident recently and wrote Bill to see if he remembered it. Bill wrote back to say he didn't 

remember a thing. 

In any case, it showed the quality of Dr. McCain, a man with a very large heart. 

So, Dr. McCain came. Kenneth was off on a tour. Miss McCague was in Bangkok. Dr. and Mrs. 

McDaniel and Dr. McCain were to come and have dinner with Margaret. She made elaborate 

preparations. "It lives yet in my memory as one of the most ghastly occasions. . . ." It was February 

10. She reads from the letter she wrote the next day. What a saint Dr. McCain was. How he would 

get down on his knees and pray with the lepers at his colony. Almost every one of them was a 

Christian. There was one old, badly crippled woman who made dippers out of coconuts, which sold 

for a few pennies, and Dr. McCain told at the dinner that she had come to him a few days ago with 

ten tekals—about $4.50, perhaps the earnings from a year's labor—and asked him to send it to the 

neediest place in the world that others might know about Jesus. Another poor soul gave him five 

tekals for the same purpose. Dr. McCain himself was a very old man, near retirement. He had a 

beautiful spirit. 

Margaret had laid out fresh clothes for Peggy so that she would look nice. But Margaret 

arrived home to find her in a shirt and diaper. The girl hadn't dressed her. Well, that didn't matter. 

But the dinner! Dit had bought a lovely big duck, and then had not cooked it. Instead, he had stewed 

up a tiny little chicken that had cost only thirty setangs, and jellied it with rotten eggs. He got the 

bread and butter onto the table, but not the jam Margaret had set out when she asked for it. It came 

with dessert. Margaret had opened a can of tiny beets that had been sent from Columbus, New 

Jersey, and that she had saved as a special treat. Dit didn't serve them at all. She had opened the can, 

put them in a pot, on the stove, to be heated. But they never appeared. He had two kinds of native 

potatoes that were most unappetizing. One was about the size of a little finger, and was yellow, most 

unattractive. Even its name was unattractive in Thai, for it meant "rat dropping"! Margaret asked for 

the beets, but even then he didn't bring them. She figured that when her guests went home, they 

would have had to find some food to satisfy their hunger. Margaret had never served guests such a 

meal. 

Margaret was so angry that she said nothing at all to the servants. She had worked so hard to 

teach them, and then this. "It was just an agony to me to sit there at the head of this table with Dr. 

McCain on my right, Dr. McDaniel on my left. . . ." And this wandering servant coming in, blankfaced, 

with perfectly ghastly food. And when she went out afterward, there was all this lovely food 

just standing, uneaten. Kenneth comments that Dit was on drugs. He smoked opium. He probably 

hadn't had his pipe that day, and he was out of it. Margaret says that over the years, they had two 

servants who were on opium, and the other one was very frank about it. He would come and ask 

money for his pipe. But Dit didn't want them to know about his addiction. He would just explain his 

failures by saying, "My head isn't much good," in Thai. 

Margaret was so paralyzed by the awfulness of the meal that she was unable to say anything 

to her guests. She wishes she had. They were all very kind, sitting there eating those horrible 

potatoes. They each got perhaps one bite of that chicken. 

269


She was so angry that she dared not speak to anybody. The Thai had a feeling about anger. 

She had seen Thai so angry that she thought they would blow up but instead they would continue 

absolutely cool in their actions. They had a great contempt for anger, and to show anger meant that 

you had lost. If you gave way to the anger, you had lowered yourself. They had many ways of 

expressing contempt, but openly showing anger was impossible. 

Margaret went into the sleeping porch, where she had a big pile of Saturday Evening Post's 

that Muriel Fuller had sent her, and she just read and read and read and read until finally the anger 

seeped out. 

7 

57:09 March 10, Kenneth writes that the family was moving to Trang. Margaret and the kids had 

gone ahead, and he was moving the furniture. He was working through the days and sleeping nights 

at the hospital, because he couldn't stay in the house alone with Miss McCague. Everything was 

crated. He hired two freight cars for his baggage, and one for his car. The freight cars were small. 

Trang was something of a port, he said. He said it was headed toward becoming a place of 

importance. "Hope so. I like to be where there are a lot of people." 

There were endless cultural shocks being in a country so different. Towke Samuin's (SP?) 

wife was cremated, and a shop or two was closed at the time. "Towke" was a term for a prosperous 

merchant, usually a Chinese, and it was a Chinese word. Towke Samuin was a Christian, but he 

never joined the church because he had two wives. In the U.S., of course, a person with two wives 

would never be permitted to join a church. But the Towke had the two wives before he became a 

Christian. Both had children. He could not put one of them away. He was a well-to-do man at one 

time, and he gave much to different Christian institutions, but he was denied the fellowship of the 

church because of his two wives. 

270


HOUR 46 


1 

0:00 (VIIB1430) Margaret continues on the Towke, and on how living in a foreign country 

challenged one's basic understanding of things. The Towke's wife was a Buddhist. Margaret saw a 

truck decorated with flowers and wreaths standing in front of a store downtown as she was going to 

church, and in the afternoon she heard a band playing next door at the temple. There was always an 

orchestra or band or theater of some kind in connection with a cremation. She could hear the priests 

chanting. 

Ma Puim (SP?), the washgirl, had a bad finger, and Margaret took her to the hospital to have 

it dressed. She couldn't do the washing, so Ma Yuin (SP?) washed the baby's clothes. Margaret 

worried constantly that Peggy or Bill would pick up an infection. One day she found Peggy with the 

mouth organ of one of the school pupils, "and most of the children are syphilitic." Another day she 

found her with a child's hat, "and lots of the children have fleas." One had to trust God to protect the 

children. The servants were no help at all, and Margaret had to watch them. They did not have at all 

the same ideas of cleanliness and sanitation that the Westerners did. The doctor told her of a man 

who begged a chicken from him which had just been removed from the interior of a dead python. 

The man was going to give it to his children. The doctor objected because of its origin, and the man 

answered that it wouldn't matter because the children wouldn't know. They sometimes give the 

children rats and other such things to eat on the same principle. "I couldn't get over it!" One day 

Mrs. Bulkley and Margaret were driving along the road—they had been out at Chong, a beautiful 

resort area, and were driving on the road between Phatthalung and Trang—when they saw a man 

coming along with a huge, dead lizard. Mrs. Bulkley was curious and stopped to ask him what in the 

world he was going to do with the lizard. "You're surely not going to eat that, are you?" "Oh no, 

certainly not!" the man replied. "It's for the children." And the Thai loved the children, too. 

Margaret wanted Peggy to grow up independent. But the girl who cared for her would carry 

her instead of letting her walk. She would dress her instead of letting her dress herself. She would 

feed her instead of letting her feed herself. Peggy discovered that all she had to do was break into a 

wail, and she would have immediate service. What was Margaret to do? "Let her wail," Kenneth 

says. "Well, I would, but Ma Yuin wouldn't." 

March 6, 1929, Margaret arrived in Trang. Ma Yuin's family was not her blood family, and 

they had not treated her well, so she was happy to go with the Landons. She had probably been given 

or sold to her family. "They're still buying children in Bangkok today," Margaret says. She tells us 

of a Frances Huntingdon, a friend of hers, who took a round-the-world trip that passed through 

Bangkok, perhaps fifteen years before this taping. She was having lunch with a Thai woman in her 

home when a beautiful little girl entered the room and knelt beside the hostess. Mrs. Huntingdon 

assumed this was a daughter. But the hostess said, "Isn't she charming? My husband bought her for 

my birthday." The little girl was a slave. 

271


7$3( 9,,, 6LGH 


2 

6:30 Kenneth's third tour started January 18, 1929, his last tour from Nakhon. Five days into the 

tour, he wrote his parents from Ban Don, a town of ten to fifteen thousand. If he went down the river 

an hour, he came to a town called Pha Tang (SP?) with another eight to ten thousand. If he went an 

hour out to sea, he came to a place called Kan Janit (SP?), with another fifteen thousand who hunted, 

fished, and caught lobsters. Across the river, two hours away, he would come to a network of canals 

housing anywhere from forty to fifty thousand people. Houses were very scattered there. Kenneth 

flooded the school system with books, Gospels of Luke, and preached in the market two or three 

times a day. His larger crowds were at night, because the daytime was too hot. He had double 

services every night, in Siamese and Chinese with the help of his friend Ah Ti. 

Ah Ti was from the island of Samui, and his name was actually Muang. Ah Ti meant "little 

brother." Kenneth was to have "long adventures" with him, and in fact they corresponded through 

the years. He was a wonderful young preacher, though a layman, and he had the fire of conviction in 

his messages. Kenneth comments that the Hainanese were that way. They were the revolutionaries. 

Ah Ti was later accused of being a communist and was incarcerated. Ah Ti joined Kenneth there at 

Ban Don. 

Kenneth tells of going into the swamp, with its serpentine channels. He gave his Gospels to 

the district chief, who gave them to the village chiefs under him, who in turn gave them to every 

home. He was the first missionary to use this tactic. He was getting his Christian materials 

distributed through devout Buddhists who were quite happy to do this for him. 

Margaret comments on a recent article about the columnist "TRB," a signature that belongs to 

The New Republic. The column is written by Richard Stroud, a neighbor in Washington, D.C. He 

recently had his eightieth birthday. He was a Unitarian, and a far left liberal, says Margaret, who like 

many liberals is "theoretical chiefly." "He's never dealt with people in all his life. He sits down and 

writes words, you see." Stroud said that "the difference between a liberal and a conservative is one of 

imagination." An arrogant and at the same time funny statement, that in his eyes conservatives were 

without imagination. 

Kenneth, she says, a conservative, and a Republican, was a person of great imagination. He 

has always been a person who defined a problem and then set about solving it. He had this 

tremendous parish that went from the Isthmus of Kra to the border of Malaysia, with a couple of 

million people in it. One person. What could he do? He had one key asset, which was that he was 

always recognized by the Thai as a gentleman, a cultivated person. Two of the people who made 

Kenneth's work possible were the Lord Lieutenant, Phya Si Thammarat, and Phra Kru Hame. The 

Lord Lieutenant held a very high office, in authority over five or six provinces, and was known all 

over Siam. He was an eminent and brilliant person, and Kenneth became his friend. Phra Kru Hame 

was the most prominent Buddhist religious figure in the south, a monk, also known throughout 

Thailand, and Kenneth became his friend too. To everybody else, this was incredible. But not to 

Kenneth. He just did it. Both men were very much impressed with what Kenneth was doing in his 

touring and evangelizing. 

Margaret tells of E.P. Dunlap's having become a personal friend of the king of Thailand in his 

time, the only missionary who did. Dunlap had been a much-loved missionary in the south and had 

lived in the house the Landons came to live in, which was still called the Dunlap House. What 

Kenneth did with the two leading figures in his area was similar. He speaks of it as something 

272


anyone might have done. But it wasn't. It had to do with the kind of person he was, imaginative, 

creative, and a gentleman. The Thai sorted the missionaries out. There was one so crude that he 

kicked a boy in the head when he was angry. That man was ordered out of Bangkok. 

Kenneth speaks further on Phra Kru Hame, and his high authority among the monks of Siam. 

"He and I were great friends." Margaret adds that "Kru" was the same word as the Indian word 

"guru." 

[Margaret's thoughts here are incomplete, and Kenneth returns to them later, 

explaining how Phya Si Thammarat and Phra Kru Hame made it possible for him to 

accomplish his work throughout the area he was responsible for evangelizing.] 

3 

22:03 It was early February, 1929. Kenneth had an immense crowd in the market place at Ban 

Don, who gathered around him as he sang hymns. He had been studying Ezekiel all day, and he 

preached on "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." This created some opposition to his message, which 

delighted him, because the people were seldom aroused enough to react. When they were, they 

would argue with him or express their anger or ask for more explanation, and he could really engage 

them in discussion. 

Once again, Margaret tells us of Miss McCague's suddenly going off to Bangkok and of her 

being "fated to be alone." 

Kenneth wanted to go to Samui, and so set off from Ban Don in a launch. Unfortunately, the 

launch got stuck on a sand bar at the mouth of the river. They managed to get past that, but then a 

rough sea came up as they waited to rendez-vous with a steamer. They waited seven hours until the 

steamer came. Kenneth was the only person on the launch who was not seasick. Sadly, the steamer 

was the wrong one—it was a steamer that went back and forth to Samui, but at the moment was 

coming IURP the island. Kenneth climbed on board anyway, having learned that the captain was a 

Captain Peterson whom he knew from earlier. Peterson gave him food and a cabin to rest in. He 

went to the cabin and slept, expecting KLV steamer to arrive at any minute. Got up, bathed, had some 

coffee. Had a regular dinner for breakfast. A good three-tekal meal. The ship had to go, so Kenneth 

returned to his launch, which was still alongside. He saw a junk coming and so ran over to it and 

finding it was going his way, left the launch and boarded it instead of waiting for the second steamer. 

The junk took him to the island. 

Kenneth spent a week on Samui, preaching daily in the market, with good crowds. There was 

a murder one night. There was a bit of an uprising, and "a number of heads were broken." And a 

man went crazy and busted up one of his meetings. Also a fellow threw a bunch of firecrackers in 

their midst, which temporarily convulsed Kenneth. He took off on it, preaching about the fires of 

hell. 

Kenneth caught Captain Peterson's steamer from Samui, studied his Bible, visited with 

Captain Peterson, talked with a Mr. Scott, then got off the steamer onto a launch for Chumphon.. 

Kenneth begins talking about Ho Chi Minh's coming to Siam in 1927 and making his 

headquarters up in the northeast of the country, in the Pupon (SP?) Hills area, which was later one of 

the U.S. centers for their Siamese underground in World War II. The connection in this thought is 

that there were many communists on Samui and that Kenneth knew this at the time. His friend, 

whom he called Ah Ti, was suspected of being a communist—Kenneth doesn't think he was, but 

doesn't know for sure—and was arrested in or soon after 1933, after the Siamese revolution. Ah Ti 

wrote Kenneth from prison and asked his help. Kenneth couldn't do much, but he did correspond 

with him, and sent him literature, and tried to comfort him. Ah Ti eventually was released. 

When Kenneth visited him in 1929 in Samui, there were communists on the island trying to 

273


set up communist cells. 

4 

30:40 So Kenneth boarded the launch for Chumphon, out at sea. This was standard practice. The 

launches would meet the steamer where the steamer couldn't go in. The sea was like ink, Kenneth 

wrote. It was late at night. The shore was like a shadow miles away. Then a sampan came, and 

people offered their condolences to Kenneth for having to disembark in the dark of night to go to a 

strange city where he knew no one. Up rushed Mr. Scott at the last moment, who pumped Kenneth's 

hand and whispered into his ear that Kenneth was right—they had been discussing religious matters. 

Kenneth crawled down into the sampan, "and away we rocked into the night. The sea presented a 

picture that I shall never forget. The ocean like ink. The ship a thing of lights and beauty behind me. 

An island to the left, with signal tower on it. Ahead, the shoreline with but a light or two. And then I 

realized that we were in a sea of liquid fire. Every dip of the oars scattered it in an oily splash. Every 

wave was rimmed with the gleaming liquid. Our wake was a fantail of liquid fire. The sea was 

literally afloat and alive with phosphorescent creatures, a sight I have never even dreamed of. It 

entranced me with its velvety gleam of jeweled elegance. If a painter caught a tenth of its beauty, he 

would be called a liar. No words can impress the mind with the grandeur I saw that night." Kenneth 

tells us that he can still remember the experience vividly. He says that it was the eggs of the fish that 

were spawning in that part of the gulf. He was literally going through a sea of this phosphorescence. 

There were no waves. "It was just like coasting through velvet. It was eery. It made an incredible 

impression on me as we went through it. And we were several miles offshore." 

At the river mouth, Kenneth found no place open, and so was forced to sleep in the boat. He 

wasn't able to sleep much. 

February 16, he wrote of his work the next day. He hired a boat and two coolies and started 

with 2000 Gospels of Luke up the river. The boat stopped after ten minutes, and there they stayed for 

two hours. "I did a lot of praying for I felt that the Adversary was against us." Finally, they got 

underway again, and the next two hours were nerve-wracking. The river was swift and shallow, with 

sudden deep pools full of crocodiles. "Our boat shivered and wriggled, started and stopped, quivered 

and quaked, rocked and slopped its way along. We hit a lot of things, and every time I marveled that 

we did not upset. We ran on a fallen coconut tree and the whole boat shot out of the water and came 

down with a smash." They arrived safely and began walking inland, when a storm came, with great 

waves. But Kenneth managed to deliver 1800 Gospels to various headmen who would distribute 

them to the homes in their areas. 

Kenneth had a native Christian travelling with him on all his tours, each time in the beginning 

a different man. [He says little or nothing about them.] 

Kenneth again tries to describe the experience of riding through the phosphorescent sea. It 

was that way all the way to the shore. "It was just eery. It was like a painting, as though you were 

travelling in an ethereal universe. It was completely unreal. And the others in the boat with me were 

awestruck. We were all awestruck. It was a most unusual experience. I never had it again. Never 

saw anything like it again." 

Margaret says that she has always wanted to Kenneth to write a book about his experiences in 

Thailand. "He just seems to have lived through times that could never be repeated." It was the same 

in the Department of State. He was there during a unique time. Margaret speaks of Kenneth's 

advantage over the other officers in the State Department, because he had actually lived among the 

people of Asia and knew them as none of the State diplomats could. The diplomats who went out 

with the Foreign Service were "above," that is, above the civilization they were reporting on. They've 

"never been down in it." 

274


February 28, Kenneth writes that he is "back home at last." He came back on the local train at 

night. He speaks of how nice it was to sleep in a bed again. He and Margaret were excited to be 

together again that they couldn't sleep. They just visited and whispered through the night. They had 

to whisper because they shared the house, of course. "Margaret was like a reservoir overflowing, and 

I was a ready listener." She comments, "You were the one that had the things to tell. I had the 

complaints." She had had a bad cold. 

"Peggy is so quick to learn, wants so hard to do the correct thing, and is pleased when she 

does it. She follows me around like a little puppy, wants to do everything I do, and do it just the 

same way. I sit at the table reading, and she pulls her little chair and table, gets a magazine, and turns 

the pages unendingly, just as I do. Bill is a whopper of a youngster. I hardly knew him at first. He 

has a dimple in his right cheek just the way I have when he smiles. He seems to love to smile at you 

all the time, and to chuckle. He's very strong and heavy." 

5 

40:13 "The only music possible for us is the poor stuff I can give from my saxophone." The 

Kenneth of today laughs with amazement, because he cannot recall ever having a saxophone. "Can 

you imagine me playing the saxophone?! Wow." Kip asks his father what he played on the 

saxophone, and Kenneth laughs, "One single note at a time! Hymns, probably." 

Margaret talks about Trang, reading from a booklet produced by the Presbyterian mission, "A 

Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 1828 to 1928." The section on Trang was written 

by Mrs. Lucius Bulkley. In the year 1910, when the railroad was being projected south of 

Petchaburi— 

Margaret digresses to say that transportation was difficult on the peninsula. The country was 

segmented because it was divided by a spine of mountains. Dialects and customs varied in areas that 

were not far apart. The dialect in Nakhon was different from the dialect in Trang, though they were 

only ninety miles apart. 

The Indians were trading in the peninsula at least by the third century A.D., but probably 

earlier than that. 

Margaret returns to the booklet's section on Trang. The Rev. E.P. Dunlap and his wife sailed 

from Bangkok, around by Singapore and up to Pinang, then up to Kantang, near Trang. Kenneth and 

Margaret talk about the types of trains that were being built. In 1910, they had started the railroad 

from Kantang to Trang, and the tracks were in to about fifteen miles from Trang, but as yet there 

were no trains. The Dunlaps rode from Pinang to Kantang in a small Malay pig cargo boat— 

knowing how pigs smell, that must have been a pleasure! Then by launch, they went on up the river. 

The Landons lived just a mile from that river, and they called the landing at the river Tajing (SP?), 

which meant "Chinese Landing." L.C. Bulkley, M.D., left Bangkok later than the Dunlaps, travelling 

to Nakhon, and then walked the rest of the way to Trang, a trek of five days, and reached the tiny 

house in an abandoned pepper garden "which meant home" about an hour before the Dunlaps arrived. 

Kru Tuin (SP?), the Chinese evangelist, Kru Chuan (SP?), the hospital assistant, and a Siamese 

evangelist with a cook and boy made up the full complement. There was one Christian family in 

Trang to welcome "the pioneers." 

For seven months, the hospital cottage was the only dwelling, with three small rooms 

intended for a bachelor. When Mrs. Bulkley joined the force in April, conditions became crowded 

indeed. During the hot season, Mrs. Dunlap often crawled under the bed to escape the sun pouring in 

through the seams in the outside wall in their west room. By the end of May, the Dunlaps moved into 

a small bamboo house, in a second compound, where they lived nine months watching the building of 

their new home. On Christmas Eve, 1911, Miss J.H. Christiansen, R.N., who had come to help with 

275


the medical work, arrived in Kantang and was handed the undelivered telegram she had sent ahead 

from Pinang to the missionaries in Trang. There was no hotel in the whole Siam peninsula. Kenneth 

says there were probably small Chinese hotels everywhere, the kind he stayed in, but the mission 

wouldn't have regarded them. A British gentleman gave over his house for Miss Christiansen to stay 

the night in, and she soon made her way to Trang. 

Thus, the mission in Trang began. 

By the time the Landons went to Trang, of course, they were able to go by train. There were 

two trains a day. Margaret tells about the trip, comparing the car she rode in to the incredible old cars 

she had once rode in the rural areas of Michigan. She rode second class in a room about eight feet or 

so square, with cane benches around the edge. The servants went third class, but they came up to her 

compartment to help her. The trains in Siam all burned wood, she wrote, spewing sparks. One spark 

burned a hole in Peggy's dress, and another burned her forehead. Some more burned holes in Bill's 

sheet, and one burned a hole in the panung of one of the servant girls. The sparks would come in 

through the window; there were no screens; and you had to be vigilant to put out the fires they 

started. "All the time," comments Kenneth. 

Mrs. Knox and Miss Eakin met Margaret at the station and drove her home. Kenneth was 

back in Nakhon, finishing the moving. Trang was very different from Nakhon. Instead of sand, there 

was lots of red clay. Laterite. All along the road were rubber trees. The new house was wood, in 

appearance like a summer cottage. "Not beautiful by any means." Some of the inner walls were 

painted yellow, and some blue. The Knox's had done nothing with the outside. The walls were raw 

wood. One thing Margaret did in the next year was to get a wood preservative in a dark reddish 

shade, and once that was applied, the house looked much better. Inside, the blue was bright and 

harsh. Margaret made up her mind right away to change those walls, and ultimately she had them 

painted an off-white. The furniture was stained ebony, and the combination of the off-white walls 

and the dark furniture gave a sense of coolness. The walls did not go all the way to the ceiling, as 

was true of almost all houses in that period. The ceilings must have been ten feet at least, maybe 

twelve. But the top two feet was a lattice which allowed for the flow of air. 

The redeeming feature was the compound, which was enormous and quite beautiful. The size 

of a large city block. How would Margaret ever be able to keep it without a half dozen gardeners? 

There were several rows of coconut trees which bore continually. Some rubber trees. Several tea 

hedges. A thousand or so pineapple plants. Some banana trees. Some lime trees. Several other 

small fruit trees. A few orange trees that did not bear. And so on. 

6 

56:06 Kenneth describes his part in the moving, repeating material from earlier. He was packing 

and shipping all day, day after day. There was a lot of rain. The three train cars he reserved, which 

were of Tunerville trolley type. Then, after he arrived on March 13, he wrote, "Here we are at the 

new stand. We have a place big enough to be a country club." Trang was like a new country. When 

he arrived, it felt "like home" because it was like riding through the foothills of the Alleghenies 

crossing the mountains. "The country is rolling and green, rich and beautiful. The land is all red 

earth, like New Jersey ground. As I ride along in our Ford, it seems like a ride at home except for the 

tropical vegetation. The climate is the best anywhere in Siam. It's cool and breezy. And it rains 

every day." There was a fine lawn in front of the house, while in back there were all the trees. 

The Knox's would leave soon, to go to the extreme north of Siam. The other missionaries at 

the station were Dr. and Mrs. Bulkley, who had the hospital, and Miss Ruth Eakin, who was leaving 

on furlough in a few days. The town was small, and the people few. 

The first day he got there, Kenneth drove with Margaret to Kantang and had a Chinese dinner 

276


with a group of Christians there. The next day they drove to "Huiawt" (SP?) and did the same thing. 

"Just getting acquainted, you know." 

Margaret in a letter wrote, "This is certainly the ideal way to move, although Kenneth writes 

that he is very tired." Mrs. Knox was still keeping the house, so Margaret had some free time. She 

discovered a bed of three or four different kinds of lilies in the front yard, in which the bulbs had not 

been dug out for several years, so she dug them. "I had never done anything like it before." The 

Margaret of today comments, "This is the beginning of my gardening, right here." 

277


HOUR 47 


1 

0:00 (VIIIA280) Margaret continues on the beginning of her gardening. "She started right in 

gardening," Kenneth says, "and I began travelling." She enjoyed doing it. "Lots of fun." Most of the 

bulbs were amaryllis, but not the cultivated kind we are familiar with today. These were about ten or 

eleven inches high, and most of them a salmon pink. They were very lovely, and they were one of 

the few garden plants that grew profusely and easily. 

While Margaret was working, she broke into a nest of white ants. "It was most interesting." 

She wanted to read about them now that she had seen their natural habitat. She actually found the 

queen. She was like a big fat worm, with a little tiny ant head. Kenneth interjects that when his Thai 

friends were paying him great honor, he was frequently served a small bowl of white ant queens with 

curry sauce. They were uncooked. Raw. "Maybe they still wiggled, I don't know." His hosts would 

feel very pleased to be able to present him a small bowl of these white ant queens. "Oh boy!" 

Margaret says. "A delicacy." "A real delicacy," Kenneth says. They had a kind of chestnut flavor to 

them, he tells us. Margaret avers that she couldn't eat them. "Oh, I eat any old thing," he says. "Oh 

yes, I know," Margaret says quickly. 

In the north there was a kind of flying ant that people caught and ate, and Margaret ate those. 

When they traveled from Phuket to Trang, once, they had to stop at some place like Phangnga 

on the way, where Kenneth ordered them a Chinese meal. One of the dishes included something that 

looked like grasshoppers, and Margaret could not eat it. Simply could not get it down. Kenneth was 

much more adventurous "FOODWISE," Margaret says, with great emphasis on IRRGZLVH. 

Anyway, back to the white ant queen. She was like a big fat worm housed in a mud structure 

that was almost as hard as brick. Then there was a sort of maze that looked like a beautiful fungus. 

The whole thing was about six inches below the ground, and when Margaret broke into it, it was like 

a tunnel, extending many feet. The ants had several stages. The destructive stage was when they 

were like a small worm with legs. In another stage, they had wings, and were edible. 

Margaret estimated that the Landons had three to five acres in their compound. Kenneth 

thinks it was about six. Much of the compound was covered by a "tough and vicious grass" that 

killed almost everything else, lalang grass. This kind of grass would grow as tall as a man, and in the 

jungle there would be open spaces where there might be a half mile of lalang grass—where the jungle 

had been burned out by people engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture, mountain people, perhaps, or 

jungle dwellers. That was where you would find the wild cattle, the sledang, which were the most 

vicious and dangerous of all creatures to hunt—much more dangerous than tigers. You couldn't see a 

sledang, because his back would be lower than the top of the grass. You would come on him 

suddenly, and you wouldn't be near any tree, and you'd be facing this wild beast and hopefully had 

your rifle at the ready if you were carrying one. Otherwise, you took off. But the sledang could run 

faster than a man. Kenneth came across sledang from time to time and just fled, because he carried 

no weapon. People who hunted them said, "You only get one shot at a sledang." 

Lalang grass was very tenacious, and one of Margaret's projects was to get rid of it. 

Ultimately, she did. Otherwise, she could not have planted anything because the lalang grass would 

work its way through the earth and destroy other plantings. 

Kenneth tells us that the rice fields of Burma that were abandoned during World War II 

278


sprang up with lalang grass. At the end of the war, when they wanted to replant in those fields, it was 

impossible to plow because the root systems went so deep. They had to use cutter plows, disk plows 

that would cut and revolve. Lacking that, the only way a Burmese planter could manage was to take 

a mattock and dig deep to get the roots out. That was the technique the Landons used in Trang, 

working with a pickaxe. The coolie did the work. 

Margaret contemplated what to plant in the compound, and decided against coconuts "because 

they have a trick of falling and might be so ungrateful as to fall on my head." This was a real danger. 

The mother of someone named "Nuang" (SP?) was killed by a falling coconut. Margaret considered 

planting rubber trees, but eventually decided against it. Of course, there were already rubber trees, 

and there were dozens of "baby trees" all around them, ready for transplanting. The trees showered 

their seeds with a pop like a gun. The seeds were bigger than acorns and dark brown. The little 

rubber trees were slim like willow wands and had long symmetrical leaves in groups of three. 

To plant a coconut tree, all you did was throw out a lot of coconuts in the rain and wait for 

them to sprout, and then, when they had sprouted, plant them. Coconuts sold for a cent or cent-anda-half 

apiece. 

Margaret wanted to get the whole place planted out because the jungle encroached so rapidly, 

and with it snakes and other undesirables. One evening she was standing on the porch and saw an 

unfamiliar shape moving below. She went to investigate, and Mr. Knox came over to tell her it was a 

scorpion. It was black, perhaps six inches long, and looked like a crab with a tail. He said that it 

could deliver a serious sting with its "tail." He killed it. 

2 

11:17 A major story from Nakhon that was missed. Peggy was a baby, still not crawling. She 

could be left on her back, and would stay where she was laid down. It was the Landons' procedure to 

put olive oil all over her, take her out into the yard, and lay her down on a mat with a topi over her 

head as a sun shade so that she could have a sunbath—under the illusion current at the time that she 

needed the sun. It was a Sunday, and Kenneth was coming home from church, dressed in a white suit 

and carrying a malacca cane. As he came up the road to the house, he saw the servants standing there 

looking at something. He couldn't see as he came up the road. [And according to other tellings of this 

story, he became aware of a strange quiet surrounding the house.] He reached the entrance and walked in, 

and there on the lawn was Peggy, having her sunbath, and coiled around her was a king cobra, with 

its head upright and its hood spread wide, examining her and weaving back and forth the way a cobra 

does before it strikes. The snake was between twelve and fifteen feet long, a huge cobra—the largest 

snake of a poisonous variety. The king cobra is completely fearless, and will attack unprovoked. 

There were many stories of people being chased by a king cobra—it could go faster than a person— 

catching up to them, rearing up, and striking them in the back. There was no antivenom one could 

use quickly enough to save life after a bite like that, high on the body. 

Kenneth never had a second thought what to do. He just let out a war whoop and started on a 

dead run, swinging the cane in the air, yelling bloody murder, as he charged the cobra. The great 

snake reared up about another foot in the air to look at Kenneth and apparently identified the 

onrushing man as a parent, because Peggy was obviously an infant that it had surrounded. 

Apparently, he decided he didn't want to fight. He took off, "and I have never seen any creature go 

faster than that cobra. He went like an express train. You couldn't possibly have caught him." 

Kenneth snatched the baby up. 

And what would he have done if the snake hadn't fled? "I would have tangled with the snake. 

I had no doubt in my mind that it was the snake or me." Margaret adds that the king cobra is one of 

the deadliest snakes in the world. It strikes so high that its venom goes into the torso. 

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Margaret tells two stories on king cobras. Dr. Bulkley was fascinated with animals, and 

really, his work should have been with animals. They were his real interest. But his father compelled 

him to be a doctor. The whole community knew of his interest, and he would pay ten cents to look at 

any animal people brought in. If he bought the animal, he would pay a good price. Sometimes, the 

people who bought for the circuses would come by and pick up animals he had. At one time, he had 

a king cobra, a fifteen footer. King cobras were thick, heavily muscled, and powerful. He had the 

cobra in a box underneath the hospital. Well, with that solidly muscled body, the animal was able to 

force it way out of the box. The doctor had underestimated its strength. Word went through the 

hospital that the snake was out, and in less than two minutes the hospital had no patients. Even the 

post-operative ones got up and ran. No one ever saw that snake again. 

The other story concerned Dr. E.P. Dunlap. The house in Trang where the Landons lived had 

been built with money that the friends of Dr. Dunlap gave. One part of the verandah was called the 

mook and was the ceremonial part of the house. It extended out from the house, and there the 

Landons would often entertain. One day Dr. Dunlap heard a woman screaming. He had his gun on 

the ready. He was expert with it. And when he heard the scream, he snatched up his gun and ran to 

the mook to see what was happening. What he saw was a woman running with a king cobra pursuing 

her and just beginning its rise to strike her from behind. He fired immediately, reasoning in that brief 

second that the woman was dead if he didn't and that there was a chance if he did. And he took the 

head off the snake. That was a tremendous story in Trang. Kenneth says he heard that story again 

and again, how E.P. Dunlap had shot the head off that king cobra and saved the woman's life. 

3 

20:37 In the mythology of that part of the world, Kenneth explains, there were stories of a prince 

who was off in exile, lost in the jungle, the heir to the throne, and all that. One of the tests of a king 

to be was that he would be protected by a king cobra. And in his infancy, if a child were encircled by 

a king cobra, he would become a king. In Thai history, a certain man had just that experience as an 

infant, and did become a king. He was the king who was murdered by the first of the Chakri 

monarchs of the present dynasty. So when Peggy was surrounded by this king cobra, the town was 

quite agog, because she was obviously going to be a queen! And eventually, she GLG marry her 

prince, a "football king," Charles Schoenherr. 

A story from the Landons' first year in Thailand, in early 1928. Kenneth went on a tour with 

Paul Fuller, and Margaret had gone with Peggy to Nong Kha (SP?), which was near Hua Hin, a resort 

area. The King had a summer palace at Hua Hin. Margaret tells us that the town was spelled "Nong 

Khae." [So now we know!] The mission had cottages there. The mission originally owned the area at 

Hua Hin, which meant "rocky head" or "head of rock." It was an extension of rock into the gulf. 

King Pajirawut (SP?) or perhaps King Prajadhipok (SP?) wanted it. Kenneth thinks the latter. He 

gave the mission a substantial sum of money to make it possible for the mission to buy land at Nong 

Khae and to build cottages there. 

In any case, Margaret was at Nong Khae, which was just south of Hua Hin, along the beach. 

Kenneth says this was in April. He came to join Margaret, and the Wells were there. They shared a 

house with the Seigles, and Margaret shared a house with the Fullers. The gulf was full of jelly fish, 

really big ones, so that if you came up under them, they would kill you. Needless to say, the 

vacationers weren't doing much swimming. They would go with bushel baskets, pick up the jelly fish 

in the baskets, and dump them on shore to clean an area out, so that they could at least sit in the 

water. 

As they were on the beach one day, all of a sudden a muddied specter came lunging and 

plunging down across the beach, with muck right up to the hairline. And they wondered who in the 

280


world this funny creature was. The man headed straight down across the beach, never pausing to 

consider jelly fish or anything else, and simply plunged headlong into the water. It was an area they 

had cleared, so he did not encounter any jelly fish. When the spectral figure re-emerged from the 

water and walked ashore, what they saw was the Reverend Dr. Kenneth Elmer Wells. 

He had been out walking—he was a great walker—seeing the sights in the area, and he had 

decided to take a shortcut down to the beach. He saw a large field to cross to go directly to the beach. 

As he started to cross the field, he saw a waterhole that had buffalo in it who sort of snorted as he 

passed. And he went along, when he suddenly found that he was in the midst of a number of deep 

waterholes, full of mud, each one filled with buffalo who were completely nauseated by the odor of 

this foreigner. A Thai boy could have walked through there, and they wouldn't have blinked an eye. 

But this foreigner put out a nauseating odor, which aroused them, and as one they came lunging up 

out of their diverse waterholes, and he found himself suddenly surrounded with angry buffalo with 

their horns down all around him. What to do? If he moved, they would attack. He didn't know what 

to do for a moment. "But then, being a Presbyterian, a Supralapsarian man of election, he decided 

that what was good enough for a buffalo was good for the Reverend Dr. Wells, and he leaped into a 

waterhole, figuring that he could drown the odor." He realized that it was his smell that nauseated 

them. And he sank down and down and down until he virtually disappeared, and he remained 

immobile. Then the buffalo couldn't smell him and couldn't find him, because they were nearsighted. 

He remained quiet, and the buffalo stamped around hunting for this fellow who had 

suddenly disappeared. They couldn't find him by smell; they were sniffing all over the place. Finally 

they gave up and began going back down into the waterholes. 

Then the Reverend Dr. Wells discovered to his horror that some of the buffalo were coming 

down into KLV waterhole and lying down beside him. He had buffalo on either side of him. They paid 

no attention to him because, as they came in, he just went under. He realized that his life was at 

issue. He didn't want to arouse them. So he was thoroughly immersed in this muck until all was 

quiet. Finally, very, very quietly, he crawled out. They didn't stir a muscle. Paid no attention to him 

because he smelled just like them. 

He came out of the waterhole, and walked past the other waterholes, and the buffalo paid no 

attention to him. He smelled like a buffalo. Finally, he got out of the meadow and headed straight 

for the beach. 

These buffalo were not wild, but work animals. Normally, you would see a little boy with a 

cloth around his middle and nothing else, escorting and riding herd on and guarding and caring for a 

whole herd of these buffalo. They were right at home with him; he smelled like them. But a 

foreigner, who ate butter and drank milk didn't smell right. 

Margaret explains that there were no pastures for the buffalo. People built their houses up on 

pillars or stilts, not only to protect against flooding, but also to provide quarters for their animals 

underneath. She used to say that, for a good part of the year, the Thai man lived a very leisurely life. 

He got up in the morning, had something to eat, took his cow or animal or whatever his family 

owned, joined his pals, and they set out on the road to find a place to forage. There were many 

undeveloped places. They would often go past the Landons' house, a half a dozen men and perhaps a 

dozen cows or buffalo. They had no fenced places for them, so they had to escort and tend them. 

Out beyond the Landons' house there was an area that wasn't developed. No houses or fields or 

anything. And the men would sit down for the day and let the buffalo forage, and then at night, they 

would go home. That was their day's work. 

When Margaret eventually got the compound fenced completely around—a tale in itself— 

with big wooden, double gates of teak at the front, one of the unexpected things that happened was 

that she would come home and find a herd of buffalo or cows that had been turned in to her nice 

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compound. The men then had gone downtown. After all, there it was, just standing there, with lots 

of nice grass, and this lovely fence to keep the critters in. It was just right for a half dozen cows or 

buffalo. Margaret got her coolie to open the gates and run the animals off. The men complained 

angrily when they returned, of course, but the coolie pointed out to them that this was private 

property. It took several such episodes before the practice stopped. 

4 

34:12 Another story from the Nakhon period. Nai Dit complained that there was some creature 

getting into the kitchen and marauding in the food, getting up on shelves and generally causing 

considerable problems. So he asked permission to trap the animal, whatever it was. He said it was a 

mu sang. The Landons didn't know at the time what that was, but later they learned it was a 

mongoose. Nai Dit explained that it would be a large trap, and that it would take him most of a day 

to build the trap, so that he wouldn't be able to cook for the Landons. They would have to fend for 

themselves to eat. He was hopeful that he would catch the mu sang the first night. Otherwise, the 

trap would stay up, and they wouldn't have anything from the kitchen to eat. "It looked like a bleak 

future." In their innocence and ignorance, the Landons told him to go ahead. So Nai Dit set to work. 

Well, it took an incredible amount of lumber and hammering and banging, and this thing grew 

and grew in the kitchen, and gradually practically filled the room. And it was a large kitchen. The 

trap was a Rube Goldberg kind of contraption. Kenneth made a number of visits out there to see how 

things were coming, with all this hammering going on. Toward the end of the day, it was completed. 

Kenneth looked it over and said to Margaret, "He'll never catch anything in that." It required the 

most incredible co-ordination of events. First, of course, the creature had to come. Then it had to 

find a path to the food Nai Dit had put out as bait. When it got there, it had to take hold of the bait, 

which was supposed to release a large paddle on which was set and tied a heavy rock. The paddle 

then was supposed to drop and hit the creature on the rear, knocking him forward through the 

entrance of the cage; and as the creature went through the entrance of the cage, it was supposed to 

break a string which held the gate, which then was supposed to drop down, which as it dropped 

down, was supposed to cause another paddle with a stone on it to drop down as a weight to hold the 

gate in place so the creature couldn't get back out!! Naturally enough, Kenneth felt it unlikely that all 

this would work. 

Well, in any case, not feeling very well fed, the Landons finally went off to bed. And in the 

middle of the night, they were awakened "upstanding" with the most awful crash of the paddles going 

down. "We both sat up in bed, and I said, 'Well, there goes the trap.'" He did not want to go and 

look, convinced there would be nothing in the trap and that they faced an empty tomorrow. So they 

went back to sleep. 

In the morning they got up, and Dit was out in the kitchen, checking the result of his labors. 

And sure enough, there was the mongoose, in the cage. Dit wasn't surprised at all that he had caught 

it. He had caught this type of animal before. He found a long stick, a bamboo pole, five or six feet 

long, and fastened a snare on the end of it, a piece of wire, and with this he snared the neck of the 

mongoose in the cage until he could tightly secure the creature. He backed the animal out of the 

cage, put his hat on, and set off for the market to sell it to the Chinese doctor for medicine. He 

walked the mongoose in front of him. Its tail was all swollen up the way a cat's would be. It was 

about the size of a raccoon. Nai Dit didn't want that thing to get on him. Mongoose are fierce 

fighters. They will kill king cobras; they're quicker than the cobras. Very sharp teeth. Nothing to 

fool with. 

It took Dit a good half a day to take the trap down. 

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5 

41:03 Margaret remembers that later, after they had moved to Trang, the lepers at the leper asylum 

outside Trang found a king cobra asleep. For some reason, these vicious animals brought a high price 

from the Chinese doctors. The reason the animal was asleep was that it had just enjoyed a full meal. 

Its stomach was all bulged up with the creature it had eaten, and it was asleep digesting. The lepers 

conceived the idea of catching this creature because they knew it would bring a good price and, of 

course, they had almost no way of earning any money. So what to do? They were barefoot, dressed 

in shorts, often no shirt. But they had a leader. And they all set about making forked sticks. There 

were about six of them involved. They went to Dr. McDaniel and got him to give them a heavy box 

to put the creature into. They set their box up, keeping their distance from the snake until they were 

all ready. They set the box up with just an opening large enough for the animal to go through. They 

all got set along the line, the head man taking the most dangerous position beside the head. With a 

sudden shout, they all came down on the snake with their forked sticks. They worked in rhythm as 

the head man shouted orders. With each shout, they would lift their sticks a little and the snake 

would surge to escape, and then they would clamp down again. Lift, and clamp down; lift, and clamp 

down, all in rhythm. In this way, they maneuvered the snake to the box, got the head in, and then the 

rest of the body. They secured the box tightly, nailed the cover shut, and took it in to the Chinese 

medicine man, who bought it. That was an exciting event for everyone out there. 

Session #37 Easter Sunday March 26, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

6 

44:20 Margaret introduces Kenneth, who will sing a little song from his childhood. He thinks he 

was six or seven when he learned it. "Now Kenneth, you're on." 

Kenneth sings, 

I ripped my pants on a rusty nail. 

I ripped my pants today. 

I ripped my pants on a rusty nail, 

And what will my Mama say. 

I ripped my pants on a rusty nail. 

I ripped my pants today. 

And when I got home, my mother did say, 

"Kenneth, you're naughty today." 

And what inspired this memory? "It just came right up out of my subliminal, yesterday or the day 

before. I was standing by the kitchen sink, washing dishes, and all of a sudden I broke into song, and 

Margaret was convulsed." She had never heard this one before. 

Kenneth describes his parish, which extended all the way from the Kra Isthmus to the Malay 

border, inhabited by 2,000,000 people. Much of it was wild jungle, with tin mines, rubber estates, 

elephants, bandits, snakes. He traveled by train, by foot, by bicycle, by elephant, bullock cart, small 

craft, coastal steamers. In the beginning, he worked to survey the whole area, especially for those 

areas not yet evangelized, so that he would know how to proceed. He was entirely on his own. 

Twenty-five years old, going on twenty-six. 

One day he drove eighty miles across the mountains to Phatthalung, on the eastern side of the 

peninsula. The name reflected the fact that it was the great center for the Nanthalung show, the 

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shadow show. Kenneth tells us that two shadow show pictures have just been sent him here in D.C. 

by a friend and are on his couch, hand-carved out of buffalo hide. The pictures were shown on a 

screen, the romance and adventures of Rama and Sida, a great Indian classic. "Phat" meant literally 

the fans or pictures of the "thalung" show. Phatthalung was the great manufacturing center of them. 

Kenneth felt it was a place long neglected, so he rented a chapel there on his first visit. He had a man 

who was going to get it ready and open a work there. 

Kenneth also had a man come to him who was an experienced Chinese pastor and offer 

himself for service. He was a migrant from China named Ngiap Seng. His mother had been a "Bible 

woman." 

Kenneth interrupts this to tell us about the man who sent him the shadow show pictures. 

Kenneth had put him through secondary school in Thailand when he was boy, so that he could 

become a teacher. He now has his own school, a very fine man, heavyset, one of the leading 

Christians in Nakhon. The two of them have corresponded through the years, and Kenneth sent him a 

picture of himself and Margaret at their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1976, which the man 

presently has hanging on his wall in Nakhon. The man sent Kenneth the shadow pictures in response 

and suggested that he have them framed in remembrance of his friend, which Kenneth intends to do. 

Back to Ngiap Seng. He had grown up in a Christian home, and had gone to a mission 

school. His sister had no education. The Landons called her Ah Sim. She was the woman who 

literally raised the Landons' children for them, and did their laundry, and worked as their butler, 

running the house for them. "A wonderful woman. A wonderful woman." Ngiap Seng and Ah Sim 

were from the village of Po Leng in China. Ngiap Seng joined Kenneth in his work, as his Chinese 

evangelist. 

Kenneth soon realized that Ngiap Seng was ruining his Thai, because he spoke the language 

so poorly. He couldn't pronounce many of the Thai words correctly. Kenneth gives examples. And 

this started to corrupt Kenneth's own pronunciation. So he declared that from then on, they would 

speak Chinese only. No Thai. And that was how Kenneth learned to speak Chinese—learning it the 

way a child would learn it—in the dialect of the little village of Po Leng, with all the slang and the 

nuances and the nasal tones of that village. Any Chinese hearing him would know right away where 

he was from. He was from Po Leng! How strange! There were no redheads in Po Leng! [Kenneth 

narrates this in Chinese.] 

Kenneth was delighted to have Ngiap Seng working with him to carry on the Chinese part of 

his work and teach him the language. 

Kenneth's aim was to establish an evangelist in every key center of his large parish, to open a 

chapel in each place, from which he would work when he traveled there. 

Kenneth read the life of George Mueller. He was always reading. 

7 

53:42 His twenty-sixth birthday. He had given no thought to it until Mrs. Bulkley announced that 

they would have a picnic in his honor. She made a nice cake for him, and so they celebrated. He had 

reached "the immense age of twenty-six. I seem to have done so many things in my short life, I feel 

much older," he wrote his parents. 

Mr. Snyder died very suddenly at Nakhon, of a stroke, and Kenneth hurried over and led the 

funeral service the next day. It was without the body, because the body was promptly shipped to 

Bangkok. Dr. McDaniel and Kenneth made the coffin, he says, lining it with tin. They fixed the 

body up. Dr. McDaniel "shot the formaldehyde in." Mrs. Snyder gave Kenneth clothes, and he 

washed the body and dressed it up. Then they put it in the box and sealed it tight with solder. The 

body would rot very rapidly there, in the heat. "Life in the rough, as we are." 

284


Snyder's death left Nakhon bereft, with only Dr. McDaniel and his wife there. Kenneth 

realized that, if he and his family had not moved when they did, they never would have. The mission 

would have kept them in Nakhon. 

After the funeral service, Kenneth went back and called on Mrs. Snyder, who was sitting on 

the verandah. She had refused come to the service. Her comment was, "Mr. Snyder never did like 

you." She felt her husband belonged in Bangkok and still resented the exile to Nakhon. Her words 

were intended to be a crushing remark, of course, but Kenneth was used to crushing remarks, so he 

wasn't crushed. 

Margaret learned that Mr. Snyder spent some time at Trang, too. She reads her letter of the 

time. Mr. Snyder had been working under the house the day of his death, a Saturday morning. Mrs. 

Snyder went down to see him about something, and he was laughing and joking with a little child 

who wanted to help him. Mr. Snyder struck a blow with his hammer, raised it to strike again, and fell 

over dead. "There was no time at all between life and death." Kenneth took the first train to Nakhon. 

There was no undertaker, so a Chinese carpenter, Dr. McDaniel, Kenneth, and two chance guests at 

the hospital worked together to make the teak coffin, line it with zinc, and then solder it shut. It was 

customary in Siam to bury the dead within twenty-four hours if possible. 

The Snyders had three sons and one daughter, Mabel. Her married name was Hoff (SP?). 

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HOUR 48 


1 

0:00 (VIIIA720) Margaret continues on Mr. Snyder and his exile from Bangkok, reading from a 

letter written by his daughter, Mabel Snyder Hoff (SP?). 

Margaret speaks of E.P. Dunlap, who was a personal friend of King Chulalongkorn but was 

very quiet about this. He knew that his influence rested on his being anonymous. Prince Prajadhipok 

(SP?), before he was king, once came down to Trang—as the Rev. Charles E. Eckels later wrote of it 

in a memorandum to Kenneth—and when he was introduced to E.P. Dunlap, he rushed forward and 

said, "Oh, my father's old friend!" Dunlap was greatly loved by everyone. He had just one fault, that 

he didn't believe in discipline. "He didn't discipline his children, and they didn't turn out well." "No 

wonder the Thai liked him," Kenneth comments. Margaret continues that Dunlap would give you 

anything and everything he had, so that other missionaries hated to follow him. Kenneth ran across 

his converts all over the peninsula. 

Mr. Snyder was jealous of a such a man, who had a rapport with the highborn Thai and at the 

same time was very much loved by the common people. Dunlap had talked a long time about 

opening a mission in Trang, and one day Mr. Snyder said to him in a snide way, "Why don't you do 

it, then?" And Dunlap replied simply, "I will." And he did. "You couldn't put him down like that 

because he wasn't 'up,' you see." 

Snyder was a builder, and built the house in Bangkok where the Landons had lived. He also 

built the boys' Christian high school, and the old Wang Lang school for girls. He was very able. He 

oversaw the Chinese workmen and did a lot of the work himself to make sure it was done correctly. 

Snyder made many evangelistic tours. 

Mr. Snyder was buried at the American Presbyterian Cemetery on Windmill Road in 

Bangkok. 

2 

5:15 By April, Kenneth had seven men working with him around the peninsula, and was looking 

for about six more to open up various chapels in the area. He needed money to do this, but he hoped 

to make the new chapels self-supporting. How he was going to do this, he didn't know. He knew 

there would be no money forthcoming from the mission. 

Margaret left for a vacation at Chong, in the mountains. She really needed it. The area was 

as beautiful as the Rockies in America. It had a tumbling waterfall and icy cold water for bathing. 

Kenneth wrote, "The other day when I took her out, I went up into the falls. I was in real, deep 

jungle. Great bunches of monkeys swinging wildly through the trees. Chimpanzees giving great 

shouts. Whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo!" Margaret says those weren't chimpanzees; they were 

gibbons. Kenneth says they weren't all gibbons. They were big black monkeys, much bigger than 

gibbons. He swam in a nice clean pool where tigers came at night. There were stands set up in the 

trees for hunters. 

Kenneth recalls, at Chong, having a whole troop of those large monkeys escort him for at 

least a half mile along the path, tumbling through the bushes no further than five or six feet away. 

"Boy, was I alarmed at the time!" They were fascinated by him, tumbling along as he walked, and he 

just held a steady pace and "kept saying my prayers. 'Jesus loves me, this I know.'" They would 

286


come whipping down through the trees and swing right past him. And on at least one occasion, 

something was thrown at him. 

3 

9:31 The Nanthalung show ran throughout the night. It used pictures cut out of cowhide, Kenneth 

says, representing Rama, Sida, and other mythological figures. The show ran for three nights at the 

full moon. It was generally put on to earn merit by somebody who was celebrating a death in the 

family, or a wedding. You celebrated equally whether it was for a death or a wedding. Kenneth 

generally studied at night, from about 7:30 to 10:00 or 11:00, Greek, or Hebrew, sometimes both. All 

of sudden he would realize that he was hearing a thump coming from the distance, made by a huge 

drum. And then another thump, booming in the night. Ah, he would think. There's going to be a 

show tonight. And then he would hear the great drum struck twice, boom boom. And a silence. 

Then, boom boom. And after a while, boom boom boom. The sound would become faster, to 

announce that the show was about to begin. Boom boom boom boom boom. People would begin 

going by on the road, carrying torches. Kenneth would grab his cane, because you always carried a 

cane in case of snakes, vipers, and he would start off in the direction of the sound. He didn't know 

where it was coming from exactly, just off in the rubber gardens somewhere. The drum would sound 

more and more rapidly, and the people would all walk toward it with their torches, meeting at the 

clearing where the play was to be held. There would be cake-sellers there, and drink-sellers, and 

everyone would sit out on mats. Then the show would begin and run all night. 

It was a wonderful time for Kenneth because he would sit down among the people, all of 

whom were talking and sharing news with each other while the show went on, and he would be 

talking to some old lady when, suddenly, she would notice him and let out a whoop in Thai, "It's a 

farang!" "It's a foreigner!" She'd just been talking in Thai, not looking at him, and all of sudden 

she'd look at him and realize who he was. She'd be chewing her betel nut and spitting, and they'd sit 

and talk a while. Then he would move around, visiting with other people. A wonderful way of 

getting acquainted. Everybody around there got to know him because he was the only farang who 

could understand this stuff and come out and sit and listen to the show. And then they'd make up 

scenes in it. Word would be passed to the players that the farang was out there, the religious teacher 

guy, and they'd make up a skit about him. He'd be sitting there, and all of sudden there'd be 

something about this farang who had come along, and you'd better look out, girls. Be watching, 

girls! Fellows, be sure to protect your lady loves! All sorts of wisecracks about him. And they'd all 

shout with laughter and then look at Kenneth to see how he was taking it. Sometimes, he would 

respond, because he too could make up little verses. He learned quickly to make jokes in Siamese, 

and he would make a funny about them. And there would be enormous applause. Then they would 

get back to the show because, after all, it wasn't about Rama and Landon. 

That sort of thing was traditional. They would do it with the officials, too. The people 

couldn't criticize the government directly, but they could make fun of it in clever ways. It was all 

good fun. 

Margaret comments that the two shadow pictures Kenneth's Thai friend sent him had never 

been used in a show. It was impossible to buy one because by the time one is used in a show, there is 

believed to be a spirit in it. There is a spirit ceremony dedicating each one. So Kenneth's shadow 

pictures are "non-dedicated" ones. 

Over the centuries, the Thai had learned how to throw up bamboo pavilions of every sort, for 

any kind of ceremony. There would be five- or six-foot stilts, and there would be an open front. The 

sides would be closed. On the front, there would be a sheet, or white cloth. The back would be open 

for ventilation. The players would have a strong light inside the pavilion, and they would move the 

287


figures in front of it so that you would see their shadows dancing and performing on the screen. They 

would have fights, and romances, and all sorts of things, as the singers narrated the events. 

In the Landons' time the players would use kerosene lamps. Margaret once asked what they 

used before the days of such lamps and was told that a bonfire would be built back behind the booth. 

This goes back to the beginning of the Christian era and even earlier, Kenneth says. It is 

common in Indonesia as well. Like so many of the folk arts, of course, it is threatened by modern 

developments such as movies and television. 

4 

17:24 Kenneth describes the Chong area, where they went for vacations in the south. An area of 

jungle, with snaky vines in tangled profusion climbing across the trunks of trees, making great ropes 

dangling from limbs to the ground some sixty feet below. Great tropical leaves in fan shapes, and of 

course, an abundance of vegetation of all kinds. 

The governor came to visit in Chong April 23, 1929, and told them he was going to tear the 

house down, build a new one, make a grand hotel resort. He was going to cut down the trees and 

build a golf course. The Landons were horrified and told him so. He reminisced that the great Phya 

Ratsida had such plans, and apparently thought that the plans would please these Westerners. The 

governor had a "mania" for cutting down trees, and had actually cut down some big beauties in 

Trang. In fact, he cut down so many that his life was threatened by the local natives. They did not 

like change. 

When one governor tried to teach the natives how to use a scythe or sickle, they nearly 

annihilated him. In that area, rice had its cult, and the way of harvesting was like a religious 

tradition. Since they lived on the rice, the cult was tremendous. Toward the end of the season, they 

would go all through the fields looking for instances in which the heads of rice had fallen together 

and knitted together. That was the "male and the female." They'd cut that off, tie it, and hang it from 

the roof. They had a blessing they sang before they did this. It was a part of tradition, never broken, 

that the women planted the rice. Always. The men did the plowing—actually, "puddling." 

After World War II, when the Americans went out into Asia with their aid programs, they 

discovered that the farmers had no plows that would cut deep. The farmers barely scratched the 

surface. So America sent in good, deep plows for the farmers, trying to be helpful. What they didn 't 

understand was that the paddy fields were like bathtubs, with a hardpan bottom, and above that a 

blotter of muck, when it was wet, about six to eight inches deep, which was the only part that was 

stirred up, and then the seasonal water that flooded it. The seasonal water brought the fertilizer that 

fertilized the seed. The nutrients didn't come so much from the muck as from the water. What the 

farmers did was to walk their buffalo through the paddies, or use wooden-faced plows. When the 

deep-cut American plows appeared, what happened was that the plow cut down through the hardpan 

and let all the water drain out. The result was: no rice. It turned out that those dumb natives weren't 

so dumb. They knew what they were doing. 

When it came to planting the rice, the women always did that, never the men. They would 

have it in little handfuls, and they would plant the rice piece by piece. 

The Thai peninsula had a mountainous spine, with many streams and rivers cutting through 

the land, so that until modern times, each area tended to be isolated from the others. This meant that 

different customs and dialects developed in different areas. In the Trang area, the men carried the 

rice in after the women cut it. And the women harvested it in the most painstaking way you can 

imagine. They had a knife that they held in a certain way with which they took each head, one at a 

time, until they had a handful which they tied up and stacked into a cone. That was what the men 

carried in. One of the governors saw this arduous work, with the women bent over all day long, and 

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he thought he would improve their conditions by getting sickles for them. The fury of the people was 

so great that they just about drove that enlightened governor out of the province. After all, the 

goddess of rice must not be offended! 

As for the trees the governor was cutting down—a very fat man, Kenneth says, part 

Chinese—the trees he was cutting down were considered sacred by the people. More spirits and gods 

to offend, who would vent their wrath on the people, of course. 

5 

24:30 Margaret, on Chong. "What'd you do at Chong, baby?" Kenneth asks. The word FKRQJ 

meant a mountain pass or tunnel. In this case, it meant a pass over a range of high mountains—that 

is, high for that part of the world. The highest peak was only about 5000 feet high, but the pass itself 

was about 1000, or perhaps less. Margaret stayed on the side of the pass toward Trang, about twelve 

miles out. "Chong is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I think sometimes the garden 

of Eden might have been like this, with the marks of the curse removed. In the background are the 

mountains, heavily wooded. All around us are tall trees. But the most unusual thing about them is 

that they are crusted with orchids and ferns. Most of the orchids are not in bloom, but they are 

nonetheless beautiful. Some have feathery leaves like ferns, some long narrow ones like the one I 

have on a tree at home that reminds of nothing so much as whiskers in one of Goldberg's cartoons. 

There are many, many kinds, and all so lovely. One very common tree is the rubber that yields resin. 

It grows with three divisions like the folds of a closed umbrella, and in the intervals ferns find a 

foothold, and occasionally even another kind of tree. I found one place where a tree had a palm 

growing in it, and the great ropes of a jungle vine looping over it like the lengths of a great snake. 

This particular vine swings from tree to tree for hundreds of feet and is as big as a tree at its root." 

Margaret tells us that the government has tried to save this area as a park, but sadly much of it 

has been destroyed. The park was built years ago by a Tesa (SP?). Siam was divided into what were 

known as twelve "circles," and there was a tesa or commander over each one. This particular Tesa 

was named Phya Ratsida. "Phya" was a title. 

Margaret tells us what the various ranks were. From the lowest up, they were Khun, Luang, 

Phra, Phya, and Chao Phya. 

Phya Ratsida's father, according to the story, arrived from China carrying nothing but a 

hopstick, which was a stick used by coolies for carrying loads. Margaret has pictures of both men. 

The father's name was Kaw Su Chien (SP?). 

The pictures Margaret has were secured for her by a friend named Lydia Na Ranong, a 

Chinese Thai whose husband was descended from Kaw Su Chien, his great great grandfather. At the 

age of twenty-five, Kaw Su Chien left China for Pinang, which had been ceded to the British in 1786 

by the Sultan of Kedah He was born about 1785 and died about 1881. By 1790 Pinang had a 

population of about 10,000. From the first, it attracted large numbers of Chinese immigrants, 

especially from Fukien. Kaw Su Chien arrived in Pinang in about 1810, and first sought employment 

as a common coolie. He owned nothing then but the clothes on his back and the carrying pole. 

Friends of Kenneth who knew him in his old age say that he kept the carrying pole to the last day of 

his life. He lived to be 96. He had it overlaid with gold and hung on the wall of the mansion he built 

at Ranong. Kenneth recalls seeing it. In the early years he was more than once reduced to eating 

slops which the peasant farmers had thrown out for the pigs. He soon entered the coastal trade, in 

which cloth and other manufactured articles were traded for tin, arrica nut (SP?), birds' nests, copra, 

and pepper, which in turn were sold to export agents in Pinang. The trade was highly dangerous in 

view of the pirates who infested the coastal areas, and the sporadic warfare between the Malay states, 

especially Kedah, and Thailand. All the northern half of what is now Malaya was tributary to 

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Thailand. From their foothold in Pinang, the British were hoping to break the hold of Thailand and to 

establish the supremacy of the East India Company. Kaw Su Chien attracted the attention of Thao 

Taep Sun Tong (SP?), rajah and apparently military governor of the important border principality of 

Tegoapah (SP?), which adjoined Burma. Under his patronage, Kaw Su Chien's great energy and 

ability were given every opportunity. Both he and his patron prospered enormously. When he had 

amassed a sufficient sum, he built a ship and embarked on trading ventures in his own right. He plied 

his boat between Pinang and the coastal towns of the peninsula. He became enormously wealthy, 

amassing a fortune second only to the King's. 

It was his son, Phya Ratsida, who was so interesting to Margaret. When she was living in 

Trang, the country women would come to call on her. They had no sense of time. They would come 

with a little gift of cakes or eggs in a little hand-woven handkerchief and give it to her, the traditional 

feudal gesture of the lesser to the greater. To the Thai, what we call bribes are often just a form of 

courtesy. And if they brought you something on a plate, you must return the plate unwashed—at 

least, in the Trang area. If you washed it, that meant to them that you had rejected the gift. So the 

women would come, and then settle down on the mook. Margaret would always offer them 

something in hospitality, perhaps a cup of tea. Peggy learned very quickly. That child, by the time 

she was four years old, was already seeing to it that any guest—if Margaret wasn't there—got a glass 

of water, a cup of tea, or something of the like. Kenneth wrote in a letter of the time, "There are three 

adults in our family. Only one baby, Bill." She grew up adopting many of the Thai forms of 

courtesy, and they are with her yet. 

The women would move into conversation. With them, questions were courtesy. They 

indicated interest. How are you today? And how is your husband? And how are your children? you 

grandchildren? your nephews and nieces? How are your crops doing? And how much did your 

husband make last year? That was considered a polite question. Endless questions. The teachers at 

the Thai school, the Anokul Safri Girls' School, could never get over Margaret's willingness to sit 

there and talk to these women. Margaret sat there more times than she could tell us for five hours 

easily. They might stop to have something to eat, and then continue talking. And the teachers would 

say, "Mem, how can you do it? Sit there and listen to those stupid old country women." They would 

not do it. Margaret's answer was that these country women were not stupid. They couldn't read or 

write, but they had the retentive memories of people who don't read or write. And they were 

interested in the past, as Margaret was. 

It was really listening to those women that Margaret began to perceive the system of values of 

the old Thai, under the feudal system. You must be able to please those greater than yourself. The 

truth is irrelevant. Courtesy is everything. The queen grandmother once said of King Phumipol's 

sister, "She's just as rude as the foreigners are!" To them, our emphasis on certain ethical principles 

is just irrelevant. When Margaret later ran the Anokunhsatree School, the hardest thing was to find 

ways of asking questions that wouldn't suggest the answer she was looking for, because then she 

would be sure to get it. 

Kenneth interjects that this was a hilarious problem when the American aid people went out to 

find what the felt needs of the Thai were, or the Burmese, or the Lao, or the Indonesians, or any of 

these people. When asked the question, the people would try to feel out what answer would be 

pleasing to the guy who was asking the question. They would sort of hedge around, and finally our 

gallant American would ask, Well, suppose you had a million dollars, or ten million dollars, what 

would you do with it? The answer: We'd build a temple. We'd make merit. No no no no, something 

that would really help the country. Well, we'd give it to the priests. Oh no no. And so they 

floundered around. The Burmese would finally say, Well, what do \RX think our felt needs ought to 

be if we had ten million dollars? And then the Americans would suggest a highway or some such 

290


project. And so a highway it would be. 

Margaret returns to the country women who would come to visit with her. Some of the old 

women who were not Christians were surprised at her being there. Margaret remembers the elderly 

woman who was asked by Kru Kim Juang, "Auntie, wouldn't you like to go to America?" That is, to 

the country that missionaries like E.P. Dunlap and Kenneth Landon came from. "Oh no," she said, 

"I'm sure it's much better here because the men came here." 

What particularly interested Margaret about these old women was that, after the formalities 

and opening questions, they would always come to the old governor, Phya Ratsida. Nobody has ever 

done a book on him, and there should be one, because he was a person of great ability. He was a 

mammoth Chinese man, about Kenneth's height, five feet eight or nine, but very heavy. Margaret 

now reads from a letter she wrote in 1929. Phya Ratsida's real name was Kaw Sim Beh (SP?). 

"Kaw" was his surname. Eventually, his father, the one who arrived with nothing but a hopstick but 

eventually became very wealthy, got hold of a tin mine. And his son somehow secured the high 

position of Lord Lieutenant. Mrs. Bulkley remembered him, and described how he would come to 

the market with his attendants and perhaps a dozen baskets. This scene was described to Margaret by 

the old country women many times, it was so memorable. He carried a great club, and when he 

arrived, he let out a great roar. People had to prostrate themselves when he passed. The women 

would tell her, "Mem, we would hear the Chao Kuhn roar, and we would fall flat on our faces." 

"Chao Kuhn" meant "High Lord." He was so powerful in the south that he could have broken away 

from the central government if he had wanted to. But he chose to remain at least nominally loyal. 

He made piles of money out of the government, which was considered acceptable. It wasn't regarded 

as graft but as a perquisite of his position. He had no salary. He was expected to make whatever he 

made out of his position. Kenneth says they had a phrase, "you eat the city," "you eat your job." 

Phya Ratsida built the mission hospital in Trang and the residence attached to it and gave 

them to the mission to run. He started a magnificent system of roads, and built beautiful parks in a 

number of places. It was he who built the pass over the mountain. He had planned to build a road up 

the highest mountain and build a sanatorium there, but before that was accomplished, one of his 

enemies shot him to death. He died in 1913. 

After reading that from her letter of the time, Margaret explains that she later learned from her 

country women that the story was inaccurate. The truth was that one of his nephews had seduced the 

wife of a doctor, and one day, as the Chao Kuhn and his nephew were coming off a ship at Kantang, 

the doctor stepped up behind the offending nephew and shot him. The bullet went through the 

nephew's body and into the body of the Lord Lieutenant. It wasn't intended for Phya Ratsida. He 

was rushed to Pinang, but that was an overnight trip by ship. He lingered for a while, then died. It 

was a tragedy for the whole province because he had turned it into one of the richest areas of Siam. It 

had been a pepper-growing area. Pepper is difficult to cultivate, and has to be grown in an area that 

has a great deal of water. In spite of the fact that Trang had over a hundred inches of rain a year, and 

there was never a month that it didn't rain—in contrast to Bangkok, which had a dry season—there 

were sixteen wells on the Landon compound, where pepper had been grown. Margaret says she has 

found the name "Trang pepper" in old books. It was considered a very fine pepper. 

Then when rubber was introduced, it was easier to grow, and more profitable. 

The old women would say, "Oh mem, the old governor. He'd come into our house." Their 

houses were always built on cleared ground because of snakes. They never had a lawn or anything 

like that. "Oh mem, he'd come into our compound." And of course, he never moved alone. No Thai 

official would ever move about without his entourage, and so strong is that tradition that when the 

Thai ambassador here in Washington, about two ambassadors ago, would go to lecture, every Thai in 

291


the city was expected to turn up. Lydia Na Ranong did not go, and he noticed it, and demanded an 

explanation. When the old governor would come to visit the homes of his people, they would be 

down on the ground. If they were up in the house, they would have to come down because they 

could not have their heads higher than the governor's. And that's why there were no two-story 

houses. Since no high Thai would walk under the place where somebody else's feet might go over, 

they had to have one-story houses. Another thing no Thai would do was to walk under a clothesline 

with women's clothes on it. That was defiling. So, anyway, the governor would come in, and he 

would roar. Down they were on their hands and knees, the whole family, mother, father, children, 

everybody, and he would say in this tremendous voice, "How many pigs do you have?" And the 

shaking farmer would say in a quiet voice, "I have three, your excellency." The Lord Lieutenant 

would then say, "I'll come back in a year, and you're to have eight! How many coconut trees do you 

have?" The same thing. "How many fruit trees? How many chickens? How many bullocks?" He 

would always double whatever they had, and he would indeed come back to check that his orders had 

been carried out. He had people who kept a record. That province was amazingly prosperous under 

him. The lazy people went to work. The fascinating thing to Margaret is that these old country 

women did not in any sense resent what the governor had done. That was what a really good ruler 

ought to do! He ought to improve the lot of the people. Look what he did. He built the roads. He 

built the hospital. He got them the farang doctor. Wonderful! He built schools. He made them all 

richer. They had the greatest love and respect for him. 

But they were wary of him too. When he would come into the market the way he would do, 

"we'd hide the girls, mem. We'd hide the girls!" He was likely to go off with some of the girls if he 

liked what he saw. 

So Margaret found that listening to these old women was worthwhile. 

6 

50:07 Margaret continues on Chong. There were several small houses, and one big bungalow 

which the Landons were using with the governor's permission. It stood on a rise of ground and 

commanded a long sweep of grass and trees. About five minutes' walk behind the house was a small 

cascade where they would go swimming. The mountain water came down clear and cold from the 

divide. There was a tiny sandy beach where the children could splash about. A half hour's walk 

away there was a beautiful big cascade, with water coming down over huge rocks, and farther still a 

high waterfall. Mrs. Bulkley had done a drawing of this in pastels which was presented to the Queen. 

She reads on the threat the people of the area made against the current governor because of his 

plans to cut down trees, the threat to shoot him if he did it. This stopped him. He knew they meant 

it. He hoped to make Chong a resort for tourists, or a vacation area for people from Bangkok, and 

thus get himself well known. He wanted to build a golf course, and a hotel. 

Margaret says that his dream has actually come true since then. Most of the great trees of the 

area are gone. 

7 

52:19 Kenneth tells that one day, at the back of their compound, a man appeared like no one he had 

seen in Thailand. He was a little, short black man, naked except for a g-string, with kinky hair. He 

wanted to speak to Kenneth, but he wouldn't come near, and when Kenneth approached him, he 

withdrew. But he left something. [Kenneth doesn't say what, but it was some sort of gift.] Kenneth 

learned from talking to Dr. Bulkley that this man was a negrito, and that the negritoes used to have 

relations with E.P. Dunlap, and that since Kenneth was living in Dunlap's house, maybe he seemed to 

be Dunlap returned in another form. The negritoes lived in the mountains up behind Chong. It was 

292


very difficult to converse with them. They couldn't count. No two of them counted to ten in the 

same way. They all agreed on one and two, but not on anything beyond that. Kenneth later wrote 

one of his papers for the University of Chicago on these negritoes. Margaret says that no one told the 

Landons what the negritoes had come for. They wanted to exchange gifts for things like pots and 

pans and bits of cloth. The Landons would have been most glad to do it, but they just didn't know. 

These were the only human beings Kenneth ever heard of who had no fixed dwellings. They slept 

under large fronds in the jungle. Most of them since then have died out from pneumonia and malaria. 

There had been no malaria in that area for centuries, only in the north. But a motion picture company 

came out to make a famous motion picture, called &KRQJ, in which they used elephants. They did 

some of their filming in the north, but then brought down people from the north to complete the 

picture in the Chong area, among whom some were some carrying malaria. These infected the area, 

and many deaths resulted. 

The negritoes were trackers, and they used blowpipes with a poison dart. Kenneth used to 

have one of their blowpipes and a dart too. Margaret says that the mountain area where the negritoes 

lived is now infested with communists. Two American missionaries, women, were killed in that area. 

Kenneth tells of a classic of Thai literature called Chao Naw (SP?). The "naw" was a clown 

in the court, the "funny fellow." 1DZ meant "kinky," and was very much like the word QLJJHU in its 

implication. It's not a complimentary word. There is also a fruit that is curly-haired, and they called 

that a "naw." Margaret calls this fruit a "rombitan" (SP?). The Landons loved it. They say they had 

the best tree anywhere around. 

Margaret tells us that E.P. Dunlap introduced pineapples from Hawaii. There were a thousand 

of them in the Landons' backyard. Margaret had them all pulled out because there was no point in 

them. They took two years to form, one under certain circumstances. And as soon as they got 

anywhere near ripe, her neighbor stole them all. Furthermore, the snakes just adored to get up in 

"that top," like vipers and horrid little things like that. She decided that with children it was better to 

be rid of them. She could buy pineapples in the market for ten cents. Pineapple had developed into 

one of the major fruit industries of the south. Pineapples went up to Bangkok by the freightcar load. 

Dunlap also brought up the rombitan tree that was in the yard. Every year at a certain time, 

people came to the Landons asking to make a marcottage from the tree. They would take a wellgrown 

but still very supple branch and peel it very, very gently at one spot, all the way around, and 

then they would have earth and the fiber from the inside of a coconut shell which they would make 

into a large ball around the peeled spot, tying it tightly to the branch, which they would cut below the 

spot. This they would plant and keep wet. Perhaps once out of two or three times, this would grow, 

and when it did, you got an identical tree which bore the same quality of fruit. 

Dunlap was constantly thinking of ways of making life better. 

293


HOUR 49 


1 

0:00 (VIIA1240) At Chong, Kenneth had one of his violent intestinal attacks. He had been having 

trouble with his teeth and feeling tired. Then one afternoon he started to feel badly, and Margaret 

started for the doctor. They were twelve miles out from Trang. The attacks Kenneth suffered from 

were so violent that Margaret didn't want to wait. Mrs. Bulkley went with Margaret, and they arrived 

at the hospital before dark. The hospital assistant made up some medicine called "the five tinctures" 

and "the five tinctures mixed with rhubarb and soda." The driving was perilous because the horn 

wasn't working and the road was under repair. But they made it back. Kenneth had had a bout of 

violent vomiting, and the servants had gathered around expecting him to die. Cholera acted that way. 

By now he was lying, weak but better, on the side porch. By morning, he was almost well, but he 

stayed in bed most of the day. The next day, Margaret herself had some chills and fever, though she 

did not become as ill as Kenneth. And then it was time to go home. 

As they were driving, they had a truck going ahead of them with some of their things and two 

of the servants. Suddenly, one of the truck's wheels "simply crumpled." The truck started to run off 

the road but plowed into a pile of earth which stopped it. 

Yin Lang (SP?), the cook, borrowed 150 tekals from Margaret. She still has the deed to his 

property. He was a Christian and had worked for missionaries for years. His father was ill and 

wanted to die. He asked to be off for a few days and asked for an advance. As security, he made out 

a first mortgage on his rubber garden to Margaret. It was supposed to be worth a thousand. In spite 

of this, she never got her money back. 

Then Mrs. Bulkley was very ill, and she couldn't take quinine. She had malaria. Her husband 

was away on furlough. 

On April 30, Kenneth wrote that on May 9 there was to be a total eclipse to the south, and he 

wanted to go. The King was going too. There would be huge crowds, and Kenneth would be able to 

preach to them. Margaret says he was wonderful at that, taking advantage of whatever came along. 

In May, Kenneth rushed up to Bangkok for a week to have dental work done. He got a plate 

with his first two artificial teeth set in rubber. Kenneth describes the Syrian refugee and the German 

doctor of international law that he met on the train returning to Trang. The German was an agnostic, 

and Kenneth talked to him at length about Christ. The man gave Kenneth a fine leather pillow that 

inflated to take with him on tour, and Kenneth carried that for the rest of his evangelistic touring life. 

Before that, Kenneth had used no pillow. 

Kenneth describes trying to get to know Dr. Bulkley, who was the silent type. Kenneth found 

James 3 a help in getting along with the man. "If the first chapter is not needed, then the result is 

verse 16. I have memorized it all for I need to practice that wisdom that is from above every day." 

2 

7:52 Peggy was starting to talk. Kenneth would sit her on his lap, point to things, and enjoy 

listening to her try to say them. She had a special difficulty with the word ERRN. "Well to hear her 

say ERRN would give you a fit. It seems to demand a terrible twisting of her lips and much vibration, 

like blowing on a comb. I got her to say 'Bible book' yesterday, and I had to go into the next room to 

laugh, it was so screamingly funny. I don't want her to know I am laughing at her for it's serious 

294


business learning a language." 

Bill was a "regular man," with a voice that could be heard in strident shouts all over the 

house. He looked like a football player. He had a grip that never let go. "I picked him up yesterday, 

and he brought the whole carpet along with him." "He doesn't perspire gently and sweetly, but 

simply sweats. And he smells like a day laborer even though he gets bathed twice or more a day. He 

works hard at being a baby!" 

In Tan Ngiap Seng, Kenneth finally found a reliable assistant, a very fine man. He would 

work on long after the Landons left Thailand. 7DQ was his family name, and his sister's, Ah Sim. 

The Chinese generally came south because of famine and economic hardship. His village of Po Leng 

was near Swatow. He had the appearance of a northern Chinese, Kenneth said. Margaret comments 

that he had quite a nose, and wonders if it was an Arab nose. There ZDV trading between China and 

Arab nations. 

Ma Pawm (SP?), one of the servants, came to Margaret one day as she was lying down and 

said that someone had brought a "panther" for Kenneth, so she got up to go and see about it. One of 

the taxi drivers from town had indeed brought a "panther" to give to Kenneth. It was yellow, with 

black spots, and in fact was a small cheetah of some sort, says Kenneth. It seemed very fierce. 

Margaret took it and tied it out by her lettuce to keep the chickens from eating the lettuce. For a time, 

Margaret tried to grow tomatoes and lettuce, out of her longing for fresh vegetables, but she gave it 

up after a while. 

There were three houses on their compound. In addition to the main house, there was the 

small bamboo house the Dunlaps had lived in while the main house was being built. The servants 

lived in that. And then there was a very nice, small house in which the Chinese evangelist was 

supposed to live, which at that time was occupied by Kru Juang, who was "posing" as an evangelist 

but whom Kenneth had to fire. He was actually a hunter. He loved to live in the woods. His wife 

Kru Kim Juang became one of Margaret's best Thai friends. She lived until about two years ago, 

dying in 1976 or so. She had five children, but she was the one who worked. She taught, and she 

was a wonderful teacher. Kru Juang kept chickens, and they liked Margaret's lettuce. 

Kenneth had seen the type of cat that had been brought him in a house in Nakhon, and he 

liked it. He wanted one, and the word was out. So here was his "panther," as the Thai called every 

small cat. These cheetah-like cats were fierce; really wild. The Landons don't remember how long 

they kept that animal, or what became of it. 

3 

15:51 Margaret's cat died. She had three kittens, two like herself, and one mongrel. Margaret 

speculates that a snake killed her. Margaret explains that this cat never had a name. This is the cat 

that Kenneth sent Margaret in the box and that fell into the well, which Kenneth rescued one Sunday 

morning. It was never named "Leander." That name was given to one of her kittens. [Confused? You 

bet. Margaret and Kenneth themselves were very confused about this.] The kittens were about a month old 

at the time, one of which Margaret gave away and the other two she kept. 

The Landons at one time had nine cats, seven dogs, and two hornbills. Margaret didn't like 

the hornbills, but Kenneth. [They were named Izzy and Lizzy.] If you had a durian seed, which was the 

size of a small egg, and fed it to the hornbill, you could see it go down its throat, and then follow as it 

went all the way through, and if you waited, it would come out the tail. All the surrounding "meat" 

would be digested, of course, but the seed would come out intact. The bird would look astounded 

and turn around to see what it had done. They called the bigger hornbill Nok Ngua (SP?). The 

animals stayed under the house, and had the entire compound to roam in. They did not come up into 

the house. 

295


Margaret begins to tell how the mission obtained the property in Trang. People who had 

property considered it a disgrace to sell it. Property was something you kept for your children. So 

the mission had difficulty acquiring land. [This narrative was interrupted and never completed.] 

7$3( 9,,, 6LGH 

4 

20:10 The central room of the house was fifteen feet by thirty. There was a dining room and a 

living room area, with an arch in between. There were two bedrooms on either side of this central 

area, each one fifteen feet square. The family actually slept on the porch, which was ten feet broad. 

There was a tremendous overhang of the roof because of the powerful monsoon rains, three or four 

feet at least. The roof had to be steeply pitched to handle the rain. The ceilings were high. The 

entire house was up off the ground about ten feet. Their garage was just under the house. The 

ceilings had a band just under them of latticework all around the walls to let air pass through. To the 

side rooms on either side of the central room, the two on the east and the two on the west, there were 

swinging doors, like saloon doors. 

The house outside had never been painted. Inside, the walls were painted a bright, garish 

blue. The compound had been poorly kept. So Margaret spent a lot of time the first years there 

making the place more attractive. She had the outside of the house stained. Paint wouldn't have been 

practical. They used a creosote oil, something called selignum (SP?), which was a dark reddish 

brown. The pillars down below were white, with a black base at ground level. The roof was a steep 

tile roof. 

Inside, Margaret began to paint in an off-white. The furniture was stained ebony. The 

combination of the off-white walls and the ebony furniture gave a sense of coolness. 

There was a porch in the back of the house, and she had a shelf built there, and she would 

have ferns and plants growing there. 


5 

25:57 One day in April, 1929, Kenneth was in a chapel that he had just opened in Phatthalung when 

a very tough-looking man came in to see him, along with two companions. They came in at dusk and 

sat down. The man was named Kuai Tien Sung. He had a ferocious look in his face, and was 

powerfully built physically. They spoke at first in Thai, and then the man addressed Kenneth timidly 

in English. Kenneth found to his astonishment that the man spoke as an educated person in English, 

though he looked like a coolie. "He started to tell me his story, and as I watched his swarthy face, I 

saw a light of honesty in his eyes." His father was a wealthy man in Pinang, owning a hundred acres 

of rubber and some thirty houses in the city. As a boy, he avoided study, and having lots of money, 

soon ruined himself. He organized a secret gang, which was against the law in Malaya. He caused a 

lot of trouble and was deported to south Siam, and never returned to Pinang. For all his dissipation, 

he looked like a boy to Kenneth, though he was thirty-five. He came to a rice mill just starting up 

and found work as a coolie, work that almost killed him at first because he had to carry huge sacks of 

rice on his shoulders—they weighed about 200 pounds. This is how he built his powerful physique. 

He took up boxing and almost became champion of the Federated Malay States. His rice mill chief 

didn't know where to buy the best paddy or where to sell good rice, and so he made a deal with his 

boss that he would go up to Phatthalung to a very successful rice mill there and find out where they 

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sold their rice. He soon won a name as a good coolie at this successful mill. He examined all the rice 

sacks as they went out of the mill and then made a weekly report to his real boss back home. If he 

had been caught in this spying, it would have meant years in prison. He posed as an ignorant fellow, 

spent all he earned on booze, gambling, and girls. Life was hard at the mill, and he began to long for 

a more honest life. So he had come to see Kenneth, and that was why he needed to speak in English, 

for fear that he would be caught out. "He's like the prodigal son. He's down to the husks of life in 

Phatthalung." The police were suspicious of him because he was such a tough, and a fighter. He 

realized that he was leading a wicked life, and he asked that Kenneth teach him. He would travel 

with Kenneth and do anything he said. He wanted to be Kenneth's acolyte. Kenneth told him about 

Jesus and the Gospel, and the man seemed to want to believe. However, the man had made a promise 

to his original employer to make two more reports from Phatthalung, and he felt that he had to do it. 

He was undercutting the mill in Phatthalung, which was losing trade to his real boss. But he made a 

promise to Kenneth that after that, he would lead a new life. 

They spent two days together, talking, before Kenneth returned to Trang. Kenneth never saw 

or heard from him again. He thinks the man wanted Kenneth to be a sort of confessor, to take a load 

off his conscience. Kenneth has thought of him many times through the years. 

6 

32:00 Margaret reads from The Expectation of Siam by Dr. Arthur J. Brown on E.P. Dunlap. It is 

a description in tribute to the great man, who was equally friend of the highborn and the peasant, who 

was even called on to adjudicate disputes between people, like a judge, he was so highly respected. 

There was one Christian family already in Trang when the work was opened in 1910. The 

father had been a devout Buddhist. One day, while trying to repair an old household god, he thought, 

"How can this helpless god do me any good? It cannot take care of itself." Then he looked at his 

hands, and the thought came to him that they must have had a creator. He called his wife and told her 

that he could no longer worship dumb, helpless idols. He put them away and set apart a room where 

he and his family went each day to worship the Great Spirit, the creator of all things. Later, an Old 

Testament portion came into his hands. It had been distributed, with others, by Dr. John Carrington 

of the American Bible Society. Satisfied, that the Creator was indeed the God of the Bible portion he 

had received, the man continued faithfully in the worship of the Creator. Dr. Dunlap happily 

received this man into his new church in Trang and worked to teach him further. 

That man's son was the carpenter in Trang, and he had two daughters in the school there in 

Trang. The older daughter later worked for Margaretta Wells at the Christian bookstore in Bangkok. 

She was called Haw Yi (SP?). The other daughter was called Haw Wai (SP). Both Chinese names. 

Ultimately, Haw Yi took a Siamese name. Another son worked for Dr. McDaniel as a medical 

assistant. 

Kenneth reads a letter to his mother, who had told him for the first time about a sore on her 

breast. He urged her to see a surgeon, which she did. She had written and asked Kenneth what he 

thought she ought to do with $900 which she had inherited from her mother. She had never 

mentioned before that she had this money. Kenneth urged her to keep it there, every cent of it. It 

was the only thing she had of her own, and if Brad could get it away from her, he would. 

His mother was forever urging Kenneth to pray, and he said that he had a lot of problems 

praying. It was hard for him to sit quiet and pray for others. "I guess the Lord made all kinds. The 

doers would be helpless without the prayers. The prayers would get nothing done without the doers. 

And I just happen not to be a prayer." 

Kenneth commented that his father, with his great concern for hygiene, would have a hard 

time living in Siam. The water, for an example, and in particular the river water was used to bathe in, 

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to urinate and defecate in, to dump all refuse into, and then to drink from. The Landons' drinking 

water was dipped from beside their outhouse! 

Kenneth learned in June that his mother had been in the hospital for an operation the month 

before. 

7 

40:17 In late June, at the full moon, all the church folks came to their house "for a frolic." There 

were well over a hundred. Kenneth hung his gasoline pressure lantern outside on the lawn, and hung 

a second, borrowed lantern under the house, where they had cement flooring. The bright moonlight 

helped to illuminate the scene. They served refreshments under the house, and had games there. Out 

on the lawn, they had a "real frolic." The young and the old leaped around in American games which 

Kenneth had laid out for them on the lawn. The people seemed to have a wonderful time, and the 

Landons hoped to do this again. The Dunlaps had done it at every full moon. As it turned out, the 

Landons were unable to keep this up. 

When he started, Kenneth had seven evangelists working under him. After three months, he 

had fired three of them, and that June, he fired a fourth. He had caught them lying to him and being 

dishonest in various ways. Kenneth didn't fool around with them. When he caught them out, he fired 

them. He was beginning to think he would have to "clean them all out" and start over again. Toward 

the end of June, 1929, Kenneth discovered that one of his evangelists had turned his chapel into a 

"disorderly house" at night [that is, a bordello]. He "set out after him," but the man got word that 

Kenneth was coming and fled. He didn't want to confront Kenneth. He was never heard from again. 

"No," says Margaret, "you were a terrible man even then!" Kenneth recalls how angry he was. 

One of the reasons Kenneth had problems with his evangelists was that Dr. Dunlap had been 

so forgiving with them. If someone wronged him, he would forgive again and again. If someone 

needed money, he would give it and never ask for it back. Did someone desire a new house? Dr. 

Dunlap would build it. On and on. The dark side of this was that no standards were set, and people 

had learned from experience that they could get away with lying and corruption. Naturally, there was 

a falling away after Dr. Dunlap left an area because the missionaries who followed him were very 

different. They were not so tolerant or forgiving. 

Margaret describes her average day. It began at 6:00, when the first peep came out of Billy or 

Peggy. Both slept well through the night, so Margaret could sleep well too. Breakfast and prayer 

were at 7:00. They always had devotions in Siamese as a sort of witness to the servants. Margaret 

had time to get things underway for the day before her teacher came at 9:00. There were so many 

things to do. Margaret was working to get the house redone, a bit at a time. That June, she had Nai 

Lai (SP?), a Christian, working on the sleeping porch. He was a slow but thorough worker, a 

carpenter. 

Margaret talks about the sleeping porches. When they first moved to Trang, there were 

sleeping porches on both the east and west sides of the house. She had one added on the south, that 

is, the back verandah, and had a door cut through into the house. This was to be for the children. 

The teacher who came at 9:00 was someone Kru Tardt had sent down from Bangkok. 

Margaret was anxious to become more proficient in the language. There were about forty ways to 

say everything, so it was a challenge. You couldn't just say EDVNHW, for instance, with some sort of 

adjective to describe the basket. Rather, there was a different word for every shape and size of 

basket. Margaret studied until 11:30, with occasional interruptions from the children [who of course 

were under the care of a servant]. Lunch was at noon. After lunch, there was time for a little nap. 

Margaret then studied again from 2:00 to 4:00, this time not book study but conversation. 

Then, if it was a clear day, Kenneth wanted her to go to the tennis club for a few sets. The 

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club was for government officials, but they had been very kind in inviting the Landons to play. After 

that, Margaret returned home for a bath and supper. After supper, Margaret worked to teach two of 

her servants to read and write in Siamese for an hour. 

In the evening, she could use her time as she pleased until Billy's 10:00 bottle. 

By this time, the Landons were acquainted with the Moffitts (SP?) at the Lum Pa (SP?) tin 

mine. 

"Bill and Peggy are going to be great friends if she doesn't take too proprietary an interest in 

him. A while ago, while he was lying on the floor with his bottle, she came past and happened to 

notice that the bottle was empty. So she took it away from him and started for the kitchen. His wails 

deterred her not at all from her duty as she saw it." "That's Peggy!" the Margaret of today laughs. 

8 

50:22 Kenneth reads a letter from July 10, 1929. Dr. Bulkley had just rushed down to the 

Federated Malay States because he had received a wire from a hospital down there that his wife was 

delirious and raving from fever. Malaria. The real trouble was that she couldn't take the medicine for 

it, the quinine. She had a real phobia about it. 

Kenneth was about to send two young men to Bangkok for a conference that would consider 

ways and means of helping along the Christian work in Siam. 

On July 19, he wrote home concerning Victorine Smith, who he had learned had gone to be 

the housekeeper in Meadville, in Mae's illness. Supposedly, in Mae's operation, the cancer she had in 

her breast was completely removed. It was Victorine who had seen Kenneth flying out the window 

one day, in his childhood, when the boys were playing follow-the-leader. It was a vivid memory for 

her. 

Kenneth reported that he had had some trouble with the Huiat (SP?) church. The Chinese 

preacher there had a bunch of kids in with him every night for instruction in the Bible, and then he 

helped them prepare their lessons for school. The governor had learned of this and felt it was against 

school law and ordered the preacher and chapel closed out. Kenneth had to go up and talk to both the 

preacher and the governor to straighten things out. The preacher was a very nice man. He was just 

acting like a parent. 

Margaret wrote that Bill was a lovely baby. He had four teeth, and he was crawling. When 

he set out to go somewhere, he went slowly, but he got there. One day he became fascinated with Ma 

Pawm's (SP?) mopping of the floor and tried to follow the motion of the mop. She kept it just out of 

his reach, of course, so he couldn't get hold of it. Just then a rainstorm came up, and Ma Pawm 

rushed out to the porch to let down the curtains. Bill crawled out after her and at last succeeded in 

capturing the mop. He was so pleased with himself. He had it! 

Kenneth commented on his visit to the Huiat church. Among twenty Chinese, there were 

people speaking in Tachu (SP?), Cantonese, Hokien (SP?), Hailum (SP?), and English. Kenneth 

could understand quite a bit in each dialect, he says. 

Margaret wrote that Ma Pawm (SP?) was still with them from Nakhon. She rose at the crack 

of dawn and put a torch in the stove to light it. She had actually bought the torch to do this, made of 

some sort of heavy leaves and pitch. She put in the wood with the torch burning in the stove and 

waited for the wood to catch. Then she removed the torch. Margaret was impressed with how easily 

she had solved the problem. 

Margaret was worried about servants. She did not like to have to keep after them, but with 

children, she had to. One night one of them left an open pin in Billy's bed, and Margaret would have 

fired the person but didn't know who had done it. The Chinese servants were very different from the 

Siamese. The Chinese she'd had were always noisy, likely to be impudent, careless, dirty, and 

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dishonest, but they were tremendous workers. "They have to be handled with a terribly firm hand or 

they run away with the works." Once a Mrs. Sheehan (SP?) came home and found her Chinese 

servants sleeping in her bed, mistakenly believing she wasn't coming home that night. Siamese 

servants, by contrast, were quiet, inclined to be cleaner, but all too often very lazy. Margaret found 

with both types of servants that if she let a little thing go, the next day there was likely to be a bigger 

thing, and the day after that a bigger still. "Yeah," Kenneth says. "If they know you're in charge, 

they respect you." 

The Siamese called durian "the king of fruits." It was a large, spiny, green fruit bigger than a 

melon. The seeds were like small eggs in size. Around these was a white, pulpy meat that had a rich, 

nutty flavor. It took a while to get used to. The fruit had a powerful odor, like decaying garbage or 

rotten eggs. Margaret would hold her nose when she went through the market if durian were on sale. 

The fruit was just delicious. The Landons learned to use durian in ice cream. It was like a rich, 

walnut ice cream, and no bad smell at all. Margaret's Auntie Trine had sent them an ice cream 

maker. When they first came to Trang, there was no ice available. Nor did they have an ice box until 

their second term. But a man named Willie Klinger (SP?) built an ice plant, and Kenneth would go 

down and get ice, which they would break up to make ice cream. Even then, there were refrigerators 

that ran on kerosene, but they were beyond the Landons' means. 

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HOUR 50 


1 

0:00 (VIIIB225) Margaret again describes the house in Trang. The large central room had no 

windows, only two double doors at each end, front and back. The view from the dining room onto 

the back porch distressed Margaret, and so she was working on it. First, she put up a screen to hide 

the kitchen, which was a separate appendage in back, and also the sink on the back porch where the 

dishes were washed. There was a lattice across the back porch even with the wall of the dining room, 

and low down on that she had had a shelf put for flowers. There was a shelf on the outside of the 

porch railing for flowers, and she had one put half way down on the inside. She had all of them filled 

with ferns. She had about twenty maidenhair ferns, six pots of violets, and several other kinds of 

ferns. She was beginning to learn lots about flowers. "I just love to see the new green shoots 

appear." Margaret came from a non-gardening family, and she had to learn everything by herself. 

Kenneth was working to solve his problem with his evangelists. On August 13, he wrote that 

the night before he had signed a contract with Kru Pram Wari Wanit (SP?) to send him for four years 

of study at Chiang Mai Seminary. On the completion of his course, he was to work with Kenneth in 

his field, and perhaps to become one of his pastors. The Kenneth of today tells us that this never 

worked out; he doesn't even know what became of the man. He was very personable. Stayed in the 

Landons' house for five days. 

Kenneth conducted his first service in Chinese August 13, 1929. The Chinese were delighted, 

and "they said they could even understand me." "That do make it nice!" Margaret comments. 

August 17, he wrote that he was having the strange experience of being taken for a "babar" or 

half Chinese. As far as he knew, he was the only missionary or white man in all of Siam to speak 

both Thai and Chinese. He was the only Chinese-speaking white man on the entire peninsula. So 

naturally, this drew considerable interest from the Chinese in the area. They would ask him how long 

he had lived in China, and he would answer, "Four days." And they would scratch their heads. 

Margaret comments on how neat and pretty the railroad stations in Thailand were, with tea 

hedges and flowers. 

Margaret went to a Siamese wedding with Kru Kim Juang, who was to become so important 

in Margaret's life. .LP meant "gold." Her parents' home was out in Tajing (SP?), which was about a 

mile from Trang. She was a Christian. Margaret once went out to call on her grandmother, who was 

a Buddhist. Kru Kim Juang had five children by that time, and was teaching school at the Christian 

girls' school there in Trang. Ultimately, she went on to have ten or eleven children altogether, and 

never stopped teaching. An amazing and lovely woman. The wedding they went to was a Buddhist 

wedding. They missed part of it because Kru Kim Juang could not get off from school. They drove 

in the Landon car down quite a pretty road with rice fields on either side and left the car in a temple 

yard with a youngster to watch it. They walked in through a lot of native houses to a new one made 

of wood with a tile roof. Most houses were made of bamboo. The ground was spongy with the old 

husks of rice that had been beaten out and thrown there. The house had two small rooms and a 

verandah. In the morning, the bridegroom had left his house with several of his friends, a brass band, 

one or two children, and one or two old people—all this carefully following the custom. 

Years later, Margaret came to know Lydia Na Ranong—who was born Lydia Tan and whose 

mother was a lady in waiting to the last Manchu Empress of China—and Lydia told her that she was 

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the little girl who rode in the sedan chair with the last emperor of China, Emperor Pu Yi, when he 

went to get his bride. 

Margaret isn't sure of the symbolism, but probably the very old represented those who had 

been married a long time, and the very young represented the future. 

The bridegroom had gone to the house of the bride where a foot-washing and head-anointing 

ceremony took place before he ascended the stairs to the house. After that, the bride with her 

attendants returned to his house with him where there was an open house celebration all day, and a 

feast for the groom's friends in the evening. The groom was dressed in a dark blue panung, the 

official color, and a white coat. The bride wore a green panung, a pink silk blouse, a green 

neckerchief, and some gold chains. The bridegroom hadn't had to pay much for her because he was 

quite desirable. He owned valuable property. He was twenty-one, the bride sixteen. 

Margaret commented that, while the Siamese customs were very different from the ones she 

was at home with, the Thai seemed very civilized to her. She felt that with the country people. They 

were very superstitious, but so were many Americans. It was difficult to win them to Christianity. 

The priests usually fought Christianity by telling the people that it ZDV a good religion but that after 

all it was no different from Buddhism, so why change? Both taught good works, clean lives, and so 

forth. 

2 

9:40 Margaret heard that the College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, had split. Adelle and Betty went 

over to the new Bible church, but after she learned what had happened, Margaret sympathized with 

the other side. What happened was that teachers from Moody Bible Institute had begun to move out 

into the Wheaton area and become part of the college faculty, and they were very divisive. College 

Church was Congregationalist. When Dr. Charles Blanchard died, he was followed as president of 

Wheaton College by Dr. James Oliver Buswell, who was very divisive also. And that soon did it. 

Things came to a head in the summer of 1929, apparently, and the church split. 

August 29, Kenneth wrote to his father speaking of two letters mailed July 15 and 21 that he 

had received from him in which Brad had said he had given up all hope for Mae. Aunt Maud had 

come to stay with Mae, day and night. Kenneth wrote assuming that his mother was now dead and 

had been dead for some time. 

In fact, Margaret tells us, that on July 27, 1929, the day Mae died, Kenneth knew it. Kenneth 

was away much of the time. He would come in for a week or so to recuperate, organize for the next 

tour, and then go off for another three weeks or a month. He was in at this time of July. Kenneth 

was the type of person who was always doing something. Adelle once said of Kenneth, rather 

reflectively, "There's really never any doubt, is there, when Kenneth's in the house." And it's true, 

she says, because he has always been "noisy." Not unpleasantly, but you simply knew it, and the 

house suddenly seemed very quiet when he wasn't there. So anyway, this day in Trang, July 27, 

Margaret saw Kenneth sitting on the mook, the porte-cochere. She can see in her mind the wicker 

chair in the corner where he was sitting. It faced north. He was sitting in the northwest corner in this 

big wicker chair, and he was absolutely quiet. He had been subject to periodic and violent intestinal 

upsets, and Margaret's first thought was that something was wrong. So she hurried out to ask him 

what was the matter. "And he just looked up to me and said, 'My mother just died.'" Just like that, as 

if he'd had a message. And he had. It was the first time she was aware that Kenneth had an 

extraordinary degree of extrasensory perception. 

Mae had indeed died that day, and probably at that exact hour. She had died in the night, and 

this was in the day in Trang, half way round the world. 

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3 

15:17 Kenneth was able to communicate with Ah Sim in Chinese now. 

Mrs. Bulkley was the daughter of divorced parents, an unusual thing in those days. She had 

been beautiful when young. But she was a difficult woman. She had come to Bangkok in about 1905 

or 1907. She was an imperious person. A magnificent horse woman. Edna Bruner (SP?) was her 

maiden name. She had no college education. All manner of young men, especially the British, in 

Bangkok were in love with her. But she was determined to marry Con Bulkley, who wasn't 

interested in her. His father was a surgeon in New York and was a wealthy man and socially 

prominent. Perhaps that is why she wanted to marry his son. It was an unhappy marriage, and after 

they had been married about forty years, and she had raised seven children with Dr. Bulkley, she 

divorced him and ended up living entirely alone in a house she had built. She died alone. One of her 

sons now lives in Seattle and is involved with scientology, [the pseudo-religion founded by L. Ron 

Hubbard]. 

Mrs. Bulkley would sit in the house with field glasses and try to keep an eye on what her 

husband was up to. 

Miss Christiansen was sent out by Dr. Bulkley's surgeon father to be there in time for the birth 

of the first Bulkley child in 1912. 

Mrs. Bulkley gave Margaret two good pieces of advice. One was that if you ever have a 

chance to get a really good Chinese servant, take her, whether you need a servant or not, because they 

are the best. 

Well, one day Tan Ngiap Seng brought his sister, Mali Tan—0DOL being the name "Mary." 

Her husband was called Ah Bat, and he was not bright. But she was. Her and Ngiap Seng's mother 

had been a Bible woman, and so Mali had been brought up in the church. Margaret hired her to care 

for the children. This was Ah Sim, of course. 

4 

21:34 Margaret and Kenneth discuss the origins of the name Siam. It went back centuries. When 

the Portuguese came into Sengora, their first contacts were with the Chinese. They asked what the 

country was, naturally, and who are the people, and the Chinese referred to them as VLDP OR or VLDP OR 

NDZ (SP?). The Chinese had always called them that, Margaret says. It went way back before the 

Portuguese, when Emperor Chiang Ho's (SP?) Chinese came down that way. The Portuguese took 

the name from that, and the country became Siam. 

One of the problems with Thai servants was that they would fill children with all sorts of 

superstitions, which they truly believed. Margaret remembers John Eakin, Jr., telling her that, when 

he lay in bed at night, he still could hear the spirits going through the top of the trees when the wind 

blew. He was an adult, and he knew it was foolishness, but this has been put into him as a child and 

he could not clear his mind entirely of it. The impression made on his mind as a child was too deep. 

Kenneth reports a memorable conversation with Peggy on this subject. He asked her as an adult if 

she remembered when she was a girl, speaking Thai, dressing like a little Thai girl, going in and out 

of the Thai school, and of course she did. And you believed in the spirits? Oh yes, she answered. 

And you knew the names of the spirits? Oh yes. She knew them. And do you still believe in the 

spirits? he asked. "Not in the daytime," she answered. This was at Scientists' Cliffs, when she was a 

young woman. She knew there were spirits around at night. 

Ngiap Seng brought his sister and said she was looking for work. She had probably come 

recently. She knew no Thai, and so she and Margaret had no language in common. This would have 

been early in the first year in Trang. Margaret remembered Mrs. Bulkley's advice. And Kenneth 

was already learning Chinese, which meant that he would soon be able to communicate with Mali. 

303


Furthermore, Mali was a Christian, indeed, a second-generation Christian, who wouldn't fill the 

children with superstitions. So Margaret took her on to be an amah, as a nurse for the children was 

called. 

It was from Thai children that the children got the superstitions, not Ah Sim. 

When Ah Sim first came, she was very noisy. Clatter, bang. This is very Chinese. Kenneth 

has a friend, Gene Hsiao, who always talks in a tremendous, booming voice. It took Margaret a long 

time to get Ah Sim quieted down. But she was bright, and she learned. In time, she also became the 

cook. She didn't know how to read, so she would memorize the market list and keep it in her head. 

Kenneth went out every evening and took the list and wrote it down. Theoretically, he was keeping 

track of the money she spent, and the theory was further that she wasn't taking any extra profits out of 

it. They found out later that she did very well by herself. But it didn't hurt the Landons at the time. 

Margaret asserts that she took very little. Kenneth says that she ended up owning three shops in the 

market. Margaret points out that both she and Ah Bat were working for them, and they lived "the 

most frugal of lives." 

Kenneth recalls a time when he went off on tour and didn't return for six weeks. When he did 

return, on the second or third day, Ah Sim came to him with a rather pained look on her face, and 

said, "Mok seu (SP?—she always called me 'Mok seu.' It means 'shepherd of the flock.' If you don't 

come and take this market list, I'm going to forget something." Kenneth wondered what she would 

make up. Ah Sim started day by day and went through the whole six weeks, right up to that day. 

And it balanced, to the last setang! It would be so many fruits, six setangs. So much pork. He asked 

her how she had remembered it all, and she said that at night, she would recite the list to herself 

before going to sleep. Obviously, a person of integrity. 

All the recipes Margaret taught her, she kept in her head. "She had the memory of an 

illiterate," Kenneth says. 

Margaret began to notice problems with the food, and she discovered that all of the servants 

were eating food out of the kitchen. The cook at that point was Yin Lung (SP?), and Margaret was 

convinced he was taking things home regularly to his family. Ah Sim and her adopted daughter and 

the cook, who were all Chinese, accused Ma Pawm, the one Siamese. Ma Pawm confessed that she 

had eaten some things and told Margaret what they were, and said she would not eat any more if 

Margaret didn't like it. A few days later, some fudge disappeared. The cook lied about this. Then 

much of a cake disappeared. Margaret caught Ah Sim and her daughter stealing fruit. 

Dr. Bulkley was back. He had found his wife almost dead, but she had made a quick 

recovery. She was in charge of the school, and Margaret had no authority. But Margaret had become 

aware that something was wrong at the school, though she didn't know what. 

5 

32:20 Margaret refers to the man Kenneth contracted to go to the seminary in Chiang Mai. It was 

in August, 1929. 

Margaret was having trouble with her eyes, and had to stop studying. 

Peggy was having trouble with an infection on her nose. She had a number of skin infections 

in Thailand. Dr. Bulkley dressed the infection several times; he regarded it as serious. 

Peggy liked to feed Bill and help bathe him. She loved to take things away from him and say, 

"No, no!" 

She had gotten to the stage where she liked to run away. She wanted to go down to the 

school, where she had many friends. One day she started off down the road before they missed her. 

She had put on a lavender rayon shirt of Margaret's over her rompers and set off for the school. 

Kenneth set off for Sengora for a month's work. 

304


Kenneth describes an experience with an unpleasant young woman at the gas station the day 

before, April, 1978. 

Of going to Thailand and her work there, Margaret says, "I was the person that had to go 

along in a life that I never would have chosen and do the best I could." Kenneth adds, "The story of 

our life!" 

Margaret tells how concerned she was about Peggy's infection. Practically all of the Thai 

children had worms. One of the first things the Landons were told when they went to Bangkok was 

never to touch their eyes. If they went out to the marketplace or anywhere at all, they would wash 

their hands as soon as they came home. Trachoma was everywhere, and ringworm was all over too. 

Peggy wanted to play with the Thai children, and Margaret had decided not to do what some of the 

missionaries did, that is, to keep their children apart from the Thai. That would be more damaging 

than most of the diseases. But of course, Peggy's playing with the children made for concern over 

what she might pick up. 

Margaret's films were stolen on the way to Bangkok, probably by a guard on the train. She 

now began to register films. 

A tiger killed a man at Chong. 

Margaret got word that Adelle was moving. So by that time, she had lost her house. 

Kenneth reads from his letter to Adelle of August 17, 1929. "Dearest Mother Too-Too." She 

had sent him some songbooks, and he had been playing the tunes on his saxophone. He had a tenor 

banjo on order, and looked forward to playing the songs on that too. "I am in the dusty room of a 

grimy, bed-bug-ridden Chinese hotel whose outstanding characteristics are floors covered with 

cigarettes and rooms full of women looking for a chance to practice their art of lovemaking. Oh yes, 

and this is Sengora, or Songkhla." He intended to work there for a month or so, and intended to visit 

every home and leave a Gospel in every home. It was there that the Chinese expressed their 

astonishment at Kenneth's Chinese and insisted that he must either be part Chinese or have lived in 

China a long time to speak the language so rapidly. "It seems remarkable to me the way the Lord has 

given me this language after scarcely three months of hard study. I still surprise myself when I start 

to speak in it." His new ability opened up a field of hundreds of thousands of Chinese which had 

scarcely been touched. "So we praise the Spirit who helps in these things, don't we?" 

Kenneth went on to write about the Lord Lieutenant of all south Siam, who was a most 

unusually brilliant man. He was particularly unusual in that he had worked himself up through the 

ranks to his high position. He had also had but one wife, at least, officially. His wife died, and as 

Kenneth felt he knew him, Kenneth wrote him and suggested the Landons' Christian hope to him. He 

wrote back and said that, when Kenneth came to Songkhla, he should visit him. So Kenneth went 

and spent two hours with the Lord Lieutenant in his palace, telling him about Christ and his message. 

The Lord Lieutenant was very interested, but listened as "a rationalist." 

Kenneth had received a letter from a missionary in Bangkok criticizing him for using 

government channels to carry out his evangelistic work. Kenneth presented the matter to the Lord 

Lieutenant, and he said that he approved of Kenneth's work and of his methods. It helped make 

better citizens. He hoped the work would continue. 

6 

42:19 Margaret reads excerpts from a lost letter of Kenneth's concerning a meeting the Lord 

Lieutenant held with about three hundred priests and six hundred commoners at which he talked 

about Kenneth. "I was his text, his example, and his conclusion. My work is his envy for the 

priesthood. He says they can and must do it. He quoted me as saying that they couldn't for they lack 

the power of the Holy Spirit and are like a locomotive without steam. He admits I have the power 

305


and says that they can acquire it too from moral teaching. As proof, he is leaving his exalted position 

here in a few months for one year to be a priest and demonstrate how it must be done. He claims he 

has studied me in detail and is left only with admiration. The things he pointed out were, one, no fear 

about losing face, that most important of all things in the East. Two, street preaching. Three, house 

visiting. Four, simple, almost self-denying habits. Neither smoking nor drinking. Five, not proud, 

but willing to pack a load of books on my back all day through the heat. Six, meeting high and low 

with the same respect. Seven, never angry when jeered by a mob, but with a cool heart and always a 

smile. Eight, always followed by a gang of kids who proclaimed my coming noisily, knocked on 

doors, and called out to the housewives and explained my business before I said a word. The abovereported 

meeting was given me by lawyer Chuan (SP?) who wrote it all down and came to tell me. I 

was amazed for I never realized that I had been under such close inspection." 

Kenneth reads a letter from September concerning his mother's death and burial. He had 

received a letter from Brad including clippings from the death and burial. "I suppose she is there 

with Bradley now in Greendale Cemetery." Passages were read at the funeral from Mae's Bible. 

Kenneth believes that Bible went to Peggy. He also gave Peggy his mother's ring. Kenneth wrote of 

the Rev. McIlvaine (SP?) who had now presided at both Bradley's and Mae's funerals, and who 

pastored the Presbyterian church which helped to support Kenneth and his family in Thailand. 

Peggy celebrated her second birthday. Margaret had a party, and about forty children from 

the school came. Many games were played out on the lawn. Peggy was the center of attention, "and 

she was feeling her years," wrote Kenneth. "Bill was excited, stood on his toes, and crowed most of 

the time. What a buster he is." 

"As far as your falling into need while your son is living, it seems a rather impossible thing. 

You can always depend on me when you have need, and you know that, Dad." 

Kenneth now had his banjo and was taking that around with him. 

A woman named Frieda had come to live with Dad's father. 

Margaret tells of the two little girls who walked four miles to come to Peggy's party. Kru 

Flora managed the games. Peggy thought it was all so much fun that she wanted to go home with the 

other children when they left. 

7 

50:08 Kru Chin Da (SP?) taught Margaret something about fine Siamese cooking by preparing a 

special dinner for her on her twenty-sixth birthday. She had been a Christian, but then had married a 

highly placed Thai official. She then more or less abandoned her Christian faith. But she had a 

loveliness in her. She was a cultivated Thai and knew many things that only the upper class Thai 

knew. The food for the upper class and for the palace was incredibly intricate, as intricate as the 

finest French cooking. Kru Chin Da decided that Margaret should have this kind of meal for her 

birthday. She and the teachers worked on it literally all day. Everything was carved. Each platter 

was exquisite to look at. Margaret hoped to learn how to make a few things. There was a cake made 

with coconut milk, eggs, and a little flower. Delicious. 

Margaret's language teacher gave her a basket for flowers made of a conch shell. Kru Flora 

gave her a rice spoon of the same material. Dr. Bulkley brought her a Burmese gong. Another 

teacher brought her an aerial view of Wattana Wittiah Academy, and two others a small set of doilies. 

Someone had to go to Madras to meet a group of children coming home from India, and 

Margaret was given this task. She was very excited. She would go in late October, spending a few 

days in Pinang, then boarding a ship for Madras. 

Margaret had made a dress for Elizabeth, which she sewed by hand. She was also making 

three dresses for herself. She had no sewing machine. 

306


"Trang is perhaps the most delightful place in all Siam for climate," Margaret wrote. "Just 

now we are having a good deal of rain. It is so cool at night that we always use blankets, and during 

the day the heat is seldom excessive. The hot months are March, April, and May, if any, but this year 

there were only a few weeks of hot weather. In Nakhon and Bangkok, we noticed the heat, or I did, 

but here I am not bothered by it at all." There was no electricity in Trang, so they had to use oil 

lamps. Excellent lamps with green shades, which had been made at the beginning of the century. 

Margaret goes on to discuss some of the foods they ate, most of them very inexpensive. The 

bananas they used in baking were grown on the compound, about half the size of bananas in the 

States, and not very good eaten out of hand. They were supposed to be rich in certain vitamins. They 

were good for children. Many mothers who couldn't breastfeed their children raised them on this 

banana, which was called a gui nam wa (SP?). Kenneth said it was a fabulous banana. The mothers 

would take a bite of the banana, chew it up into a mush, and then spit it into the mouth of the baby. 

Margaret was very interested in the banana trees. Where an old tree was, several new shoots 

sprang up around it to replace it. Bananas grown from seed were very slow indeed. The stem of the 

tree was woody and in section, cut across, looked like an onion. The leaves came out of the top, one 

at a time, great long spirals that unfolded and then drooped. After the tree had grown and put out a 

good many leaves, a stem appeared with a huge deep rose bud, very fat, and all and all as big as the 

upper arm of a reasonably stout woman. It was made up of closed petals which, one by one, dropped 

off. Under each was a bunch of tiny, tiny bananas. The bananas grew to maturity, and when they 

were harvested, the tree was cut down. It was of no further use. In the meantime, there were almost 

always a number of new shoots growing around it, ready to take its place. The tree itself would be 

sliced up, pounded into a mush with a mortar and pestle, and fed to the pigs. The bananas were cut 

green and allowed to ripen in the house. Sometimes, if this were not done, the bananas would split. 

The banana leaves were the universal wrapping paper of the East. Some kinds of cakes were actually 

made in banana leaves, wrapped into them and secured with a twig as a pin and then steamed. 

Margaret was fairly tanned, but she didn't know how much because she had no one to 

compare with. The idea was to be as white as possible. Among the Thai, the more light-skinned 

people were admired. 

307


HOUR 51 


1 

0:00 (VIIIB635) When Ma Pawm first came to the Landons, she was poorly dressed and had short 

hair like a boy, which was the old style in Siam. But Margaret had taught her to read a little, and she 

had grown her hair, and had some nice clothes now. Ah Sim was learning too. At one point, 

Margaret had thought of firing her, but she was not so rude now. She did the washing, and there were 

loads of it. 

Kenneth suddenly breaks into Chinese, then translates what he would say to Ah Sim, "You're 

makin' too much of a noise! You talk too much! Shut up!" "Oh, oh, Mok seu, mok seu!" she would 

say. She was very fond of Kenneth, Margaret says. Then, when Carol came along, she just fell in 

love with her. She called her Ah Bi. $K was the honorific, and %L was her word for "baby." If Bill 

did anything to Ah Bi, Wow! Ah Sim was there! Carol quickly learned to make use of this. 

Margaret was without Kenneth much of the time, because he was on tour so much of the time. 

He was determined to get the Gospel to every household on the peninsula, and he was busy about it, 

devising every technique he could, including using Buddhist officials to distribute his materials. 


2 

3:28 Back to 1927 for a minute. Kenneth remembers his first sermon in his home church in 

Meadville, Pennsylvania. The preacher was Dr. McIlvaine, who buried Kenneth's brother and later 

on his mother, "and then I'm sure would have been willing to bury my father many times, but by that 

time my father had left that church. . . ." At any rate, the Meadville Presbyterian Church was a very 

large church, and the Landon pew was always the third one from the front. The pew had a grease line 

along the back of it where Kenneth's head had been for many, many years. Everyone in that church 

was certainly familiar with Kenneth. So when he was to preach his sermon, the church was full. His 

father was up on the platform to begin with, though when the time came for the sermon, he went 

down into the audience. And as he sat there on the platform with his Dad, Kenneth was told by 

someone later on that Brad was exceedingly nervous—while Kenneth sat quite calmly. The contrast 

between them was very obvious. Kenneth had had an unusual preparation for preaching because of 

the Gull Lake Bible conferences, where he had listened to the finest expository preaching in the U.S. 

Kenneth himself always engaged in expository preaching. He would have his sermon thoroughly in 

mind, and he would have his Scripture memorized. 

So the time came, and he read his Scripture and discussed it as he went. And preached his 

sermon. At the conclusion, Dr. McIlvaine stepped up the pulpit and stood there bemused for several 

moments, then said, "I was certainly surprised and astonished at this precocious sermon. It was a 

sermon worthy of a man who has been in the ministry twenty-five years or more." 

Margaret and Kenneth speak of the preaching contest at Princeton when Kenneth was not 

told. 

3 

7:30 There was in Trang a police lieutenant Kenneth was aware of who turned out to be a great 

308


surprise. He was a slender man, extremely polite, rather inconspicuous, certainly not bold or 

aggressive. Then one day, as Kenneth was playing tennis, he saw this young man come by, 

barefooted, wearing a pair of black pajama pants, Chinese pants, with a big belt around his middle, a 

revolver in the belt, "and a cane in his hand around the neck of a man in front of him who was 

manacled." He was walking the man down the street. The man in manacles was a large, burly man 

who was known as a nok leng seu (SP?), a "tiger bandit," who had the whole countryside terrified. 

All the tennis matches stopped as these two figures walked by, and there were cries from the officials 

there. The governor was there, the chief justice, and various others. Some of them were jocular, but 

all of them expressed great admiration for this police lieutenant. Kenneth was amazed at the entire 

scene and asked around about it. What he found was that the young policeman had decided that this 

dangerous bandit needed to be taken, and rather than get a big bunch of police together and try to 

surround him and capture him, which would mean a gunfight, with lives lost, he would dress as a 

peasant and go out and hang around the countryside, hither and yon, in inconspicuous fashion, with 

no police uniform to draw notice, until he found out what village the guy lived in and what house in 

the village he slept in. The people in the village were supporters of the bandit, of course. But one 

night, the policeman went in with a knife in one hand and his gun in the other, with his handcuffs at 

the ready, sneaked into the man's house, came down on his chest with his knife right up under the 

man's chin, and woke him up. He put the cuffs on him. And he said, "One word out of you, and 

you're dead." Here he was, all alone with this bandit, surrounded by people in the village who would 

overwhelm if they were awakened. He chained the bandit, put his gun in his back, and walked him 

out of his house and out of the village in the dead of the night. Not a peep out of anybody. 

This man became famous throughout the province. He made no show of his courage, but was 

absolutely fearless. He cleaned up the bandits around there in a hurry. 

This was the same man that Kenneth competed with for the tennis championship of Trang 

province. Kenneth had him all the way to the third set, set point. Then he suddenly realized in that 

last game that the crowd had become silent, and he sensed an air of great antagonism to him. If he 

had won, this foreigner, defeating their hero—well, it would have hurt his work. What to do? So the 

next time the policeman ripped a ball over the net, Kenneth just casually knocked it into the net. 

Which brought the game back to deuce. And on the following point, he did the same. And on the 

next. Each time into the net. The crowd quickly realized what he was doing, that he could have won, 

but that he didn't choose to. Kenneth played out the rest of the set the same way. When he served, he 

served double faults. Margaret explains that what he was doing was totally Thai, and they 

understood it. It was the most contemptuous thing he could possibly do, what they called bra chot 

(SP?). He was saying to the people in effect, I understand your point of view exactly. Now you can 

understand mine. I have a great contempt for what you stand for, but I won't say a word, and you 

won't have a thing you can say when I am done. They were absolutely silent. Thus he saved his 

position as a farang in the area. He said to them, in effect, If it means so much to you, go ahead. It 

doesn't mean that much to me. 

In a system like theirs, where protocol was so important, where things were pondered, what 

did this mean, what did that mean, everyone learned to be wary. They were still in their thinking 

feudal. One of the things one had to learn was how to cope in a society of that sort. 

Margaret says that Kenneth brought that technique of expressing contempt with him from 

Siam. He used it with the girl at the filling station recently, and with the man whose dog defecated 

on the sidewalk. 

Margaret speaks of the Woodpussies of the World meeting which is upcoming. Kenneth 

corrects her; it is to be a "convention." Margaret explains that the woodpussies of the world are 

"stinkers, but in a nice way." [Needless to say, this was not a real organization. The Landons 

309


had friends in the Literary Society, William and Margaret Atwood, I believe their names were, 

and the wife had an eccentric sense of humor. It was she who invented the "Woodpussies," 

whose august company included her, her husband, the Landons, and perhaps a few other 

personal friends.] 

Kenneth recently went to have his car inspected here in D.C. and had to sit in line for an hour, 

waiting to be inspected. There was only one lane. When he finally got to the inspector, the 

inspection was perfunctory. The car passed and was waiting for another man to change the sticker on 

the windshield. The man at the booth had his back turned, ignoring Kenneth, trying to insult him, but 

Kenneth just pulled out a book and started reading. He was perfectly content to sit there in silence 

indefinitely. It was the same technique of bra chot that he had used in the Trang tennis 

championship. Meanwhile, other cars were coming through inspection behind him. Finally, the man 

was forced to spring into action, and did so with great anger. Kenneth had put him down without 

saying a word. 

4 

20:41 Margaret received a cable in late September from Evangeline, signed, "Love, Evangeline 

Welsh." In that way, Evangeline told Margaret and Kenneth that she had married Evan Welsh. 

Margaret describes a dress she sewed in white voile, her first unqualified success. Even 

Kenneth liked it. 

It was the rainy season. Both Peggy and Bill had colds. 

Margaret said she had never been interested in plants and things, but the house looked so 

barren without them that she was getting into gardening, an interest she would have the rest of her 

life. She was afraid to plant her nasturtiums, and she was right; they didn't work. 

Kenneth left for a two-month tour. 

October 29, Margaret wrote to Kenneth, one of her few letters to him that survived. She had 

received a letter from him that she knew had been opened and read. She tells us that she always 

sealed letters in Siam using wax and a seal. She still has some of the wax. Margaret wrote that a Mr. 

O'Brandon, of John Sampson and Company of Bangkok, had come to Trang. That was a big and 

important company. "Court, naval, military, and civil tailors, complete outfitters, decorative 

designers and house furnishers, general importers, commissioners, and insurance agents." He was 

visiting Dr. Bulkley on Sunday, and they were all invited to tea. Dr. Bulkley tried to make Margaret 

appear a "brute" in the whole affair. He wanted her to send Ah Sim to help at his place and get along 

without her while she herself had company (Miss Christiansen was visiting her at the time). This 

involved someone named Chen Leung (SP?), a woman with children who was ill at the time, whom 

Dr. Bulkley wanted Ah Sim to care for. The Landons are vague on the details themselves and try to 

sort them out. 

Margaret asked Kenneth to ask about Ma Pawm—the servant Margaret had brought from 

Nakhon—to see if she had visited there. Recently, she had supposedly gone to Nakhon for a visit. 

But a card had come from Nakhon for her which suggested to Margaret that her people there had not 

seen her. She had apparently gone somewhere else. 

Miss Christiansen said that the hospital in Petchaburi was being closed, leaving Ma Wan 

(SP?) without a job. If Petchaburi would release Charlie Hak, Dr. McDaniel might get Ma Wan. 

Hak was faithful but rather dumb. He was the child of a Dutch merchant of some sort and a Thai 

woman, and he spent time at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Ma Wan was a highly educated 

woman, a graduate of the Yale School of Nursing, an R.N., and she was a Parsee. Socially and 

intellectually, she was way above Charlie. But there weren't many people for her to marry. She 

would like to have married Prince Songkhla, who helped to support her. He was the heir to the 

310


throne, and was interested in her. She came back to Siam and worked in the mission hospital at 

Petchaburi. She and Charlie ultimately came to Trang and lived on the compound with the Landons, 

and Charlie became pastor of the church. Ma Wan was a very superior person, Margaret says. She 

told Margaret that while she was working at Petchaburi with Dr. Metagarde (SP?), a stubborn, 

difficult man who disapproved of Miss Christiansen and her ideas on midwifery, she—Ma Wan—had 

seen cures by herb doctors for two diseases considered incurable in the U.S. She had seen them with 

her own eyes; there was absolutely no question of it. One of them had something to do with the liver. 

Margaret isn't sure. Ma Wan tried to persuade the Danish doctor to attempt to find out what the herbs 

were and how they worked, but she couldn't budge him. He would have had to pay for it, because 

medicine was proprietary. This kind of formula was handed down in a family and would not be 

given out to anyone. Ma Wan couldn't move Dr. Metagarde at all, and so those potential cures were 

lost to science. He had no interest. Margaret met him later. He treated Peggy for boils, and was very 

kind to her. But he was a person "who had blank walls in him. No way through." 

5 

34:36 Margaret tells us that King Mongkut asserted that the Bible supported reincarnation, and in 

this connection quoted the verse from John 9:3 in which Jesus asked who sinned that a certain man 

was born blind, the man or his parents. And Jesus answered that neither the man nor his parents were 

responsible. On this basis, King Mongkut argued that obviously the person responsible was the man 

himself in a previous incarnation! 

We continue talking about the strange ideas and beliefs people have, on the one hand, and the 

way others are impenetrable to logic. Margaret tells of her father, who was of the impenetrable sort, 

and of how Adelle, who often had good ideas, learned to raise her ideas, present them, have them 

rejected, as they virtually always were, then drop them and wait. A few weeks or months later, A.D. 

would suddenly come forth with her idea, but as his own, having forgotten that it came from her. 

Margaret saw this again and again. He wasn't mean. He really thought he had come up with this 

wonderful idea. 

Margaret and Kenneth talk about two young men that Kenneth helped to get their education in 

mission schools—helped them get scholarships. The Landons also sent them money every month. 

Both of them turned out to be fine people. A Mr. William Harris provided the scholarships, the 

headmaster of Prince Royals College, a preparatory academy on the high school level. He wrote the 

Landons that they were two of the finest young men he'd ever had. Boon Pha was the one from 

Nakhon, and he is head of the school there to this day. He has given a lifetime of service. [It was 

Boon Pha who recently sent Kenneth the two shadow pictures made of leather in Phatthalung.] 

Nai Nuang (SP?) decided not to go to work for the mission, and Kenneth accepted that. He didn't 

have the personality for it. But he was a solid citizen. When a bank was organized in Trang, after the 

Landons' day, he worked there, and was active in the church. He married Kim Juang's niece. Five 

years before this taping, he sent the Landons some pictures of Trang as it is now. His two sons were 

both educated as architects in the U.S. He took them to the airport about three years ago, sending 

them off to the U.S., returned home, and dropped dead. No warning. 

6 

42:56 Kenneth wrote Adelle from his tour. He was on the eastern coast, at Pak Binang (SP?; Ban 

Pak Phanang?), halfway between Singapore and Bangkok. The town he was in was a city on stilts, 

standing in water up to its knees. They had but one street, and that was a river a couple of hundred 

yards across. The houses were as close together as they could be. One could almost jump from 

house to house. Kenneth said he had walked about a mile the day before with a pack of books, 

311


hopping from house to house. Never got a ducking once. The first day he was in the market, he was 

fairly mobbed by people swarming in from the jungle. Then they all went home to make cakes for 

the priests, and the next day they closed their houses and all went up the river on boats, from grandma 

to the baby, to make merit. They had boat races, got drunk, traded wives and husbands around and 

felt great doing it, Kenneth wrote. The celebration was the end of Lent, the Landons say. They had a 

long Lent in the wet season. This Lent had nothing to do with our Lent. It was in the rainy season 

when priests couldn't travel. They "hibernated," and everything closed down until the end of the 

rainy season in October, and then everyone came out to have a big celebration. No religious 

celebration amounted to anything if they didn't drink a lot. So, as Kenneth was writing his letter, he 

was sitting in a deserted village waiting for everyone to come home. The people had made special 

and beautiful boats and floats for the celebration. Kenneth found the Siamese women comical, for 

they would all dress up alike imitating the white women's dresses. The boats were very colorful, and 

so were the dresses. 

"Another scene I saw yesterday that is unusual in the market: a sidestream about fifty feet 

across simply jammed solid with small boats full of vegetables, oranges, and so forth. One could 

walk across at any point and need hardly watch his step." 

Kenneth estimated that he had given out almost 100,000 Gospels to people up and down the 

east coast of the peninsula. He was looking forward to covering the entire area and then going 

through the same process with the west coast, on the Trang side, which he felt would be easier. It 

was less developed. 

Kenneth's good friend Captain Peterson of the S.S. Valaya—the coastal steamer that Kenneth 

had encountered on his trip to the island of Samui—came by Nakhon while Kenneth was there. But 

he was unable to visit with him. Peterson was Danish, and his ship belonged to the Danish East 

Asiatic Company, which was very active in the East. 

Margaret had gone on her trip to Madras to pick up some Siamese school children for their 

parents, and expected to be gone for about a month while Kenneth was on his tour. [Apparently, 

Peggy and Bill were sent to stay in Bangkok.] 

Kenneth explains that the southwest monsoon came to an end in October, and then the 

northeast monsoon came on a couple of months later. The wind blew from the southwest up from the 

Arctic and across the Indian Ocean, picking up moisture. And then, along about May, coming into 

June, those winds would begin hitting the cold areas up in the Himalayas, and they would begin 

dumping their water. The greatest precipitation would be in eastern Pakistan, now called Bangladesh, 

and in Burma, and to a lesser extent the peninsula of Thailand. Then the winds would change. The 

northeast winds were called the Tradewinds because they weren't as strong and didn't carry as much 

water, coming down across Asia. They had dumped most of their water further north. They would 

hit North Vietnam, giving most of their water up there, making it possible for North Vietnam to have 

a two-crop year. Even a three-crop year. The only other place that got that was Java, which has a 

three-crop year to this day. 

Kenneth says that this was what made it possible for him to get the miraculous picture he once 

took, which was published in The National Geographic of rice cultivation in all its stages. It 

showed the seedbeds, the transplanting, the growth of the rice, the dry field, and the men and women 

trotting off with the harvested rice on their shoulders—all in one picture! The Geographic gave a 

two-page spread to this picture. They bought the picture for $350. 

Margaret describes the monsoon rains, how "unbelievable" they were. We get nothing like 

them except in an occasional torrential cloudburst. She used to walk a lot with Kru Kim Juang, when 

she was put in charge of the girls' school in Trang. She felt it was important to keep in touch with the 

parents, many of whom were not educated themselves. So Kru Kim Juang, who had been born in that 

312


community and had taught for years in a temple school there though she was a Christian, would go 

with Margaret. She was truly "of" the town, and knew its patois. They worked out a plan where, if a 

child was missing from school more than two days, the two of them would go out and call. It was 

good public relations. But it meant that they did a lot of walking. Margaret can remember so many 

times, as they started home, perhaps, that they would begin hearing this incredible sound, "like a 

thousand galloping horses. There's no sound like it. You never hear it here." Kenneth says, "It 

sounds like an army marching through the treetops. It's awe-inspiring. And if you're in the jungle, as 

I often was when this thing would begin, it would just sound like a host of demons coming down to 

grab you by the neck. And when it hit, you were dry one moment, and you were soaked the next. I 

mean, there was no in between." You could have an umbrella up, and it made no difference. "I've 

had the experience of walking across a river ankle deep in the morning and swimming back just a few 

hours later." The amount of water that fell was tremendous. The roofs of the houses had to be made 

with a tremendous pitch to carry it off. 

Kenneth wrote that he had just been up at a tin mine which was impossible to reach much of 

the year. There were about 500 Siamese and Chinese there, and eleven white men. They were shy of 

him at first, but after they had talked a few hours on the subject of dredging, and he had helped 

"rebabbitt a bearing on the L tumbler," they accepted him. They were quite astonished to think that a 

young American could come in and rebabbitt a bearing. He had a talk with each man there about 

Christ. "Their main trouble is the usual native women." He said good-by and prepared to leave, but 

the truck broke down, and he couldn't go. So he wondered who he had forgotten or missed. He 

strolled around and met a young man of twenty-one from South Africa on a dredge, "and he opened 

up his heart to me for several hours. He certainly needed a father to help him." 

"You should hear me chatter Siamese and Chinese now. It does tickle the Chinese heart." 

Margaret speaks of the nicknames they used for Evangeline, teasing her. They called her Eve, 

Vangie, Wangie, and even Hetty—for Hetty Green. Margaret then tells us about Hetty Green! Hetty 

Green was a very famous woman, one of the wealthiest in the U.S., but very stingy. Her stinginess 

was legendary, and there were many stories about her. Margaret now tells us one of those stories. 

Hetty Green had to go someplace in a hurry and chartered a train, but then decided it would be 

cheaper to ride with the engineer in the engine than to have a car added. Evangeline was always very 

careful with her money, and so she always had some when the others had run out of theirs. So they 

called her Hetty. "Well, that's that one," Margaret says. 

Evangeline's death at the end of 1941 was a terrible shock to Adelle. She was riding in the car 

when it crashed, and at first they thought it was she who had died. They had to get a blowtorch to 

extricate her. She became a different person after that. 

313


HOUR 52 


1 

0:00 (VIIIB1140) Margaret continues on the auto accident in which Evangeline died in late 1941. 

She died immediately, there on the road. The shock was terrible for Adelle. She felt that she should 

have been the one to die. 

Margaret talks about how hospitable Adelle was. Her letters were filled with the people she 

had invited over for dinner, or after church. She would see some "lost soul" and would take this one 

in and that one in. 

Margaret reads from a letter she wrote Evangeline October 21, 1929, in Pinang from the 

Anglo-Chinese Girls' School there. She wrote "Pinang, Siam," which she now regards as ridiculous, 

because Pinang was "straight settlement" [explained below; it was part of Malaya]. She was on 

her trip to India. The Bulkleys had driven her by car to Kantang, where she had taken a ship to 

Pinang. Margaret had made elaborate preparations for the trip. She kept the books for the school as 

well as for her own household, and she had brought these up to date. She had made herself some 

smock dresses. She did have an old sewing machine that had been lent her, but most of the time it 

didn't work. So she sewed by hand. Miss Christiansen had taken Peggy and Bill with her to 

Bangkok, along with two new students. 

Margaret wrote of how little she saw of Kenneth now, with his constant touring away from 

home, and of how lost she had felt at first. But then she had decided this wouldn't do and had found 

lots of new interests to fill up the time. For one thing, she was developing an interest in gardening. 

Then, she had her studying, and she was gradually developing some Siamese friends. This was slow 

work because the Siamese were so cautious about relationships. "Better to watch," they would say. 

"Know the heart first." 

Kenneth and Margaret break into Thai for a moment. 

Kenneth wrote his father concerning a gift he was sending him, a little, engraved pendant for 

his watch chain with the words engraved, Won Chai (SP?), which meant "Victory Day." It was 

made of niello ware. Two days before he had walked twenty-two miles through the jungle, half of it 

in water from ankle to waist deep. His Chinese evangelist had collapsed in exhaustion that night and 

had been in bed ever since. But Kenneth felt fine. The evangelist was a heavyset man. 

Margaret sailed on a little British steamer, the only passenger. They had a little dining room, 

where two meals were served a day, breakfast and dinner. There were two British officers, beside the 

captain. There was and is a lot of anti-American feeling among the British. These two men were not 

unkind, but they enjoyed teasing Margaret. One of them was from Yorkshire, and Margaret literally 

could not understand what the man was saying. The other was from another shire, possibly 

Lincolnshire, and she could not understand him either. Margaret later learned from a British friend 

that these were two of the most difficult dialects and that most British couldn't understand them 

either. The two men had a lot of fun talking away at each other and seeming to involve Margaret in 

the conversation, knowing full well she wasn't getting a word. 

2 

10:19 Kenneth wrote from a town called Ron Phiboon (SP?) November 13. 5RQ meant "hot," and 

SKLERRQ Kenneth is not sure, perhaps "merit." There were three mines in the area. One was 

314


hydraulic engineering and the other was steam, which was like a boat, floating around on its own 

lake, carrying its own water with it. He stayed with them. 

He acquired a new friend, a little Japanese named "Suzy"—Sootsee (SP?) being the Japanese 

name. Suzy was a little puppy, and it was a "he." He was given to Kenneth by a Japanese in 

Nakhon, and Kenneth wanted to give him to the children at Christmas. He was very cute, very 

friendly, not yet three months old. He would only eat meat. Kenneth couldn't get any rice down him. 

Margaret says he was a spaniel of some kind. He looked like a little lion, and everyone was scared to 

death of him. He was a tiny thing, but "I want to tell you, people were very leery of that dog." 

Peggy was terrified of Suzy. He would chase her, and she would run madly and climb up on a 

chair. One day she was so terrified that instead of running away from the dog, she ran DW it. Suzy got 

the point right away and took off in the other direction. And from that time on, they were friends. 

Peggy lost her fear. 

December 1, Kenneth writes from Nong Khae, where he has gone with Margaret after what 

was supposed to be her trip to India. [It had not come off. Why has not yet been made clear.] 

"Margaret won't take walks along the beach, but gets her exercise with the washboard or scrubbing 

the floor. Yesterday I had a ten-mile walk to a nearby mountain, then climbed along its shoreline 

over great rocks that looked like old lava to me." 

Margaret returns to October, when she set off from Trang to Pinang for the trip to India. She 

stayed in the Anglo-Chinese Girls' School in Pinang. There were three delightful women there. She 

remembers the names of Miss Johnson and Miss Lois Ray (SP?), but not of the headmistress, a lovely 

woman. 

Then she digresses to say that Malaya was divided into three different administrative 

divisions, "straight settlements," the federated states, and the unfederated states. The "straight 

settlements" were just Singapore, Malacca, and Pinang, which were ruled by a British governor. The 

states made up the body of the peninsula, the federated, which had a British governor, and the 

unfederated, which had sultans. 

Margaret wrote November 12 that Peggy had cut off a lock of her hair when Miss 

Christiansen was visiting, back in October. Peggy was so fond of Miss Christiansen that she had 

shown off, bringing all her treasures to show "and cavorting around at a great rate." She was two. 

Kru Tardt had sent her a little red umbrella for her birthday, and she looked very cute with it. 

Billy had started to talk. He said "pudding" as clear as a bell. He would repeat words 

Margaret said. 

Bill had a gift for languages. By the time the Landons left Siam in 1931, when he was not yet 

three, he was using three languages very correctly for the amount of vocabulary he had, English, 

Thai, and Chinese. And the most remarkable thing was that he was using the pronouns correctly in 

all three languages. 

After the children left with Miss Christiansen, Margaret left on her trip, travelling to Pinang. 

The plan was to get a ship from Pinang to Colombo, on the island off the coast of India known as 

Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]. Then she would take the train up to Kodacanal (SP?) where the children were 

in school. That school is still operating today. Indeed, Ed McDaniel's son is teaching there now. 

The plan was then to go farther north to Madras and take a ship back to Pinang, and then take the 

train up to Bangkok. The Bulkley children would have been dropped off at Phatthalung, and the rest 

would have gone with Margaret to Bangkok. Unfortunately, Margaret couldn't get a ship to Colombo 

that was within her means, so she decided to go straight to Madras and back on the same ship, and 

telegraph the school to take the children to Madras. But before Margaret could get shipping, she 

came down with dengue fever. Breakbone fever. The doctor said that she couldn't go, and one of the 

Methodist ladies, Miss Lois Ray, went in her place. That was the end of Margaret's trip, a great 

315


disappointment. 

When she was better, some of the women invited her to go down to Taiping with them in 

Perak, Malaya. One of them invited her to go up on the mountain with her for a few days, and there 

she had a true vacation. Margaret is usually good with names, but she cannot recall this woman's. 

Malaya had wonderful roads. It was like riding along in Michigan again. The roads in Siam were 

very poor, and there were areas that had no roads cars could use. The Methodist mission had a 

cottage on top of the little mountain, where Margaret wrote home November 13. They walked the 

nine miles up the mountain, 4000 feet up, a walk that took about five hours. It was cold. The 

government had experimental gardens a little below them, and there they bought fresh vegetables 

every day—lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, corn, lima beans, radishes. The Landons could eat none of 

these things in Siam, and Margaret reveled in them. Servants were furnished with the cottage, so 

Margaret and her friend had nothing to do but walk and rest and read and write. They had a glorious 

view of the mountains and valleys from the cottage, though it did rain at times so that the mist and 

rain blotted out the view. 

A man carried their luggage up the mountain when they came, and carried it down again—for 

75 cents. They were taking some flowers back with them, and Margaret was looking forward to 

seeing how they would look in her garden. Daniel, the Tamil cook and caretaker, gave them some of 

the flowers. Others they bought at the market. Daniel was tall and very black and most stately in his 

white turban. He was a splendid cook, but a bit of a thief. He was gracious about it, but he managed 

to collect milk and kerosene and other things for his own use "at a great rate." 

"I still remember the joy of that beautiful, beautiful place." The British, wherever they went, 

set up these marvellous hill stations. They were so reasonable, a few dollars a day. Then they would 

always set up botanical gardens where they would grow beautiful plants, which they would sell you. 

She bought her royal palms and traveller's palm from the gardens in Pinang. The name of the hill 

station where Margaret stayed was Maxwell Hill. 

Perak used to be under Siam, and Thai was widely spoken. Even today many of the officials 

still speak Thai. 

3 

23:33 Kenneth speaks of the nurse Margaret vacationed with, believing she is the woman he had a 

peculiar adventure with many years later going up to Michigan. The Landons associated with the 

Methodist missionaries, and indeed, Kenneth spent quite a while "down there" after his appendix 

operation during his second term [1932-1937]. One night, when they had returned to the U.S. and 

were living in the Chicago area, Kenneth was going to speak in a church. He was going up the 

Interurban line, and he had to come back late at night. He was on the way back, at about 11:00 p.m., 

reached an exchange point, and discovered he had just missed the train. He would have to wait a 

couple of hours for the next train to Chicago. The only other person hanging around the station, 

waiting for the train, was a nice-looking, middle-aged woman, a little older than he. There was a 

coffee bar there. He was walking around. Being the friendly type, he walked over, said hello, and 

invited her to have a cup of coffee and talk. She said yes, that would be nice, and so they sat down 

and had a cup of coffee. Kenneth told her what he was doing out that night, and she replied that she 

had been doing the same thing, speaking in a church. She had been speaking in a Methodist church. 

He then told her that he had been a Presbyterian missionary in Siam and had known a lot of 

Methodist missionaries while there. She replied that she had been a Methodist missionary in Malaya. 

Then Kenneth looked at her, and she looked at him, "and suddenly we realized that we were old 

friends!" What had happened was that he had never seen her except in her white uniform, with 

draggled hair, and here she was smartly dressed, hair nicely done up, well-groomed. And she had 

316


never seen him except in his white ducks, probably just a shirt, and he was presently dressed all up in 

winter clothes. The two of them just sat there and howled with laughter. "This went on for about an 

hour before we could calm down. It was so ridiculous." In Malaya, they had had dinner together, 

walked together, gotten to know each other over a period of years. Meeting her in Chicago was an 

eery experience, and made Kenneth realize how easily one could disguise himself. "If I had read that 

in a book, I wouldn't have believed it." 

Margaret and Kenneth went to Bangkok for a week, to pick up the children and visit, then 

went down to Nong Khae for two weeks, intending to get back to Trang before Christmas. Peggy 

had had a bad case of boils, and still looked "all spotty," but she was much better. Bill celebrated his 

first birthday, and Kenneth rented a movie camera to take pictures of the occasion. He had never 

taken movies before, and didn't know if they would be any good. This was in late November, 1929. 

From Nong Khae, Kenneth wrote that a friend named Post had come down from Petchaburi. 

He and Kenneth took a number of walks together, and played golf four times. This was Kenneth's 

first experience of golf. The man was Rev. Richard W. Post. He showed Kenneth how to play the 

game, and Kenneth almost beat him the fourth time out. A Mr. Allen came down from Bangkok and 

boarded with them. He was a camera fiend, and Kenneth was becoming one too, so they had fun 

together. Kenneth had a new camera now, a double-extension bellows Graphlex which could taken 

action pictures on a plate. He was doing his own developing, and hoped to do his own printing. 

One day Mr. Allen and the Landons went to Hua Hin, having been given special permission 

to go through the King's palace there. It really belonged to Her Majesty and was for her retirement 

when the King died. It was a beautiful estate, and Kenneth took many pictures outside and inside. 

The land where the palace was had originally belonged to the mission, and the King had wanted it 

because it was a very desirable location, a point jutting into the Gulf of Siam. So he gave the mission 

another piece of land, which became Nong Khae, three miles to the south, plus a nice sum of money 

that made it possible for them to build the cottage there. Then he built his palace in that more 

desirable location. 

7$3( ,; 6LGH 

4 

33:29 Kenneth received from his father Mae's ruby ring, which Bradley had given to her out of his 

own earnings when he was a boy. Kenneth had a small part in it too. Peggy now has that ruby ring. 

Kenneth remembers buying the ring. He often made more money than Bradley did, and also "I shot 

craps." Margaret comments that Kenneth got a lot of money that way. He once bought Bradley a 

watch out of it, a $135 W.S. Freymond (SP?) watch. In today's money, over $1000. Kenneth tells us 

that he has the watch upstairs at 4711 Fulton St., "the best Elgin watch ever made. All hand made." 

Kenneth tells of going with Bradley to Wilson's jewelry store, where Pinky Phillips was the clerk. 

Mr. Wilson always bought cigars in lots of 10,000. He always had a cigar in his mouth, and if he 

happened to remove it, you saw that his mouth had a permanent curve in it where the cigar normally 

was. The two boys wanted to buy a ruby ring, and Wilson said he had the real thing within their 

means. But it was made from the dust of rubies that had been ground and polished and amalgamated 

in some fashion, not just a single stone. It was a beautiful ring, and not cheap, but less than $100. 

Kenneth thinks Bradley paid him back for his part in buying the ring, because it ZDV Bradley's gift. 

Kenneth bought a $9000 life insurance policy at $20 a month which was automatically 

deducted from his salary. Mr. Allen arranged this in Bangkok. The theory was that by the time 

Kenneth was 52, the policy would actually be worth $11,000, and that Kenneth could withdraw it if 

he chose. To him at the time, this sounded like a fortune. In fact, that was the policy "we ate up" 

317


during a year of unemployment in 1938-9 while they lived with Margaret's mother in Wheaton. 

Margaret says that they actually kept a part of the policy after that period. It was with Sun Life of 

Canada. But they did lose most of it, and in the end, he couldn't pay it back. They also ate up 

Kenneth's flute and camera during that time. "Everything. Everything we had," Margaret says. "I 

remember standing in the store with ten cents in my pocket, which was all I had in the whole world." 

A Mr. and Mrs. Bovee of San Francisco spent a week visiting with the Landons in Trang. 

They had met them coming down on the train. Kenneth wrote that they were a typical American 

couple, and the Landons enjoyed their "freshness." They stayed through Christmas, leaving for 

Pinang three days afterward. 

5 

40:00 Margaret wrote home that the Mortenson Christmas package arrived the day after Christmas. 

Everything was lovely. "I'm still eating the candy tonight." Kenneth laughs uproariously. "That's 

me!" Margaret says. "That's my girl!" Kenneth says. In the package had been matching suits for 

Peggy and Bill, and a dress for Margaret. On the clothes Peggy had received, Margaret wrote, "She 

was quite thrilled to have anything so beautiful. She knows immediately what is pretty, and what 

isn't, and it is all that I can do to get her into a dress that she does not consider pretty." 

Margaret talks about Evan Welsh and his failure as a husband to Evangeline. "Though he was 

a wonderful person in many ways. People—Mother, and Evangeline, I think—endured as much as 

they did from him because he had that very rare gift of being a true evangelist, a true apostle, 

everywhere he went. He won people for Christ. And still does." 

Margaret tells of the thrill the Mortensons had when they received the movies Kenneth had 

taken at Bill's birthday party. They found a man who ran the movies over and over and over for 

them. 

"This is the last day of 1929. Tomorrow, I can begin to say that next year we will be going 

home." 

Margaret returns to the Bovees, Dan and Doris Hume Bovee. He was a dentist, and she was a 

writer. They were travelling around the world "on a shoestring." Mrs. Bulkley did a lot of the 

entertaining. She could be very pleasant at times, and very unpleasant at others, and this was one of 

the pleasant times. The Bovees were a very "worldly young couple." Kenneth never failed to 

evangelize all the foreigners they met there, and he did now. "A lot of people that never got into a 

church got a sermon anyway. And a nice one too, I assure you, always graciously done." 

Christmas was celebrated at the Bulkley's, putting the two Landon children together with their 

five. The adults were mainly an audience. Margaret was distressed because she didn't have a gift for 

Kenneth. She had intended his new camera to be their gift to each other. Kenneth had also gotten the 

insurance policy for her, the first insurance of any kind they had had. Even the car was uninsured. 

Kenneth had bought her a gift of a solid silver sugar and creamer. The pair was made by hand, 

beaten in a Siamese design, in a technique called repoussé. That set went to Carol in the early 1970's, 

Margaret says. 

Margaret describes some of Peggy's ways. "A few nights ago I came in, and she was eating 

supper. She didn't say anything, simply held out her hand for me to shake. It was so cute." 

Sometimes Peggy would greet Margaret in the morning with a handshake and simply say, 

"Morning!" 

Both Peggy and Bill had hair so light in color that it looked almost white. Margaret describes 

the two of them. The way Peggy used to squat, like the Siamese, while Bill just sat on his legs with 

his toes showing behind. He was "a lovely, good-natured fellow about everything except food." He 

howled at the slightest sniff of it. "We can't get him full. Every time his mouth is wiped off at the 

318


end of a meal, he wails, even though he's so full that his stomach stands out. It's just the idea of 

having it all over that bothers him." Peggy was very fond of bananas, and often ate three a day. 

Margaret speaks of the dog Suzy that Kenneth gave the children, which was like a Pekingese, 

but of course, Japanese. It was fierce-looking, and fearless. It wasn't afraid of the biggest dogs 

around. It ran everything off the place, including the chickens and ducks that had been eating 

Margaret's lettuce. Kenneth thought the dog was a "he." Margaret thought it was a "she." They 

probably ended up giving that dog away. 

Kenneth says Suzy was so fearless that it would even go after a big buffalo, driving it right 

out of the place. 


6 

50:13 Margaret talks about slang of the time that is now badly outmoded—GDQG\ and QLIW\, as two 

examples. 

Kenneth wrote in a January, 1930, letter to Adelle about the month's vacation he and Margaret 

had enjoyed in Bangkok and Nong Khae. It reminded him of their honeymoon because Margaret 

spent so much time scrubbing floors and washing clothes. "She is such a clean person that her 

favorite perfume should be Lennox soap or something. I prefer things clean, you know, but if they're 

dirty, I'm not so aesthetic as to feel miserable. I just stand on a chair to put my pants on when it gets 

too dirty in a Chinese hotel." 

Margaret says she didn't enjoy cleaning. But she had the responsibility of two small children 

in a place where death was quick. Cleanliness was essential to protecting life. Margaret was 

particularly conscious of skin diseases. Peggy had a special susceptibility, and kept picking up boils, 

skin infections, eczema. It was everywhere. A second thing was the problem of eyes. Trachoma 

was everywhere. It was essential never to touch your eyes. Whenever they had been out, as soon as 

they came home, they washed their hands. Lennox was a strong soap, British made, which was not 

hard on the hands. It was made with coconut oil. Miss Christiansen had taught Margaret not to wash 

the hands just once. Keep the soap on for a minute or so. Then wash again. Margaret still does this 

today. It got to be a habit. 

The third thing that was such a problem were all the intestinal diseases. Those were the ones 

that killed people so quickly, especially the children. Margaret speaks of the son of a missionary in 

Bangkok, a baby, who suddenly died of dysentery. That family lost two children in a row. 

Kenneth's letter continues, speaking now of his new Graphlex camera. Margaret says that 

Bill, the photographer in the family, has most of the plates from that camera. Kenneth was doing all 

his developing and printing himself, which made the cost less than a quarter of what it had been 

before. "In my travels I see things that no other white man sees, and if I have a camera, I can shoot it 

so easily and get a really valuable collection of things in south Siam." Margaret comments on how 

fine the pictures Kenneth took with that camera were. Nothing he has ever owned since has done as 

well. Often, because of the way the camera worked, he was able to take pictures of people behind 

him—so that they didn't realize they were being photographed—by holding the camera under his 

arm, facing behind him. The people looked completely natural. 

Kenneth describes coming home after a long tour away, and how joyous the children were to 

see him. Kenneth and Margaret describe the Christmas package Evangeline and Evan sent them. 

There was a pair of shoes and a dress for Margaret, shoes and stockings for the children, candy for 

all, and a sweater for Kenneth. Evangeline spent the last of her own money on these gifts. The dress 

was of a brown and white material, and the shoes were dark. Evangeline had made the dress herself. 

319


Evan had a very different attitude toward money than Evangeline. Years later, Lillian Norris 

Weaver told Margaret that at the time of Jack Welsh's death in 1952, both Evan and Jack had so 

many debts all over the city that their credit had run out. This sort of thing was very hard on 

Evangeline. 

320


HOUR 53 

Session #40 continued April 30, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXA140) Margaret continues on Evan and Evangeline and the managing of money. Jack and 

Evan had a store they ran in the summer in Frankfurt, and they had made a lot of money. But in fact, 

by the time Evan married Evangeline, he was heavily in debt because of that store. He kept this from 

her. All their married life, for twelve years, they were paying back that debt. Evangeline often had 

no money at all. She had a desk they had bought when they moved to Minneapolis that had little, socalled 

"secret drawers." Adelle had gone from a comfortable middle-class lifestyle to the verge of 

poverty, but nevertheless, she would go over to Evangeline's house and slide a dollar or two into one 

of those secret drawers so that Evangeline would at least have something. It was hard for both 

women. 

"I have more fun with Peggy than a barrel of monkeys. She is really so quaint. She resents 

being treated as a child and expects to come in on an equal footing every way. Now, when guests 

come, she meets them at the door with a handshake and a 'Morning!' gets them seated, then hustles 

off to find me. She was terribly indignant a few days ago because I wouldn't come when she called 

me. I happened to be doing my hair. If they don't look comfortable, she hustles around and gets a 

pillow and inserts it behind their back. Then she gets a magazine to keep them amused. I don't try to 

make her so old in her ways. It seems to be her very being, so I let her go on about her way. 

Yesterday morning when I went in to pick her up, she was lying with her eyes very wide. They are 

an intense blue. She said in a sepulchral tone, 'Doggie. Doggie came in here. Doggie bite baby.' 

Then she got up and showed me the place where the doggie had come through the screening. I 

suppose she had been dreaming that Suzie, our little dog, had come in and bitten the baby." 

Margaret wrote concerning their guests, the Bovees, then the Sheehans, and others. The 

Bovees returned. They had been affected in some way by the recent crash in the American stock 

market, and they were waiting here until they found out how things were. Mrs. Bovee was putting in 

five or six hours a day at the typewriter. She was about Margaret's age, and quite pretty. Rather the 

flapper type. He was the ex-athlete variety. They were both very nice, and good company, but they 

were not Christians. 

Yin Lung left, to Margaret's intense relief. He was too extravagant, too dirty, and too 

unsatisfactory in every way. "I am sick of having Chinese men for cooks. They are a joy when 

company comes, but the rest of the time they are an aggravation and nothing else." 

Dan Bovee did a nice thing. When the Landons had moved onto the compound in Trang, 

everything was in a run-down condition. The outside of the house had not been painted, and so the 

Landons had it done with an oil finish designed for the tropics, which had a reddish color and which 

also protected against termites. The pillars under the house were partly whitewashed and partly 

black. Margaret had been working at the various needs with the help of a coolie, sometimes two 

coolies. They had to get the lalang grass out, a tremendous job, because it harbored snakes, and with 

her children, she could not have snakes. 

"My life was so defensive. I was always concerned with the defense, as it were, of my house 

and household. The bacteria, the diseases were one thing. Then there was the constant presence of 

snakes. Since these snakes were all poisonous snakes, it was a thing that you thought about. You 

had to think about it. Just the way I wouldn't let the children go down onto the grass when it began to 

321


be dusk, because that's when the snakes would come out. Wouldn't let them put their hands on 

bushes because vipers would live in the bushes, you see." 

What Dan Bovee did was to go to work on the compound with the coolies. He spent some 

time up in Bangkok. But when in Trang, he worked. There was a big bush Margaret wanted out, so 

Dan got it out, tying it to the Ford and pulling it out. He also got some of the wells filled in. By the 

time he left in June, that compound was in order. And from then on, she had no difficulty keeping it 

in order. 

2 

9:00 Peggy frequently had sore throats, and Kenneth would say, "Open your mouth," and she would 

say, "Why?" and he would say, "I want to look down and see your beautiful tonsils." She was 

surprised and delighted to think that she had beautiful tonsils. So he would get her head turned 

toward the light; she'd open her mouth wide open; he would peer down and say, "Oh yes, I can see 

beautiful tonsils, and they're a little sore, aren't they?" Then he would have her swash something 

around in her mouth to soothe her throat. At any rate, the Landons had guests one day, and Peggy 

was trying to entertain them and wasn't doing so well. Neither Margaret nor Kenneth was on the 

scene yet, and Peggy was managing on her own. Suddenly, it occurred to her that she did have 

something that was very unusual and that they might admire. So she said, "Would you like to see my 

beautiful tankles?" She explained that they had to see them in the light, and she turned her head and 

opened her mouth wide open. Well, the guests were non-plussed. They didn't know what they were 

supposed to be looking at. And there she stood, looking at them out of the corner of her eyes. "Well, 

come over," she said. 

Kenneth heard this from inside the house, and when he came out, he asked her what she was 

doing. She explained. "Showing them my beautiful tankles." 

Bill never had that social instinct, Margaret says. It was just born in Peggy. It wasn't 

something she was taught. Margaret was always surprised at it. She would always get guests a drink. 

Bill was always self-absorbed. He always found something to do, and he always had a group 

of little Thai children trailing along with him to help him do it. Endless projects. By the time he was 

two, he was "definitely maneuverable." He started to run almost immediately. He never was much 

interested in walking. But when he discovered running, he was off. 

Bill also had a gift with languages. One day, the Chinese girl Ah Low (SP?) told Margaret 

little Bill was saying in Chinese, "Throw it out! Throw it out! Throw it out!" He was just over a 

year old. He had a passion for throwing things off the verandah. Got a lot of pleasure from heaving 

things over. 

Bill had this passion for things he wanted to do. And he discovered that there were many 

things he wanted to do that his parents didn't want him to do, and so he became very secretive. He 

didn't let them know what he was doing until it was done. "Very sound procedure," says Kenneth. 

"Yes, but he had that down pat by the time he was just a little over two years old." 

Kenneth rode on a train with Mrs. Seigle going to Nakhon. She had brought the mission 

children down to Pinang to send them off to India again, then had returned to visit the Landons for a 

week. She had never been in the south of Siam, and was delighted to find how cool the climate was. 

No mosquitoes compared to Bangkok. 

Margaret was wearing the ruby ring that had belonged to Mae. 

In a letter to his father, Kenneth wrote that, when he parted from his mother three years 

before, they had both known they would probably never see each other again. He had felt the loss of 

his mother years before her actual death, then. 

More on the Bovees. They had gone to Singapore, where they learned that they had been 

322


cleaned out in the stock market crash. They did not have enough money to get home. They had then 

sent Kenneth a wire asking if he would take them in until they could get some money. They could 

not contribute to the running of the household financially. It was a significant drain on the Landons. 

Kenneth drove to two of his churches and held communion in the Chinese language. It was 

quite a ceremony, and they seemed delighted to have him speak their tongue. He was studying a 

chapter a day of Scripture in Chinese. 

He was memorizing the book of Hebrews. 

Kenneth was writing frequently to Aunt Maud now. It was late January. 

Kenneth had no knowledge of Margaret's dengue fever while she was in the hospital. None of 

the letters informing him reached him while he was on tour. As far as he knew, she was on her nice 

sea trip to India. In fact, it had been ruined by a mosquito. 

In another letter, Margaret wrote that Bill was beginning to walk. "He staggers along, 

shouting at the top of his lungs like an inebriated gentleman on his way home after a spree. It is 

really most interesting to see how his being able to walk improves his self-respect. He's so proud of 

himself he nearly bursts." 

Back to the Bovees. A lot of their investments were on margin, Kenneth says. They had 

quite a lot of money. A lot of stock. The Landons had a number of picnics while the Bovees were 

there. 

Margaret was training a new girl to do the cooking, but she was doing much of the cooking 

herself. 

Mr. Weisbecker (SP?) stopped by to visit the Landons too. He was from the north, and he 

was on his way home. Kenneth says that he was another ex-missionary who couldn't get a church in 

America, just like Kenneth in the late 1930's. And for the same reason: suspicion of missionaries 

who supposedly wouldn't understand the American scene. He told Kenneth it was hopeless. He 

finally settled down in a little church out in the country for $1200 a year. 

3 

20:45 February 16, Margaret writes that she will assume responsibility for the girls' school in 

Trang. She had not decided whether to teach. There were about 140 pupils, at least 30 of whom 

were boarders. She hoped to teach some so that she could have direct contact with them. Not all of 

them were Christians. In fact, there were fewer Christians than Buddhists. 

"Many customs differ, but the people here are highly civilized and seem just like people at 

home when one is used to them. There is society and styles and all the things good and bad that we 

have at home." Margaret felt the Siamese were very superior. She had a higher opinion of the 

Siamese than of the Chinese in Siam. These Chinese were the poor who had come to better 

themselves, not the cultivated Chinese. But even cultivated Chinese would tend to hawk and spit and 

speak in booming voices, things deeply offensive to the Thai. A Chinese was likely, in eating, to 

spill food all over the table because this showed that you were at home. It was polite. But the Thai 

abhorred that. There was something always about your better-class Thai, and even the very poor, that 

was gracious. 

Peggy was learning to dress herself and comb her hair. She was very independent and never 

for a moment seemed to realize that she was a child. When Margaret washed her hair, Peggy got a 

towel and helped her dry it; and when it was dry, she helped Margaret comb it out. When Margaret 

came home from somewhere, Peggy would dip up water so that she could wash her hands, and urge 

her to the table for something to eat. Sometimes, she would sit and sing, or pretend to read from a 

book. Thai was her language of choice as a small child, not English. It was for all three children, in 

fact. 

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Kenneth wrote his father that they expected to leave Siam July 4, 1931. And while home, he 

was expected to study at some university, as all missionaries did. Kenneth hoped to see Palestine on 

the way home, and also visit Germany and France. He was contemplating a university in 

Philadelphia, and the possibility of taking a course in business. 

Kenneth was finding that the church out on the mission field had its fights and splits just like 

any other church. A "loud-mouthed chap" in the local Trang church was causing problems at the 

time, under the influence of his wife. His name was Maw Juang (SP?). 

March, April, and May were the hot months in Siam. The Landons had become very sensitive 

to the slightest change of temperature. 

Kenneth set out on a new tour up the coast toward Burma in late February, 1930. 

Bill demolished his bed, and after throwing out the sheets, blankets, mattress pad, and 

dislodging the mattress in an attempt to throw it out too, Margaret discovered to her horror that the 

bed was full of bed bugs. Drastic actions were taken to get rid of them. Fortunately, the other beds 

proved to be clear. 

One time the hair of the children at the school became infested with something that was not 

lice, something that altered the strands of hair so that they developed knobs that made it impossible to 

run a comb through them. There was nothing to do but cut the hair off, with the result that the school 

was full of bald-headed kids who looked like nuns. 

Dr. Bovee had an opportunity to work for a month in Bangkok and took it. Mrs. Bovee stayed 

in Trang. Word came that the Bovees had not lost as much in the market crash as they had first been 

told. Their broker cabled them money, but it never came. Mrs. Bovee was trying to write as many 

stories as she could while in Trang. 

Mrs. Bulkley was preparing to go home to the States with her five children. 

4 

32:46 Kenneth expected to stay a month in Phuket, on the west coast of Siam, evangelizing and 

distributing Gospels. 

His father was sixty-one that year. 

Margaret entertained the Ladies' Aid. It was a little group of Christian women who had a 

meeting every Sunday afternoon at one house or another, and this was Margaret's turn. The meeting 

was at four. The selection was from Matthew 15, and Margaret was expected to speak as well as 

entertain. So she did, and then two of the school teachers said something. Margaret had Miss Eakin's 

piano for a few months, and so they could sing without being distracted by some of the older women 

who were enthusiastic but had no sense of melody. "They made a cheerful noise unto the Lord," says 

Kenneth. After the service, they had tea. Ah Lao (SP?), the little Chinese girl Margaret was training 

to be her cook, had not yet learned to make cake, so Margaret made the cakes herself. It had to be 

done without butter because the Thai did not like butter and often told the Landons that it caused 

Westerners who did use butter to give off an offensive odor. 

Margaret speaks of Nai Lai, the fix-it man, who was a tall, gangly Chinese who looked not at 

all like any other Chinese she had ever seen. He always walked "hippity-hop," bouncing up and 

down, "hippity-hop, hippity-hop, coming along." He was very loquacious, and very skillful. He had 

come to Margaret's rescue any number of times. He was absolutely sure that he could fix anything. 

He fixed the septic tank which had begun to cave in, and he fixed the stove. Nai Lai taught Margaret 

many practical things, one of which seemed improbable but turned out to be true, that coconut trees 

like it if you dig down around their roots and fertilize them with a handful of rock salt. The best 

coconut trees on islands were the ones closest to the shore, where they could get salt from the 

seawater. The best coconut trees of all, according to Kenneth, were the ones that grew around houses 

324


where the people regularly urinated. More salts! 

Margaret discovered cashew nuts. She had never seen them before. They grew in an odd 

way, outside the fruit. The Siamese had a story about them. One day the Buddha was walking along 

and stepped on the cashew fruits. Always before, the nut had been inside, as with other fruits. But 

when he stepped on them, the seed came out, and there it has been ever since. Margaret roasted the 

nuts and dropped them in boiling water and sugar. The Siamese were very fond of this confection. 

Phuket was an island off the coast of Thailand and the seat of the government of the province. 

Kenneth was hoping Margaret would come up with the children. He wrote that a Dr. W.B. Toy was 

there in Phuket, in charge of the local Chinese church. He was with the Brethren, and was out under 

what they called "a faith mission." He lived in an unlivable place and was sick most of the time. He 

couldn't do much work. Didn't get proper food. He said he was looking to God to support him. 

Well, Kenneth was doing so as well, but not in that way. The church was not prospering. Little 

teaching was going on. He wouldn't allow Kenneth to take communion with him, though he did let 

Kenneth preach in his church. 

5 

42:03 Margaret went to Nakhon with Mrs. Bulkley for a day. They went third class at Margaret's 

insistence. First class had black leather cushions. Second class had straw cushions. Third was wood. 

One of the Christian teachers at the school was marrying a young Christian man who was an 

assistant to Dr. McDaniel at the hospital. Kenneth came over to marry them. The girl's mother was 

not a Christian and had been determined to get a lot of money for the girl, holding the wedding up for 

three years. She had now, finally, relented. Miss McCague wanted the affair concluded before she 

left on furlough and so had sent for Kenneth to come and perform the ceremony. He interrupted his 

tour in Phuket to do this. 

When Kenneth arrived from Phuket, a letter came saying that the wedding had been called 

off. The very day that the invitations were being mailed, the old mother arrived. She demanded 1000 

tekals in cash, a gold belt worth 500, and a diamond worth several hundred more. Miss McCague 

was so disgusted that she called the wedding off. The next day she wired again and said the wedding 

was on again. Come quick. So Kenneth rushed over and married them. 

When he returned, the whole family went by boat to the island of Phuket, where Kenneth 

would complete his tour there. 

The day Margaret and Mrs. Bulkley visited Nakhon, they had time to do some sightseeing. 

They visited the leper asylum, which was now under a Siamese official. They went to the principal 

temple, Wat Pritadt (SP?), which meant "the temple of the relic." There was supposedly a small bone 

of the Buddha in the temple. It was a beautiful temple, very old. They did not have permission from 

the Governor to go inside, so they could see only a little. It had large grounds, and many memorials 

to the kings from the time that Nakhon had kings. Nobody knew their names any more. There was a 

square gallery, hollow in the center, which housed several hundred Buddhas seated in rows, and there 

were rows on rows of the peaked burial monuments to the kings. 

Even to this day, the Thai have little interest in history. Lydia Na Ranong, Margaret's friend, 

who presently lives in London, wrote of an experience with a young Thai woman studying there 

whom Lydia took to various historic places. The woman was utterly bored. These things from the 

past held no interest for her. Lydia, being a Chinese, knows that history is important. 

In one porch of the temple in Nakhon, there was the skeleton of a whale. Surprising. And 

there was also a strange stone written in a language that had never been deciphered. Later on, a 

scholar came and deciphered it. 

At that temple, there were still Brahmin priests, with their long hair, as well as the Buddhist 

325


priests. Brahmin priests were only where there had been a court, as there had been in Nakhon. 

Kenneth says they could not read their own documents, but they could recite them. They learned 

them by heart. They had the look of being Indians in heritage. 

6 

49:37 The Sheehans lived at a tin mine in Phuket, and they had invited Margaret and the children to 

stay with them, along with Kenneth. So Kenneth brought the family back with him after the 

wedding, for a month with the Sheehans. 

Bill was a sobersides, and smiled very little unless very amused. Peggy was very different, 

"all for the theatrics," wrote Kenneth, showing off and making a big noise about anything she wanted 

to do. "She's got to have an audience." 

Kenneth commented that Margaret was becoming more beautiful every week. A very 

handsome, striking woman. "She isn't what you would call a pretty woman. She's a handsome, 

striking woman. She's filling out a bit now. The girlish angularity is more rounded than I've ever 

noticed before. She could stand a lot more weight if she could just lay it on. But her hair is so 

luxuriant and goldy. She has a way of putting up her hair that is just the thing with her. Very simple, 

very attractive." 

The tin mine was called the Katu (SP?) Tin Dredging Company. The manager of the mine 

and his wife were named Neal (SP?). They had just been fired and were going home to Australia. 

The price of tin had nose-dived, and the firing was because of that. Kenneth had left the family with 

the Sheehans and gone up to the north to continue his work. 

The tin dredge was a huge boat, built in the same fashion that Noah built his, that is, on dry 

ground. After it was finished, the earth was dug away, creating a pond which they filled with water 

and into which they floated the dredge. The dredge had huge buckets that dug the earth, and as it 

moved forward, it dumped its tailings out the back, so that the pond moved forward with the dredge. 

It was fascinating to watch. The buckets would go down as far as ninety feet, to the bedrock. They 

would dig up the alluvial muck, which had a layer of tin perhaps twenty feet below the surface which 

sometimes went down to the rock level, and wash it on a chute, throwing the tailings out the back. 

The tin was deposited on the bottom of the dredge. It looked like black sand. At this mine, there was 

a manager, a dredgemaster who was responsible for repairs, a diesel engine expert, since this was a 

diesel engine dredge, and two winchmen or foremen. Mr. Sheehan was one of the winchmen. The 

dredge ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There were many coolies to provide the dirt 

labor. Mr. Sheehan oversaw these to make sure they kept at the work, hoeing the sandy water on the 

chute with big hoes so that the tin would settle. The mine was getting twenty pickels (SP?) a day, 

and it took fifteen to make expenses. A pickel of tin was a little bag of tin about the size of a twelvepound 

flour sack, but it was almost worth its weight in gold, Margaret writes. 

Margaret was there three and a half weeks. The Sheehans were delightful people, though not 

cultivated. Mrs. Sheehan was a devout Catholic. Her name was Ethel. Mr. Sheehan had a song that 

he sang around the house, or when he went to the club and was full of Australian beer. It was his 

only song. Kenneth sings for us, 

Oh, it's hard to see a fly upon the mountain. 

The distance interferes with the view. 

But anyone can see with 'alf an eye 

That I'm in love with you! 

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Oh, it's hard to see the bottom of the ocean. 

The water interferes with the view. 

But anyone can see with 'alf an eye 

That I'm in love with you! 

Oh, it's hard to see a needle in the haystack. 

The hay interferes with the view. 

But anyone can see. . . . 

And so on. He had a hundred verses. He could go on interminably. He was a great, big, gaunt 

Australian with a big voice, and he would bellow this song. If he was feeling happy, he would sing 

it. 

Ethel had a monkey. They had no children. The food was delicious because Ethel was doing 

her own cooking. She was a marvellous cook. She was able to take two chopsticks and beat up an 

egg into a froth, the only Western woman Margaret ever saw who could do that. She had a coolie, 

and an old Tamil woman to help in the house. The Tamil woman was a real character, very gentle 

and clean. 

Kenneth met a lot of people he knew up in Phangnga, where he was doing evangelistic work. 

The governor took Kenneth for a day's trip in his new Essex Super-Six touring car. 

So far Kenneth had memorized Hebrews, Philippians, Ephesians, I Corinthians, Romans, 

Galatians, part of John, and hoped to finish the New Testament in another year. 

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HOUR 54 


1 

0:00 (IXA525) In Phuket. One day Kenneth took Margaret to visit a number of the Christians 

there, most of whom were Chinese. Many years before, a Dr. Amner had come there to work under 

the government, an earnest Christian man who learned to speak Chinese and perhaps Siamese. He 

built up a large church. He became so powerful among the Chinese that the government wanted to 

get rid of him. But he went on making his living as a doctor. He has been gone many years, but the 

church he founded was still there, with perhaps a dozen regular attendants, called the Gospel Hall. It 

was these Christians the Landons went to see. After Dr. Amner left, he asked the Plymouth Brethren 

to take over the work, and there was a Brethren missionary there now. But he was accomplishing 

little. Dr. W.B. Toy. He did nothing all week but sit in his house. He refused to learn the language. 

Kenneth had received the will his father had made out and had put it in a safety deposit box he 

had there with his other valuable documents. This was the mission safe. Kenneth offered to help him 

if he had need. "We do not have much, but we are always ready to share all we have with you." 

Adelle never told the Landons about her needs, so they never knew whether she was in plenty or in 

want. Margaret never had known what her mother's resources were. She ZDV in need, Margaret says, 

as she learned later, but she was "the stiff upper lip type." 

Dr. Toy had once been part of the Presbyterian mission, but left it to go to work for the 

government, for which he drew a huge salary. His first wife bore him four children, then died. He 

married again, this time a Eurasian girl who bore him six children. When the last king died— 

Wajirawut (SP?), in 1925 or '26—Toy was laid off. He was a fine doctor, especially a fine 

obstetrician. He had some strange ideas, decided to come out on faith to Phuket, and gave up his 

practice of medicine. He had no ability to do evangelistic work. The Landons went and called on 

him, and it gave Margaret a very strange feeling. He just sat in his house all day. Sunday morning he 

would get up and go to the church service. He held the meeting in a back room, rather than in the 

main chapel, and there might be an hour of mostly silence, a prayer, a hymn, a bit of Bible reading. It 

seemed Quaker. As a result, the old Christians were falling off one by one. They came to be fed and 

received nothing. Dr. Toy couldn't even speak their language. Didn't try to learn. 

Dr. Toy put great emphasis on being "separate." He wouldn't associate with other whites in 

Phuket. He was a queer, bitter old man. 

The first Christian man Margaret met there was a regular patriarch and had been a Christian 

for better than forty years. He had a long white beard and strong frame, although he was over 

seventy. He went with the Landons to call on an old blind man who was so glad to see them that he 

just smiled all over. His sons had swindled him out of all his property after he went blind by getting 

him to sign it away on the pretense that he was signing for taxes. "And yet he is happy in the Lord." 

He thought Kenneth must be a Chinese when he heard him talk. The old man pronounced a long 

blessing on Kenneth in Chinese, much in the manner of the patriarchs. It was very impressive. He 

sat in a long chair, clothes in tatters, hair stringing about his face, leaning on a cane, and staring at 

them with sightless eyes. There was a real smile on his face. 

After that, the Landons went out into the country to call on two people, one a farmer and one 

a tin miner. 

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2 

8:20 Kenneth tells of two Christians there who were on opium. They had tried and tried to quit the 

habit. Finally, Kenneth worked it out with them that every day, when they would have gone to the 

opium den to get their pipe, they would go into the chapel instead and sing hymns and pray together. 

They would spend the same length of time that ordinarily they would be smoking their pipe. They 

did this, and both of them cured their opium habit. Kenneth took their pictures. Kenneth told them to 

sing loud and happily during their time in the chapel. And pray. And then sing some more. And it 

worked! They were quite pleased with themselves. 

May, 1930. Kenneth writes concerning his father and dresses. A confusing section. 

Margaret tells of fine dresses Victorine Smith had picked, apparently for Brad to send to Margaret. 

He had taken them back to the store, without Victorine's knowledge, and purchased cheaper dresses 

that had no style and sent those instead. Victorine had spent five or six dollars a dress, and Brad had 

exchanged each one for a dress that cost two or three dollars. When Victorine learned of this years 

later from Margaret, she was disgusted. 

Margaret left Phuket, and Mrs. Sheehan drove her down to Tonka (SP?) harbor where she was 

going to sail. They sat on the porch of the bachelor's bungalow, the mess where the single men ate. 

They were given tea, and one man played phonograph records for them, classical music. It was the 

first classical music Margaret had heard in Phuket. Everyone else preferred jazz. He was an older 

man who had a wife back home, with a child too delicate to live in the tropics. So he had come out 

alone. 

The passage from Phuket island to Kantang was miserable. The boat was small. Margaret 

had twenty-three pieces of luggage. Five cases of groceries. Tennis rackets. A typewriter. A box of 

photographic plates that Kenneth had developed but not printed. Her own things. The baby's things. 

When Margaret arrived home, Doris Bovee was still there. Dan had gone up to Bangkok again 

because he had been offered another month's work as a dentist by a doctor there. Doris had been 

alone for three weeks. The first thing she said was, "Talk. For goodness sakes, talk a lot. I haven't 

heard a voice for so long I'm nearly mad!" She had no Thai. 

Once again, Peggy's skin broke out with red blotches all over the place. The doctor said it 

was eczema. 

3 

15:52 The last day the Landons were in Phuket was a Saturday, and the Landons took the Sheehans 

for a trip over to the mainland for a visit to a small town called Phangnga, where there was a cave 

with a temple inside. Armed with flashlights, they explored as much of it as they could. It smelled 

most unpleasant and was very dark. When they came out, they were streaked with dirt from top to 

bottom and drenched with perspiration. There were many such caves up and down the peninsula, and 

they almost all had a little temple in them. 

Kenneth recalls the island that was used in World War II to secretly transport agents into 

Thailand. Off the beach, in the Bay of Bengal [more likely the Andaman Sea], perhaps two miles 

offshore, there was one particular island that Kenneth had explored. He had pictures he took inside 

of it. The only access to the island was at low tide when the mouth of the cave entrance was 

revealed. You could literally walk in, stepping out of your small craft, at low tide. You had about 

thirty minutes while you could duck under and walk inside until the tide rose, sealing you in. You 

were stuck inside until the next low tide. There had to be a boat there to pick you up or you couldn't 

go anyplace. Kenneth made such arrangements when he visited the cave, knowing that he would be 

inside for about twelve hours. He had a lunch, and he had his beautiful camera. "It was like a 

cathedral inside. It was an incredible place. Oh, it was eery!" He took pictures, and climbed around 

329


like a goat inside. There were channels where you could climb around, with somewhat precarious 

footing. Huge stalactites. The apex of this small mountain, which was the core of the island and in 

which was the cave, had broken in, and a beam of light came in and illuminated the whole area. So 

Kenneth was able to take pictures in sunlight in the cave. Ngiap Seng was with Kenneth in the cave, 

but he stayed below. The time came to leave, and Ngiap Seng began calling, "Mok see! mok see! 

(SP?)" That is, "Come on!" "Me me! Me me!" So Kenneth took his last shot and then started to 

come down—at which point he discovered he had come down a different way than he had gone up 

and had reached to a dead end. The path did not continue at that point. There was a chasm, and 

Ngiap Seng was on the other side. In the time it would have taken Kenneth to climb back up and go 

around, they would miss the boat that was waiting outside to pick them up. They would have been 

stuck for another twelve hours. So Kenneth jumped. He didn't give it a second thought, though if he 

had not made it, "that would have been the end of Kenneth." When he landed, Ngiap Seng grabbed 

him, and then began scolding him for doing such a thing. 

Right on time, the water level went down with the tide, and they looked, and sure enough, 

there were the fishermen with their little boat. So they climbed in and left. 

Kenneth told the OSS people about that cave during World War II, and they used it to stash 

their spies and all their equipment. They were perfectly safe between tides. They would be run in 

there on a small motorboat. Twelve hours later, another boat would pick them up and ferry them to 

the beach, and there a one-engine plane would pick them up and fly them straight to Bangkok, right 

into the airport, right in the midst of the Japanese. They went into the Thai airdrome, which was 

reserved for the Thai military. There, the Regent, Pridi Phanom Yong (SP?) would have his official 

car pick them up and take them into the city to the Rose Palace—also called the Red Palace, 

apparently—where they had their headquarters, with their radios and communication system and 

everything. 

Kenneth tells of one time [perhaps this was the standard procedure; not clear] when our 

man was dressed in full uniform, with all his medals and ribbons, because he didn't want to be shot if 

he were captured. There never was any problem with this arrangement, though Kenneth suspects the 

Japanese knew about it. The Japanese didn't want to interfere with the Thai government, which was 

useful to them, and they figured our spies were nothing more than a nuisance. Kenneth figures they 

must have known. He would send telegrams and messages from the State Department by radio and 

get answers sometimes in three days, from inside the Royal Palace. 

Dillon Ripley, the present head of the Smithsonian, who was well known as an ornithologist, 

was an OSS operative. He was famous for the day in Ceylon when he chased out in nothing but a 

towel onto the greensward in the midst of a tea party amongst all the high mucky-mucks of Ceylon 

after a particular bird he had spotted from inside. In the chase, he lost his towel and everything else, 

and here he was with all the English ladies and the formality of the tea party. But he paid no 

attention to them until he had gotten his bird. 

Kenneth asked him one day about a couple of stories attached to him. One was that our 

operator had gone in from the Bay of Bengal [Andaman Sea?] island hideaway, caught the 

monoplane on the beach, flown in to the airdrome at Dan Luang (SP?) Airport, only to find that there 

was no car to meet him. So here he was in this big empty airdrome, with Japanese driving back and 

forth in front of those big open ends, our American spy sitting there in full uniform and medals and 

so on. The pilot jumped out and rushed off to make a telephone call, then came back and said, "Do 

you have any whiskey?" And the man said that he did, he had some Scotch, and so the pilot 

demanded a bottle with which to recruit a man to drive for them. He said he had been on the 

telephone with him, saying, "The American spy is here! Where's the car?!" But the man wouldn't 

come unless they gave him something. Kenneth asked if Ripley was the man this happened to, and 

330


he said no. But he confirmed that it KDG happened to one of their agents. 

At any rate, the car came, and the American spy got into the back seat of the car, and they 

drove the thirty miles into town. In that city, Bangkok, you blew your horn all the time in traffic, and 

the driver was blowing away when the horn stuck. So there they were driving through Bangkok with 

the horn blazing away non-stop, obviously in trouble. A jeep full of Japanese came whipping up, 

waved the car down, and asked if they could be of any help. They looked right at the American but 

didn't identify him. The driver said that, no, he was in a hurry, he had to get to the Royal Palace right 

away. Well, the young Japanese lieutenant said that, in that case, he would escort them, clearing 

traffic for their car. So the jeep and the car drove in tandem through the city, with horns blaring, to 

the Sunkhala (SP?) Palace. The gates were closed, the Japanese saluted, they jerked the wires off the 

horn, and everything was fine. 

This story became attached to Dillon Ripley, but he denied to Kenneth that he was the man. 

The Regent, Pridi Phanom Yong, was the man Kenneth wrote his first book on, Siam in 

Transition 

4 

27:39 Margaret was in charge of the girls' school now. Mrs. Bulkley had left, and Miss Eakin never 

came back. The hope was to build a new wing on the building in the coming year. 

That was a dry year in Trang, and many wells had gone dry. The school well had to be dug 

deeper because of the problem. 

The school year there started in May, near the end of the hot season and the beginning of the 

rainy season. 

Margaret tells of the woman in Pinang with a tangled history of marriages whose half-white 

daughter had studied at the school for some time. Her second, Siamese husband now had her 

daughter by her first husband, while she pursued a third, Indian husband. 

At the end of May, Kenneth went to Nakhon to see the new preacher down from Bangkok 

named Kru Jerun Segungun (SP?). Kenneth had known of him in Bangkok and described him as the 

best preacher in Siam. The McDaniels were the only Americans left in the station at Nakhon. Kru 

Jerun Segungun was travelling by ship off the coast of Siam during World War II when the ship was 

bombed, and he was killed. 

Kenneth describes the process by which he processed his photographic plates. He was having 

trouble in the heat and humidity of Siam, and many of his pictures were spoiled. 

Session #41 May 7, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

5 

32:33 Among the effects of E.P. Dunlap that Kenneth inherited when he and Margaret moved into 

Dunlap's house in Trang was a cloth-covered book entitled, "Those That Has Been Talked." It 

contained the names of people resident in a village near the city of Thung Song in the center of the 

peninsula, which was a train junction area. In the course of his evangelistic touring, Kenneth arrived 

in Thung Song, carrying this book. And he went to the village with the book in his hands, and began 

asking for people by name. When he first arrived, he had quite a crowd. By the time he had read ten 

names, almost no one was left. They were alarmed and suspicious. So Kenneth explained that he 

was a missionary and explained what the book was. The people in it had known his predecessor, old 

Maw Ga (SP?), as they called him, the "old doctor." People began drifting back, then. Kenneth 

visited that village several times in the next year, and the third time, they invited him to stay 

overnight. He stayed with the village chief, who was a tall young man whose father had been village 

331


chief before him. When they went to bed at night, they all slept in the same room in a row. His wife 

and baby were next to the wall. His eldest daughter next. Then himself. Then his next daughter. 

Then his biggest son. And then the baby boy, who was next to Kenneth. And finally Kenneth, who 

was on the outside. He was the last one to bed, and the first one out. They treated him well. He had 

various kinds of medicines, including worm medicines, which he gave them. He visited them five or 

six times. 

Then one day, a couple of men came from the village to visit the Landons in Trang, to return a 

courtesy call. They had never sat on chairs, so they sat on mats. The Landons gave them tea, and 

invited them to stay overnight. They camped out. Looked the place over. Then went away. 

A little later, the young village chief came back, with a couple of his aides. Kenneth has a 

picture of him posed in the compound, very nicely dressed with a shirt, a bathing cloth tied around 

his waist as a belt over a loose panung which was not fastened up under his legs and tucked into his 

belt but hanging loosely. He hung around with a couple of his friends a couple of days. And then he 

made a proposition. 

He said, Here you are, living on this big place. You have servants you have to pay. We'd like 

to ma pung (SP?)—that is, become your gang, your dependents. We'd like to serve you. And you 

would be our overlord and look after us. You could discharge your servants. We would do the 

cooking, cut your grass, care for your children, raise chickens for you, do your gardening for you. 

We've surveyed nearby fields. You could buy the fields, and we'd raise rice on them. You'd never 

have to feed us, and you'd never have to buy rice again. We'd be your people, and you would take 

care of us in any problems we had with the government, if we were arrested or got drunk. You'd 

arrange our marriages, and our funerals. We notice that you go everyday and take violent exercise at 

a game. We'd be glad to do that for you. You wouldn't have to do things like that. We notice that 

you always carry books. We'd do that for you. You don't chew betel nuts, but you should; it's very 

good for you. Anyplace you go, several of us would go with you; one would carry your books, 

another would carry your betel set, another would carry your spittoon, and so on. We would be your 

entourage. He also suggested that if Kenneth needed more wives, their daughters would do. He 

could have his pick. 

Kenneth realized he was faced with a quandary. He expressed great appreciation for this 

wonderful offer. He said that, of course, he was inclined to take it up, but there was one problem. In 

the first place, Kenneth didn't own this compound on which they proposed to build their village. It 

belonged to a "company," as he described the mission organization. Furthermore, at a certain time, 

about a year from now, the Landons would be returning to the United States, and the village people 

would be orphans. We, their "father and mother," would be half way around the world, and might 

come back, might not. Then where would the village be? Who knew who would succeed the 

Landons at the compound? From the villagers point of view, it would not be a secure move. 

Whereas, if Kenneth were staying on and not returning to the States, the arrangement might work out 

very nicely. Kenneth expressed his deep appreciation, thanked him. Took his picture. The village 

chief understood. And they parted. 

Kenneth has often used this story to show how governments are formed in Thailand. 

Whenever you have a man of power, you always have phak puak ti pung (SP?), that is, a "gang who 

pungs him." When you have three very powerful men, each with his own gang, you've got a 

government. And every single government since 1932 has been formed on that basis. Kenneth saw it 

work with the Governor in the 1930's, who had his hangers-on. His compound was full of relatives 

that he never even knew ZHUH relatives until he became governor. This is their system. 

Margaret adds this key detail. When the village chief from near Thung Song got ready to 

make his proposition to Kenneth, he went down to the floor—which of itself was not unusual. 

332


Country people often knelt. But the way the man did it you would never have seen in Bangkok, 

because it was gone there. "It was the real, old feudal way to do it." He got down on his hands and 

knees and abased himself. The rump did not stick up the way it does in the movies. It is swung to 

the side. Margaret asks Kenneth to get down on the floor and demonstrate, which he sort of does. 

Margaret is not satisfied, and so at the age of seventy-five, she herself demonstrates! "I've never seen 

it except this one time. It's a feudal gesture. He got down; he began sinking down sideways, this 

way. And then he went on down until he got his head to the floor, not looking up at all. And then his 

hands went out this way." Her hands went out and then waved back over her head. "It was saying, 'I 

who am nothing scoop the dust from under your feet.' And since the head is almost sacred, so that 

nobody touches another person's head, this gesture—the gesture was toward Kenneth's feet. Do you 

see? It's the only time I've ever seen it done. And that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years." 

It was very touching. Moving. The man was, as it were, scooping the dust from under Kenneth's feet 

and pouring it over his own head. It was an offer of fealty, and it would have been good for life. It 

was exactly the sort of thing that would have been done before a feudal noble. 

Margaret adds that once a man had made that gesture of fealty, it would pass to the noble's 

heir. A feudal noble inherited from his father a great many retainers because wealth was figured in 

terms of the number of retainers. Interestingly, titles were figured in terms of the number of rai 

(SP?)—a smaller unit than an acre, but a measure of land—a man supposedly had. This had become 

a totally formal thing and no longer indicated real land at all. But real power was figured in terms of 

the number of retainers. Once a man was attached to one of the feudal nobles, he was branded. The 

brand was actually a tattoo. In one reign, it would be on the wrist, and the next under the arm. It 

alternated. 

If Kenneth had accepted the village's offer, they would have migrated en masse, every man, 

woman, child, and chicken they had. They would have put up houses first. They had already noticed 

the wells. They thought it was a wonderful setup. 

That sense of importance being figured in terms of number of retainers is still very much part 

of Thai thinking. Margaret tells again the story of the Thai ambassador who expected every Thai in 

the D.C. area to show up for a special occasion, in effect as his entourage, and noticed that Margaret's 

friend Lydia Na Ranong was not present. But she was an independent character. She had been born 

a Manchu princess, and she felt no need to be part of any man's entourage, not even the ambassador's. 

But, Kenneth adds, she was a professor at a Thai university, and she was expected to perform. On the 

whole she ZDV willing to conform, Margaret says—except when she didn't want to. 

6 

48:03 Margaret wrote home to Adelle that Bill had just recently learned to run. He tended to weave 

this way or that, like a drunken sailor. Peggy had learned to sing, but since she knew no tunes, her 

singing was always "original." 

Margaret had been put in charge of the school when Mrs. Bulkley left. Miss Ruth Eakin, who 

had built the school up, had gone on furlough to the U.S. and was due back in September, 1930. But 

she had a duodenal ulcer, and never returned. So Margaret ran the school that year, until leaving for 

the U.S. July, 1931. And then was put in charge of the school again when she came back. It was 

"tremendously hard work." She tried to teach some, but mostly handled the administrative side of 

things. 

Mrs. Bulkley had three girls. Her two boys were in India at school. But in 1930, there was an 

uprising in India, so she took the boys as well as her daughter to the U.S. She chose Pomona for all 

the children because she was a Californian. The Bulkleys were fundamentalists. 

Fundamentalists originally were the group in the church that accepted the Bible as the word of 

333


God and believed that salvation came through Jesus Christ. The liberals, or modernists, said that the 

word of God was LQ the Bible, not that the Bible ZDV the word of God. They selected what to believe 

from Scripture. And Jesus was "a good example." Fundamentalism today is a different phenomenon. 

Wheaton was a Congregationalist school, and the Congregationalists were the former Puritans. They 

accepted, as did Margaret's parents, all the thou-shalt-nots. Not only those in the Bible, but also those 

which over history had become part of the Puritan ethic. Theater was wrong. Dancing was wrong. 

Cards were wrong. Ultimately, Margaret rejected that part of it. She saw these as relatively 

unimportant. But there was something to be said for the point of view because, when the Puritans 

arose, British society was very corrupt. Cards were connected almost entirely with gambling. People 

in America who had been influenced by the Puritan ethic felt very strongly about those things. 

Kenneth recalls as a child being expelled from a barber shop because he was playing solitaire. 

Margaret rejected cards and dancing and so on as a child, feeling they were wrong. But she changed 

with time. 

When the modernists made themselves arbiters of what was and was not true in the Bible, 

they put themselves in the position of God. 7KH\ were the arbiters of truth, not God. Which made for 

a deep division in the church. 

Fundamentalism changed with time and became extreme. Many of those who in its early 

days would have called themselves fundamentalists put distance between themselves and 

fundamentalism, calling themselves conservatives or evangelicals. Thus, a good word was turned 

into something negative. Derogatory. It implies intolerance. 

Margaret cites a similar thing with the word JD\, which has now become a characteristic word 

for homosexuality. How could you call anyone "gay" now? You wouldn't dare to any more. And 

yet that was a beautiful word, originally. 

The Bulkley children were delightful, the best-behaved of any on the mission field, Margaret 

says. An amazing thing, since both their parents were so difficult. Margaret tried to persuade Mrs. 

Bulkley to send her college-age children to Wheaton. Dorothy wanted to go. And it was easy to get 

in at that time. Margaret recalls Mrs. Bulkley's reply. "Well, Mrs. Landon, Con is from the East 

coast, you know, and , P from the West coast. And IUDQNO\, you know, we GR consider the Middle 

West WHUULEO\ provincial." She was just as rude as she could be. 

Kenneth tells of the first time he entered the Bulkley house, and climbed up the stairs, when 

he suddenly found as his head came up that there was a tiger skull looking at him. Then his eye went 

along, and he noticed that there was a little tiger skull, and then a bigger tiger skull, and then a bigger 

still, and then a bigger than that. And so on. The line of them ran all the way to the end, and in the 

middle, there was a gigantic tiger skull. And he said, "Doc! Where'd you get all these tiger skulls?" 

Oh, they were shot, came the answer. And Kenneth said, "Good heavens, Doc! You must be quite a 

tiger hunter!" In fact, every full moon he went tiger hunting, he said. Kenneth asked if the Doc had 

taken pictures of all these tigers he had shot. Yes, he had pictures. So, after dinner, Bulkley pulled 

out his pictures. Kenneth asked if he had a picture of the granddaddy over there, and he said, yes. [to 

be continued] 

334


HOUR 55 

Session #41 continued May 7, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXA950) Kenneth continues on Dr. Bulkley's tiger skulls. Bulkley showed Kenneth the 

picture of himself standing over the huge, dead Bengal tiger whose skull now graced his house. Doc 

was standing there with his foot on the tiger's neck, his gun in his hand, with a barefoot Thai hunter 

and gunbearer standing beside him. Doc looked out from under his peaked scoutmaster-type hat, 

with a "lasso" under his chin—peering out at you with this little fuzzy, gray beard. Kenneth said, 

"Gee, Doc, where'd you shoot it?" And Bulkley told him, over at such and such a place. The man 

showed him picture after picture. "Doc, where'd you shot this one?" Kenneth would ask after each 

one. Kenneth began to be skeptical as the doctor told of kill after kill. Finally, Kenneth asked him 

outright if he had really shot them all. Well, not exactly. He KDG been hunting. But he hadn't much 

luck himself. So when someone else shot a tiger, he would buy it. 

Bulkley told Kenneth a couple of tiger stories. One tiger had been shot by a man who had a 

single-barrel, sixteen-gauge trap gun. The tiger had been molesting his buffalo, so he tethered a 

buffalo calf out in a field and went to sit in a bush near it. He fell asleep. When he woke, he felt 

something sniffing past him, and there was a tiger, which attacked the buffalo calf. The man was 

only about fifteen feet away. So he took his single-barrel, sixteen-gauge shotgun, shot the tiger, and 

killed him. He had loaded the shell with screws and bolts, the wonder being that the barrel didn't 

explode. When that thing hit the tiger, screws and bolts went every which way in its body. That tiger 

was full of screws and bolts from end to end. When Bulkley autopsied it, he found screws 

everywhere. 

Bulkley tried to get Kenneth to go hunting with him, and he did go once. But he had no 

interest in hunting. 

One night, Kenneth was at the church quite late, left the church, and bicycled up past the 

hospital when he saw that the surgery was all lit up. Whoops. Margaret tells Kenneth to hold that 

story for a bit. She urges him to tell the story of another man Kenneth talked to who had shot a tiger. 

When he brought the tiger in for Dr. Bulkley, Kenneth saw him and could hardly believe it. He was a 

little old man with quavery arms who looked as if he could barely hold a gun up to shoot. Kenneth 

asked him if he had shot the animal. Yes, he had. He had staked out an animal as bait. He himself 

was nearby, on the ground, not up in a hunting stand. Kenneth asked him if he weren't afraid that the 

tiger would eat KLP. Oh no, the man said, the tiger wouldn't eat me. The man laughed that he didn't 

have any flesh on him at all. No tiger would be interested in KLP! When he shot the tiger, the tiger 

made a tremendous leap and almost reached him, but then fell dead. And wasn't the man afraid? 

Kenneth asked. Oh no, came the answer from the frail-looking little man, for he had his trusty gun! 

(After he had shot the tiger, of course, the gun was empty.) 

Kenneth resumes the story of the night he was biking by the hospital when he saw the surgery 

all lit up. He wondered what might be going on over there, and so rode over. He got to the bottom of 

the steps to go up into the surgery. It was a cement building. He heard Doc chuckling to himself and 

wondered what on earth was going on. Kenneth went up the steps, and there found Dr. Bulkley with 

a man stretched out on the operating table. The doctor was all alone, giving the man chloroform with 

one hand and trying to operate also, a tricky procedure. And the doctor kept chuckling to himself. 

Kenneth asked him what was going on. And Bulkley welcomed him happily, inviting him in. "Oh, 

335


this is the most wonderful and exciting experience of my life!" He said the young man was going to 

have a shoulder just like Livingstone. "Is that so?" said Kenneth. Yes, and here was the shoulder of 

Livingstone, the doctor said, indicating a plaster of Paris cast which Kenneth had often seen in his 

office. Bulkley was a great admirer of Livingstone, and he had bought this cast of Livingstone's 

famous shoulder which had been mauled by a lion. And he had brought it out there to Siam. Bulkley 

was looking at the shoulder as he operated on the man. He said, "Here, you can help with the 

chloroform," and he handed Kenneth the bottle and the cotton. 

Kenneth began to help. He couldn't believe what he had heard, and asked again what the 

doctor was doing. Bulkley answered, "This young fellow is the luckiest man in the world. He's 

going to have a shoulder just like Livingstone." It would hurt his hunting, of course. The man was a 

professional hunter. It was the same shoulder as Livingstone's, and after his mauling, Livingstone to 

the end of his days could never lift a gun with his left hand. But there were other things the man 

could do. 

The two men talked throughout the operation, and Kenneth asked how the man had been 

injured. Bulkley explained that the young man and he had been out hunting for a tiger, and that 

Bulkley had wounded the tiger. The two of them followed the trail of the blood through the jungle as 

the sun sank, until it became dusk. Bulkley realized it had become too dangerous. They couldn't go 

on any farther. So they stopped for a few moments, talking about what to do. Up to this point, the 

hunter had been ahead, following the spoor. They turned around, with Bulkley leading the way, to go 

back to the car. They had only gone perhaps fifty steps when all of a sudden the tiger jumped from 

the top of an anthill down onto the hunter. He knocked the hunter to the ground, and Bulkley swung 

around, still holding his gun, and as he did, the gun went off. Fortunately, the shot struck the tiger, 

not the boy, killing the animal. That was the only tiger Dr. Bulkley ever killed, unintentionally. 

So, there was the dead tiger, and a young man with his shoulder mauled. What to do? The 

hunter said there was a village nearby. So Bulkley fired a few more times, and began shouting, and a 

few of the villagers came. They made a litter with carrying poles and a shirt and put the wounded 

hunter on it, carrying him back to the road and putting him into the car. Bulkley drove into town with 

him and was now taking care of him. And what a lucky young man he was! 

Kenneth went back to visit the young man several times in the hospital. He found him to be 

illiterate, and so he would read to him. He read him Aesop's fables because he thought the man 

would be interested in the animals. The hunter kept saying that he wished he could read like that. 

Well, the Thai alphabet wasn't that difficult, so Kenneth taught him the alphabet and got him started 

reading. The man found he could pronounce a word, and the moment he pronounced it, he knew 

what it meant. Kenneth spent two or three weeks in and out visiting the wounded hunter, then had to 

go off on tour and after that didn't see him. Later, Kenneth asked Doc what had become of the man, 

but Bulkley was vague. He wasn't sure. 

The years passed. Kenneth left the mission field, wound up in government, and in the late 

1950's worked on the White House staff of President Eisenhower, with an office in the Executive 

Office Building next to the White House. One day, he received a phone call from the Thai embassy. 

They said that a certain government official, whose name they gave him, and who was the Deputy 

Minister in charge of adult education for the whole country of Thailand, wished to call on Kenneth. 

Kenneth was puzzled; he wasn't on the Thai desk any more; why would the man want to call on him? 

The embassy answered that the man was interested in Kenneth, had known about him and wanted to 

call on him specifically. The embassy had suggested he go to the State Department, but the man was 

insistent that he must see Dr. Landon. So, okay, Kenneth made an appointment, and the man came 

in, stood in front of Kenneth, looked at him, smiling, and said, "Do you remember me?" The face 

was vaguely familiar, but Kenneth had to confess that he didn't really remember him. Well, the man 

336


said, "does this remind you of anything?" as he tried to raise his left arm and let it fall back. Then he 

reminded Kenneth of the young hunter who had been hunting with Dr. Bulkley and was mauled by a 

tiger. Did Kenneth remember teaching him how to read Aesop's fables? Yes, Kenneth remembered 

that. Well, the man said, he was that boy. Kenneth expressed amazement, and marvelled that this 

man could have become the Deputy Minister for Adult Education for the whole of his country. 

"Well," Kenneth said, "just think what you might have become if you hadn't learned to read Aesop's 

fables!" Yes, the man said, he would have become a hunter. He said he just wanted to call on 

Kenneth; he had remembered him all these years. 

A fabulous and true story. The visit in Washington would have been in about 1958, Kenneth 

says. Kenneth does not recall the man's name, unfortunately. 

Margaret says that Kenneth taught quite a few people to read. He taught the Landons' 

nursemaid in Bangkok. She was so excited that she would stay up all night reading, and she would 

be feverish the next day. She was astonished to discover that she could read all those letters and 

work out what they said. She had never thought she could do what educated people did, and she was 

absolutely thrilled. That was Ma Cham (SP?). 

2 

15:54 Mrs. Bulkley had decided to go home on a freighter. She took the boys, who went to the 

Kodacanal (SP?) school in southeast India, which still exists. Dr. Bulkley travelled up to Pinang to 

see about shipping a baby elephant to New York. This was May, 1930. He had been a contributor to 

the Museum of Natural History in New York for some years, and had a number of certificates from 

them. When he heard that there was a baby elephant for sale, he determined to buy it and sell it to a 

circus or to the zoo. Dr. Bulkley could have had the elephant for 200 tekals if he had not appeared so 

anxious to buy it, but the seller, noting his eagerness, more than doubled the price to 440 tekals. 

Margaret explains that a tekal today is worth about five cents, but in 1930, it was worth about fortyfive 

cents. Bulkley had a hard time getting papers for the elephant to show that he had not stolen it. 

All wild elephants belonged to the King. Then he had to get a health certificate from a veterinarian. 

Much red tape. Finally, Dr. Bulkley decided to send the elephant on the same freighter that his wife 

was travelling on, hoping by this expediency to save the cost of a keeper. An elephant had to eat 

almost continuously. 

When Bulkley first procured his elephant, he put it out in his backyard, and he found that he 

had to hire a man who worked all day caring for and feeding the critter. The elephant was lonely, of 

course. Kenneth was not there, but Margaret and the children went down a number of times to see 

the baby. It was exciting. The baby weighed about 800 pounds, and it wanted to lean against 

somebody. As soon as you came into the yard, it would come running over hopefully and try to lean 

against you. He missed the comfort of his mother. There was something enchanting about this big, 

loving baby. But no one could possibly hold him up when he leaned all that weight on them. And 

besides, as a baby elephant, he had stiff spines all over him which stuck into you in a most 

uncomfortable way. 

It cost Dr. Bulkley another 200 tekals to take the elephant to Pinang. He had paid for the 

papers, of course, and the keeper's fare up to this point. The fare on the ship was another 200, besides 

all the food, another large bill. Then a cable came from New York saying there was no sale for an 

elephant in the U.S. at the present time. But this did not reach the doctor before the ship sailed with 

the elephant in the hold. Margaret never heard how that came out, but she enjoyed thinking of Edna 

Bulkley, with her aristocratic ways, spending her days feeding and cleaning and caring for that big 

elephant baby as they travelled around the world. 

337


3 

21:37 The school term ran from about May 6 to October, running to the end of the Siamese Lent. 

The main section of the school housed the auditorium and the dormitory. The girls were very shy 

about sleeping in private rooms, and so they all slept in an open room. They had never in their lives 

slept in a room alone. They were afraid of spirits. One time at the school in Nakhon, the girls said 

there was a pi [pronounced pee]—the generic word for all forms of spirits. They had all kinds of 

pi, and these all had long names, and had their own characteristics. There was one that was as tall as 

a tree but had a mouth only as large as the eye of a needle and therefore was constantly hungry. 

Those little marks you had on your arm in the morning after a night's sleep were not mosquito bites; 

they were from the pi. Kenneth says that his book Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions is 

loaded with information on the pi. This fear of the spirits was deep in the people and went way back 

in their history, to long before Buddhism, which was just a sort of "frosting on top" of their animism. 

One night at Nakhon the girls began to say, in great fear, "There's a pi, there's a pi, there's a pi. 

We can see it over there by that tree." They could see it dancing around. They were so upset that 

they couldn't sleep. A teacher got a flashlight and went to investigate. What she found was an 

ironing board that had been set up, and the cover had come loose and was waving in the wind. In the 

halflight, it seemed to be dancing. 

One night at Trang, about a dozen girls tried to get into one bed, and the bedsprings just went 

down to the floor. It was just a web of springs, and it couldn't hold them all. They told the teacher 

who stayed with them that they had seen a pi. 

The structure of the school was intended to be an +, with the auditorium and the dormitory 

above it in the center, and then two wings with classrooms. One of these had been built, but the other 

had not. Miss Eakin had raised the money for this, and the second wing was to be built in the coming 

year. It was to have more classrooms and more dormitory space. The building was made with white 

stucco and had pillars in front. It was nice-looking. Back of it and connected to it was a wooden 

building for the beginners' class and an open dining room. The walls of this came up half way, and 

then there was netting up to the roof, which was of tile. A new kitchen with a cement floor had just 

been added. There were six tables with benches in the dining room, which seated about fifty or sixty 

people easily. Margaret went with Kru Ka (SP?) to buy some additional white enamel dishes and 

basins. China was too breakable since the children washed the dishes themselves. 

Peggy came down with another skin infection, and it was suggested to Margaret that she 

needed calcium. 

4 

28:22 June, 1930. Margaret wrote Elizabeth, thanking her for her letters. Letters from home 

cheered her up, and she really needed it. "I don't know anything more discouraging than missionary 

work. The failures loom so much larger than the puny successes." Just that week, one of the 

Christian families in Trang had broken up. The woman was one of the church's most spiritual 

members, and read her Bible regularly. She lived by it. Her husband, a third generation Christian, 

had become interested in another woman and had practically driven his wife out of the house. Dr. 

Bulkley was going to try to patch the matter up. The elders had met and appointed him and one of 

the old Christians to do it. 

Margaret speculates that this would have been Lung Duan, a wonderful old man, a really 

saintly person. Not an ounce of self-righteousness in him, "just one of those large-hearted, gentle 

people that everyone respects." A wonderful man. Kenneth has his ebony cane in the basement at 

4711, a slim stick with the curve of the wood in it at the handle. Lung Duang gave it to Kenneth in 

338


remembrance. Twenty years later after leaving the mission field, Kenneth encountered Lung Duang's 

daughter on a trip to Thailand, in 1956, up in Chiang Mai. 

/XQJ meant "Uncle" and was a term of great respect. 

Margaret wrote home, "If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget the first date I had when I 

was a freshman in college." It was with Alexander Gale, and they went for a walk. It was very trying 

because he didn't have much to say, and neither did she. Alex just didn't know how to talk, unlike his 

twin brother Bill. He left it entirely up to the girl to do all the talking. 

Margaret recalls social times at Wheaton, when her mother would have students over to her 

house, or they would all go over to the Hyatts' house, or the McShanes'. 

Gasoline cost about $1 a gallon in Siam at the time. 

Dr. Bovee's father had died. Doris had sold a story for $250. The Bovees were planning to 

leave for the U.S. in July. They were still staying with the Landons. They were going to go on 

separate ships, because he was going to work his way home on one ship while she rode on another. 

Again and again in the East, missionaries would take in people who were destitute. They all 

did it. Dr. Bulkley never hesitated when there was something like that. He once heard that there was 

a white man down at Kantang who was very ill, who had come in to the dock there, and he went 

down to get him. The man was trying to go round the world in a small boat. He was a German. 

Bulkley brought the man to his hospital and nursed him back to health. He probably would have died 

otherwise. 

Another time Dr. Bulkley went up to a tin mine where there was a Frenchman who had 

blackwater fever, brought him out, and nursed him. The man died. The Frenchman believed in 

cupping, so Bulkley obliged and cupped him, though he knew this was useless. 

Margaret says that one of the articles she wrote for her course at the Medill School of 

Journalism at Northwestern University in 1937-8 concerned this practice of people taking advantage 

of the hospitality of missionaries. Somerset Maugham did that, leaving a trail of tragedy behind him. 

He would go into a community. He had a gift for digging out old scandals, and then he would 

publish stories about them. One man, who had lived an honorable life for forty years, had done some 

dishonorable thing when young, and Maugham found out about it. Wrote and published it. The man 

went into his room and never came out. The famous one, "The Letter," worked havoc in two or three 

lives. 

And then there was the story of a man, a professor at Northwestern University, who wrote a 

book on Tibet, My Trip to Lhasa, which was accepted everywhere as genuine. The scholarly 

community regarded it as the authoritative work on the subject. He described Lhasa in detail. But in 

fact he had never been there. India was under British rule. This man wanted to go into Tibet. The 

authorities said no because every time someone went in, they had to send an expedition in to get him 

out again. 

Kenneth knew this man well but can't think of his name. He would wash his hair and dry it 

"all in a fizz" and never comb it. He used to wear a fur shackel (SP?). A famous character on the 

Northwestern campus. In World War II the Navy brought him in to the Navy building, and he 

insisted that they also bring his whole library, which they did, several thousand volumes. He was a 

great buyer of books. He was drunk much of the time, and they didn't get much work out of him. 

But he was colorful and articulate. He always made a great splash wherever he went. 

Kenneth ran into one of his students one day, a girl. This was at the University of Chicago. 

Kenneth asked about the man, and she told him how carefully she took notes on his lectures, with all 

the book titles, and names, and footnotes, and at the end of the course, to prepare for exams, she tried 

to look up these references and couldn't find a one. So she went to the professor to ask about it. He 

was astonished. He said he had just made them up as he went along. He never expected anyone to 

339


look them up. The woman said he was the only professor she ever had who lectured half the time 

with his fly open. He was very careless with his dress. 

In any case, the man did not get permission to go up into Tibet. The Landons had neighbors 

in Wheaton in the 1937-8 year that Kenneth was doing his doctoral work at Chicago, the Wilsons, 

who had been missionaries living up close to the border between India and Tibet. Mrs. Wilson was 

the one who knew what had happened and told Margaret the story. Kenneth suddenly remembers the 

man's name, William McGovern. 

So McGovern came up there and just crossed into Tibet, without a permit, and was almost 

immediately arrested and thrown into prison. Tibet was a closed country. As usual, the British had 

to get up an expeditionary force to go up and get him out. "I don't know why they bothered," 

Margaret says, "but they did." And then he wrote this book, which was totally out of his imagination. 

Margaret wonders why he didn't write fiction, with just a vivid imagination. But he was a "scholar," 

and he knew that no one could check on him. 

5 

41:32 Another story Margaret used in her article concerned Edison Marshall, who was a very 

popular novelist. He went into Indochina. These people would just walk in on you, and what could 

you do? They were foreigners; they had no other place to stay; and so you felt you had to take them. 

As for the Bovees, the Landons invited WKHP, and they behaved beautifully. Kenneth says he 

has often marvelled that they never wrote a story about the Landons. Margaret says Doris may well 

have done so, and perhaps even published the story, but if so, they don't know. They didn't read the 

kind of magazine Doris wrote for. 

Back to Edison Marshall. He just dropped in on some Christian Missionary Alliance people, 

who had a bare subsistence living. And he asked them to organize for him a pony train to go up into 

the mountains to visit some of the indigenous people. They did it, he went up into the mountains, got 

his material, and then walked out without paying for anything. He left these missionaries, who had 

nothing, to pay for all his expenses. 

Another story concerned the "small woman," Gladys Aylward (SP?) in China. A movie 

company came out to make the movie, "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness," which was based onher life 

and which they made in Taiwan. They asked her to come out and act as an advisor. Naturally, they 

offered to pay her expenses. They put her up in an expensive motel. And then, when they were 

done, they went off without paying a cent. She had nothing. She had to come to the U.S. and travel 

around making speaking appearances to try to earn the money to pay off this huge bill the movie 

company had run up. 

This was just the sort of thing that was constantly happening to missionaries out there. But 

except for the Bovees, who were a happy experience, it didn't happen to the Landons. 

6 

44:40 Bill injured his knee, but recovered. Peggy was getting over her eczema. Kenneth wrote, 

"Peggy just loves it when her father will play gentle with her. She doesn't like roughing for some 

reason. She's a prim little lady. Knows her mind very definitely. But Bill makes up for it several 

times over. He's afraid of nothing. You could hang him head first over the well, and he would 

giggle. A real manly boy. Nothing sissy about him. It's comical to watch him boss the Chinese 

servants. The tone of authority comes into his big voice as he roars orders to come pick him up, or go 

get his hammer. He knows what he wants." 

Margaret comments on a recent incident with President Carter's daughter Amy, in which Amy 

was upset about her team's losing in a track meet. Supposedly, she sat on the ground, weeping that 

340


she wanted a trophy. So, according to the story line, a Secret Service man grabbed a first place 

trophy and gave it to her. The White House denied that it had happened. Margaret suspects that it 

did. She recalls what Miss Christiansen told her when Peggy was born: "Any child is born without a 

moral sense and with one strong impulse: to survive." Kenneth adds, "To dominate." Margaret 

continues, "And to dominate the environment, and the environment is the parents. She told me, I can 

remember, 'I've seen babies go out of here in control of their parents at two weeks.'" Margaret figures 

that Amy, being a child, was doing what any child would do. Children always use their parents, or 

grandparents, or anyone they can, trying to make them jump to their command. 

Kenneth had ordered a mimeograph machine from Bangkok, intending to send monthly letters 

to many scattered Christian families around the peninsula and also to many interested people. This 

was June, 1930. 

Margaret felt she could not trust the younger woman who was working and cooking for her, 

Ah Lao (SP?). She was afraid to leave the children with her. With Ah Sim, it was better, and once 

Margaret had her trained, she took over. 

Margaret passed her second year language exam. She began working on her third year. She 

had a new teacher. Kru Pachum (SP?) had gone to Bangkok to study nursing, and Margaret now had 

Kru Flora instead. Her father was a Czechoslovakian, and her mother a Siamese. Her father went 

away when the children were very small, promising to return, and never came back. The mother 

went insane from the grief, after years of waiting for him. That story was all over Asia. "After all," 

Margaret says, "that's Madam Butterfly " The children were brought to the mission school in 

Bangkok, where they were educated. Kru Flora was a charming girl and a fine person. Her name 

was Kru Flora Lapsa. She had been teaching at the girls' school, and a new teacher came to take her 

place. This was a problem, though, because the new teacher did not yet have permission. The laws 

were strict, and a teacher could not start to teach until she had received permission from the Ministry 

of Education in Bangkok. 

7 

51:32 Peggy was beginning to learn her letters. Very exciting. 

One morning, Kenneth called Bill, and Bill answered, "No!" in a very determined voice. 

Kenneth called him again, and again he said, "No!" When he was called to dinner, he said, "No!" So 

Kenneth asked him if he wanted to be spanked, and he nodded his head that he did. Of course, he 

didn't know what he was saying. 

Kenneth went to Dr. Bulkley's place, where a young German named Willi Klinge was staying. 

Kenneth was trying to pick up some German while he had the opportunity. 

The Landons went for dinner at Dr. Bulkley's one night, and as they ate, two men were 

skinning a tiger just outside the door. The tiger had a strong odor, which mixed with the odor and 

taste of the food as Margaret ate! She went out and watched after dinner. This tiger had killed four 

cows before the owner managed to shoot it. The night before, a crocodile had been brought in alive, 

and Mr. Klinge bought it for eight tekals and shot it. The men skinned it in the night. In the stomach, 

they found two Singapore pennies and a Chinese cache. They also found an egg ready to be laid 

inside the crocodile, which they put away to see if it would hatch. Dr. Bulkley had a python in a box 

underneath the hospital. He was just fascinated with animals, dead and alive. 

The hospital was built on low pillars, perhaps three to four feet high. You had to crouch 

down to go under the hospital. One time, there was going to be a funeral, and they needed the 

cartwheels that were under the hospital on which to carry the casket. This was at night. Kenneth had 

a flashlight, went to the hospital, ducked under the hospital with his flashlight lit, and went well 

under to where he thought the wheels were, when all of a sudden his light came down on the blazing 

341


eyes of a panther. A black panther. He couldn't see anything but the eyes. The panther let off an 

awful roar, from just a few feet away. There hadn't been a sound out of it until then. Well, Kenneth 

thought he was dead. The flashlight fell out of his hands, and the light went out. And here he was, 

all crouched down, and he had lost his sense of direction. He fully expected to have the panther's 

jaws on him at any second. He couldn't see it. He could smell it. He could hear it panting. He could 

hear it snarling, "Eeagh, eeagh! Eeagh!" And here Kenneth was, nose to nose with it. Well, nothing 

happened. He kept waiting for the deathstroke. The teeth! He kept thinking, "Kenneth! Good-by, 

Boy!" Then nothing happened. So finally, he padded around and padded around, hunting for the 

flashlight. Finally found it. Turned it on again to see what was going on. Again, he found the eyes 

with his light but this time saw that the panther was encased in a sort of trap of bamboo slats, and was 

tied in there in such a fashion that it could not move. Its head was out, but nothing else. Kenneth 

gingerly backed out—with the cartwheels. 

On another occasion, Dr. Bulkley had Kenneth over for a feast of exotic meats. They had 

tiger meat and crocodile meat. Doc himself had shot a rogue elephant with government permission, 

so they had elephant meat. Monkey meat. Cobra meat. And rat meat from a great big field rat. 

They were all to decide which sort of meat they preferred. The cook had prepared it as steaks and 

roasts and chops. And they all decided that the most delicious was the cobra. The elephant was just 

like rope. Tough. The crocodile was stringy so you had to chew your head off. The monkey had a 

sort of sour taste. The cobra was like chicken, very tasty. 

By July, Kenneth had his monthly letter going out in English, Siamese, and Chinese. He had 

a mailing list of 170 names to start with in various towns. He had bought the mimeograph at a great 

bargain because the base had been eaten away. 

342


HOUR 56 

Session #41 continued 5/7/78 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXA1480) July, 1930. Kenneth continues on the mimeograph machine he bought, whose 

base had been eaten out by white ants and replaced with a teakwood base which was better than the 

original. He got it for 300 tekals instead of 450. 

He also hoped to get a Siamese typewriter so as to make neat Siamese copy. 

A monkey was given to Kenneth. His coloring was peculiar, in reds and browns and grays. 

His eyes were like big brown marbles that popped out at you. He had funny flat hands, and travelled 

about as fast as a tortoise. Neither Margaret nor Kenneth can recall what became of the monkey. 

Margaret wrote Adelle that she would momentarily be off to King's Daughters meeting. That 

was an old women's organization that has probably died off long ago. Mrs. Dunlap must have 

organized it when she was there. 

The Landons lived on what was then Tajin (SP?) Road, which is called something else now. 

It went east and west, and it went out west beyond where the Landons lived for about a mile and a 

half to the river, where the original settlement had been when traffic was by river. The Landons were 

half a mile outside of town. The road came in, crossed the railroad tracks, came to the hospital and to 

the first crossroad—down which were the church and the girls' school. The road continued east 

where the main Christian community lived, in a little village called Thai Pru. This was two or three 

miles from the Landons. Generally speaking, the pattern of living in that part of the world was that 

people lived in villages of perhaps twenty to thirty houses, always up on stilts, their animals under the 

house. The houses were fairly close together for protection. Their fields would be outside the 

village, surrounding it. Their fruit trees would be around their house. Kru Proi (SP?), who taught in 

the school, lived in Thai Pru. She was married and had one child. Her brother became Margaret's 

coolie, and he was a wonderful coolie. A powerfully built, gangster type in appearance. 

After the King's Daughters meeting at Kru Proi's house, the ladies had a feast of durian. She 

had two durian trees in her yard, and they were unusually fine ones. Durian in the south of Thailand 

was usually not as good as in Bangkok, but hers was. When Margaret first came to Siam, she felt 

sick whenever she smelled durian. The odor was extremely penetrating and lingered on in the 

manner of onions. She was amused to find a reference to it in an article on tropical animals which 

Dorothy Bovee was reading in the Saturday Evening Post The article said that apes were very fond 

of durian, "that high-smelling native fruit which is repugnant to most foreigners, but which a few 

years after living in the tropics learn to eat [sic], and some even acquire a depraved taste for it." 

"Well," Margaret says, "we had that depraved taste." In appearance durian was like a large thorny 

burr from six `to eighteen inches long. It grew on a tall tree and dropped to the ground when ripe. 

The inside was in longitudinal sections varying in number. Each section was separate from the others 

and contained a long roll of the fruit, not unlike a Vienna roll in shape, with a mutton-fat-like color. 

These rolls broke up into several pieces. Each piece was a large oval seed with the flesh of the fruit 

attached to it. On good ones the flesh was half an inch thick and about the consistency of soft cheese. 

The first time Margaret tasted one, she thought it was like nothing so much as an onion. But now she 

no longer tasted the onion flavor at all. The taste was very much like walnut ice cream. The Siamese 

considered durian the "king of fruits," and Margaret was inclined to agree with them. The only fruit 

she liked nearly so much was strawberries, and she couldn't get them. 

343


2 

11:53 That afternoon, Margaret had a conversation that she put into the first story she ever wrote 

for the Literary Society. It was one of the best things she ever wrote, she says, but her agent Helen 

Strauss could not sell it. She entitled it "A Grave for Frankie." Kru Proi, as they sat there eating the 

fruit, said that she had an uncle who was a wizard. She was in a chatty mood. She began to tell 

Margaret about him. She told what he did. When he died, she said, his son sat over his grave for 

three days and three nights so that no one would come and dig him up. The Thai believed in 

sympathetic magic, and if they could get some part of the wizard, such as his liver, it might be very 

powerful. Maybe they could kill their enemies. A wizard would make up a doll, a crude little doll, 

and people would come and ask how much it would cost to have so and so put out of the way. 

Margaret doesn't know if Kru Proi's uncle went that far. He would make up love potions. But 

wizards also dealt in hate potions. Kenneth breaks in to say that revenge was one of their favorite 

activities. Many murders were committed either by knife or poison. But the people believed a 

wizard could manage a death without any human instrumentality. The wizard would make a doll for 

this purpose and have it deposited at the intended victim's house, with some vital thing like a little 

knife in its innards. And sometimes they said the person would die of fright, though Margaret does 

not know if this is true. It was very like voodoo in Haiti. 

In any case, the son sat over the grave to protect the body. Margaret is uncertain what 

happened then, because the normal practice in Siam was cremation. The body might have been 

buried only temporarily. 

The story Margaret wrote was a true story that dealt with this kind of thing. 

Kenneth says he has a long series of stories about "witch doctors I have known." 

3 

16:38 Kenneth wrote home that modernism—as distinct from fundamentalism in the sense of the 

term current at the time—was creeping into the mission. "As I have followed its course in just the 

last three years, it looks like a sinking ship to me." The people in the mission were doing relatively 

little. There were only a handful of missionaries out in the country actually doing any evangelistic 

work. Most of the missionaries lived in the large cities where they could have a nice social life "with 

a slight amount of business effort." The Landons had pretty much been left alone during their term in 

the south, which meant that Kenneth's evangelistic touring, preaching, and Gospel distribution were 

unimpeded. But Kenneth was beginning to ask questions. "It is really a big problem with us whether 

we will come back to this mission or not. We think and pray about it a great deal in our hearts and 

are seeking the guidance of the Lord. If I had a private fund of money or fortune that could enable us 

to continue independently of the mission, we would so do. But I'm neither a wealthy man nor the son 

of one." 

What was happening was based on what Kenneth had seen at Princeton which was the 

product of the rise of higher criticism of the Bible. 

Session #42 June 4, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

4 

19:39 June, 1930. The Bovees were getting ready to leave at last. Doris was going to sail on the 

Prince line steamer Imperial Prince which sailed from Pinang July 4. Dan was hoping to go on The 

President Johnson, but in fact this did not work out. [He did find work on another ship and 

worked his way home.] Doris had been caring for the animals, but now that fell to Margaret. 

When Kenneth had returned from his last tour, he had brought with him two hornbills. They 

344


were voracious eaters, named Izzy and Lizzy. Unfortunately, some animal had recently caught and 

eaten Lizzy, so only Izzy was left. His full name was Isaac Gershwin. Kenneth says that one of their 

favorite foods was a whole durian seed, and since the hornbill had a straight intestine that ran from 

his neck to his tailpiece, it was possible to watch the passage of the seed from top to bottom. This 

became a fascinating sport—"for Doris and myself, at least"—to feed the hornbill a durian seed and 

then watch as this progressed to the end. And then the look of absolute astonishment on the face of 

the hornbill "as the seed departed." Margaret laughs and says that Kenneth has the fruit wrong! She 

would never waste durian on a hornbill. It was the jack fruit, the poor sister of the durian. It was a 

huge seed, much like the durian, but cheap, and without the good taste. 

Margaret forgets the fate of Isaac Gershwin. 

The hornbills were fond of fruit, bananas, and Izzy developed a taste for long shreds of meat. 

Suzi, the little dog, was a small, long-haired Japanese dog, brown in color, whose full name was 

Susan Gertrude Barr. There was also a long, thin, Siamese cat "of no particular shape or ambition" 

that had a taste for small lizards. His name was Leander. Peggy called him "Ananer." His full name 

was Leander C. Halliburton— Halliburton being a famous professional traveller. Finally, there was a 

spunky little black and white cat whom Doris took when almost dead and nursed back to life. They 

called him Willie, but his full name was Wilhelm Frederick Hohenzollern, after the last emperor of 

Germany [actual name was Friedrich Wilhelm Victor Albert of the Hohenzollern royal family]. 

The grounds of the compound were beginning to look the way Margaret had hoped for. Dan 

Bovee had done a great deal to bring this about, and Margaret was grateful to him. The place had 

become like a park. The Landons had a man who cut grass. That's all he did, all day long. When it 

rained, he couldn't work, of course, and the grass would get ahead again. He also carried water for 

them, for their bathing, and to water the plants. And he brought fuel for the stove. New hedges had 

been planted. Rubbish and weeds cleared out. Trees had been trimmed. 

To plant a hedge, they would break off branches of tea, stick them in the earth, and about half 

of these would grow. In about three years, the hedge looked like privet, dark green, very close. 

Nai Lai was doing repairs in the house. Margaret also had a sewing woman coming to catch 

up on the sewing work. She sewed well and fast, working on a sewing machine. Margaret did the 

cutting, and she did the sewing. It was a challenge to keep the children in clothes. There was nothing 

to buy in Trang. Margaret had to make everything, even the underclothes. In the hot climate, the 

children might go through two or three changes of clothes in a day. Kenneth would go through a suit 

every day. All the clothes had to be washed on a rubbing board. 

Every third day there was a big market, which was in a large, open building with aisles. 

Vendors of every sort brought vegetables. You could buy pork and some other items from vendors 

on the street. But the big market was just every third day. 

Margaret talks about the challenge of making underwear for Peggy that would not sag, 

solving the problem with a piece of elastic in the middle of the back. Some clothes were coming by 

mail from America, of course, from the Mortensons and from Brad Landon. 

5 

29:42 Margaret tells of an article in the Bangkok newspaper concerning her reunion with a Mrs. 

Boyd. The article was accurate except that a remark praising the newspaper had been put in 

Margaret's mouth which she had never made. This has been a frequent experience through the years. 

When she was interviewed after Anna came out, time after time words would be put in her mouth 

that she had never spoken. "It happens all the time." She is sure that it happens with many people 

who are quoted as saying this or that in the newspapers. Daily Mail Reunites Friends Long Apart," 

the article read. While in Bangkok, Margaret had read an interview in the paper with a Mr. William 

345


Boyd, former vice president of the Curtis Publishing Company, who was visiting in Bangkok with his 

wife. Margaret had known them since she was a child, through her father. So, through the 

newspaper, she communicated with the Boyds and had a visit with them, which the paper reported. 

Margaret reads the statement at the end of the article that she never made, praising the Daily Mail 

Margaret wrote in a letter to Adelle that, after three years in Siam, "I am just beginning to feel 

that I have any use as a missionary." She felt she was really getting the language now. She loved the 

school and the girls. 

July 1, 1930, Kenneth's first mimeographed epistle to his field went out. It was not the first 

pastoral letter, because there had been at least one earlier one written entirely by hand in Siamese and 

Chinese. They did type up the English one. [This is vague. It sounds as though they GLG 

mimeograph the handwritten letters. What seems to have been new July 1 was that Kenneth 

had a typewriter to work with.] Margaret points out that Kenneth was following the Pauline 

pattern, first touring an area, then keeping in touch with the Christians and any interested persons 

through mass letters. It was the only way to keep in touch with them. Kenneth could only get round 

to them personally once a year or so. But the Thai had a good postal system. So he conceived the 

idea of "epistolary evangelism." The number of people he sent to grew steadily to a large number 

and spread all over the country, even up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. Christians from 

other parts of the country wrote in asking for the letter. Fortunately, stamps were very reasonable. 

Margaret says that nobody kept up the practice when the Landons left. Ken Wells 

commented many years later when he visited in the Trang field that he visited in the homes of some 

Christians who had the complete file of all the epistles they received from Kenneth. The letters were 

treasured. Most people received almost no mail. When the pastoral letter came each month, it was 

an event. They would read the letter over and over. 

Kenneth tells of beginning his letters with the greeting, "Pluang Thi Rak (SP?)." "Thi Rak" 

meant "he whom I love, as well as like." Kenneth received some love letters from one particular 

woman in the north who took his salutation quite literally. "She really meant business. She was all 

ready to UDN!" Kenneth had to write her back and straighten her out. 

Margaret comments that, while the Thai had many words for things the Americans did not, 

the reverse was also true. In English we have words for different kinds of love which they don't 

have, and this could cause confusion. At the same time, the missionaries contributed new words and 

meanings to the Thai language. 

6 

39:04 Margaret writes Evangeline that she especially liked Sunday morning. "The early morning is 

the most beautiful part of the day in the tropics. It does not quite come up like thunder, as Kipling 

would have you believe, but it is dark, and then it is light. There is hardly any sunrise, and almost no 

twilight, as we have in the Occident. Sunday the coolies do not come, only the house servants. The 

children are dressed quickly and given their breakfast as soon as possible. Bill howls if his is not 

immediately forthcoming. I dress more leisurely. Kenneth still sleeps. It is the only day in the week 

that I don't immediately plunge into something. When breakfast is over, I stroll out and have a look 

around the yard. The morning is still fresh and damp by eight o'clock. But by nine, the sun has 

brushed the dew away, and the heat of the day starts. During the rainy season, I do not wear 

stockings about the yard. The grass in two days of rain shoots up long spires with pointed seeds that 

are a tremendous nuisance. The slightest touch as one is walking past and they are firmly stuck in the 

clothing. I've taken as much as half an hour to get them out of a garment once full of them." 

Margaret described a plant called a "sensitive plant." The slightest touch, and the leaves 

would immediately fold up and droop as if wilted. After a while, they would open up again. 

346


Margaret didn't know the name of the plant, but it was a weed, and she was trying to get rid of it. The 

flower was lavender and round in shape. The leaf was like a locust leaf. If the slightest bit of root 

was left in the ground, the plant quickly shot up again and soon flowered, propagating madly. 

Margaret wrote of picking a ripe jack fruit, which was huge like a watermelon and entirely 

filled a pail. 

The tea hedge would grow as high as the house unless it were cut back. When it bloomed, it 

was covered with red blossoms. 

Margaret would play old hymns on Miss Eakin's piano Sunday mornings. "It always seems 

that Tabernacle Hymns #2 have many pleasant associations." They would sing them around the 

piano. 

Kenneth was studying German, since there was a young German man in Trang at the moment, 

and since he would need a reading knowledge of German, French, Latin, and Greek to get a degree 

when he returned to America on furlough. 

Nai Lai made about thirty small hangers for Peggy's dresses, and a pole in the closet to hang 

them from. Much better than keeping them in a pile. 

The girls in the school were rehearsing a play to be given in September. Margaret was 

watching one night when suddenly Kru Mun Jua's (SP?) little girl ran up on stage and began to dance. 

"I never saw anything funnier." The girl had an impish face and a tiny little body. The Siamese 

dance was very beautiful, but very formal, with every movement conveying some meaning. Siamese 

music "has an odd rhythmic cadence like nothing else I've ever heard, something rather primitive and 

yet quite sophisticated." 

[We adjourn for a time to watch the Washington Bullets basketball team play in the 

championship of professional basketball, which they proceeded to win for the one and only 

time.] 

7 

45:25 Charles Hak, a Eurasian, who had been working as an evangelist in Petchaburi, and who was 

very orthodox, having studied at the Moody Bible Institute in the U.S., came to Trang at Kenneth's 

invitation. There was no money for his support at present, but Dr. Bulkley and Kenneth decided that, 

if necessary, they would divide their salaries with Charlie so that he could work as pastor of the 

church there in Trang. He was a thorough Siamese, despite his mixed blood, and the people regarded 

him as Siamese. Kenneth and Bulkley did find money for him. 

Of Peggy, Kenneth wrote, "She's such a darling. You don't have to say things twice for her to 

understand them. She has a very helpful spirit." Kenneth would come in and find Peggy standing 

behind Margaret with a brush in her hand, her face all red and glowing with excitement as she 

brushed her mother's hair. "She fairly puffs, she works so hard at it." When Kenneth got dressed, she 

would tell him each thing to put on, in order, and brought him his socks, ran to get his shoes, and 

tugged and tugged to put them on him. It was all voluntary assistance and not regarded as work. If 

they dropped anything, she was quick to run and pick it up. In fact, it was difficult to throw things 

away. She would run and bring them back. She had a mania for being clean. "Her favorite word is 

GLUW\." She liked to wash her hands frequently. 

Both children were ruddy from the sun. They took regular sun baths. Bill was a tough little 

man. Nothing seemed to hurt him. When he suffered small injuries, he did not cry. When Ah Sim 

wouldn't obey his command, however, he knew how to cry in "most lusty fashion, until she again 

becomes his willing slave and does his wishes. He can cry very realistically for an hour and never 

shed a tear. Quite an accomplishment." 

Kenneth was sending out his letter once a month, at the first of the month, in all three 

347


languages. 

The Sheehans came to visit. Mr. Sheehan went hunting with Dr. Bulkley, for tigers, but all 

they brought back were a few peacocks and jungle fowl. Kenneth enjoyed the feast of eating these. 

Tin prices had gone so far down that the mines were all shutting down. That was why the Sheehans 

were travelling; they were on their way back to Australia. 

Margaret and Kenneth speak of typing on the Siamese typewriter. Very difficult to learn. 

The letters had to be done in the correct order because the vowels went ZLWK the consonants, and had 

keys that did not move the carriage. If you were cutting a stencil, you had to do it just so or the entire 

stencil was ruined. 

Kenneth received a letter from the city of Nan (SP?; Muang Nan?), a thousand miles away in 

the north of Thailand, from someone who had one of his pastoral letters. He was receiving an 

increasing flow of letters in response to his pastorals, from people at all levels of the Thai society. 

7$3( ,; 6LGH 

8 

52:03 Kenneth comments on how much time it took to prepare his monthly letter. The materials 

were expensive, and all of the cost came out of Kenneth's own pocket. 

Margaret looked plump and healthy, Kenneth wrote, and she said that she felt better than at 

any time since coming to Thailand. 

Peggy had a "sort of fragile looking beauty, and is very dainty in all she does. That is, she is 

until she decides to spank Bill for something he has done. And then you should see determination on 

her face. Bill is as big as she is, but she handles him and gives him a sound spanking when she thinks 

he does wrong. He wet his pants one day, when we were not home, and when we came back, there 

was Bill standing in the corner with his face to the wall, and she was standing behind him, saying, 

'Shame!' and using her hand to slap his wet bottom when he howled." The two children made a fine 

pair and played well together, the only difference being that Peggy was not a child at all but was one 

of the three grownups in the family. "Poor Peggy," Margaret laughs. "She never felt she was a 

child!" 

When it rained, the streets emptied in Trang. Nobody liked to walk in the rain for fear of 

getting the head wet. It was so cool at times that Kenneth would wear a sweater. 

Kenneth taught Peggy how to play hide and go seek, but initially she had difficulty with it 

because she kept giggling in her hiding place. Bill liked the game too, but he could not manage to 

stay in one place for long to hide. 

The stove was poor in quality, and very slow. Baked poorly. 

Beef, when they could get it, was fresh-killed and tough. When Margaret went to buy it, the 

carcass would be hanging up there. The butcher would be sitting cross-legged, a fat Chinese, and he 

would say, "What you want, Mem?" Margaret learned which part was the tenderloin, because that 

was the only part she could make into a nice roast. The Thai solved the problem by cutting 

everything up into small pieces in their curries. Margaret would wrap the tenderloin in papaya leaves 

for twenty-four hours to tenderize it before roasting it, something she learned from Mrs. Bulkley. 

There was a lot of pepsin in the papaya leaf which worked on the meat. Pork was more tender, so 

they had more of that. Margaret did not enjoy the haggling that she had to do to buy anything. She 

bought a lot of beans, often the only vegetable she could get. People called beans 365'rs, because 

they would eat them every day. 

348


HOUR 57 

[A historic entry begins, the visit in August, 1930, to Nakhon, in which Dr. McDaniel 

introduced Margaret to the books of Anna Leonowens. The story just begins; the substance 

of it continues in Hour 75.] 

Session #42 continued June 4, 1978 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXB50) Margaret continues the story of her first learning of Anna Leonowens. She tells us 

that she has often said that when she first read The English Governess in the Siamese Court 

during that visit in Nakhon she really had no sense of a curtain going up. The letter in which she 

recorded the visit, which was for several days, was dated August 13, 1930, and as she and Kenneth 

talk it over, they conclude that the visit must have taken place in late July. So in the last days of July, 

1930, the saga of Anna began. 

Dr. McDaniel was about to build a new house, on a very beautiful site. There were great 

trees. The land was given to Dr. McDaniel by Prince Damrong. There was little tropical 

undergrowth, perhaps because of the sand in the soil, perhaps because it had been a cultivated area. 

When McDaniel began to build, which was some time after that summer, the workers found that 

everywhere they dug, they unearthed stones and relics from what Margaret believes must have been a 

temple from centuries before. They had several acres of ground, enough to build a new hospital on. 

They could see the mountains from there, looking blue in the distance. 

Mrs. McDaniel died during their furlough in the U.S., which was after Margaret's visit. She 

had already been quite ill. 

McDaniel was energetic and progressive. He wanted to build a hospital wing for people with 

tuberculosis. He put up a big water tower with a pump and a windmill, and intended to build his new 

house with running water. He also intended to have electricity. A friend had given him a Frigidaire 

refrigerator run by kerosene. 

Margaret visited the leper home while there, but has lost her letter recording this. 

She tried to persuade the McDaniels to send their children to Wheaton College. The oldest 

son intended to become a medical missionary, but died in a drowning accident. The youngest son, 

Ed, became a doctor and worked in Chiang Mai. In the past twenty years, he has become very 

interested in the problem of family planning in Asia. From the first introduction of it, the Thai 

women were very interested. They responded so strongly that they almost overwhelmed the doctor. 

They didn't want to bear ten or twelve children, five or six of whom would die. The government has 

taken this up. Ed did go to Wheaton, the only one who did. 

Margaret wrote of the closing of the tin mines and rubber gardens. Unemployment in Malaya 

was increasing. There were communist riots in Singapore. 

The King of Siam travelled to the U.S. for an eye operation, using an assumed name. 

Margaret remembers a story from that trip. After the surgery had been done, in a New England 

hospital, no bill was presented, and so the King asked for it. The surgeon said something like, "The 

King can do no wrong. I leave the fee to you." This meant that the King paid a much larger fee than 

he ever intended to pay, which he did not appreciate. 

The Landons were trying to get the Thai Christians to tithe to support their new pastor, 

Charlie Hak, but the response was not good. Previous missionaries had created a lot of what the 

349


Landons called "rice Christians." They were not anxious to give. In effect, they had converted from 

the idol of Buddha to an idol of silver and gold. There was one wealthy man, a leader in the church 

named Maw Juang (SP?), who gave nothing but a few coins in the offering plate. Kenneth 

commented that the Thai Christians "squeezed the pennies till they squealed for air." They expected 

the missionaries to pay for everything. 

2 

11:23 Adelle moved to 301 E. Seminary Avenue in Wheaton, where she lived the rest of her life 

until she was in her eighties. 

Kenneth's best friend at college and seminary had been Ralph Varhaug, who succeeded him 

as pastor at the Columbus, New Jersey, church. Joe Wright sent the Landons a picture of Katherine 

Tate and her baby. Ralph had met Katherine at Wheaton and married her. The Landons had not 

heard from Ralph in about two years. Katherine wrote occasionally. But the whole relationship had 

gone stale and cold. The Landons found it hard to take that Ralph would cut them off. A curious 

thing happened, though. He told people that he was writing Kenneth, but that Kenneth was not 

writing back. 

Muriel alone had been faithful about writing. And Joe Wright had been faithful also. Both of 

them very busy people. Muriel sent magazines, books, children's books, gifts. She was incredible. 

Margaret speaks of what a shock it was to her when Muriel "turned against me in 1951." She 

couldn't believe it. 

Every day Kenneth reviewed four chapters of Scripture that he had memorized, and 

memorized one new chapter. Every day he read at least two chapters of German and learned thirty 

new words. Every day he studied Greek and Hebrew for three hours after supper. The rest of his 

time went into church work. "I used to be pretty industrious, I guess." Margaret replies, "When did 

you stop? I hadn't noticed." 

Kenneth had some bad teeth and went up to Bangkok in early September to get them fixed. 

While there, he did some shopping for the family. Cloth for dresses. Other articles to wear. The 

Sunday he was in Bangkok, he preached on the Holy Spirit. 

Margaret wrote Evangeline, who was then living at 808 Essex Avenue, Southeast, 

Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband Evan Welsh. 

Margaret speaks of her problems with her cooks. Ah Sim eventually took over. Kru Flora 

helped Margaret with the shopping. 

Bill's pet amusement at the moment was pushing Peggy's doll carriage around. He loved 

playing with something that would "go." One morning, Margaret found him washing Peggy's doll's 

hair. He had hot water in a basin, and the doll was standing on its head in the water. The two 

children looked almost like twins now because Bill weighed only one pound less than Peggy. 

Margaret shares various little incidents with the children. Sometimes, when she was in bed, Peggy 

would call Margaret insistently. "Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama," on and on. When Margaret failed 

to respond, Peggy finally shouted, "Marget!!" This was always such a surprise to her mother that her 

mother would respond. 

3 

22:34 Margaret was planning warm clothing for the November mission meeting in Chiang Mai, far 

to the north. 

Margaret finally got a good garden book, a great event. She still has it. A Garden Book for 

Malaya by Kathleen Gough. Margaret now had 120 house plants. Many of these were ferns. 

Outside, she had salmon, pink, and red amaryllis. She also had a small pink lily and a small white 

350


lily that was shaped like a star. Then there was Honolulu creeper that was in flower year round with 

long sprays of pink and white flowers. The bougainvillea was a showy bush that grew large and high 

and had plum-colored flowers. The petrea had blue flowers like a lilac, but without scent. The 

duranotta [SP? duranta?] had tiny blue flowers and clusters of a little yellow fruit. Then there was a 

small flower that was waxy white, like a gardenia. And she had recently discovered that she had a 

Margaret figures that all of these were planted in Dr. Dunlap's time. He died about 1918. Near 

pomegranate tree with a very pretty flower on it, so she was hoping for fruit. As for trees, there were 

of course the coconuts, some beautiful wild cinnamon, a number of fruit trees, among them guavas 

and limes and breadfruit and jackfruit and rambutans and lemuts (??), as well as two durians. 

Christmastime, the place was all ablaze with poinsettias. Margaret had planted them completely 

round the caretaker's house next door. The soil there was well suited to them. They grew as tall as 

the house by Christmastime. 

Margaret was presently trying to grow a dozen royal palms and three candlestick palms, 

which she bought from the gardens in Pinang. They were tiny, no bigger than a finger. They were in 

pots four inches across. They would grow into gigantic trees if they survived. Each morning 

Margaret would take them into the full glare of the sun for a little while, then take them back under 

the house where they had partial sunshine. 

The palms did survive. Toward the end of the Landons' second tour, they were about eight 

feet tall, and Margaret planted them in such a way as to make an avenue of trees. She never saw 

them again after 1937, when they left Thailand. But after World War II, when Kenneth travelled to 

Southeast Asia, he had his pilot fly over the house at Trang. He was flying from Bangkok down to 

Pinang, Singapore, and on to Jakarta. He didn't have the time to land in the Trang area, but he 

wanted to see. So first they buzzed the hospital, then flew up the road, and there, below, he saw the 

majestic avenue of trees Margaret had planted. The royal palms were fully grown, twenty, twentyfive 

feet high. 

In Florida, where these palms grow, there is a deadly pest killing the palms, Margaret tells us. 

The fear is that it will spread to other parts of the world. 

4 

29:45 Kenneth inaugurated a system of smiles with the two children. One day, when Peggy was 

fussing and crying, with the tears running down her face, her eyes all red, Kenneth shouted at her to 

"Smile. Smile!" Peggy couldn't manage it, though she tried hard, so to obey her Daddy, she put a 

finger at each corner of her mouth and drew it up so that she would look like she was smiling—all the 

while continuing to weep. Kenneth couldn't help laughing "at her invention." Margaret laughs, 

"Aren't children incredible?! Really, they are, you know." 

Margaret felt the regular sunbaths the children were taking were improving their health. 

Peggy disliked vegetables, so there was a struggle to get her to eat them. Bill had eaten his 

vegetables until lately, but recently he had turned against beans and spinach. Kenneth figured this 

was because he was too lazy to chew. He preferred potatoes and squash and other such things that 

could be "inhaled." 

What rules Kenneth and Margaret had, they enforced. Their philosophy was not to have too 

many rules, but to enforce those they had. 

The new pastor, Charles Hak, arrived in early October. 

Kru Kim Juang, the head teacher at the girls' school, had a little girl Peggy's age. Her 

nickname was Bu. She spent the night with the Landons, which was very exciting. Bill, who had 

always displayed "a supreme indifference" to everyone outside the family, took a great liking to her. 

He wanted to play with her but didn't know how to go about it. He galloped around her and chortled 

351


and patted her on the head and tried to get her attention in many ways. 

Both Peggy and Bill were interested in Margaret's gardening. When she dug, they dug. 

When she carried pots about, they carried pots about. Lately, Margaret had steamed some earth to 

get rid of pests, and the children found this fascinating. 

One day Bill ran a nail into his hand. The doctor cut it open, cleaned it out, gave him a 

tetanus shot, and Bill came out of it as chipper as ever. 

Margaret now knows that Auntie Trine sent the ice cream maker for Christmas, 1929. It was 

a drum you filled with ice and salt, and you put your ice cream makings inside, and there was a crank 

to turn. It didn't take long, and the ice cream was wonderful. 

The Landons were hoping to get electricity, but they never did. 

Peggy graduated to a regular bed. No railings on the sides any more. Bill moved into the bed 

that Peggy had used. 

The taping underwent a four-year break at this point. Kenneth had become 

increasingly resistant to the taping because of its slow pace and especially the tedious 

reading of the letters. This was not his style. Finally, after the June, 1978, session, he called 

an end to it. As far as he was concerned, he was done with it for good. 

For years I wondered if we would ever be able to complete the history. I dared not 

raise the issue, knowing that if I did so prematurely, that would truly finish it forever. Finally, 

by June, 1982, enough time had passed, and conditions seemed to have changed sufficiently, 

that I found it possible to raise the matter of taping again. And Kenneth acquiesced, but with 

the caution that if it deteriorated into the same sort of thing as before, he would finish it. We 

actually began June 19, working with material from after the Siam years, in what is listed as 

session #46. This was followed by sessions on July 2 and July 6, then a two and a half month 

break before the session of September 24 that follows. After all these years, I cannot explain 

why we taped out of sequence. 

Session #43 September 24, 1982 Kenneth, Kip, and after a while Margaret and Nona Beth 

5 

36:09 Kenneth had a distribution project using Bible portions provided by the American Bible 

Society, such as Matthew, John, Acts, books like that. There would be several thousand copies to 

distribute in the villages. The hope was that the people would retain them and read them. The 

country people had no books, and there were no newspapers except in the towns. Kenneth had an 

open touring car with a fabric top and open sides. No starter battery. You had to crank it from the 

front to get the car going, and you got started on the magneto. Kenneth and Ngiap Seng loaded up 

the whole back of the car, the back seat, the section between the back and the front seat. It was solid 

with these booklets. The two of them were in the front seat, with Kenneth driving. It was the 

beginning of the rainy season. The road that ran between the paddy fields was about eight feet above 

the paddies most of the time so that traffic wouldn't be inundated when the monsoon came. The 

paddies had eight to ten inches of water in them at least, all the way along. If you had to go to a 

village through the paddy fields, you walked on the dividing partitions between them. So what you 

saw were many rice paddies filled with water framed by walkways, with the road going through. The 

road was quite narrow. 

352


Kenneth was driving from Trang to Phatthalung. And as they drove, there, coming in the 

opposite direction, was an elephant with a mahout on his back. The elephant was right smack in the 

center of the road. Car and elephant came together, and clearly one of them had to get off the road 

for the other to pass. Obviously, it would have to be the elephant because the car FRXOGQ W get off the 

road. The elephant didn't have enough room at the side of the road to stand securely, so that the car 

could pass. He had to get off. But he didn't want to. It was clear in his mind that the car should go. 

There was a big argument between the mahout and his elephant, and the elephant was 

grumbling. He didn't ZDQW to get off the road. Grumble grumble. Finally, the mahout began to 

whack the elephant with his hook and tell him he KDG to get off the road. In the end, the elephant 

grudgingly submitted, and with much groaning and complaining, he eased down on his haunches and 

literally slid like a kid on his bottom down the eight- to ten-foot embankment into the paddy field. 

Kenneth had seen elephants do this thirty or forty feet down into the Mekong River, splashing 

happily into the water. They thought it was fun. But this elephant didn't want to do it. 

By this time, the engine in the Ford had died, and the two men sat there in their dead car, 

noticing that the elephant was not going on by. On the contrary, he was right there beside them, 

turning very slowly and deliberately to look at them. He gave them "the eye." His head was right on 

a level with their car, so that they were looking eyeball to eyeball with him. They didn't think 

anything of this especially, assuming that he was just curious. Kenneth was just about to have Ngiap 

Seng get out of the car to crank up the engine when, with no warning at all, the elephant raised his 

trunk—which he had quietly filled with water and mud—and directed it immediately in Kenneth and 

Ngiap Seng's faces. He blew a blast of water and mud completely over them, instantly soaking them 

and plastering them with mud. The elephant decided that this was a nice game, and "he just 

maliciously kept filling his trunk with water and spraying us with it," until the car was literally full of 

water, right up to the tops of the doors. It was like sitting in a bathtub. Kenneth got Ngiap Seng out 

to turn the crank, but he was so excited he couldn't get the car started. Finally, Kenneth got out, 

having set the spark and the gas levers the right way, and managed to get the engine going. The 

elephant continued all the while spewing water into the car. He kept the car full so that when 

Kenneth opened the door to get back in, water rushed out. But as soon as he closed the door, the 

elephant started filling the car up again. 

At last, Kenneth started down the road. And the elephant set out along with the car. The Ford 

was rather slow, and the elephant had no difficulty keeping up. He chased them easily for a quarter 

of a mile down the road, sucking up water and spraying them with additional water and mud. 

They drove on to the next village, and the people could hardly believe what they saw. The 

two men were so covered with muck that they were unrecognizable. "You couldn't tell I was white. 

You couldn't tell Ngiap Seng was a yellow Chinese." They hauled out their pamphlets and tried to 

clean out the water and muck from the car. They always carried with them their bathing sarong, 

which was called a pa khema (SP?) and which was literally a strip of cloth about two and a half to 

three feet wide that fit around your middle and that you could put on so tightly that it looked like 

underpants, with the tail tucked up in the back. So they undressed before an admiring crowd—"with 

no modesty whatsoever"—drenched themselves down with water from the village well, then in their 

bathing cloths, went back to try to rescue their books. The inner books were damp but salvageable. 

They spread them all out to dry. Some of the villagers had actually seen what the elephant had done, 

and they were discussing among themselves in an admiring way what they had seen, and of course 

commiserating with the two victims. 

353


6 

47:13 Kenneth tells of the first time he ever used a bathing cloth. It was on one of his earliest tours, 

in 1928. He was at a little town up along the railroad, a place called Ban Na, or Ban Na Son, and 

there was a small stream nearby where Kenneth wanted to take an evening bath—rather than just 

throw water over himself at the Chinese khe chang (SP?), that is, the hotel. So Kenneth set out with 

his bathing cloth clutched around him and with a dipper in hand. He had never done this before. 

Eventually, he learned to put the bathing cloth on with a hand knot so that it would stay on, but this 

was his first try in public, and he hadn't quite mastered the art of it. He got into the stream and was 

into the business of serious bathing when he inadvertently stepped on his soap, losing his balance. As 

he flailed to recover himself, he discovered that he had lost his bathing cloth. Quite a number of the 

villagers, the girls and the boys, were taking their evening baths along with Kenneth, and they 

erupted into laughter. He managed to recover the cloth and tried to put it back on, while the villagers 

howled and laughed. But in his confusion, he couldn't get the cloth back on, and finally, he just fled 

down the road toward the hotel "flying this cloth over my head." By that point, there was no time for 

shame or modesty. He went running right through the middle of town in his birthday suit, no doubt 

leaving an indelible impression on all who saw him. 

Kenneth tells again the story of Ken Wells and the buffalo, near Hua Hin, where the King had 

a palace. It was the palace that King Prajadhipok (SP?) fled to in 1939 when they had the coup d'état. 

The Landons and the Wells were at Nong Khae, the Presbyterian mission vacation area a mile or so 

south of Hua Hin. This was right on the shore, on the Gulf of Siam. There were many jellyfish in the 

sea, dangerous ones, and Al Seigle and Kenneth and some other fellows worked hard with bushel 

baskets to clear out the jellyfish so that they and the women could sit in the water. As they were 

sitting in the water, enjoying themselves, there suddenly appeared a figure covered with mud 

"staggering and racing and leaping and cavorting and moaning and groaning" down from the fields 

up behind the beach area, where the buffalo usually hung out. The missionaries could hardly believe 

what they saw. The head was the head of Ken Wells, but the rest of him was unrecognizable. He 

plunged into the water. They naturally wanted to find out what had happened, so after Ken had 

cleaned himself up a bit, he told them the story. 

He had come down on the railroad to be with Margaretta and the rest of them, and being 

impatient to get to the beach, he had taken a shortcut through the fields. When he was well into them, 

it dawned on him that the fields were filled with mud wallow holes with buffalo in them. Only the 

snouts and nostrils of the buffalo showed above the water. As he approached, they began suddenly to 

come rearing up, and he found himself surrounded with buffalo. They were offended because he 

"stank like a foreigner." Their horns were down; they were pawing the ground. And Ken did the 

only sensible thing. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So he went right down into the nearest mud hole. 

He went in right up to the neck, like a buffalo, so that they could not smell him. Their eyes were very 

poor. 

Well, the next thing he knew, the buffalo were all coming back down into the wallow, 

nudging him, leaning up against him, paying him no attention, because he now smelled like a buffalo. 

He waited until everything calmed down, and then slowly, cautiously, eased himself out of the 

wallow. The buffalo paid him no attention. "He smelled like a buffalo; he was respectable." Ken 

made his way through the fields, buffalo on all sides, and finally "he saw us down by the beach and 

came racing down, leaping, bounding, shouting, groaning, wailing, fell into the water, went under the 

sea, with all his clothes on." And when he emerged from the water, he looked more or less like 

himself. 

Margaret talks about how the farmers cared for their buffalo. They would keep them under 

the house, perhaps. How groups of men would take their buffalo out to grazing areas to feed. No one 

354


milked cows, though they did have female buffalo. 

She tells how, when she had fenced in the compound at Trang, the men discovered they could 

let their buffalo in to graze and then go off. Didn't have to watch them. The first time it happened, 

she didn't see any people at all. She just looked out and saw her compound full of buffalo. After it 

happened the third time— 

Margaret interrupts her thought to speak of the coolie who cut the lalang grass. It was so 

tough that he had to use a scythe. The danger of snakes. 

355


HOUR 58 

Session #43 continued September 24, 1982 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IXB400) Margaret continues on the buffalo the villagers had put into the Landon compound. 

She stopped it by having the coolie let the buffalo out, much to the distress of the villagers when they 

came back for their animals. 

Kenneth tells how he asked Margaret to marry him. He was working at Rodin's Restaurant, 

which was near the courthouse, and the men, the lawyers, from the courthouse wanted fast service. 

They tipped well if they got it. There were two fast waiters, Henrietta, and Kenneth, who learned 

from watching her, and the two of them collected the best tips. Kenneth was saving his to buy an 

engagement ring for Margaret. 

When he was in Meadville, he went to George T. Wilson of the Wilson Jewelry Store. He 

smoked cigars all the time, and his mouth had a little round hole permanently formed in it from the 

cigar he always had in it. It was peculiar to see on the rare occasions when he removed the cigar 

from his mouth. He bought his cigars in huge lots. And he always smelled like a cigar. Kenneth told 

Wilson how much money he had, and asked what sort of ring he could get with it. Wilson came up 

with a ring that Kenneth liked but that cost more than he had. And Wilson trusted Kenneth with it. 

Kenneth gave him what he had and committed to paying the rest when he could. Which he did. 

The problem was that Margaret didn't seem to want to be engaged. But then, one day, the two 

of them were out taking a walk around Wheaton, and finally he got round to the matter of getting 

engaged. "How about marrying me?" Kenneth says she didn't seem interested, but then he whipped 

out the ring and said, "Well, let's see if the ring fits." They sat down on a curbstone, and he stuck the 

ring on her finger. And it fit. So that's how they became engaged. 

The first thing she wanted to do was to rush home and show her mother. So the two of them 

went dashing home with the ring on her finger to show her mother. "And I don't remember that she 

ever said yes. I don't think she ever did say yes." "I didn't," Margaret says. But she had the ring on 

her finger, so they were engaged. Kip recalls hearing Kenneth say, when he asked her to marry him, 

that he then said, "You will!" and then whipped the ring out. And Kenneth says that, yes, he had 

done that. "You will, won't you?" and before she could object, slipped the ring on. To which she 

tacitly acquiesced. 

So, to this day, after fifty-six years of marriage, four children, and with grandchildren and 

great grandchildren scattered around the country, Margaret has not formally agreed to marry 

Kenneth. And apparently, she never will! 

Margaret says, "Well, you see, we—as you will have noticed—are of different temperaments. 

Kenneth thinks that things should be done immediately. It's very fortunate, because things do get 

done. But I'm likely to think I have to give this some consideration. It's quite a big decision to 

make." 

Margaret says she really wasn't in a rush to go home. But they did go home. And her father 

was there, and he said a memorable thing. He looked at Kenneth and said, "I've been praying for you 

since the day Margaret was born." 

Adelle was concerned that Kenneth, like A.D., was an overworker whose health might suffer 

accordingly. But of course, he had a completely different temperament. Margaret talks about her 

father's Danish heritage, going back to the Vikings "who were not very nice people." The northern 

356


Jutland Danes were known in Scandinavia for their inflexibility. They were almost unable to bend. 

Margaret tells about her grandfather's brother, an inventor, who invented a special kind of drill bit. 

His name was Christian Caspar Mortensen. Margaret has a picture of him wearing a medal the 

Egyptian government gave him because of what his drill bit meant to their drilling. 

Margaret goes over Mortensen family history. Her grandfather who emigrated to this country. 

How her father took on the responsibilities for his family when he was twelve. Grandfather had 

invented, among other things, a merry-go-round, and he travelled around from country fair to country 

fair with it while A.D. carried the responsibility for the family back home. 

All the other five children of that family lived long, healthy lives. A.D. was burned out by 

hard work and died at fifty. 

Kenneth worked hard, but he didn't have a "nervous" or inflexible temperament. "You see the 

way Kenneth does things, so quickly, so fast, and so easily." 

2 

14:01 Kenneth and Margaret perform the Burmese Gospel chant they learned when they were 

young. 

Shama fulla waukee, waukee, waukee. 

Shama fulla waukee, waukee, waukee. 

Hojabo! Ho! 

Hojabo! 

Ho! 

They have no idea what it means. Kenneth says "they" just made it up. It was just noises. No, 

Margaret says, there were Burmese words in it. There was a group of young Burmese Christians who 

went all over the country holding meetings in churches. [It is not clear which country, Thailand or 

the U.S. Presumably, Thailand.] They taught Kenneth one sentence in their language, "Gaung 

gaung, ma gaung gaung, sa sa!" It was what a mother told her little kid when he wouldn't eat his 

porridge. "Eat it, you little rat, whether you want it or not!" "Gaung gaung" meant "good." "Ma 

gaung gaung" meant "no good." And "sa sa" meant "eat it." So Kenneth spoke fluent Burmese, one 

sentence's worth. 

Kenneth tells how he managed to get his ring to fit Margaret's finger. He had played with one 

of her rings, seeing which of his fingers it fit on, and when he went to Wilson, he told the jeweler to 

size the ring for that finger. So it fit perfectly. If it hadn't, who knows what would have happened? 

She might not have worn it home. They might not have gotten engaged. 

Margaret says she can still remember her state of mind at this happy moment. Bewilderment. 

Adelle noticed this when Margaret put salt in the cocoa instead of sugar. She was confused. 

3 

17:35 Margaret tells of Christmas in Thailand. The first Christmas they spent in the country, 

Peggy's first Christmas, presents came from the U.S. Even though Adelle and the girls had very little 

money, they always found ways of sending gifts. On Christmas Eve, the Landons were in bed asleep 

when, at about one or two a.m., they awoke to the sound of singing. Some group of people was 

singing Christmas carols just under their sleeping porch, and their singing was truly lovely. It was a 

group of church young people. There was a guard on their compound, at the entry bridge from the 

road, usually a Sikh, employed by the mission. He let the group in. 

The Siamese naturally picked and chose what of the Western culture the missionaries brought 

357


with them they would take up and what they would not. And Christmas was something they adopted 

happily. They loved it. When the Landons went south to Nakhon and then Trang, they found that 

Christmas had taken hold there too. There would be a Christmas service at the church. There were 

no pine trees for Christmas trees at that time. But there would usually be a tamarind tree that had a 

fruit that was like a little twisted frankfurter, and it could be painted gold or silver as decoration. 

They would have a tree at the church. And they would exchange gifts, usually very simple things. 

And then the young people would start at midnight caroling. They were a protocol people, so 

naturally they would start with the governor. The governor and the officials had gotten used to this. 

The carolers only went to the top ones, the governor, the chief judge, the head of the police, and so 

on. They would be invited in at each place to have something to eat. Then they went down to the 

village of Thai Pru, where many Christians lived, and caroled there. And finally, they would get to 

the Landons' house at about 6:30 in the morning. They just loved it. Ah Sim and Margaret would 

make a big pot of cocoa, and prepare some cookies and kanoms (SP?), the night before. They could 

hear the carolers coming, and singing at the next house up the road. 

The Landons had a tamarind tree, so they would have the coolie cut a limb and set it up as a 

Christmas tree. They would trim it, and have some decorations. 

Preparations for Christmas actually began the June before with a letter to Adelle to begin the 

process of buying gifts. She would shop for them, perhaps at Montgomery Ward. It would take 

months to get the presents bought and shipped to Kantang, where Kenneth would then go and haggle 

with the customs people over them. Every year, Kenneth and the customs man would have a long 

battle over how much duty he was going to pay. One memorable experience was over the little red 

farm wagon that was intended to be for Bill. Was it a toy? If so, the duty would be high. Or was it a 

working vehicle? If so, the duty would be low. Kenneth argued the latter. It could carry the wood. 

It could carry all sorts of useful things. And finally, the customs man succumbed. Kenneth would 

return home with all the gifts, and they would hide them from the children. 

Adelle even had to send the paper and the ties to wrap the presents. So, all would be prepared 

for the great day by Christmas Eve. The carolers would be singing their way through the night. All 

the gifts were under the tree, because the plan was to open them as soon as the carolers left. Morning 

came. They could hear the carolers singing in the distance. Margaret got up to prepare. 

She threw open the doors. The house had no windows front or back. It had double doors with 

bolts top and bottom. 

The porch was quite wide and went all the way around the house. The sleeping areas were on 

the porch. The corners at the back were the two bathrooms. At the front, the porch was extended at 

the center in what was called the mook. The car was parked under that. It was the ceremonial place 

where guests were received. Margaret had ferns there as decoration. 

Margaret threw open the double doors, and when she did, she just stood there stunned. "The 

tree, the gifts, everything were literally covered with large ants, so totally covered that they 

absolutely obliterated the tree." Kenneth says, "They were like a blanket. They were literally like a 

blanket that was pulsing. It was a pulsing blanket." Margaret thought, Our Christmas is gone. But 

the guests were coming, and so she pushed this concern aside, closed the doors, and went out to 

welcome the guests. 

The carolers arrived, and began to sing. There was always someone who stepped forward and 

began to dance, beautifully and gracefully. Margaret and Ah Sim brought out the cocoa and cakes 

and cookies. It was really nice. The young Thai squatted in the way that was natural to them, rather 

than sitting in chairs or on the floor. 

Then it was over, and they left to go home. This was WKHLU Christmas. There would be no 

Christmas for them at home. So for them, this marked the end of the celebration. 

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Margaret had deliberately avoided looking in the direction of the Christmas tree, and "my 

problem." She had concentrated wholly on her guests. Now that they were gone, she summoned her 

inner strength, and turned to deal with "my problem." And there wasn't an ant. All the ants had 

gone back into the wall. Kenneth says, "They were the ants that lived with us. They had literally 

come out of the wall." The tamarind was very fragrant, and Kenneth thinks that the ants were 

curious, and in the night they had emerged and swarmed over the tree. This never happened again, 

though they had other tamarind Christmas trees. Only that once. Kenneth says, "Well, anyway, they 

were satisfied. They'd viewed the tree, and viewed the Christmas, and decided it was all right and 

went back into the walls." 

The Landons never had to clean the table or sweep up the crumbs from the floor, Kenneth 

says. "You could drop crumbs, and you could see a crumb trotting right along the floor. You 

wouldn't see the ant. You would just see the crumb!" Ah Sim would never put food on the table 

until they were ready to sit down. Many people would put the legs of their dining table in bowls of 

water, though the Landons didn't do that. They would sit down at the table, and the food would come 

on, and the Landons would try to beat the ants to it. And if you had any crumbs on there, you could 

just see the crumb go. Each crumb would go trotting right off. 

Margaret says that the ants didn't actually come up onto the table while the family was eating, 

though "they were there." Kenneth exaggerated a little bit. But not much. They always called the 

house "the bug house." 

4 

34:12 One dramatic event was when army ants would come through the house, in a path about eight 

inches wide. They would come in a solid phalanx. They came right up one of the pillars the house 

stood stood on, right up through the house, all the way through, down a pillar at the other end, and on 

their way. They wouldn't go round the house. They went right through it. One time, Kenneth 

decided he was going to stop them, and he took kerosene and burned them back as much as a hundred 

yards. It never phased them. They just kept coming as though he hadn't burned a one. They went 

right over the bodies of all the incinerated ants, and Kenneth finally just gave up. 

The ants did not go across the floor. 

In describing where the ants GLG go, Margaret says that the roof of the house had a large 

overhang because of the kind of powerful monsoon rains they would get. She then tells us of the 

times she and Kru Kim Juang found themselves caught in one of those great storms, which leads to 

the subject of their going out on many afternoons to visit the homes of students who had missed 

school more than once. It was good public relations. They would have umbrellas, but often, they 

would be coming home when they would hear this sound—"like an enormous army of chariots." 

"Coming through the treetops," Kenneth says. "Like a roar of galloping horses coming, " Margaret 

says. One minute they were dry; the next they were soaked. 

So. The roof was very steep, with a long overhang to carry off the water. The pillars under 

the house were brick, eight feet or more high. The ceilings in the house were high, and there was a 

lattice at the top of the walls to allow the air to move. 

The army ants for some reason always chose the back of the house to enter. They would 

come up the pillar and always come in at the bathroom end and get up near the ceiling at a point 

where there was no lattice for some reason, and they would walk right across at the ceiling level, all 

the way across the house, and then would go on down the pillar at the other end and continue on their 

way. They left a mark on the wall where they had gone, and Kenneth found that it was impossible to 

eradicate. The only thing that could be done was to repaint the wall. 

Margaret comments that the world of that time is all gone. She enjoys remembering it. She 

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wishes they had kept better records. Written diaries. They could have, in the evenings. Nothing was 

going on in the evenings. Kenneth comments that, Well, they had read Dickens in the evenings, all 

the way through—reading out loud to each other. [The entire, elegant, matched set of Dickens 

which they read to each other in Siam presently resides with Peggy. 5/95.] Margaret says of 

that time that as they were living through it, they were not aware that they were living at the end of an 

era. 

Margaret goes off to bed. 

5 

39:27 Kenneth was visiting a tin mine in one of his tours, and there were elephants about. The 

elephants were used to carry the tin on their backs, a few hundred pounds or so. They had weak 

backs, generally speaking. They would go through the jungle from the tin mine, making a practical 

transport. There was one particular elephant standing out in the roadway, waiting for his mahout. 

Elephants generally did what they were told to do, if they were well trained. Kenneth went into a 

Chinese cookshop to get a cup of cocoa—he says it in Chinese. The proprietor and Kenneth were the 

only people in the shop, and he brought Kenneth some cakes and cocoa. Kenneth had his back to the 

open end of the shop, which opened out onto the street, because of the glare from the roadway. As he 

was holding his cup in his hand, "all of a sudden a great big trunk came sliding in over my shoulder 

and sucked up my cookies. They all just went right off my plate." Kenneth looked up, and here was 

this elephant looking at him benignly, with his head right up above his. The elephant was high, of 

course, and the roof was low, and to get his head in he had lifted the entire roof of that building up 

onto his shoulders. Kenneth had sensed the roof going up, and noticed dust coming down into his 

cocoa, but before he could make sense of that, this sinuous trunk had slid over his shoulder and 

sucked up his cookies. All of them! The proprietor saw this happen—it had evidently happened 

before—and he let out a shriek, grabbed a couple more cookies, and hurled them at the elephant. The 

elephant backed out, reached back in and got those cookies too, and returned to the road. 

"And then, a very comical thing. I'll never forget that elephant. He was like a small boy who 

knows he's done something naughty. He isn't sorry for it. But he's got to pretend he's sorry for it. 

And he stood out there with his hind leg, one hind leg rubbing back and forth apologetically against 

the other. Just like a kid rubbing one ankle against the other, you know. Shaking his head. Oh, he's 

so sorry, so sorry. Until the next time." Obviously, he and the proprietor knew each other well. 

6 

43:03 Once, at Ban Don, up on the Gulf of Siam, Kenneth was travelling by dugout canoe and 

came to a dock for the night, hoping for a place to sleep. It was a fishing village just north of Ban 

Don. He and his evangelist asked in a number of houses if they could stay there for the night, and 

everyone rejected the two of them. So they decided they would have to spend the night in the dugout 

canoe. It was tied up to the dock. Kenneth went to sleep and began to have a nightmare of sorts, a 

feeling that all was not well, and that somehow the boat was tipping over. Suddenly, Kenneth 

realized that it ZDV tipping over. And he looked and saw the front legs of a crocodile that was getting 

at the boat and preparing to make a grab at him. As the croc pulled down on the boat on one side, 

Kenneth went flip out the other side. "I really levitated." He or a part of him would have become a 

meal for a crocodile. The animal would have had Kenneth very shortly as it pulled down the side of 

the boat to get at him. 

Chong was between Trang and Phatthalung in the mountains. There was a backbone of 

mountains that came from the Himalayas and swept down through the peninsula, all the way down 

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through Malaysia. It was several hours by bicycle from Trang to these mountains. Among them, 

there was a fine peak where a former governor had contemplated putting in a hill station, the sort the 

British had put in here and there in Malaya. The idea was to have a resort area. At the foot of the 

mountain, there was a very nice waterfall, with the water tumbling down out of the mountain in a 

beautiful, scenic way. There was a large pool at the bottom of this, and lesser pools further down. 

Kenneth used to go out there now and then with the family to have picnics, and he would bicycle out 

with his youth group. He had formed a "bike gang." They would go swimming, lie around in the 

pools, then return in the late afternoon. 

One time Kenneth was out there, perhaps with a few members of his gang. They identified 

with Kenneth by wearing the kind of white duck pants that he wore. They would have no shirt on, 

and no shoes, just these white duck pants. It was the club outfit. As he recalls it, he had a puncture. 

The boys went on ahead, and he had to wheel his bike down to the road to patch up his tire. As he 

went along, all of a sudden a whole gang of gibbons came hooting down through the trees and began 

to crash along beside him, shouting, "Whoo whoo whoowhoowhoowhoo!" They were leaping and 

cavorting right there alongside him. Very curious about him. "I was scared witless for a few 

moments." And then, "I decided, Well, what the heck, they can't do more than kill me. And I don't 

think they eat people. They're vegetarians." So he began to whoop back at them, and they went 

along for a couple hundred yards or so, whooping at each other. They never came out into the path, 

which was very narrow. They were swinging alongside. There must have been thirty or forty of 

them. They all wanted to see this funny fellow. Never seen one like this. 

7 

49:48 Kenneth was very much interested in young people. He mentions his work with the youth at 

the Columbus, New Jersey, church. In Bangkok, this carried over. He had played a little basketball 

when he was a kid, and in Bangkok, he got into coaching a group of young Chinese. After his year 

working with them, they gave him the set of tekal silver buttons in appreciation. When the Landons 

moved over to Trang, he set out to find activities for the young men there. They could all play 

soccer, which they called football, and he couldn't help them with that. But he got them into playing 

badminton. They knew about badminton, but they didn't have the equipment. He had the place, the 

Landon compound, and he had the equipment. So he got them started playing badminton. And 

horseshoes. And wrestling. And then Kenneth made a mistake. He had done some boxing when he 

was a kid, at the Moose hall, and he thought he knew how to box. What he didn't know was that they 

knew how to box too, using their feet. He quickly gave up boxing when he discovered that he would 

get hit in the back of the head with someone's heels. Then he cast around some more and tumbled to 

the idea of a bicycle gang. 

Japanese bicycles weren't very expensive, and you could buy them without mudguards. Just 

the frame and the wheels. And in no time at all, he built up a gang of thirty or forty fellows, all with 

bicycles. They would all wear these white duck pants. And off they'd go. That was when he found 

out that you could go through the jungle, on the narrow jungle paths, with these light bicycles, and 

cover an incredible number of miles in a day. They might go thirty or forty miles in a day, right 

through the jungle and the rubber estates, on back paths where there were no roads whatsoever. This 

was why he knew the Japanese could do it in World War II. He knew how it could be done. He had 

done it! 

Speaking of the War, when he was in Bangkok in 1946, a man came to call on him at the 

embassy, a huskily built man who invited Kenneth to dinner at his restaurant. He gave Kenneth his 

name, and looked at him inquiringly to see if he recognized him, which he didn't. He had no memory 

of seeing anyone who looked like this. The man was massive. But Kenneth went to have dinner at 

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his restaurant. And after a while, the man said that he had changed his name and that his new name 

was the name he took when he went into judo. He said that he had been one of Kenneth's boys in 

Trang. Kenneth then remembered him vaguely as a sort of skinny kid. The man said he remembered 

the good times they had together, and that Kenneth had gotten him interested in sports. When the 

Japanese came into Siam during the war, they began holding judo contests, and he went in for judo, 

and laid on a lot of weight, and became the champion of Siam. Then Japan held a competition of 

judo wrestlers, and he went as the champion of Siam to represent his country. To his astonishment, 

he began to win every contest through the preliminaries right up to the major bout, until he was 

wrestling the champion of Japan. He realized at that point that if he beat the champion of Japan, he 

probably wouldn't be allowed to live. The hospitality that had been shown him up to that point had 

already begun to change. So he deliberately took several bad falls; their pride was saved; and he gave 

up judo, at least in Japan. 

The bike gang went so far as to take tours all the way across the peninsula, some ninety miles, 

camping out overnight. It amused Kenneth to hear the boys talk. They would talk, as they travelled 

through the jungle. All the unclaimed land in the jungle belonged to the crown. Any young fellow 

who wanted to set up housekeeping could stake out an area in unclaimed land, and go in and report it 

to the nai yun peu (SP?) or district officer—that he had such and such a parcel of land that he was 

going to work—and so make it his. Kenneth would hear the boys saying to each other that they liked 

this or that piece of land and might claim it. And then someone would ask where he was going to get 

a girl. Oh, he would kidnap her. And they did! And the girls didn't mind, Kenneth says, because this 

was one way of getting married. A boy and girl would be attracted to each other; he would go around 

and serenade her a few times; she would make herself available; and boom, he would walk off her 

with her. They would go out into the jungle and set up housekeeping. 

Kenneth says that these "boys" were in their twenties or younger. They were not 

businessmen. Most fellows got married in their early twenties. Several of them were of prominent 

Chinese business families. 

Kenneth begins the story of the villagers who wanted to catch the train. He speaks of all the 

travelling he did. His parish extended from the Malay border up to Chumphon, and he really toured 

his parish. That meant he travelled by train, by dugout canoe, by elephant, by bullock cart, by 

walking, and by any other way he could get around. [Story continued in Hour 59] 

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HOUR 59 

Session #43 continued September 24, 1982 Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (IXB805) The trains on the Siam peninsula only ran in the daytime because of the buffalo and 

sometimes elephants that might be on the tracks. The risk of hitting one was too great. Villagers 

liked to go by train, but they had no sense of time. None whatsoever. They wouldn't tell you that it 

was eight o'clock to ten o'clock. They went by the watch. Nung yam, song yam, sam yam (SP?), 

which watch was it? They divided up the day by quarters. Tum (SP?) was when it was dark. So 

they had no sense of the time when a train would come in. They had no timepieces, of course. 

Kenneth was amused at the way the villagers solved their problem with the train. One family in 

particular had relatives up the line, and they decided they were going to visit them. They had the 

equivalent of a lunch basket, the kuntos (SP?), with a series of three or four little pots that sat one on 

top of the other, all held together with something up the side, and with a carrying handle up at the top. 

The night before they were to go, they loaded up with several of these things so that they would have 

food with them. And they got all set, and the next morning, the papas and the mamas and the kids all 

got together and went down to the railroad station to catch the train. But the train had already gone! 

So they asked the stationmaster when the train had gone, and he told them what time by the hour, 

which meant nothing to them. So they wanted to know how was the time in accordance with that 

coconut tree with the light, and he understood and explained as best he could, how the sun would be 

and what the length of the shadow would be when the train came in. So they all sat down and ate 

their lunch, and then all went back home, made fresh preparations, and the following day the whole 

group of them came trooping down at what they thought was the correct hour, and darned if the thing 

hadn't gone! They had missed it again! 

Well, the whole family caucused on this. They decided that they weren't going back home 

this time, because they might miss that thing again. So they all camped on the tracks that night. 

They had their meals with them. They weren't going to let that thing get past them again. So there 

they were, on the tracks, when the train came along, and they immediately began to take their 

observations as to the time. That was their first experience with the modern sense of time. 

Right along about that time, the Swiss were dumping excess watches at a very reasonable 

price, and they discovered that the bigger the case, and the cheaper the price, the easier it was to sell. 

These Thai, with their skinny wrists, wanted great big watches. The bigger the watch, the more the 

prestige as they flaunted their new timepiece. So the Swiss came through there literally with cases 

full of watches to sell to the farmers. And then the village people began to get on to this modern 

sense of time. 

When Kenneth had gone out to Southeast Asia in late 1945, after the war, he had another 

experience concerning time. He was supposed to see that the Legation was cleaned up and ready for 

use. It had been used by the Japanese as a stable during the war. The Thai knew that the Americans 

were coming back, so they had cleaned out all the manure, whitewashed everything, cleaned the 

whole place up. They even had turkey in the refrigerator. Kenneth arrived before Charlie Yost, who 

was coming with his wife Irena as the American minister to Thailand. There was only one other 

American diplomat in Bangkok, a USIA man named Ted Grondahl (SP?), who arrived the day before 

Kenneth. Aside from him, it was the OSS crowd, Jim Thompson and some of those fellows, who had 

nothing to do with the Legation. Kenneth and Charles Yost were there for the British-Siamese 

363


negotiations. The Regent of Thailand was the head of the U.S.'s Free Thai intelligence operation, and 

Kenneth and Charles invited him and the Prime Minister, a fellow named Luang Tham Rong (SP?), 

who was a Sino-Thai, and with them the whole cabinet and regency to come to dinner. They were 

invited, as Kenneth recalls, for 7:30 p.m. 

It was a hot and sticky night in late November. Kenneth was staying in the same house with 

the Yosts on Sathorn Road, which was the old Legation. Charlie was dragging around with his collar 

open, his tie dangling, his pants off because of the heat, and his shoes on. He was "really looking 

soggy." Irena was in the dressing room without her dress on, with her hair down, and Kenneth 

looked at his watch and saw that it was about 7:05. He said to the Yosts that they should hurry up 

and get ready, warning them that the Thai might arrive early. Charlie replied, Oh, these are Orientals. 

They don't have any sense of time. They won't come on time. We'll be lucky if they get here by nine 

o'clock. He was yawning around and wishing that it was all over with. 

At that moment, the whole cabinet drove up, Prime Minister, Regent, their entire entourage. 

They were fifteen to twenty minutes early. The wildest scrambling ensued upstairs as the Yosts 

rushed to get their clothes on. Irene was shrieking. She couldn't get her dress on. Her skin was 

sticky, and the dress wouldn't pull on. She was frantic and crying for the maid to help her. Where 

was the powder? Charlie was cursing under his breath as he hauled his pants on. And all the 

dignitaries were coming up the steps. Kenneth was the only person ready to receive them, along with 

the servants. He greeted them out on the verandah, addressing them in Thai, showing them all the 

proper protocol respects, and held them there until Charlie and Irena came rushing out. After all, 

they were the real host and hostess. Kenneth was only the political advisor to Charlie Yost. Here 

were people who knew that the Americans liked to have things on time, and they overdid it a little bit. 

"Yes, I think I witnessed the learning of the sense of time by the Thai from the village folks 

right on up to the cabinet level." 

2 

9:25 The first year the Landons were in Siam, while still in Bangkok, Margaret and Kenneth were 

invited to a Chinese dinner at the Hoy Tin Lao (SP?) hotel in celebration of a wedding. The time was 

set for 7:00. Being Americans, they naturally thought they should arrive on time. So, the two of 

them drove over to the Hoy Tin Lao hotel. In those days, you could leave your car and return later to 

find the wheels still on. You couldn't do that now; you would have to leave a driver with it. So they 

arrived, and went upstairs, and it was as quiet as a tomb. Nothing was going on. They finally found 

their hostess up on the seventh floor. It was the biggest hotel in town. There were some old Chinese 

ladies sitting there, eating watermelon seeds. The Landons were seated with the old ladies to eat 

watermelon seeds and kill time. And Kenneth thought, Oh my gosh, where's the dinner, where's the 

party? Drinks were brought, and time passed, and they ate seeds and spat husks out. Neither of them 

spoke much Thai at that point. 

Hours passed, the Landons drank, and ate watermelon seeds, guests began drifting in, so it 

was clear that something ZDV going to happen. But then Kenneth began to realize that he needed to 

go to the bathroom. He UHDOO\ needed to go to the bathroom. He began to wander around, looking for 

some sign that would say "Men's Room" or something like that. But everything was in Chinese, and 

he didn't read Chinese. There were waiters around, who could see that Kenneth was uneasy and 

becoming uneasier all the time, and he said to Margaret, "You know, I'm going to have to leave and 

go someplace." Finally, in desperation Kenneth took one of the waiters to one side and in his 

laborious new Thai said, "Hong phu chai thi nai?" +RQJ meant "room"; SKX FKDL meant "man"; WKL 

QDL meant "where?" "Room man where?" Kenneth was saying. That's the way you speak Thai, 

Kenneth says. It was perfectly good Thai. You didn't use connectives. You just said, "Room, man, 

364


where?" Kenneth thought he was covering the subject. 

Well, the waiter looked at Kenneth, seeming to comprehend, and said, "Ohh, ohh, ohhhh. 

Ma! Ma!" That is, "Come!" So he led Kenneth out and took him up another floor or two into a 

room where he found a covey of Chinese beauties, with lipstick, rouge, slit skirts, all looking 

expectantly at their new customer. That was the "men's room." 

Kenneth fled. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with the waiter, and he didn't want to 

get anywhere with the girls. And he still had this little problem. So he did what came naturally, went 

right straight down to the street, stood in a corner of the hotel, and relieved himself like a Chinese. 

Chinese saw him doing it and weren't at all perplexed. It was the thing you did when you had to. 

Then, relieved, he went back in. And finally, the dinner was served around ten to ten-thirty. 

Kenneth says he will never forget that night and that experience—and where he found the 

"men's room." "Hong phu chai thi nai?" 

3 

14:11 On the railroad, on the east coast of the Thai peninsula, there was a town, Chumphon, where 

Kenneth arrived with Ngiap Seng on one of his evangelistic tours. They got off the train, and there 

was a very handsome Chinese in beautiful silk trousers and slippers, a silk shirt, his hair all combed 

with cocoa butter, as handsome as he could be, and perfumed and powdered, standing on the 

platform. He came up to Kenneth and addressed him and asked where he was going. Kenneth 

answered that he was going over to the Chinese hotel, the khe chang (SP?). Ngiap Seng was making 

the arrangements. The man said that they shouldn't go there. It was only for ordinary people. And 

he invited them to come and stay with him. He had a nice big house, and they could have one entire 

wing to stay in. Kenneth tried to fend him off, but he was very insistent. Kenneth talked to Ngiap 

Seng about it, and Ngiap Seng said that the man seemed very prominent in that town. Everyone was 

being very respectful to him. He was obviously a man of importance, some sort of businessman. So 

they went to his house. And sure enough, it was a great big house, a fine house, with lots of servants. 

A beautiful wife. Nice kids. And he gave the two men, literally, a whole suite to stay in. 

Kenneth asked the man what his business was, and the man was vague. He did a little buying 

and selling and so on. Was he a government official? Well, he said, he had a good deal to do with 

the government. But he was not in their employ exactly. He was on very good terms with the 

government, and he named a number of officials, some of whom Kenneth knew. So, during his stay 

there, Kenneth would go out in his usual way to preach the Gospel, and the man would go with him. 

Kenneth would stand out on the corner and sing a song, get a crowd, preach a sermon, make a speech, 

hand out pamphlets, then go back to the man's house for meals. The man stood in the crowd and 

listened. And Kenneth kept trying to find out what this man was doing. He could see that everyone 

was very respectful to him. The women were respectful to him. Government officials who came 

around to call on Kenneth—they always came around to call on him, and he on them—they were 

very respectful to him. And he would ask them what the man was doing, and they were always 

vague. 

So finally one morning, Kenneth was perplexed about it, and uneasy. He knew there was 

something irregular about the whole thing. He got up early, sneaked out of the house, and went down 

to the marketplace to a coffeeshop, where he joined some of the fellows there, speaking Chinese with 

them. And he asked them what his host's business was. They looked at him, looked at each other, 

and kind of laughed. Again, he asked them. He said he couldn't find out what his host did for a 

living. The men replied that they had all been wondering why he was staying with this man. But 

they thought that maybe he knew. Well, what is he? Kenneth asked again. 

"Hoo. Nak ling tho! (SP?)" That is, "He's the big gangster!" The tough guy, big shot, like Al 

365


Capone. Kenneth was absolutely stunned. He went racing back to the house, and the man was 

looking for him and wondering where he'd gone. Kenneth explained that he had been down to the 

marketplace and had just found out that he, his host, was the "nak ling tho" in this town. Ho, the man 

said, they had given him away. Kenneth challenged him. "Why have you done this? You have 

discredited me. Here I am preaching Christian religion and morality and things of this sort, and here 

I am staying with the chief gangster of the town!" Why had the man done it? He answered that he 

was a great admirer of the Americans. He owed practically everything he had to the Americans. 

Kenneth asked him how that was. And the man replied that at one time he had had nothing. But he 

liked to go to the movies. And he would go to the gangster films. There was one fellow named 

Robinson [Edward G. Robinson] who seemed like a great gangster in the movies. He had studied 

all the gangsters in the films and their techniques, and he had tried them out, and they had worked! 

He was very grateful to the Americans. He owed his success to them. 

In 1950, Kenneth was visiting in the house of Jim Thompson on the canal—not his big house, 

which was built later, but a small house on Sathorn Road next to a canal—having dinner with 

Thompson. And there were two other guests, one of whom was the "nak ling tho." An amazing 

coincidence. He was now a respectable businessman. He had made it, and he had gone respectable. 

He remembered Kenneth clearly. 

Session #44 October 2, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

4 

21:29 Kenneth says that, in Trang, the Landons lived about a mile from the market area of town. 

They either had to walk, ride the car, or go by bicycle. Much of the time they went on bicycles. One 

evening, Kenneth and Margaret went to the church for a service, and they rode their bicycles. These 

were Japanese bicycles. No mudguards. Just wheels and a frame. Very light. Hand brakes. They 

finished the church service, and when they started toward home, it was dark. They had expected that 

there might be some moonlight, but there wasn't. They were going up the road. Kenneth says that 

he thinks they may have had carbide lights of some kind that sometimes worked and sometimes 

didn't. At any rate, there was a temple on the right hand side of the road as they went out toward 

home from town. At that point, the road fell off sharply on the right, a four to five foot drop. On the 

other side, the road fell off slightly, and then there was a little uphill. Margaret was ahead, the two of 

them pedaling along. And as she looked ahead, she suddenly said, "Kenneth, look at that funny star!" 

Kenneth was close behind her. "Look at that funny star that's jiggling around up there!" Kenneth 

suddenly realized what it was. It was the coconut lamp on the head of an elephant, with the mahout 

sitting behind the lamp, coming down the road. Kenneth yelled, "Margaret! Jump! Jump!" "And in 

those days she did what I told her. I don't think she would have done it today. She would have 

probably begun to argue with me, want to know why. But in those days she was very obedient." She 

never questioned. She just turned her bike right straight off the road into the bushes. And she just 

missed the front end of a big elephant who was padding right down the middle of the road. She 

would have run her bicycle straight into its legs. 

She lay in the bushes, and Kenneth went down off the bank into the temple grounds, skinning 

himself up. "I used some Presbyterian language, probably." Then he got back up, and saw the 

elephant go by just as quietly as could be. Not a noise out of it; not a noise out of the mahout. 

The two of them got back up onto the road and wheeled their bikes along for a little while. 

But then they decided they had better get on them because there were always snakes on the road. 

366


You don't walk around at night without a light, and preferably you would carry a cane because you 

would run into cobras and vipers and other snakes. Cobras and vipers were very commonplace. 

People were forever encountering snakes at night, stepping close to or even on them and being struck 

on the ankle. So the Landons got back on their bikes and rode on home. 

Kenneth thinks this would have happened during the first term, perhaps in 1929. 

5 

28:55 The Lord Lieutenant, the province governor, was named Phya Si Thammarat. "Lord 

Lieutenant" was a very high rank. He was over three provinces, with three governors under him, and 

he controlled the country from the Songkhla area north all the way to Chumphon, in the Kra Isthmus 

area. Tan Ngiap Seng and Kenneth went to Songkhla with several thousand copies of a Gospel 

portion which included, perhaps, Matthew, John, Acts, and some other book of the New Testament, 

all bound together. People seemed to like Matthew and John. These were printed in Bangkok, in 

Thai. The two men were staying in a Chinese khe chang, or hotel, and they would go out and visit in 

homes, and out to villages, giving out copies. 

Kenneth had called on the Lord Lieutenant when he came into the area, to show his respects. 

In about a week, the Lord Lieutenant sent word that he would like to see Kenneth. So Kenneth went 

and called on him, and the Lord Lieutenant said that he had used Kenneth and what he was doing in a 

speech that he had made to the monks. He had called a meeting of the monks of his three provinces, 

which was a lot of monks, hundreds of them, all of whom convened at the Lord Lieutenant's request. 

He had told them of the white missionary who was very industrious, going out into the villages, 

visiting them on foot, visiting in the homes, handing out portions of the Bible. He said he found this 

admirable. He had read the books; they were good books, with good moral teaching; the intentions 

were excellent; there was no effort to make people become Christians, but the missionary doesn't 

object if people GR become Christians. The Lord Lieutenant said he thought the time had come that 

the Buddhists needed to do more like the missionaries, visiting the people in their homes throughout 

the countryside. He suggested that some of the scholars should put out some religious writings for 

distribution, like the missionary's Bible portion. 

Then the Lord Lieutenant asked Kenneth what his intentions were. He said he had people 

following him and watching what he did. He described what Kenneth spent his days doing. How 

many homes did Kenneth want to visit? he asked. How many people do you want to give your 

booklet to? Kenneth, in his boyish enthusiasm, said he hoped to put his portions in every home. 

Well, the governor said, really? Most of their homes had no published material at all. The people 

were too poor. Even the library in a town would have only twenty books or so. They couldn't afford 

more. The governor asked if Kenneth realized how many tens of thousands of booklets it would take 

to get them into every home? And then he said that if Kenneth could afford to have that many 

booklets printed up, he, the governor, would have them distributed for him. Kenneth asked how this 

would be done, and the governor answered that it would be very simple. You load the booklets on a 

freight car, and start unloading them in the numbers the governor would indicate as you come down 

the railroad line, and the governor would have the district officers on both sides of the railroad, east 

and west, with their pu yai bans (SP?), their village chiefs, meet you at these points, and pick up the 

correct number of booklets for their village. Kenneth was skeptical. The governor would do this? 

Really? Yes, came the answer. It's a good work. If Kenneth would have the booklets printed and 

bound and made available, he would have his officials distribute them to all the homes in all the 

villages of all three provinces. 

Kenneth said he would have to go up to Bangkok and consult with the American Bible 

Society about having all these booklets published and bound. The governor called in an official, and 

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they consulted on the number that would be needed, and after a while they came up with the number. 

Kenneth forgets what it was, but the booklets eventually filled a whole freight car. Kenneth 

subsequently went up to Bangkok to see the American Bible Society man there, who could hardly 

believe what he was hearing. Kenneth told him of his friendly relationship with the Lord Lieutenant 

and assured the man that all the Bible booklets would be distributed. The ABS man said that, if he 

did what Kenneth was asking, it would take most of his entire budget for the year. But Kenneth 

argued that this was what the man was there for. In the end, the man agreed. He said it would be the 

biggest Scripture distribution program this country had ever seen. 

So, it was done. He printed the booklets up, packaged them in the lots Kenneth indicated, so 

that they knew each package contained fifty, or a hundred, loaded up a freight car, packing it right up 

to the roof, and Kenneth got on board to ride down the line with his load. He had special help from 

the railroad company to unload the packages. Every few miles, they would come to another 

distribution point. The district officers would all be there. The packages of booklets would be 

unloaded. And off they would go. 

When it was all done, Kenneth went and thanked the Lord Lieutenant. And the head of the 

ABS wrote to thank him also. In Kenneth's tours around in subsequent years, he found that the 

distribution had been very faithfully carried out. Ken Wells told him years after Kenneth had left the 

country that, when he visited in the peninsular area, to his surprise he found households where they 

still had these booklets—and where they read them. At night, the son or daughter who was going to 

school would read to the whole family out of Matthew or John or Acts. Kenneth says he doesn't 

suppose they understood what they were reading, but they knew it was all good stuff. 

6 

40:17 Kenneth's parish extended from the Malay border all the way up to Chumphon, a couple 

hundred miles. The peninsula was about ninety miles wide. And he covered every part of it. "I went 

by every means of transportation that's ever been invented. I walked, I rode bicycles, I went in 

bullock carts, I went by elephant, I went by train, I went by canoe, I went by small craft, I went by 

motorboat, I just simply went every place." He took his camera with him, a double-extension 

Graphlex camera with glass plates. Kenneth was also a swimmer, and everywhere he went, he would 

go swimming. "I swam on every beachhead and every beach on both side of the peninsula, wherever 

there was sand." He really knew the terrain. He knew every back path through the jungles. He 

found out how easy it was to travel through very deep jungle because there was always some kind of 

a path, sometimes badly overgrown. If you were going by bike and came to a tree that had fallen, 

you just carried the bike over it, and then got on again. 

When World War II broke out, Kenneth had photographs of both sides of the peninsula all the 

way up to Burma, and also on the islands in the Gulf of Siam [and the Andaman Sea on the west 

side]. He had maps. And he had a ten-year file of Siamese language newspapers, the only person in 

the U.S. who did. [And then, he became involved with the Free Thai intelligence operation, 

and was the first substantive employee of what became the OSS and later the CIA.] So some 

Siamese officials concluded that Kenneth had never truly been a missionary at all. He had been a 

spy. Josie Stanton, the wife of Ambassador Edwin Stanton, said to Kenneth just before she died, 

"Ken Landon, you never were really just State Department or Foreign Service. You were really OSS- 

CIA, weren't you? Ed and I never really thought that you were quite what you pretended to be in the 

State Department, that you were really an intelligence officer, and a spy." Kenneth said no, but she 

wouldn't believe him. She said that he had known too much. But of course, foreign service officers, 

who didn't get out into the country and know the people, never knew what he knew, or had the depth 

of knowledge that he had. 

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7 

44:14 Margaret bore all three of their first three children in Bangkok. When it came near time for 

Carol to be born, in early 1933, Kenneth took her up to Bangkok. There were no facilities in Trang 

that would be satisfactory for her. Kenneth recalls that Margaret had difficulty giving birth to both 

Peggy and Bill, Peggy because she was a breech presentation, Bill because he had such a big head. 

So Kenneth took her up to Bangkok. After being in the quiet of the countryside, the many activities 

of the capital city wore him down quickly. He was dashing around trying to make various 

arrangements. One night there was a dinner party with the Horsts, the Proctors, and the Seigles. 

Kenneth was sitting next to Jeanette Seigle, who was on his right. The servants brought in the first 

course, which was hot soup. Kenneth ate the soup. And the next thing he knew, he was waking up 

the next morning, in bed. 

He was told later what had happened, because of course he had been unconscious. Jeanette 

said she had been sitting there when suddenly she found Kenneth's head on her shoulder. She had a 

nice, plump shoulder. She thought he was just horsing around and fooling. And she had started to 

josh with him when one of the doctors at the table said with alarm that Mr. Landon was unconscious. 

His eyes were shut, and he was absolutely gone. The doctors leapt to their feet, rushed around, got 

hold of him, and laid him out on the floor. Dr. Horst rolled his eyes back and peeked in, with a 

flashlight, took his pulse, which was normal, took his temperature—"How they took that, I don't 

know. I've never found that out."—and that seemed to be normal. And they were in a quandary. 

They didn't know what had happened to him. But he wasn't dead. His heart was beating. All they 

could think of was to pick him up, put him in bed, and watch him. The three men picked up the body 

and carried it upstairs—the house had two stories, an unusual thing—undressed it, and put it into bed. 

Kenneth never made a move, never objected in any way. Remained completely unconscious. They 

went back down and had their dinner, then came back up to check on Kenneth. Again Dr. Horst 

rolled back his eyelids and peered at his eyes. Kenneth is not sure what he expected to see there. 

"Maybe there's something you see if a guy is dead." 

But his breathing was normal. His pulse was normal. His temperature was normal. 

Everything seemed normal. "The only thing was I wasn't there." Kenneth did not wake up until the 

next morning, with no memory of how he had gotten into the bed. Naturally, he was just fine. 

Needed a little sleep, that's all. 

8 

50:15 Kenneth was once on a tour, probably in 1935 or 1936, when he realized that he had 

appendicitis. The way he concluded this was by use of "the tickle test." He had the idea—"I don't 

know where I got it."—that if there was a subcutaneous irritation from the appendix, and if you 

stroked the belly with the back of your fingernail or a feather, then when you came to the appendix 

area, the muscle there would jump. As you went back and forth over the point of irritation, you 

would get this reaction. And in fact, there was this specific reaction every time Kenneth went over 

the spot where the appendix was. He felt "bilious," but not exactly sick. So he had himself put on a 

stretcher and sent to Pinang by train. When he arrived, he had to take a ferry across to the island of 

Pinang. He sent word ahead that he was coming and wanted to be taken to the hospital, so when the 

boat docked, they met him, put him on a stretcher, and trotted him over to the hospital. They took 

tests, confirmed from the blood count that there was an infection, palpated the area, which now hurt, 

and promptly operated. Unfortunately, they used a spinal anesthesia which did not take except down 

in his legs. Kenneth had no anesthesia in his midriff. When the doctor started to cut, Kenneth cried, 

"Ouch!" The doctor was skeptical. This doesn't hurt, does it? he said, as he slashed further through 

Kenneth's abdomen, and it hurt like hell. Kenneth asked for some chloroform. Is this really sharp? 

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the doctor asked, and cut Kenneth again. The answer was, You're darn right it's sharp. So finally, 

they gave him chloroform. Kenneth passed out. The incision was large, and yes, the appendix was 

indeed infected and was about ready to break. The surgeon was British. 

Bill had appendicitis in Wheaton, Illinois, years later. Kenneth had performed his tickle test 

on Bill, concluded that his problem was appendicitis, took him to a doctor friend who examined Bill 

and concluded that he didn't think it was appendicitis at all. Well, Kenneth was very sure of it. The 

doctor reluctantly referred him to a surgeon, who examined him and did some tests and concluded 

that, yes, it was appendicitis. And so Bill's appendix was removed, and his too was close to the 

bursting point. 

[In his own case, Kenneth experienced little or no pain from the appendicitis.] 

Bill hated taking medicines. Peggy was more agreeable, but he would fight back. Kenneth 

would have to get Bill down on the floor and sit on his chest, with each flailing arm under his knees, 

and with his head between his knees to hold him immobile. His eyes looked up at Kenneth full of 

rage and anger in his determination not to take the medicine. Kenneth would hold Bill's nose so that 

he would have to open his mouth to breathe, and when he did, in would go the medicine. 

This went on for quite a few times until, one day, Kenneth called Bill to take his medicine. 

"All right," Bill said resignedly, came over, lay down on the floor on his back, spread his arms out, 

and opened his mouth. That was the way you took medicine. "I felt terrible. What I had done to this 

kid!" There lay Bill, spread-eagled, in a total surrender, waiting to take his medicine. "Gee," laughs 

Kenneth. "I was a brute." 

Margaret cared for the children during the day, but Kenneth was always the one who put them 

to bed at night. They counted on this, and they always wanted him to tell them stories. He made the 

stories up as he went, continuing stories that went on and on night after night. The kids would have 

to remind him where he had left off. He could never remember. Kip recalls that Kenneth did the 

same thing when he was a boy, and particularly recalls stories of Henry and the monkeys. Bill and 

Kip had a similar complaint, because they would want their father to tell a story over again that they 

had particularly enjoyed, and Kenneth never could. He didn't remember what he had told them. 

Kenneth begins to tell of the special relationship he had with the Chinese in Thailand. He was 

supposed to be a missionary only to the Thai. But he quickly discovered that the people who "did 

things" were the Chinese. They were the people who had the money, the businesspeople, and they 

were the people who seemed to have a lot of ambition. Most of the high officials were Chinese or 

part Chinese. 

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HOUR 60 

Session #44 continued October 2, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXB1285) Again, most of the officials Kenneth encountered in southern Thailand were 

Chinese or part Chinese, usually third or fourth generation. The Chinese fascinated him. His 

travelling companion was a Chinese, Tan Ngiap Seng, his evangelist. And they had three little 

Chinese chapels that he was supposed to help serve. One of the things that started him learning to 

speak Chinese was that Ngiap Seng's Siamese was atrocious. It was corrupting Kenneth's newly won 

skills in the language. So Kenneth insisted that Ngiap Seng speak to him in Chinese, which he would 

learn from him. Kenneth had little cards, the size of visiting cards, hundreds of them, and he would 

write the Chinese word on one side and the English meaning on the other. He didn't use the Chinese 

character to begin with; he wrote the Chinese word out phonetically. Then he learned that there was 

a phonetic system for that dialect that had been developed by English missionaries. So he wrote to 

Swatow to the English missionaries there asking for their phonetic New Testament, and their 

phonetic dictionary, in the Swatow dialect, which had eight tones. Sure enough, they sent them, and 

he paid for them. Unfortunately, Kenneth left them in Siam after his ten years out there, thinking he 

would be going back. So he doesn't have them, and they have gone out of existence. Kenneth began 

reading the New Testament in the phonetic Chinese, comparing it verse by verse with the English, 

and in this way rapidly learned to speak the language. In six months he was able to conduct a church 

service in Chinese, in this Swatow dialect. He and Ngiap Seng always spoke Chinese. Kenneth 

would practice as they rode in buses or sat in coffeeshops, wherever. 

In his parish, there were at least two million people, and a substantial portion were Chinese on 

rubber gardens and tin mines. And they had no Chinese schools for their children. Kenneth had the 

bright idea that perhaps he could interest them in building primary schools, say, through the fourth 

grade, to teach their children Chinese and Chinese culture and history and so on. He was concerned 

that they were rapidly losing their culture. The first place he experimented with this was in a place 

called Ban Na. He simply went, with Ngiap Seng, telling nobody what or who they were, except the 

Thai officials. They always touched base with the Thai officials everywhere they went. He would sit 

in the coffeeshop and get acquainted with people. They wanted to know who he was and what he 

was doing, and he would be as mysterious as possible because he knew that this would arouse more 

interest. And finally, in this fashion, he would find out who the principal merchants were who owned 

land or lumber or had labor that they controlled. 

Ngiap Seng and he would tour the town and pick out a piece of land that was in the market or 

close to the market that had no structure on it. Every little town had some place like this. Then he 

would try to find out who owned it. And that would arouse a great deal of interest. The people 

would want to know about this. But Kenneth would still be mysterious about his intentions. When 

he found out who owned the property, he would call on the man. Usually, he would find that he was 

most accessible when he went for his morning or afternoon opium pipe, just as we go for a coffee 

break. They'd go down to the opium shop, lie down, have a pipe, relax, then go back to the shop and 

resume business. Didn't seem to hurt them any. So Kenneth would call on this man, maybe at his 

home—probably at his home, to begin with—and then would follow him up whenever he could 

encounter him at leisure and talk to him about his children, growing up to be ignoramuses, knowing 

371


nothing about the great thoughts of K'ung Fu-tzu [Confucius], Lao-tzu [founder of Taoism], Mengtzu 

[Mencius], Chuang-tzu, the great Chinese philosophers. You don't know much about them, and 

your children will know less. What could we do? the man would ask. And Kenneth would say, Well, 

you have a piece of land. If you will give that piece of land, and if other Chinese will make donations 

of lumber, bricks, mortar, offer labor, we could put up a school. Well, who's going to pay for it? 

Why, you are! Kenneth would say. Well, why don't you get the money from America to build it? 

No, Kenneth would say, that's not the way to do. Then it wouldn't be yours. Well, what do you get 

out of it? Oh, Kenneth would say, the satisfaction of knowing your children were going to become 

educated. 

This, they would never believe. They were very skeptical at that point because they always 

thought in terms of money, of dollars. Kenneth would say, Well, let's have a meeting on it. By this 

time, Kenneth would have found at least five to ten merchants who were prosperous and doing well. 

He would have started with the one who had the land. Then he would find someone who controlled 

the lumber yard, or carpentry shops, and so on. And then he would give them a speech in Chinese 

about how their children were growing up to be ignoramuses. The Thai government had a mandatory 

requirement for education in the Thai language, but you have no equivalent in the Chinese language 

for your children. They are growing up to be non-Chinese. They won't understand their own culture. 

They were very suspicious of Kenneth. Well, who would own it? You would own it. Well, 

what would be your relation to it? Nothing, he would say. None at all. Well, do we have to make 

out the papers in your name or anything? No. You just have to register it with the district officer in 

the proper way so that the Thai officials know what you are doing. 

The Thai officials by this time were getting very much concerned about Kenneth, wanting to 

know what he was up to. No missionary had ever tried to do this, and they didn't know what to make 

of it. Everything was to be done locally. No money from America, nothing for Kenneth. 

Very suspiciously, in their community, the Chinese got themselves organized, set up a 

committee, and this merchant would agree to give the land if that merchant would give the lumber if 

that other merchant would give so many bricks, and so on, until they got all the raw materials, and 

then they could draw up a plan. 

Kenneth always insisted that in the plan for their school, they include a reading room so that 

the men and their wives and anybody who wanted to read could come and do so. Kenneth would 

help them subscribe to periodicals and newspapers from Swatow, from Shanghai, from Singapore, 

Pinang, and so on. He was in contact with missionaries there with whom he could arrange this. And 

the Chinese would be able to come to their reading room and sit and read—much better than the 

opium den. 

The next thing was, Do we have to become Christians? No, you don't. Well, do you ZDQW us 

to become Christians? And Kenneth would say, That isn't the point. The point is, Do you want a 

school? Well, they would say, yes, they would. But they kept wanting to know what he was going to 

get out of it. What was his angle? 

Kenneth went through this process one town at a time. He had to do one first to see if it was 

possible. At Ban Na, finally, actual construction began. People were very much interested in this. 

The Thai officials were all coming round to see what was going on. The whole process to this point 

took about a year, and involved a number of visits to the town. He would come for perhaps four, 

five, six days at a time. 

It didn't take long to put up the building once they got going. They finally convinced 

themselves that Kenneth didn't have any arm twist on them, that it was theirs, that they would register 

the school with the district officer, that they FRXOG teach their children in Chinese. 

Then they wanted to know what they were going to do for teachers. Kenneth answered that 

372


he had lists of teachers from friends of his in Chinese work in Bangkok, Swatow, Pinang, and 

Singapore, and that they could get a head teacher who spoke their particular dialect but was also 

fluent in Mandarin. You had to use the Mandarin language because there were so many Chinese 

dialects in any given marketplace. You couldn't just have it in Cantonese, or Swatow Chinese, or Hui 

Chu, or Ta Chu, or anything else. Then they wanted to know who was going to pay for the head 

teacher, and Kenneth would answer as before, You are! Naturally. It's going to be your school. 

You'll pay them. Well, how much? And Kenneth said we'll find out how much they'll want. It 

wasn't too hard to find young Chinese scholars who would be interested in coming into a town of 

rubber growers because they could teach, they'd have a living, and they would also have an 

opportunity to get into the rubber business. 

All the children had to be registered. Courses in the Thai language had to be taught; they 

were compulsory. The school and its program had to be inspected by the education department, the 

local officer. So it was a bilingual program. But in any case, the thing was done. The school was 

built; the teacher was brought in; and the Chinese themselves ran the thing. 

Kenneth did preach. He presented his Christian beliefs. And he put Chinese Christian 

reading materials in their reading room, Bibles, Christian magazines, Scripture portions, some printed 

in China and some in Singapore, Pinang, and Bangkok too. And the next thing he knew, he had an 

invitation from some people who had been watching what was going on in Ban Na. They were in 

Ban Na San, and they wanted him to do the same thing in their town. In fact, the word got around, 

and at one point, Kenneth had the process of establishing a Chinese school going in three different 

towns simultaneously [or simultumultuously, as Kenneth would often say]. 

Then, the curious thing was that after they got going, and they had their nice big reading 

room—it was always a large, comfortable room with nice lounge chairs and tables—"by George, if 

they didn't decide to organize themselves into a church. I hadn't pushed it at all. But they had this 

reading material. And they felt kind of cheap about not becoming Christians. So they decided they'd 

better become Christians." 

Kenneth is not sure how many of these schools he got built, but he thinks it was five or six in 

all. He was really just the entrepreneur. Once they learned how it was done, they became 

enthusiastic about it. They saw that they could really do this thing, and they saw what it could mean 

to their children. 

The Thai became very concerned about it because this was moving into the era of 

discrimination against the Chinese, which Kenneth described in his book The Chinese in Thailand, 

a carefully structured program to deny the Chinese access to certain professions, to tax them, to limit 

their immigration, and also to limit the education in the schools. Kenneth was seen as a symptom of 

a growing problem, out there in the boondocks of the south. This meant that every school was under 

close supervision by the Thai officials, and the Chinese had to be careful to conform to all the rules 

and have the requisite courses in Thai language and history and so on. The Thai were very much 

concerned about communists amongst the Chinese, especially among the Hainanese— the Hailum 

Chinese. They were from an island off the southern coast of China, out opposite Haiphong in the 

China Sea, where there were many communists. One of Kenneth's best friend was a Hailum Chinese 

on the island of Samui, which was off the east coast of Thailand. He was thrown into prison as a 

communist. Later Kenneth came into contact with him in Singapore, and he wrote Kenneth for many 

years. 

Each of the Chinese communities that built schools with Kenneth's help became Christian, 

developed their own churches, and of course needed pastors, some of whom they got down from 

China. 

373


2 

20:06 Once Kenneth went to visit one of these churches and discovered that the congregation was 

having a schism. It was a three-way split. They had been reading their Bibles, and they had a 

preacher, and Kenneth found that they weren't speaking to each other. They informed Kenneth that 

even KH wasn't doing it right. Finally, he got them all together. There were perhaps a hundred of 

them present. And he asked them what the real problem was. They said that it was baptism. You 

just sprinkle a little water on, and that's not right. There was a party in the church which advocated 

this. But the second party argued that John the Baptist baptized people XQGHU the water. You have to 

immerse people. Another group said, No, that wasn't sufficient. You had to immerse people three 

times, once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy 

Ghost. "Really, Christian denominationalism rampant right there in this one little place!" Kenneth 

told everyone to sit down and think for a few minutes, and after a few minutes, he got up and in 

Chinese said, Now, except for me, we are all Chinese together. When the schoolboys who speak 

Mandarin meet, they say, "Cheenalee (SP?)." That's the correct Mandarin way of saying, "Where are 

you going?" Was that correct? Yes, that was correct. Then Kenneth said, the Hoichu (SP?) say it a 

different way. They say, "Naleechee (SP?)." When the Cantonese say it, they say, "Haibenchia 

(SP?)." And it means, "Where are you going?" Just the same as the others. And when the Fukien- 

Hokien (SP?) meet, they say, "Keetaloch (SP?)." And when we Swatow speakers like myself meet, 

we say, "Keuteekaw (SP?)." Now isn't this curious? Kenneth said. All these different words with the 

same meaning. Sprinkle on head? Put them under the water once? Put them under the water three 

times? All same thing. Right? They sat there in silence and then began to laugh. That was the end 

of church schism right there. They just laughed and laughed and laughed because he had used their 

own dialects to show them. 

In writing, the exact same character was used in each dialect for these different words that had 

the same meaning. 

We refer briefly to the story of Kru Pakai and her letters, which is really Margaret's story. 

"That was one of the great climaxes of our mission politics, and it's a big story. It would take 

Margaret probably an hour, and she'd get into the history of it. I hope she'd leave out her Danish 

grandfather." [But probably not.] 

3 

25:21 The Landons did a number of things on the mission field that aroused anguish in the hearts of 

their fellow missionaries. "In the first place, I had no business learning Chinese. And there were 

many missionaries who were very angry at me because I was supposed to be a missionary to the Thai, 

not to the Chinese." He caused particular anguish to the Reverend Graham Fuller, who was WKH 

designated missionary to Swatow Chinese and had been sent to study Swatow Chinese in Swatow, 

and was not exactly a howling success. He was so jealous of Kenneth "that he could spit." He tried 

not to show it; didn't succeed entirely. He was a great big, amiable fellow who just literally 

anguished over Kenneth because he did not speak this language well, and Kenneth was fluent in it. "I 

could rattle Swatow Chinese like nobody's business." Kenneth could go into Fuller's church and be 

"whacking away" in a loud Chinese voice, rattling along just as easily as he would in English. And 

Fuller couldn't. Rev. Fuller wrote Kenneth a letter many years later telling how he had anguished 

over Kenneth, how jealous he was, how he would have done anything he could to discredit Kenneth, 

and finally realized that the failure was his own, and he wanted Kenneth to know that he had gotten 

over it and to apologize for having mean intentions toward him. Kenneth says they were not too 

mean; he was too amiable for that. He had a lovely wife, who is still alive. He is dead now. 

374


Margaret and Kenneth always had an affinity for writing things, he is in his way, she in hers. 

He started his pastoral letters, which was natural to him to do. Then Margaret suggested that they put 

out a little magazine of their own, which they did once a month. It had about twenty pages. The two 

of them wrote for it, and sent it out to their fellow missionaries. Well, that caused some resentment. 

The thing that really upset them was Kenneth's speaking out concerning the Japanese in 

Thailand. As Kenneth travelled around, he continually encountered Japanese photographer-dentists, 

who were literally spies, intelligence officers, for the Japanese. "They were better photographers 

than they were dentists, and I lost some teeth to them." Kenneth realized that a great deal was going 

on, and he began collecting materials on the first five years of the Thai revolution, the overthrow of 

the monarchy in 1932, and also the rise and tide of the Japanese in Indochina and in Siam. He wrote 

an article eventually—Margaret started the article, got bogged down, and then he completed it— 

entitled "Siam Rides the Tiger," which was published. There was a Japanese photographer-dentist in 

Trang who had no social standing when he first came to the town, but the year the Landons left, 

1937, at an official party, KH was the man who was walking around with the governor. Kenneth put 

that into his article. 

The Landons were convinced that, not only were the times changing, but also the missionaries 

were still doing things the way missionaries had always done them rather than turning more and more 

of the responsibility over to the Thai. Kenneth had already done this with the Chinese. He had put 

them on their own from the first, totally responsible for their own schools and churches. They were 

not beholden to New York at all, nor to any American budget. He made sure they were financially 

autonomous. And he made a point of arguing for this approach in mission meeting, saying that 

primary responsible must be given to the Thai. Yes, we could help advise them, give them ideas, but 

they must be self-sufficient financially, as well as administratively. "They must assume 

responsibility if they are ever going to grow up. They can't be our children forever." Well, this 

caused a lot of anguish among the missionaries. 

Finally, a man named Leber came all the way out from New York because of the concerns 

raised, one way or the other, by the Landons, and attended a mission meeting. In New York they had 

the idea that the Landons were troublemakers. "Well, we ZHUH!" Kenneth says. "With ideas." Leber 

came down to visit the Landons at their home in Trang. He was absolutely astonished in their home 

at what a large library the Landons had there. Kenneth and Margaret have always built a substantial 

library [the substance of which went to the Landon Collection at Wheaton College, Wheaton, 

Illinois, near the end of their lives.] Leber was quite favorably impressed with the Landons and 

with their life and work in Trang. Finally, he decided they had a point. They put their ideas on paper 

for him, particularly as to giving primary responsibility to the Thai. 

Finally, it was decided to have a special meeting of Siam missionaries in New York, which 

occurred while the Landons were on furlough. It was deliberately done so because the Landons were 

"the pièce de résistance." So Margaret and Kenneth attended this meeting in New York with their 

fellow missionaries, a whole mob of them, many of whom had been brought back from Siam, to 

decide future mission policy. This was in 1938. At the conclusion of the meeting, the missionaries 

"decided that what they were doing was right, only they ought to do more of it. Just the way they'd 

always done it. This is the way agonizing reappraisals always go. It's nothing new. I've noticed that 

it's always that way in government too. You always have an agonizing reappraisal and decide what 

you were doing was all right. Begin [Prime Minister of Israel] is doing it now. Agonizing 

reappraisal. Nuts." 

In the aftermath, Margaret and Kenneth talked it over and decided they should resign, not go 

back. Kenneth felt strongly that Asia was not a place to be any more because he felt quite sure, given 

the way the Japanese were doing in Indochina, that things were very ominous for Thailand and the 

375


rest of Southeast Asia. So the Landons wrote a resignation of about twenty-five double-spaced 

pages. They submitted this to Charlie Leber and the mission board, and Leber was very anguished 

about it. He felt they were wonderful missionaries and should count on going back. But Kenneth 

said that, in view of the mission policy that he and Margaret considered obsolete, and his feeling that 

missionaries were no longer innovative, but were just treading water, marching in place, and with 

Asia coming on fire, it would be ridiculous to return. "We didn't feel that we had a part in such a 

backward-looking, unimaginative organization." The board didn't want to accept the Landons' 

resignation. But if they had to accept it, they didn't want the Landons' reasoning in their files. So 

they tried to reject the written resignation on the grounds that there was no place in their files for it. 

Kenneth said that if they did so, if they did not make his and Margaret's written resignation part of the 

record, acknowledged by the board officially, he would then resort to the rights and privileges of a 

Presbyterian minister in good and regular standing and present it to the general assembly of the 

Presbyterian Church at the next annual meeting. Fortunately, they believed him. In fact, they were 

alarmed that he would do it. So they accepted the written resignation, with regret, and put it in the 

files. 

He was in the process of completing his Ph.D. at Chicago University, and he returned to end 

his work there. The board was supporting him through this. 

When the Landons left the mission field, they truly expected to go back. They left many 

things in Thailand that they would have brought with them if they had known they weren't returning. 

They did have some things, like the Windsor chairs, the desk he gave Margaret, and a chest of 

drawers set aside to come if they did not return. But Kenneth had made no provision for his library to 

come. There were many books that he would like to have had. "I had a beautiful theological library, 

I really had." Those were lost. 

The board forgot all about the Landons until Margaret began to make some money from 

Anna, at which point the board contacted them to say it felt the Landons ought to pay the board for 

the year in Chicago. The Landons wrote them a very kind letter saying they felt they had given their 

lives in service, and that the currency exchange was not financial. 

4 

39:23 Kenneth sums up his work in Thailand. During his years there, he started six Chinese 

schools and churches. He preached and evangelized in all the major population centers of his parish, 

and many small villages. He published a monthly journal in both Siamese and Chinese. He had a 

Presbyterian church in Trang, with its own local pastor. Kenneth was not the pastor of the church. 

He had three evangelists working with him, one Chinese and two Thai—Ngiap Seng, Kru Lop (SP?), 

and Yuin Yam (SP?), the husband of Margaret's head teacher Kru Kim Juang. The last was more of a 

hunter out in the woods than anything else. Kru Lop didn't seem to have a clue as to what he was 

supposed to do. Kenneth concluded that he would have to train and educate some young people from 

scratch who could study at the theological seminary up at McCormick in Chiang Mai and then come 

and work with him on the peninsula. To that end, he and Margaret subsidized from their own income 

two young men, Boon Pha, from Nakhon, and Nai Nuang (SP?), who is now dead. Kenneth didn't 

make it a contract with these men that they KDG to return to work with him because, if they didn't 

want to, he wouldn't want them anyway. It had to be a voluntary association. But he made clear his 

hope. As it turned out, when Boon Pha graduated, he ZDV inclined to work with Kenneth, and for a 

time did so. In time, however, he got into school work, which was quite all right with Kenneth, and 

has stayed with it ever since as the principal of a boys' school. Kenneth feels that it was a good 

investment. The other man, Nai Nuang, worked with Kenneth for a short period of time and then said 

that he didn't want to do it any more. He married a nice girl and went to work for the roads 

376


department. They were always on good terms. Kenneth's feeling was that if he didn't want to work 

with him, he didn't want him anyway. 

There were only two Thai churches in the area Kenneth was responsible for, one in Trang, 

and one in Nakhon Si Thammarat. He worked with both of them, back and forth across the 

peninsula. Each had its own pastor. Then he had a Chinese chapel on Phuket, the island, and a 

Chinese chapel at Phatthalung on the railroad line, and another at Hui Yawt (SP?) and another at 

Kantang, each of which Kenneth would visit. 

Most of his work was visiting individuals homes and villages evangelizing and distributing 

Gospel portions. 

But the best work he feels he did was with the Chinese and the starting of those six schools 

and churches. According to Ken Wells, who visited through the area where Kenneth worked just 

before he, Ken, retired, all those schools and churches were still going many years later. As far as 

Kenneth knows, what he started with those Chinese communities did not spread to other Chinese 

communities on the peninsula. It only spread where he spread it. 

As for his letters that he wrote in Thai and Chinese, Ken Wells said that he found homes on 

the peninsula and also up in the Chiang Mai area to the far north of the country that had kept the 

whole file of them. He sent them out to "quite a number of hundreds" of households. 

Kenneth tells again of sometimes addressing his letter to Pluang Thi Rak (SP?), "Dear Friend 

Whom I Love/Admire/Like," and of the woman in the north who wrote back upon receiving his letter 

that she was willing! 

5 

46:23 When the Landons went on furlough in 1931, Kenneth travelled around the world one way, 

on his own, while Margaret travelled around the other way with the children. She went east, and he 

went west so as to travel to the Holy Land. 

One memorable experience was swimming in the Dead Sea. "Yes, I VDW in the Dead Sea. 

You can't swim in it." He says he is the type who sinks in fresh water, but he could sit in the water 

and read a newspaper. He literally sat upright, reading. He also swam in the Sea of Galilee. Had a 

wonderful time there. 

On his trip, he got first to Egypt, hoping to tour around Cairo and see something of Egypt. He 

was walking along the street when a very tall Arab in a long gown, with a fez on his head, came up to 

Kenneth, spoke to him in English, "Good Morning, Sir!", and said that he would show Kenneth all of 

Egypt for $25 a day. Kenneth was walking along, looked at him, and said, "I will show \RX all of 

Egypt for $20 a day!" "Oh," the man returned, "I will show you all of Egypt for $15 a day." "Is that 

so?" Kenneth said. "Well, I will show \RX all of Egypt for $10 a day!" "Oh ho," he said, "we are 

bargaining. I will show you all of Egypt for $5 a day." Kenneth said that his new friend would show 

him all of Egypt for nothing a day, and that Kenneth would pay all their expenses. Really? the man 

said. Yes! 

All right, the man said, when do we begin. Right now! Kenneth says. There was a tram car 

coming along, the kind that's open at the sides, with wooden steps along each side onto which you 

would step to board and take your seat. It was first class, second class, third class. Kenneth didn't 

even look back. He went right over to the tram and swung on board in the third class section. The 

Arab followed him and swung on board in the first class section. He said, Hey, come on up here. 

Kenneth said, Uh uh, come back here. I'm here. "You go third class?!" he said. And Kenneth said, 

"Yes, there's no fourth class." He was really perplexed. He scratched his head, came back 

reluctantly. "You're a funny man," he said. "Yes," said Kenneth, "I've been told." 

The guide and Kenneth toured around Cairo, sometimes by taxi, usually by tram cars, and 

377


Kenneth paid for everything. The man seemed to be enjoying himself, though he was bemused. 

Then he took Kenneth out to ride on a camel to visit the pyramids and the sphinx. And then he told 

Kenneth that he had told all his relatives about Kenneth, and they had said to bring Kenneth out. 

They all wanted to see him. He said, "Will you visit my home?" And Kenneth said yes. So they got 

on some camels and rode off—"I don't know where we went."—and came to a small village with 

mud houses. He took Kenneth into the house, and they removed their shoes and socks and washed 

their feet. Then his mother came out. She had all kinds of marks down her face, blue pigmentation 

that Kenneth took to be tribal marks of some kind. The man said that normally Kenneth would see 

no women, but his mother wanted to "look at you." The father was a very fine, elderly man, "an old 

man of fifty." They were very friendly. 

Kenneth's guide said that the whole family was getting ready to go to Mecca, and how about 

going with them? Kenneth answered that he couldn't do that. He was a Christian. Oh, that didn't 

matter, the guide said. He could become a Muslim. And how would he do that? Easy! the answer 

came. You simply say the confession of faith. And then the zakat (SP?), which had to do with 

paying his taxes. And then we teach you the five prayers for the day. And tell you about the Haj, and 

the fast, and Ramadan, and you're in! You're a Muslim! But the main thing was the confession of 

faith. Say that, and no one can say you're not a Muslim. 

Kenneth asked what happened after he said the confession of faith. Ah, well, we have to 

circumcise you. Have you been circumcised? Kenneth said that he wasn't going to be cut. Oh, you 

have to be cut, the guide said. You go to Mecca, they inspect you. They inspect people they are not 

sure of. Kenneth later learned that many Javanese were only incised, not circumcised, and when they 

went to Mecca had to undergo the full circumcision as adults. 

Kenneth thanked his host but said "the honor is too great." 

Then the guide tried to sell Kenneth a cigarette case, which he had no use for. He did sell 

Kenneth a scarab that the Landons still have. 

Kenneth had noticed that there were many British military types in Cairo, and he talked to 

them. 

From Egypt, he went over to Jerusalem and stayed with a resident American community 

there. Then, to his surprise, many of the British that he had seen in Cairo began to show up in 

Palestine with rifles to keep the peace. There were riots between the Jews and the Arabs, and the 

Armenians were caught in middle. Kenneth fell in with a young Armenian who was driving an 

Erskine 6 car, a nice new one. He wanted Kenneth to hire him to drive around for so much a day, and 

once again Kenneth bargained. He said that he knew the Armenian wanted to get out of Jerusalem. 

He, Kenneth, wanted to tour the country. They would go as friends, and Kenneth would pay all the 

gas, food, and lodging expenses, to which the Armenian agreed. A very nice fellow. 

The two of them toured all over Palestine, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, where they stayed 

with some monks. He drank some of the monks' home-made wine there. He was at the Sea of 

Galilee late in the evening, and he was hot and tired and wanted to swim. He got down into the Sea; 

it was a rocky shore at the foot of the monastery, very rocky; and he dove in and swam out a quarter 

of a mile from shore in the moonlight. Then he lay over on his back and floated in the water. As he 

floated there, in the moonlight, he became aware of a typewriter going. The sound puzzled him, and 

he rolled over, looked around, then saw the shadowy figure of a boat, not far away, with a person 

sitting in it typing. So he swam over. It was a woman, who had an oarsman who would row a bit 

now and then but most of the time just sat there with her, while she typed away. Kenneth stuck his 

chin on the edge of the gunnel and asked her what in the world she was typing at night. She couldn't 

see what she was writing. Oh, she said, she didn't need to see it. She knew what she was writing. 

She was a touch typist. Her husband was ill back in America and couldn't make the trip, and so she 

378


was writing him about everything she saw and experienced and felt as she went along. Kenneth 

found she was staying at the same monastery as Kenneth and his guide, at a place outside the 

monastery wall. After talking to the woman, he swam back to shore. 

The name of the Armenian was John, a very strong, little man. Kenneth was having trouble 

walking on the rocks in his bare feet, and John, who was wearing shoes, just picked Kenneth up and 

carried him off the rocks. It was a bit of a surprise. John seemed to carry him effortlessly. 

The two of them went on up to Ba'albek, and Aleppo, then back down over the hills of 

Lebanon and through the famous cedars. "I got quite a thrill out of that." Then down to Beirut, 

staying in a hotel there for three or four days, where Kenneth waited for a ship to take him through 

the Mediterranean. John had some friends there in Beirut, and he learned that they were fresh out of 

a hotel manager. So John and his friend made Kenneth a proposition, that he stay there and become 

the manager of the hotel. John would run the taxi business, and the other fellow would run the girl 

side of things. There were a lot of prostitutes hanging around the hotel. Kenneth wouldn't have to be 

involved with that, they said. (He hadn't told them that he was a Presbyterian missionary.) They 

thought this would be a nice deal, and they offered him a very nice amount of money to do it. 

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HOUR 61 

Session #44 continued October 2, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

1 

0:00 (IXB2000) Kenneth continues on his Armenian guide, John, and the men in Beirut who 

proposed that he manage their hotel there. He said he didn't know anything about managing a hotel, 

but they said that didn't matter. They would tell him what he needed to do. They needed somebody 

to make them look respectable—to be the "front man," and perhaps also the "fall guy." Kenneth 

thanked them for their offer but declined, said good-by to John, and boarded his ship for a slow trip 

through the Mediterranean. They passed through Greece. He still remembers sliding through a 

narrow channel in Greece. It was eery because there were sheer walls of granite in those straits. 

"You could reach out off the side of the ship and touch the walls, they were so close on either side." 

Kenneth can't remember the name of those straits. 

When he visited in Damascus, Kenneth was quite struck by a pair of rugs he saw in a shop 

there. There was a little one that was a prayer rug. The other one was slightly larger. Kenneth 

bought the two of them and put them in his tin trunk. When he reached Marseilles, customs asked 

him if he had anything to declare, and he said no, he was just passing through on his way to America. 

But when they searched his baggage, they found these two rugs and accused him of trying to smuggle 

them in. "Nonsense," he answered. He was en route to New York, and they were part of his 

possessions. They were going with him. They demanded $100 if he brought the rugs into Marseilles. 

"So I got into a shouting match with the tax people there." He wasn't going to pay a thing. He said 

that, if they insisted on payment, he would just take the rugs to the dock and throw them into the 

water. He wasn't going to pay a penny! He didn't have the money. And he wouldn't pay even if he 

did. 

It became a very loud and angry altercation. An interested observer came over saying he 

represented the American Express Company. He told Kenneth that if he turned the rugs over to him, 

he would send them on to New York. All Kenneth would have to pay was the price of shipping 

them. And Kenneth agreed and paid him. 

Kenneth completed his trip to New York, where he notified the mission board that the rugs 

were being shipped to him. Then he travelled on to Chicago to reunite with Margaret and the kids. 

Months passed, and no rugs. Kenneth wrote to the board, and they wrote back that the rugs hadn't 

come. After at least nine months, Kenneth arrived home at the little apartment in Chicago, he thinks 

it was (The Landons were living with Adelle Mortenson, Margaret's mother, that year, but also had a 

little apartment in Chicago), and he noticed an odor. A strong, distinctive scent. "I could smell the 

seven seas when I stepped inside the door!" There was a bundle wrapped in burlap, on the outside of 

which there was written "Duty Free, Port of Origin, New York." Kenneth was baffled. "New York?" 

They opened up the bundle, and there were the two little rugs. And they stank. They had been in the 

holds of who knows how many ships for months. 

What had happened was that when the rugs arrived at the mission in New York, some 

character in the shipping department saw that the parcel was for the Landons, who were supposedly 

in Siam, and so shipped them on to the other side of the world. When they arrived in the port at 

Bangkok, the customs people wanted to collect duty there on the import of these rugs! But the 

mission people, knowing the Landons were in the U.S., shipped them back to New York. And when 

the rugs arrived in New York, the mission staff now knew the Landons were in Chicago and 

380


addressed them on to them there. As for the duty people, they saw that the rugs had originated in 

New York, wrote "Duty Free" on the rugs, and Kenneth never had to pay duty on them. 

Kenneth tells again of his experience with the phosphorescent sea off the coast of Thailand. It 

was the Gulf of Siam. Kenneth was travelling on a moonlit night for twenty-five to thirty miles. 

[This was on the way from the island of Samui to Chumphon on the mainland. See #46] "The 

surface of the sea was almost oily and calm. And it was like liquid fire. And as the boat went on, the 

water would part, and it was like going through liquid fire. It was just incredible. It was like a fairy 

land. And behind us, in our wake behind, we could see the water would roll as though it was alight 

with fire. And this went on mile after mile after mile. And it was caused by the fish, and the laying 

of their eggs, I presume. That was my understanding. But it was the most incredible, eery 

experience. It was almost heavenly, or angelic. You just could hardly feel it was of this world. It 

was so unusual. We were just floating on a sea of fire. And the other people in the boat with me 

were awestruck by it. Literally awestruck." Kenneth guesses this was about 1933, [but in fact it was 

in 1929]. 

7$3( ; 6LGH 

Session #45 November 5, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

2 

10:27 Margaret: "What I call 'The Pakai Affair.'" To tell the story, she gives some background 

concerning mission history in Siam. When the Landons went out in 1927, there had been 

missionaries in Siam almost a hundred years. In fact, in 1928 there was a celebration of the one 

hundredth year of the first missionaries—though these were not Presbyterians to begin with. 

The Presbyterian mission in Siam had two main stations in 1927, when the Landons went out, 

one in Chiang Mai and one in Bangkok. Chiang Mai was 500 miles north of Bangkok in Lao 

territory. The people were Lao. Chiang Mai was actually a much older city, a walled, medieval city. 

Bangkok was no older than Washington, D.C., [which was established by the Constitution in 

1789]. It was originally a Chinese trading post, and the capital was at Ayuthia. The Lao mission in 

Chiang Mai and the Siam mission in Bangkok had been two separate missions until shortly before the 

Landons came, but they had been joined. The stronger mission was actually the northern one. It had 

five sub-stations, and it had greater success among the Lao people, who were animists. They were 

Buddhists technically, but animists in practice. There was a policy in that northern mission which the 

southern mission did not have, which was that if a missionary sent out by the board turned out to be 

difficult or disagreeable, they never permitted that person to return. It was a wise policy because in a 

small group, a person who makes trouble is a tremendous liability. The southern mission, on the 

contrary, would keep difficult people on. The southern or Bangkok mission had only three substations, 

one at Petchaburi, which was perhaps fifty miles southwest of Bangkok, and the other two 

500 miles down the peninsula, the two the Landons knew, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Trang. 

Nakhon was on the side of the Gulf of Siam, and Trang, ninety miles away, was on the side of the 

Bay of Bengal. They were connected by the railroad. The railroad also ran down the peninsula. 

The Landons were sent first to Nakhon, of course, in 1928, and then to Trang, in March, 1929. 

Margaret tells of the Rev. Frank Snyder, a very difficult but very capable person, and the letter he 

wrote that was critical of the government. The government spies regularly opened and read mail, and 

they read Snyder's letter, whereupon they demanded that the mission send him out of the country. 

The mission managed to secure a compromise by which Snyder could stay in the country but in an 

381


out-station, and so Snyder was banished from Bangkok to Nakhon. This was an example of the sort 

of thing the Bangkok mission did. Nakhon had only Dr. and Mrs. McDaniel and Miss Helen 

McCague, other than Snyder and his wife, and he made everyone miserable. This was what the 

Landons entered into in 1928. Fortunately, they were not there long enough to have any real trouble 

with him. And of course, Rev. Snyder died the next year. 

Margaret tells about Rev. Snyder's pigeons that fouled Dr. McDaniel's roof and drinking 

water. 

Then, in 1929, the Landons were sent across to Trang, where they found Dr. and Mrs. 

Bulkley. Mrs. Bulkley was considered the most difficult and unpleasant person in the station. "She 

earned that honor." 

Margaret now explains her association with the girls' school in Trang, which was called the 

Anokul Safri Girls' School. The name meant something like "Taking care of and educating girls." 

The Landons' house was almost a mile out of town. The center of Trang was a crossroads, and the 

hospital and hospital residence were close to that center. Cater-corner from them, on another road, 

was the church and the school. The compound on which the Landons lived had been bought for the 

boys' school, which had not yet been built. 

The Trang station was opened in 1910, and the girls' school was started by Mrs. Evan 

Wachter. The person who actually built it up was Miss Ruth Eakin [pronounced Aiken]. She was 

part of a very difficult family. Her brother Paul Eakin was "our personal enemy." Kenneth interjects, 

"He done his best to do us in." Margaret continues that she must explain something of the 

organization of the mission or we will not understand the significance of his enmity. 

The mission was run by an executive committee of from five to seven members, usually five 

officially with two alternates. There was an executive secretary. There was one person from the 

medical side of the mission, one from the educational, one from the evangelistic, and two alternates. 

All through the Landons' period, Paul Eakin was the executive secretary, which was a very powerful 

position in the mission. His enmity toward the Landons actually started before he ever saw them, 

because Kenneth was the only person who ever duplicated his feat of doing the three years of Thai 

language study in one. He was born there, so that the language was native to him, whereas for 

Kenneth it was not. He was out of the country the year the Landons were there. His father was 

running the school, and he wouldn't permit Kenneth to take the examination because that would have 

equaled Paul's record. He just wouldn't let Kenneth do that. Kenneth tells us that he finished the 

three-year course in ten months, but the elder Eakin wouldn't permit him to take the final exam until 

some time later. Kenneth says he didn't care anything about it. "He resented me. And Paul hated me 

sight unseen, because he was supposed to be the white-haired boy, speaking the Thai language like a 

native." Margaret says Kenneth's going to Princeton, which was conservative Presbyterian, 

contributed to the problem, because Paul was on the liberal side. "He had a great love of power." 

Margaret says that she can think of no substantive work that he did in the mission, and Kenneth can't 

either. "He never did anything. Except act like a secretary. He built no churches. Built no schools." 

Margaret says that he was unscrupulous about his use of power. One of the things he did was to write 

scurrilous letters about people he didn't like to the mission board. 

3 

23:52 Each station had its little organization also. In a sense, this was ridiculous. In Trang, there 

were just five people, one of them Edna Bulkley, a very difficult person. Miss Ruth Eakin was totally 

unlike her brother. She was a very gentle person, and a very sensitive person. Shortly before Miss 

Eakin left on furlough, there was a "station meeting" at which Miss Eakin sat between Kenneth and 

382


Margaret, literally shaking from head to foot. It was very distressing. When she went home to the 

U.S., they found that she had serious stomach ulcers. Everyone had expected her to come back, but 

she never recovered her health sufficiently to do so. Mrs. Bulkley was generally blamed for her 

indisposition. 

When she left, Mrs. Bulkley was in charge of the school for a while until VKH went on 

furlough. Then the last year of the Landons' first term, 1930 to 1931, Margaret was put in charge. In 

a Siamese school like that, there was what was called the phujatgan (SP?), the headmistress, and 

under her the head teacher, the kru yai (SP?), who actually ran the school by and large. The 

headmistress was responsible to the government and to the mission for the conduct of the school, 

though the head teacher did the day by day running of it. 

One custom in Siam that was different from our American customs was that all letters that 

came into the school were opened and read, either by the headmistress or by the head teacher, before 

they were distributed. One of their problems was to keep men from running off with their girls, and 

reading the letters was a key part of doing that. Often girls were placed in mission schools more for 

the protection they received than for the education they received. 

The head teacher when Margaret took over was Kru Bunjua Bunyasing (SP?), a very fine 

person whose husband was doing graduate study in the Philippines. She had a little girl Peggy played 

with a lot that everyone called Bu (SP? Phu?). Her name was really Siritat. Kru Bunjua was very 

responsible. 

Mrs. Bulkley was not back from furlough yet when the Landons left for WKHLU furlough in 

1931. That left Kru Bunjua in charge. Before the Landons left, Margaret made an arrangement with 

the Wattana Wittaya School in Bangkok, which had originally been called the Wang Lang School, 

though its official name was the Harriet M. House School. It was founded in the nineteenth century. 

When the missionaries originally went into Thailand, there were no girls' schools. No girls received 

an education other than the highborn, who were tutored. Miss Edna Cole took the Wang Lang School 

when it amounted to very little and made it into the finest school in the country. It set the pattern for 

girls' schools. Miss Cole told Margaret that, even when she came to the country in 1879, people were 

still saying, "Teach a buffalo before a woman." 

Under Miss Cole, the Wang Lang School became so successful that it began to be patronized 

by the highborn, even by royalty. As it grew, it ultimately required larger quarters. It was on the 

Thon Buri side of the river. "Wang Lang" was a term that referred to the back palace. There was the 

royal palace, the front palace, and the back palace. There would be a first king, a second king, and a 

third king. The third king dropped away very early, but the name hung on to the area where the third 

king had had his palace. Ultimately, Wattana Wittaya was built on a large tract of land on the same 

side of the river that Bangkok was. Bangkok was on one side, and Thon Buri on the other. Thon 

Buri is now joined to Bangkok by bridge. 

Miss Cole retired in 1923, but she had a staff by then of three or four missionaries, all able 

teachers, who kept on. When Margaret was preparing to leave Trang on furlough in 1931, she 

arranged to have Trang's little school taken under Wattana's wing. Miss Faye Kilpatrick was given 

the responsibility of looking after Anokul Safri. But naturally, Kru Bunjua, as the head teacher, 

actually continued running the school when Margaret left. She was married to a husband with a bad 

heart, and also she was pregnant, so she struggled with the responsibility of the school, and the school 

suffered. 

As a result, Wattana thought it best to call in the services of a Mrs. Sheena Aitken, the widow 

of a Singapore attorney. She did not become a part of the mission. She was about sixty years old and 

had lived in the East for about thirty years. She was very strict, perhaps overly severe, but she did 

well with the school. The mission was determined that Mrs. Bulkley not have anything to do with the 

383


school because of her reputation as a troublemaker and because she never finished a project she 

undertook. Wattana agreed to pay Mrs. Aitken's salary on the condition that Margaret become 

headmistress again on her return. 

At the end of their furlough, the Landons departed the U.S. October 11, 1932, for Siam. Carol 

was due in March, 1933. They arrived back in Siam at the end of November, 1932, and Margaret 

begged off on becoming headmistress again because of her pregnancy. Mrs. Aitken was in place, 

running the school, and Margaret asked that she be retained for another year. So did the Bulkleys, 

who said many unpleasant things about the Siamese teacher Margaret left in charge and about 

Margaret's running of the school. They talked about Wattana's "usurpation of power, and that's a 

quote, and insisted that the school be returned to the supervision of the station." "The station," of 

course, consisted of the Bulkleys and the Landons! Needless to say, the Landons ZDQWHG Wattana's 

"usurpation" to continue. Anything else meant war in the station. Wattana was providing substantial 

funds to the school, and also providing teachers, which they did for all of the mission schools. The 

Bulkleys wanted the money and the teachers to keep coming, but they wanted control. The Landons 

said nothing in this debate. 

4 

37:13 Margaret went up to Bangkok for Carol's birth, leaving at the end of February. While she 

was there, the executive committee met and decided that the school would remain under the control 

of Wattana with Margaret in charge locally. Furthermore, they decided that Mrs. Aitken was not to 

be retained. This meeting was held two days after Carol was born, which was March 9, 1933, so 

Margaret was unable to participate in the meeting or present her views. Mrs. Bulkley was invited to 

present her views, "but fizzled out." Dr. Bulkley decided to go elephant hunting instead of attending 

the meeting. He was one of the seven members of the committee, Margaret wrote at the time (and 

she comments now that at that point, apparently, there were seven members instead of the usual five). 

He should have been there to plead for Mrs. Aitken. 

After the Bulkleys returned to Trang, they began sending letters and telegrams to the mission 

protesting the decision not to keep Mrs. Aitken. Mrs. Aitken herself and one of the teachers at the 

school, Ma Wan (SP?), told Margaret what was going on. Otherwise, she would not have known. 

Ma Wan was married to a man named Charles Hak. Ma Wan was Eurasian, part Thai, part European. 

Mrs. Bulkley met Mrs. Aitken and Ma Wan at the Landons' front gate one evening before the 

Landons returned from Bangkok and said to Mrs. Aitken, "You are not going. I am not going to 

permit it." She said it in an imperious tone. "Oh, but I DP going," replied Mrs. Aitken. Mrs. 

Bulkley's got black in the face, so Mrs. Aitken reported, and she went on to say that she would 

compel the Landons to help keep Mrs. Aitken and to protest the abrogation of station rights by 

Wattana and ended by saying that if the Landons failed to do so, "she would make it hot for us." 

The Landons returned to Trang in early April. They did want to keep Mrs. Aitken, but not 

enough to cause trouble with the mission. Certainly, not enough to join her in her attacks on 

Wattana. This made Mrs. Bulkley very angry, and she shunned them. Margaret wrote that this was a 

blessing, actually. "I had gotten to the nervous state where I shook when I thought I heard her car 

coming into the yard. I do hate quarrels." 

Mrs. Bulkley went home again in about 1934. She stopped to see Adelle when she was in the 

Chicago area. 

5 

42:25 Margaret gives the historic background on Edna Bulkley. She came to Siam when she was 

barely twenty, in 1903. She did not come from a Christian home, and had no Christian background. 

384


She had been converted in a conference. Margaret tells of the fight the two Bulkleys had over 

naming their first child, right at the altar, forcing them to retire and decide on the name. Mrs. Bulkley 

won. She was a high-strung and impetuous person. She was clever and convincing. She tended to 

do things with a high hand, simply bowling people over with her presence and manner. Apparently, 

she had done this with the mission board. After her conversion, she decided to be a missionary, and 

somehow got herself sent out although she was very young and had not graduated from high school. 

She was beautiful in a high-spirited way, and "she rode a horse like a poem." All the unattached 

males in town fell in love with her, and she was quite the belle of Bangkok. She was teaching at the 

Wang Lang School under Miss Cole, who was very strict. Miss Brunner had a nervous collapse after 

several years. Dr. Bulkley came out to the mission field several years later than Edna Brunner. He 

was the son of a famous New York doctor, and was a quiet, unassuming man. He should have been a 

naturalist. He had always loved the woods and animals of all sorts. His father forced him to become 

a doctor and a medical missionary. Edna Brunner fell in love with him and pursued him for years, 

spurning all other suitors. When she was twenty-seven or so, he finally proposed to her, and they 

were married. 

Margaret reads from a letter of the time, concerning Miss Christiansen's coming, the birth of 

Mrs. Bulkley's children, and Mrs. Bulkley's jealousy of Miss Christiansen, a very plain woman. On 

the change in Mrs. Bulkley when she went into one of her rages. In Miss Christiansen's opinion, Mrs. 

Bulkley was temporarily insane during these periods and not responsible for what she was doing. 

She had trouble with every woman she encountered in every station she had been in. It wasn't as bad 

for Margaret as it had been for some because Margaret had been warned. 

Mrs. Bulkley had wanted to take over the school and hated Margaret because that was given 

to her—the irony being that Margaret didn't want it. The reason Margaret was asked to do it was that 

the authorities feared all the teachers would resign if Mrs. Bulkley became headmistress. 

One thing Mrs. Bulkley did was to accuse Margaret of taking the money appropriated for 

repairs on her house and using them on Margaret's house while she, Mrs. Bulkley, was away on 

furlough. With that justification, she came to the Landons' compound, tore down Margaret's 

woodshed, and went off with the posts to build a sleeping porch on her house. 

One February, when Miss Christiansen was visiting the Landons and was terribly ill with the 

beginning of cancer, which ultimately killed her, Mrs. Bulkley came and made a terrible scene. Miss 

Christiansen begged the Landons not to let Mrs. Bulkley take her down to the hospital. She was a 

strong woman, but she deeply feared being in Mrs. Bulkley's hands. When Mrs. Bulkley made her 

terrible scene, she started it in front of Miss Christiansen. She made a whole series of accusations 

against Margaret. It was a horrible experience. Margaret had difficulty getting her out of the 

sleeping porch where Miss Christiansen lay, but she did. She refuted every charge that Mrs. Bulkley 

had brought against her, calmly and methodically. It took hours to get Mrs. Bulkley to leave. 

Margaret never raised her voice, but spoke very frankly. "That was not of me. That was of the 

Spirit." She told Mrs. Bulkley that the reason she turned one thing after another into something it 

was not was that she hated Margaret. At the end, Mrs. Bulkley finally apologized. "You destroyed 

her," Kenneth says. "You destroyed her. She never could face you again." "When she left," 

Margaret said, "she was creeping out of the house, bent over, and she was afraid of me from then on. 

Because like all bullies, she was essentially a coward." 

6 

55:35 The real beginning of the story. Two days after Carol was born, Margaret was informed that 

she had been put in charge of the school in Trang. 

Two months after returning to Trang, she developed a terrible toothache. She had to take 

385


Carol with her up to Bangkok in order to go to the dentist. After she returned to Trang, a couple of 

months later, a back tooth broke off, and she had to go up again. Then she developed some sort of 

infection in the uterus, and she had to go up to Bangkok for about five weeks. So that was a year 

when Margaret literally, physically could not do anything about the school, which contributed to the 

crisis that ensued. 

Margaret begins to tell us about the "other villain in the piece," Bertha Blount McFarland. 

Bertha Blount came out to the mission in 1908. She was assigned to Wattana Wittaya Academy. She 

was a very able person, but not an attractive person. Kenneth tells us she had a little mustache. At 

various times, she acted as headmistress of Wattana. She had a great love of power. In 1923, Miss 

Cole retired, and Miss Blount took over. By an odd coincidence, in the year of 1937-1938, when 

Kenneth was taking his doctorate in Chicago, the people living above the Landons' apartment were 

from India, named Wilson. Delightful people. Mrs. Wilson had somewhere had contact with Miss 

Cole, and she told Margaret a story she never would have gotten otherwise. She said that Miss Cole 

told her that Bertha Blount McFarland "knew how to thrust her hand into the heart and tear the 

heartstrings out." She had connived to get Miss Cole to leave Wattana so that she could have the job. 

And she hardly had the job before Dr. McFarland's wife died, a very lovely woman who had been 

married to Dr. McFarland twenty-seven years. 

386


HOUR 62 

Session #45 continued November 5, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (XA270) Margaret continues the story of Kru Pakai's letters. Miss Christiansen had the 

maternity home where Peggy, Bill, and Carol were all born. She nursed the first Mrs. McFarland in 

her final illness. Dr. McFarland was born in 1866 and died in 1942. He was the son of an early 

missionary in Siam, though he himself was never a missionary. He was trained as a doctor and 

dentist and was instrumental in organizing the first modern hospital that Siam had. He was the first 

dentist ever. He wrote textbooks and that sort of thing. His brother Edwin invented the Thai 

typewriter, at the end of the nineteenth century. Edwin died and left the typewriter to his brother, 

who organized The McFarland Typewriter Company, which was ultimately very successful 

financially. Kenneth bought typewriters from them. The McFarlands owned a lovely home that they 

bought, which was already named Holy Rood when they bought it, and it had two or three acres, a 

beautiful garden. Mrs. McFarland was dying of tuberculosis in 1923. Miss Christiansen told 

Margaret, and Margaretta Wells later confirmed, that Bertha Blount came to the McFarland house 

while Mrs. McFarland was dying and courted Dr. McFarland. It was a ghoulish thing to do. 

Margaretta recently told Margaret that the first Mrs. McFarland knew what Bertha Blount was doing, 

a tragic thing, to be lying there, knowing you were dying, and to know that this woman was taking 

over your husband. 

Bertha Blount married Dr. McFarland in 1925. In the meantime, he had proposed to one of 

the younger missionaries because he still would have liked to have children. Her name was Alice 

Schaefer (SP?), and she turned him down. Wisely, Margaret thinks. Miss Blount was in her forties, 

and she never had children with the doctor. "She was very able, though." She was a close friend of 

Faye Kilpatrick. After she married the doctor, she became a so-called "affiliated missionary." She 

wasn't a missionary, but she was counted a member of the group. She became very close to Paul 

Eakin, and they made a powerful combination. "You never wanted to get crosswise of them." 

Margaret found out later that one of Bertha's wards, Pakai, had been appointed head teacher 

of the Anokul Safri School two days before Margaret was appointed headmistress. Margaret was not 

consulted in any way. Kru Pakai came down to Trang shortly after Carol was born and took over the 

running of the school. During that first year, of course, Margaret was at the school very little because 

of her new baby and her health problems. It wasn't until the fall of 1934 that she could be in any way 

connected with the school. 

Kenneth says that Pakai was a very thin woman, and they called her "Bat Bong (SP?)," that is, 

"the thin model." She was "very glandular, very active, very aggressive." She had been at Nakhon 

when the Landons were there, so Margaret already knew her, and her heart fell when she learned that 

Wattana was sending her down to Trang. Miss Kilpatrick was doing what the new Mrs. McFarland 

wanted her to do, placing her ward at the school. 

In November, 1934, Margaret wrote her mother of her deep concern about a situation 

developing at the school, which was rapidly coming to a head. There were nine teachers at the 

school, most of them fine young women. However, the head teacher was causing Margaret a great 

deal of trouble. She was a person who had made trouble wherever she had been. She was a 

Christian, from a Christian family, but there seemed to be no Christian character. Almost no one was 

aware of the trouble, and Margaret did not want them to be. 

387


Pakai was Margaret's age. She had attended Wattana. She was the daughter of a high 

government official in Bangkok who was now retired. She acted as head teacher of a school in 

Bangkok until she was discharged for misconduct. She had become the lesser wife of some man or 

other and had one child by him before he tired of her. When she knew he was through with her, she 

took a knife, went to his office, and tried to kill him. At this point, Bertha Blount McFarland got hold 

of her, taking her into her home and working very hard with her. When Mrs. McFarland felt that 

Pakai was ready, she sent her out to take a position at Lampang in the north, and later at Nakhon, 

where Margaret saw her. At Nakhon, she had trouble with the Siamese couple who were heading the 

school and left. She then had a year's further study in Bangkok and was sent down to Trang as head 

teacher against the judgment of many people. 

Mrs. McFarland "is a strong-minded woman and she sometimes rides right over other 

people." She had managed the appointment through a close friend, that is, Miss Kilpatrick. 

Margaret found it very unpleasant working with Kru Pakai. There seemed to be a stone wall 

in Pakai's heart. And now a situation had developed "so terrible that I have felt ill for days. And 

Kenneth was literally sick in bed on Saturday from the nervous shock, I feel sure." About the 11th or 

12th of December, people began to give Margaret information that they had not given before because 

of fear. 

2 

10:42 What had happened was that Margaret went over to Nakhon Si Thammarat for a few days, 

and while she was there, a woman from Trang came to see her. The woman would not have come to 

Margaret's home in Trang because she would have been afraid to. She was the stepmother of two of 

the girls in the school. Her husband was the son of the first Christian in Trang, and he was a 

carpenter. She came to Margaret and gave her in detail an account of Pakai's life. Margaret believes 

the woman travelled all the way from Trang for the specific purpose of telling Margaret what was 

going on, out of a sense of urgency, fearing to do it in Trang, seeing her opportunity in Margaret's trip 

away from Trang. What she told Margaret was that Kru Pakai had one lover who was constant, and 

numerous others who came and went. How many others there were, Margaret does not know. 

Kenneth says that she was even entertaining her lovers in the church, which was close to the school. 

It was easy for her to slide over to the church to do this. It was a terribly shocking situation. The 

woman gave her chapter and verse. And other people gave her information too, confirming what the 

woman had told her. But the information that one woman supplied was Margaret's primary source to 

begin with. Kenneth explains that one reason the thing came out was that her main lover was over in 

Nakhon, and the two of them wrote letters to each other. But Margaret says that's getting ahead of 

the story. 

On Thursday, December 13, Margaret telegraphed Bertha McFarland in Bangkok, writing a 

brief message in code because of her knowledge that anything in the telegram would be read. Mrs. 

McFarland telegraphed back promptly telling Margaret to send Pakai to Bangkok on the next 

morning's train. That was at 7:30 on Thursday evening. She merely said "urgent business." 

Margaret wondered if Pakai would go, but Pakai did decide to go, jumping to the conclusion that her 

father was ill. And the next morning she left. 

Margaret goes over this again. By the 13th, she felt she had sufficient evidence to act, and 

that she must act quickly and, hopefully, quietly. Thai law had a clause in it according to which, if 

the head teacher of any school were caught in immorality of any kind, the authorities could close the 

school. 

The woman who came to Nakhon to see Margaret feared Pakai personally, knowing that she 

was violent, and also feared Pakai's main lover, who was also violent. She was a timid woman. She 

388


spent about two hours with Margaret, "and it just left me absolutely sick at heart." How the woman 

got the information, and where, Margaret did not ask her. She believed her without question. Pakai 

was "totally immoral." 

Margaret's problem was to move in such a way that the school and the community didn't find 

out about it. In a small community, things are known to some degree no matter what. But the hope 

was to minimize the damage. 

What Margaret said in her telegram to Mrs. McFarland, basically, was, "Summon your ward 

to Bangkok immediately or I will dismiss her publicly for cause." Margaret still has a copy of her 

telegram, in code, which she can no longer read. Margaret also has the telegram that Mrs. McFarland 

immediately sent back. It read, "Send ward here Friday express. Urgent business. Leave son Si 

Thammarat." There, Margaret says, Mrs. McFarland acted very properly, and what she said could do 

no harm. 

Pakai went quietly. There was no fuss about it at the school. Margaret took the teacher who 

was Pakai's close friend but an able and fine person, and put her in charge of the school temporarily. 

Pakai said she thought she could be back within the week. They only had trains twice a week, and 

off she went on the express. 

3 

18:12 Margaret and Kenneth went home. "I felt throughout it, I always felt, that we had God's 

guidance very definitely." Margaret wanted Pakai to reach Bangkok and talk with Mrs. McFarland 

before she made her next move. At this point, Mrs. McFarland did not know what Margaret's reason 

for acting was. But she had believed what Margaret said, and Margaret says that she would indeed 

have discharged Pakai publicly and told her to get out of town. Then she would have been finished 

forever. And she would have made a terrible row, because she was a violent women. 

Then, Kenneth and Margaret went down to the school, and Margaret summoned Kru Wat, 

who was Pakai's special friend, and a very able person, and said that Pakai would not be coming 

back. They were there to collect all her possessions to ship up to her on the next express. Naturally, 

Kru Wat was terribly upset. But she got Pakai's suitcases and began to pack her clothes and papers 

and so on. Pakai had been living in the residence that adjoined the school, and she had a large 

wardrobe that had doors at the top and at the bottom. In the center, there were two drawers that were 

locked. Margaret said to Kru Wat, "Send for the coolie." Which she did. When the coolie came, 

Margaret directed him to open the locked drawers. He said it would break the drawers. Margaret 

said, "Open them." So he got tools and ripped them open. 

The drawers were packed with letters, just packed solidly with letters. Kenneth and Margaret 

were expressionless. They directed Kru Wat to put the letters into one of the suitcases and said 

nothing more. They took everything Kru Pakai had, everything she owned, and took it all up to their 

house. Margaret remembers her sense of utter exhaustion. So Kenneth, "who has more stamina than 

I, took the letters and went out—and I can see him still, sitting on the back porch—we had a table 

there where we ate breakfast; we usually ate dinner in the dining room; but we ate breakfast there— 

and this tremendous pile of letters. And he began to read them." 

Margaret reiterates that she had the right [and evidently the obligation] "under the thinking 

of the mission" to read them. It applied to teachers as well as students, because so many of the 

teachers were young women. Margaret remembers once that they had a long battle with a lieuten ant 

governor who was determined to get away with one of their girls. It was all on the politest level; 

nothing unpleasant was ever said; but it was a struggle. Kenneth says that men would send letters 

filled with poetic language on the theory that foreigners wouldn't understand them. They'd talk about 

the flowers and [Kenneth breaks into a stream of Thai]. But what it was was setting up dates, 

389


saying, Come on out and meet me by the oak tree, or something like that. Often, a man with one or 

two wives would set up relations with women who were willing to be "secret wives," in effect, 

mistresses. Or take them on as lesser wives. 

Margaret remembers another kind of story, that of a lovely young girl of fifteen whose 

grandmother came for her. A marriage had been arranged for her. She loved school and didn't want 

to go, but her grandmother forced her to go, and the family forced her into the marriage. Margaret 

remembers how lovely the girl was. She committed suicide. She took oil of wintergreen. 

Margaret got a "great deal of face" when she was made headmistress, even though she didn't 

want to be, over Mrs. Bulkley. But she also won a reputation that stayed with her the rest of her time 

as headmistress of never losing a girl. She had the co-operation of her teachers. This incident with 

Kru Pakai was absolutely crucial in establishing that reputation on the one hand and not "losing face" 

on the other. 

So Margaret asked Kenneth to read the letters. The most amazing thing about them was that 

most of them were Pakai's letters to the men, and that they were specific. "Totally pornographic, in 

great detail." She had evidently made the men return them. Kenneth was nauseated by them. 

Kenneth and Margaret talked about what to do. They were sending her things to her. But 

there was one suitcase that had lost most of its latches, so they put the letters in there to send up. The 

Landons never talked to anyone in Trang about what had happened with Pakai. But Margaret said to 

Kenneth that Pakai was a favorite of Mrs. McFarland and would very likely succeed in persuading 

her that she was innocent. And if Mrs. McFarland or others challenged the Landons for what they 

had done, they couldn't summon the people who had come to Margaret with the information on Pakai 

because they would be too afraid. But the Landons had these letters as proof. So Margaret decided 

to take out a selection of the letters to keep as insurance. Later, when the time seemed right, they 

could return them. At Margaret's request, Kenneth made a selection of letters to keep, and they 

packed the rest into the rickety suitcase and tied it up with rope. They proceeded to send Pakai's 

possessions, including the suitcase letters, up to Bangkok. 

4 

28:22 Wattana reacted beautifully. They sent down almost immediately a very fine woman named 

Kru Briyuhn (SP?) to take over as head teacher. Everything was calm. 

Time passed. The crisis seemed to be over. 1935 came, with the end of the school year in 

sight in March. Margaret knew that, if what had happened ever became public, it would have 

finished the school. "The government would have closed it. Or the people would have come and 

taken their children out." 

Margaret wrote Elizabeth January 20, 1935, summarizing what had happened. Pakai seemed 

to have no interest in spiritual things. Her work was not good. And she refused to co-operate with 

Margaret. Of Bertha McFarland, Margaret wrote, "She used to be a missionary. She married a rather 

elderly man who owns a large typewriter store in Bangkok. Her name is Mrs. McFarland. She is a 

short, German type of woman, very determined. She has lots of money, or did have, and the leisure 

for much committee work. Altogether, combined with a good mind and a determination to rule, she 

is a formidable person. She is especially well liked by an influential group of Siamese." She was 

rather like some mothers who could see no wrong in their children, in her case, people like Pakai that 

she had taken under her wing. 

Margaret and Kenneth discovered that Pakai had stolen hundreds of dollars from the school. 

They found this out by auditing the school books. 

"It has been a hard and long-drawn-out experience, with a thousand complications. It isn't 

finished yet. But things are much better, and I think the school is saved. I had a wonderful sense of 

390


God's presence throughout the time. I felt that if the school was for his glory, he would overrule. . . ." 

Margaret spent a great deal of time working with the school ledgers, trying to straighten out 

the tangled accounts. One ramification was that an elder of the church, who was also a hospital 

employee, was found to have taken money from the church. [The connection is not clear here.] 

Dr. Bulkley discharged him. 

After Pakai left, and this man was discharged, the various men in the case banded together to 

find out who had given the Landons the information. The report was that they had hired a thug to do 

damage to the witnesses who had come to the Landons. But they could not find out who the 

witnesses were, and nothing happened. 

5 

35:48 One day in late January, Dr. Bulkley came to the Landons' house to say that he had just had a 

telegram from Paul Eakin in Bangkok saying that he and the Rev. Plueng Sudakom (SP?), moderator 

of the Siamese church, would arrive in Trang the next day. Margaret was puzzled by their coming. 

No reason was given for it. They were to arrive the next afternoon, and Margaret was planning to 

meet them at the train. As it happened, however, a serious disciplinary case arose at the school which 

held her until very late, so that she was unable to meet the train. "It thus happened that I was there—I 

truly believe by God's special providence—when Dr. Bulkley's coolie arrived with a package and 

some letters. One of the letters was for Kru Wat, who had been Pakai's special friend in the school. 

[For more on the small miracle of intercepting this letter, see #63-1.] As was customary in 

Siamese schools, Margaret opened this letter to read it before being passing it on to Kru Wat. It was 

a terrible letter from Kru Pakai." There were many slips of paper purporting to be IOUs for small 

amounts of money over a considerable period of time. Pakai wanted Kru Wat to produce these 

spurious notes to show that she had not taken the money from the school at one time but over a 

period of time, and of course had always intended to pay it back. [She was to produce them for 

the two investigators coming down from Bangkok, one of whom, Paul Eakin, had carried 

down Pakai's letter for Kru Wat.] From the letter, Margaret learned "obliquely, as it were" that 

Pakai had convinced Mrs. McFarland and Mr. Eakin of her complete innocence, and that the reason 

for the two men's coming to Trang was to investigate the situation at the school. In other words, 

Margaret was to be placed in the position of defendant. She, Margaret, had discharged Pakai for no 

good reason and had ruined her good name. Pakai explained that there was a family in town, which 

she named, which had come to Margaret with all sorts of false accusations because they wanted to 

discharge her in favor of their daughter, who would then take over as head teacher. Margaret had 

foolishly believed their accusations and was "either a knave or a fool or both." Mrs. McFarland was 

insisting that Pakai be vindicated at once and be returned to her position at the school. 

Margaret found the letter a greater shock than the original trouble. She was astounded that 

her fellow missionaries had believed a person with such a personal history, instead of herself. "By 

the time I had finished reading the letter, I was cold all over." Margaret hurried home to tell Kenneth, 

who could hardly believe it either. But he had felt something was not right because when he met Mr. 

Eakin at the train, Eakin, who had been expecting Dr. Bulkley, "had turned white, and his chin had 

begun to tremble." 

The Landons went to the Bulkleys for dinner with the two gentlemen from Bangkok. Eakin 

was circumspect, but Kru Plueng was "more bluff." It was he who later confirmed the fact that both 

the Siamese Christians and the missionaries in Bangkok had accepted Pakai's version of events. 

Pakai had been portraying Margaret as something of a monster to them, so much so that it would 

probably be impossible for Margaret to secure good teachers from Bangkok. Mr. Eakin confirmed 

391


this, saying that "no one of whom he knew would come to Trang next year." 

The Landons said nothing, so the two men had to raise the issue. Margaret remembers clearly 

the moment when Paul Eakin asked whether they had any evidence to back up their claims. And she 

looked across at Kenneth, "Would you say that we had anything in the way of evidence?" And 

Kenneth, with a very straight face said, "Well, some." Later they learned that Kru Plueng, who had 

obviously picked up the ominous implication in the Landons' remarks to each other, said to Paul 

Eakin, after the Landons had left, "Let's take the train back. We were wrong to come." But Eakin 

intended to continue. He told the Landons that he and Kru Plueng would be going about Trang 

interviewing people about the incident, which would have destroyed the school's reputation in the 

town. "Paul Eakin was a fool," Kenneth says. "He was rather lofty about it," Margaret said, but 

agreed to look at what the Landons had before going around interviewing people. 

The time was set. 10:00 the next morning. The next morning, Margaret decided that she and 

Kenneth needed to write out a contract in which the two men would agree that they would not under 

any circumstances reveal any of the information supplied to them by the Landons about Kru Pakai 

without written consent. When the two men came, the Landons had a round table set in the middle of 

the porch, with two chairs on either side, and nothing on the table but this contract. Eakin was 

absolutely furious. But the Landons explained they everything they had done was to save the school. 

The kind of scandal that Pakai was involved in would have destroyed the school if it had become 

openly known in the town, because the mission schools had a reputation for integrity. Lose that, and 

they lost everything. The Landons said they had refrained from discussing the scandal with anyone, 

not with the Bulkleys, not with Thai Christians, and they certainly didn't want these two men going 

back to Bangkok and talking about it. It would be in Trang by the next day. They refused to show 

the men the letters unless they signed the contract. And they said that, in that case, the two men were 

free to carry out their investigation throughout Trang. "And then we would have destroyed them, you 

see, later. I mean to say, they would have made such fools of themselves." Very reluctantly, the two 

men signed. 

6 

45:06 Margaret had the letters in a file folder. As soon as the men had signed, Kenneth took the 

two signed sheets, and Margaret came to the table, carefully tipped out the file folder's contents, and 

said, "There it is, gentlemen." Kenneth says that it was a big pile of letters. It covered the tabletop. 

The Landons went off and left the men there. They began to read, and in a few minutes, Margaret 

heard one of them groan. "Ooohhh. Oooohhhh!" So she thought, "Well, he hit a good spot." The 

Landons left them alone. Served them lunch. Didn't say a word about it during lunch. Made no 

accusation, ever. The two men read on until 4:00 in the afternoon. "And they crept out of there." 

So they went. They talked to nobody in town. They took the next train out of town. "And I 

want to tell you, I had such face as you'd never expect to get." The two men had been indiscreet 

enough to let out to people in Trang that they had come to investigate the Landons concerning the 

Pakai affair. So people knew that Margaret was on trial. Kenneth says that the Siamese gentleman 

apologized. "Oh, he was really upset, and ashamed of himself." Margaret had forgotten that. "He 

just practically wanted to kiss your feet. He really did." He knew he had been taken in, and also the 

people in Bangkok. 

Margaret recalls that at the beginning, Paul Eakin told them that Mrs. McFarland had said to 

him, "If I've been made a fool of all these years, I want to know." That is, by Pakai. So when they 

finished reading at 4:00, Margaret said to Paul, "Has Mrs. McFarland been made a fool of all these 

years?" He just shook his head, "She surely has. She surely has." 

Margaret wrote in a letter that, when Pakai knew that her case was hopeless, she left Mrs. 

392


McFarland's house vowing to travel south and avenge herself on Mrs. Landon. She wrote that she 

would sue Margaret on some charge or other. Kenneth reminds us that Pakai's boyfriend in Nakhon 

was something of a thug, and the chief of police in Trang warned Margaret not to sit near the light in 

the evening. He warned both Landons to be very careful. Somehow he had learned what had been 

going on, perhaps from public threats made by the boyfriend in Nakhon. The police over there may 

have informed the police in Trang. 

Then the Landons heard that Pakai had gone to Nakhon and was living quietly there. 

Paul Eakin wrote a letter that disturbed Margaret. It said that he and Mrs. McFarland had 

talked to Pakai in Bangkok after his return from Trang, presumably confronting her with the facts, 

though the Landons don't know for sure, and that "she was like a mad thing." She admitted nothing. 

Then one night, in the middle of the night, a strange and delightful thing happened. Kenneth 

was awakened by loud singing on the road. That was not unusual. In the old days people did it to 

show that they were honest persons returning home late, and not robbers. Now they did it to keep 

themselves company, or simply because they liked to sing. The singer was on a bicycle, riding very 

slowly, and he sang along in Thai, loud and clear, "The person in whom you are interested has come 

to Nakhon and is arranging to enter suit against you in the courts. This news has come to Nai Hong." 

The man was obviously a friend. 

Several other people informed Margaret that Pakai was trying to bring suit against her, but the 

lawyers would not do it. There never was a suit. Something was known in Trang, but not the whole 

story. The Landons heard that the lover from Nakhon did come to Trang at one point, but nothing 

happened. Perhaps the police intercepted him. The chief of police had two girls in the school and 

was very friendly to the Landons. 

Without the letters, Pakai would have won. 

Under the Thai way of thinking, Margaret was not wrong to read them. The irony was that 

Pakai had taken the precaution of having her lovers return them. And so there they were, waiting to 

be found. 

Without the letters, the Landons would have been unable to make their case. No witnesses 

were going to speak. Pakai would have been vindicated. And the Landons would have had to leave 

the station. "And Paul Eakin would have been delighted to be able to do it because he just loathed 

me," says Kenneth. 

Margaret and Kenneth talk about the respect he had won from the Lord Lieutenant over all 

three southern provinces as well as the high priest. 

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HOUR 63 

Session #45 continued November 5, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (XA680) Margaret completes the story of Kru Pakai. Kenneth had a rapport with the Thai 

people. "He understood them, and they knew that." He travelled all over the peninsula; preached in 

Thai; wrote regular pastoral letters; founded six Chinese churches. And he had big plans for their 

third term, which was to begin in 1938, after the second furlough. By the end of that third term, he 

expected to have twenty Chinese churches going, and ultimately he expected to get a hundred of them 

going all up and down the peninsula. He saw what the mission had missed, that the Thai were 

absorbing the Chinese. Whereas it was very difficult to reach the Thai Buddhists—maybe one here, 

one there; the Thai churches were all small—you could reach the Chinese more easily because they 

had broken with their tradition by coming to another country. They were open, and accepted 

Christianity readily. Margaret has pictures of four or five of Kenneth's Chinese churches. So, she 

says, he really had something going. And Pakai could have wrecked it all. The threat wasn't just to 

Margaret and the school, but also to Kenneth's evangelistic work. 

Margaret worked almost full time from then on running the girls' school. Kru Briyuhn had 

said she wouldn't stay beyond the final two months of the school year, which ended in March. She 

was from Wattana. Margaret says that "all the teachers who had said they were going to leave 

stayed," and Kru Briyuhn helped in that. (This had not been said before in our taping.) Kru Wat, 

who believed in her friend Kru Pakai, had been talking to the teachers, and they had all decided that 

they would leave unless Pakai were reinstated. They had expected the Landons to be straightened out 

by the two men from Bangkok and were stunned when instead the men crept out of town without 

doing anything. So here was another, major aspect of the crisis. Margaret comments that, yes, it was 

a complex situation. 

Still another, though not major aspect of the crisis was that Japanese propaganda was making 

inroads at the time, with the theme "Asia for Asians." There was beginning to be feeling against 

foreigners. 

Kru Briyuhn did agree to stay one more year. And then she married a governor she met 

whose daughter went to the school. He was not a Christian. That kind of rank was very tempting to 

the Thai. To be the wife of a governor was to be a very important person. 

2 

5:16 When Briyuhn was preparing to go, in 1935, Margaret decided on her own to elevate one of 

her teachers to the position of head teacher. She was a neighbor of Margaret and Kenneth, Kru Kim 

Juang. 

Margaret tells how, during their first furlough, Dr. Bulkley had arranged with Kim Juang's 

husband to rent the whole lower half of the Landon compound and plant it. The kwak (SP?) grass 

had moved in. He was harvesting the coconuts from the trees. The grass had two names, lalang grass 

or kwak grass, which grew very high and was very tough. You couldn't cut it with anything but a 

scythe. It was always full of snakes. The Landons put an end to this arrangement. 

Kru Kim Juang did not have as much education as someone like Briyuhn, who had gone 

through the eighth mattiyon (SP?), equivalent to twelfth grade. Kim Juang had gone through fourth 

mattiyon. But she had grown up there, and she was a person of great tact. She had taught in the 

394


temple school. 

She met a priest that she knew one day, and she salaamed him. The priest said, "Ah, teacher, 

you honor the cloth." "Oh, sir, no," she replied. "I honor the person." It was an example of her tact. 

She had a gift for it. 

Margaret realized that she would make an ideal head teacher. She had about eight children, 

but her husband never seemed to work much, so she was the support of the family. The mission 

wanted to send down a man from Bangkok who would have been totally wrong for that community, 

which would not have accepted a man as head of a girls' school. He would not have understood the 

local customs. Kru Kim Juang could speak in Bangkok Thai, but just as easily she could slip into the 

local dialect, and did. People liked and trusted her. She always knew the right thing to say. 

She and Margaret walked together, probably for hundreds of miles, visiting the parents of 

their students. They knew they needed the confidence of the community. If a student were missing 

from school more than two days, the two of them would walk to the home and visit with the family. 

They gradually paid visits to home after home after home, and they would sit there and talk. And it 

worked to build the school. For people trusted Kru Kim Juang, and if she sponsored Margaret, then 

they trusted her. 

Margaret left her in charge when the Landons came home on furlough in 1937. And as it 

worked out, the mission left her in charge. She won their confidence by the quality of her work, and 

she did a very good job with that school. She even talked the Japanese military out of taking the 

school. She went down to the gate and very graciously spoke to them when they came, and so the 

school was saved. 

She has since died. The compound on which the Landons lived is still there, but there is a 

school on it. In fact, the mission sold the land where the girls' school was, and built a coeducational 

school on what had been the Landon compound—a measure of how much has changed in the 

country. It continues to be a Christian school. 

Kenneth says that, while the Landons intended to return when they left in 1937, they were 

also aware of the possibility that they might not come back—because of the crisis in the mission that 

the Landons had precipitated. There were a lot of things that they left in Siam in their expectation of 

returning, like the correspondence with Paul Eakin. And Kenneth's theological library. And quite a 

bit of furniture. 

We return again to the letter that Margaret intercepted the night the two men arrived from 

Bangkok. The perfect timing of it. The providence of Margaret's staying at the school late. And 

now Margaret tells us that the really incredible thing was that Pakai sent the letter down by hand, to 

avoid sending it through the post office. If she had sent it through the post office, Margaret would 

have gotten it and read it. Which, of course, Pakai knew. She had sent it down by Paul Eakin 

personally, who had given it to the Bulkleys' coolie to carry over to the school for Kru Wat. 

Margaret's being there at the school that night was miraculous. If Kru Wat had received the letter, 

both Landons are sure that she would have done exactly what Pakai asked of her. And they would 

have gone to the dinner with the gentlemen from Bangkok completely unaware that they were under 

attack. 

Session #46 June 19, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

This is the session in which we actually resumed taping after the four-year break. For 

reasons I cannot explain in 1995, we began again with Kenneth's finding a new job at Earlham 

College in 1939, then dipped back into a bit of 1938 history. Thus, a very important period of 

Margaret and Kenneth's lives has for the most part been omitted from the record. 

395


While on furlough from the mission field in 1931 and 1932, Kenneth spent a year taking 

his M.A. at the University of Chicago. While on his second furlough in 1937 and 1938, Kenneth 

spent a furious year at Chicago working for his Ph.D. in comparative religion. This was a 

special program that had been set up by the president of the University, a man named 

Hutchins. I believe Kenneth was the first person to do it. He took and passed all the course 

work, took and passed his 

comprehensives, and wrote his dissertation in that one incredible year. The dissertation was 

his first published book, Siam in Transition. 

During this same time, Margaret took courses in writing at the Medill School of 

Journalism at Northwestern University. She will tell of this several sessions down the line. It 

was the beginning of her career as a professional writer. 

In that year of 1937-1938, the family lived in an apartment at the University. 

Kenneth has already told the story of the meeting of missionaries to Siam in New York, 

and of how at the climax, the Landons resigned from the mission. This was a huge decision, 

not only because of all they had invested in their work as missionaries in Siam, and in their life 

and their home there, but also because 1938 was in the heart of the Great Depression. 

Kenneth had a wife and three children and no way of supporting them at a time when jobs 

were very hard to find. 

At some point in this period—I don't know the exact time—Kenneth did the logical 

thing and began looking for a church to pastor. He had his degree from Princeton 

Theological Seminary, and now a Ph.D. from Chicago. He was the Reverend Kenneth 

Landon. Having left the mission field, it followed that he would now pastor a church in the U.S. 

Unfortunately, after months of seeking a pastorate, he was told by the Presbyterian authorities 

that, because of his ten years out of the country, he must begin with a small rural church and 

move up. Kenneth knew that it would be impossible to support his family if he did that, and so 

he began to cast about for another way of making a living. 

In that year of unemployment, 1938 and 1939, the Landons lived with Margaret's 

mother, Adelle Mortenson, in Wheaton, Illinois. They sold off most of their life insurance 

policy. They also sold some precious belongings, like Kenneth's flute. 

One job possibility Kenneth explored concerned Prince Damrong's library. He went 

out on the road to find a university that would take the library, a story that he tells here. The 

idea was that Kenneth would go on the university's payroll as curator. But as it turned out, no 

one wanted the library. 

By the time in the summer of 1939 that Kenneth left home to find a teaching job at any 

college or university that would hire him—the story he is about to tell—he was truly 

desperate. 

3 

17:26 This date was the anniversary of Margaret's parents' wedding. This afternoon in Bellevue, 

Washington, Bradley Landon, a grandson, and Carolyn, were married at 3:00 p.m. 

Kenneth tells us how he found his job at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, in 1939. 

"The way I got to Earlham was I was broke, and I was hunting for a job." He had already tried for a 

year to introduce Southeast Asian studies to a number of universities. He was sponsored in this by 

the American Council of Learned Societies. But the effort had been "abortive." "Then I said to 

Margaret, 'I am going out and get a job.'" He had a list of all the colleges and universities in the 

states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania, and he simply started out in his car to visit 

396


them cold, right off the road. [I recall his saying that he told Margaret he was going out to get a 

job and would not return until he found one.] At every college or university, he asked to see the 

president, figuring it was best to start at the top and work down. At most of these institutions, he was 

informed that he was going about things the wrong way and would never find a teaching position in 

this way. He should go back home and write letters of application and send his curriculum vitae and 

then wait for someone to show interest in him. In each instance, Kenneth said, "Nuts. I need a job. I 

need it now. This is the American way to go about it. And if you aren't interested, good-by." This 

happened at Wooster, and at Oberlin, and at a number of colleges where the presidents tried to 

straighten him out. "They didn't succeed." 

Then one evening, he arrived in Richmond, Indiana. As he drove into town, he saw the sign 

for Earlham College. So he thought, Aha, I'll call the president tomorrow morning. So he found a 

place to stay, a private house that accepted boarders, and the next morning, at about nine o'clock, he 

drove into a gas station, filled up with gas, and called the college. He had four nickels. He dropped 

in his first nickel, telephoned, and asked to speak to the president. It was a man named William 

Cullen Dennis. Kenneth was immediately referred to Dennis, who said, "Good morning, who's 

calling?" And in his best manner, Kenneth informed him of who he was, that he was "Professor 

Kenneth Landon," and that he was looking for a teaching position. The president asked Kenneth 

what subject he would like to teach. "Well, I was ready to teach anything," Kenneth tells us. He had 

been applying to teach in religion, and applying to work as a chaplain, and this, that, and the other 

thing. But this morning, from out of the blue, Kenneth answered, "Philosophy." There was quiet for 

a moment, and then Dennis said, "Did you say you were applying for the position in philosophy?" 

Kenneth said, "Yes." Dennis said that this was "rather unusual." That position had only fallen vacant 

the night before at about ten p.m. "How did you hear about it?" "Well," Kenneth replied, "Mr. 

President, these things get around. That is the position that I would like to apply for." 

The president was immediately intrigued and asked Kenneth to tell him more about who he 

was and how he came to apply for this position. Kenneth told of his missionary background, and of 

having his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in philosophy and religion, and that he spoke Thai, 

Chinese, and Malay, and was familiar with Oriental philosophy as well as Western philosophy. Then 

President Dennis was intrigued. He asked Kenneth if he spoke Mandarin, and Kenneth assured him 

that he did. He wasn't as fluent in that as he was in Taichu, or in Hokien, but he said that he had been 

promoting Chinese primary schools, and that naturally he had to speak the Chinese language to do so. 

In dealing with the various dialect groups, he had to speak the common language, which was 

Mandarin. They called it "schoolboy Chinese," the equivalent of the kind of French taught by 

teachers in Indiana who had never been to France. 

Kenneth had dropped his second nickel into the telephone, and now he dropped in his third, to 

keep talking. When he reached his fourth and final nickel, he said that he had run out of nickels. 

Could he come to see Dennis personally? Oh yes, yes, yes, come right around! So Kenneth drove 

over and entered the man's office. 

Dennis asked Kenneth if he could handle the teaching of metaphysics. "Well, yes, of course I 

could." Could he handle the teaching of ethics? "Indeed I could," Kenneth answered, and began to 

hold forth on ethics. How about logic? Kenneth began to hold forth on logic. And he said that he 

could teach Chinese philosophy, and other Oriental philosophies, if there was interest. 

The president said that the college had a problem. They had a young psychology professor 

who needed supervision. Could Kenneth teach advanced psychology? abnormal psychology, if need 

be? and supervise this young fellow's work? Kenneth replied that yes, naturally, he could. 

Dennis was bemused at Kenneth's confidence that he could do all these things. "He looked at 

me owlishly," and asked if the head of Kenneth's department at Chicago University would agree that 

397


Kenneth could do all these things. Kenneth suggested that Dennis call him up and ask him. Which 

the man promptly did, calling A. Eustace Haydon, Kenneth's mentor at the university. In no time at 

all, Dennis had Haydon on the telephone and sat there looking at Kenneth while talking to Professor 

Haydon. Dennis began asking questions about what Kenneth could do. Could he teach this? Could 

he handle that? Kenneth did not hear the answers, of course. Dennis came to the subject of 

psychology and asked if Kenneth could teach that, and then listened. And then, finally, he thanked 

Professor Haydon and hung up, and said, "Well, he says you FDQ." Kenneth thought, concerning A. 

Eustace Haydon, that that was probably "the greatest favorable lie that he'd ever told in his life." 

Margaret interjects that Dr. Haydon was greatly impressed with Kenneth, so much so that 

ultimately he hoped Kenneth would be his successor at Chicago. Kenneth tells us that he had given 

Haydon a terrifically hard time in his class. Haydon told Kenneth several years later, in 1947, that he 

would prepare his lectures for class and then sit and look at his notes and think to himself, "Now what 

will that son of a bitch, Landon, do today?" Kenneth challenged every point he made with which he 

disagreed, and he disagreed with a great many. Kenneth would ask him to demonstrate his evidence 

and his footnotes and documentation, and thus support his position. Kenneth would challenge him all 

through his lecture while the rest of the class just sat there. This went on throughout the year. 

Kenneth thought Haydon hated him. But when it came to taking his comprehensives, which was a 

five-day comprehensive, for which Kenneth had to typewrite at least five or six hours a day, Haydon 

gave him one of the highest marks he could give, to Kenneth's surprise. Haydon told Kenneth, "I 

never had such an exciting year in my teaching career. I would think every day, What is that son of a 

bitch, Landon, going to do today?" He would look all through his notes trying to figure out what 

Landon was going to challenge so that he could be prepared. 

In any case, Haydon gave him a very favorable recommendation. President Dennis said he 

would consider it, but before making a decision, he had to meet Kenneth's wife. Kenneth was 

delighted. "I knew that he was JRQH if he ever met Margaret because she was so impressive herself. 

And so it turned out." And that is how Kenneth became the head of the philosophy department and 

the supervisor of psychology at Earlham College.. 

Kenneth says the reason Dennis was interested in Kenneth was that he was an attorney and 

had been legal advisor to Chiang Kai Shek of China. He was very much impressed with Kenneth's 

knowledge of Chinese philosophy and language. 

Kenneth hadn't been at Earlham very long before he asked if he might offer a course in 

Chinese philosophy. Dennis said he had no objection, but questioned whether Kenneth should 

introduce a new course so soon. "Little did he know I had never taught DQ\ of the courses that I was 

teaching. Everything was new to me." Dennis added that he didn't think Kenneth would have many 

students. Well, Kenneth put on the course, and when it was offered, he had fifty applicants, and there 

were only about 350 students in the school. Kenneth took about thirty. 

It was the era of "Confucius Say." In the newspapers, there would be playful sayings that 

supposedly came from Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher. Each day Kenneth would put up on 

the blackboard a genuine "Confucius say" written in the Chinese language, with the English 

equivalent. People began trooping in there after class to see it. Faculty would come in and copy 

down these sayings. "I made quite a splash on campus." 

Dennis told Kenneth later, "You know, you had three balls and two strikes on you before you 

ever opened your mouth." Dennis had always said that he would QHYHU have a professor of 

philosophy from Chicago. Never! He always had his philosophers come from Harvard. Secondly, 

he would QHYHU have an ordinary minister, a man of theology, in the philosophy department because 

such a man would be prejudiced, working with blinders on. Thirdly, Kenneth wasn't a Quaker. He 

was a Presbyterian! And the philosophy department was the heart and soul of the college and its 

398


ideology and theology and thinking. "So you had everything against you," Dennis said, "but I took 

you anyway." The two of them became great friends. Kenneth admired him, and he was very 

friendly to Kenneth. 

4 

32:17 The Landons went there in the fall of 1939, and lived and worked there for the next two 

years. [During this period, Margaret was working on what was to become Anna and the King of Siam. The 

work had begun in Wheaton, before Kenneth found his job at Earlham, and continued steadily throughout their 

years there. She tells the story near the end of our taping, many sessions down the road.] 

Then in the summer of 1941, they went on their first vacation. They went to Gull Lake, 

Michigan, where Kenneth had attended Bible conferences as a boy. And there, the Landons' lives 

changed dramatically once again. 

In the months before this, there had been a number of inquiries from the government which 

the Landons recorded at the time but which Kenneth has completely forgotten. Kip has recently 

come across them in the Landons' files at 4711. There was a form from the War Department which 

Kenneth threw away without filling it out. Then a letter from a colonel in military intelligence 

offering him a clerkship, which Kenneth briefly considered but decided against. He saw no future in 

it. Then there was a telegram from Mortimer Graves, secretary of the Council of Learned Societies, 

asking for information about Kenneth. 

It was Graves who had sponsored Kenneth on his tour of the universities to try to introduce 

them to Southeast Asian Studies. This was in 1938, after Kenneth took his doctorate from Chicago. 

Kenneth toured the universities of Philadelphia, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Chicago, 

two of them among his alma mater. But he was unable to interest them at all in Southeast Asian 

studies even though he had the magnificent library collection on Southeast Asia of His Royal 

Highness Prince Damrong, who had founded the National Library in Bangkok for the Thai 

government and who had taken a copy of everything he bought—he would have a second one for 

himself. Even before doing that, he had established the basis of his library by liberating the library 

collection of a very famous scholar named Dr. Oskar Frankfurter in World War I. He had the nucleus 

of what was probably the finest collection on Southeast Asia in the world at that time. "And I 

couldn't give it away!" Kenneth carried with him a listing of all the books in that collection. Prince 

Damrong at that time was in exile in Pinang as a result of the coup d'état of 1932. Kenneth saw him 

now and then during his second tour. And before departing Siam on furlough in 1937, Kenneth asked 

the Prince if he would allow Kenneth to locate his library in some American university, and the 

Prince said yes, and gave him a complete list of his library collection to show the universities. The 

Landons still have this list among their papers. 

Margaret says that we must stop and explain who the Prince was. He was a son of King 

Mongkut and a half-brother of King Chulalongkorn. He was the most able of the King's halfbrothers, 

so that as King Chulalongkorn began to modernize the Siamese government, he would put 

Prince Damrong at the head of a new department, so to speak, because they did not have the 

department system. He was head of their first department of the interior, and then of their fi rst 

department of education, and how many others, Margaret does not know. He was a very powerful 

and highly respected person, not only by the Thai but also by all the foreigners living in Bangkok. 

He was the premier Prince. King Chulalongkorn was long dead by the Landons' time. When the 

coup d'état came, and the Prince went into exile, there was a shock about this that went beyond what 

it would have been with any other prince. There was only one other prince who was of similar 

stature, Prince Nagorsearga (pronounced Nakonsewon). It was a great shock to the common people 

and foreigners alike. 

399


Kenneth explains that Prince Damrong was not forced into exile. He chose it, fleeing from 

the military. Prince Nagorsearga also chose exile, fleeing to the Netherlands East Indies. Prince 

Damrong was unwilling to undergo the humiliation that the military was heaping upon him. King 

Prajadhipok (SP?) also wanted to get out of the country, having lost his power, and ultimately 

succeeded—on the basis of needing an eye operation. He travelled to America for the operation, and 

never returned to Siam. 

Prince Damrong wrote a letter to Dr. Edwin Bruce McDaniel from his exile in Pinang. Dr. 

McDaniel was the man who introduced Margaret to Anna. Prince Damrong was the person who 

arranged for Dr. McDaniel to have a large tract of land outside Nakhon for his leper asylum, which 

Margaret often visited. Dr. Edwin Bailey McDaniel, the last of Dr. Edwin Bruce McDaniel's sons 

still living, visited the Landons just this past week in Washington, D.C. He has just retired after 

thirty-four years of working as a doctor in Siam. Margaret believes he has his father's papers, and she 

asked him if he had ever come across Prince Damrong's letter. Margaret never saw it. But the elder 

Dr. McDaniel told her about it. Prince Damrong wrote, "Everything that I had in life, position and 

power, has been taken from me. But no one can take from me the things I did for people like you." 

When Kenneth got to Harvard to offer the Prince's library to the university, he first went to 

John King Fairbank, who was a junior professor and assistant professor at the university. He was the 

contact that Mortimer Graves had given Kenneth at Harvard, but he wasn't helpful at all. The only 

person who did show any interest in Kenneth was a man named Jamie Andrews, who took Kenneth 

out of his hotel and brought him home with him. But Andrews couldn't do much for Kenneth. So 

Kenneth got on the telephone and called the heads of various departments, including Dr. Keyes 

DeWitt Metcalf, the head of the library and the most famous librarian in the U.S. at that time in 

collegiate and academic work. Kenneth called on him and showed him the listing of all these books 

he had for the university if they were interested. Metcalf told Kenneth that they did have a small 

collection on Thailand, but that was the extent of their interest. He said to Kenneth, "Mr. Landon, 

Harvard does not teach a course on Southeast Asia," and he added, "and it probably never will." He 

said also that, if they took Prince Damrong's collection, they would have to hire curator. 

Well, of course, that was the whole idea! Metcalf said Harvard couldn't afford to pay a 

curator. The going rate was $2400 a year. Kenneth said, "How about $2000?" He was ready to 

settle for anything to get a job. But the answer was no. 

As it turned out, the war got going, and Kenneth went into the government, becoming one of 

the lecturers in military government and administration for various countries. He lectured at Harvard, 

among other places. Metcalf had forgotten about him, and was lamenting the fact that Harvard had 

no library resources to support these courses. Kenneth told him that he had no one to blame but 

himself, and reminded him of their earlier encounter. Then Metcalf remembered, and was dismayed. 

5 

44:51 In the summer of 1941, Margaret and Kenneth decided to take a vacation at Gull Lake. They 

arranged for a cottage, remembering what a quiet place Gull Lake had been in the past. But Gull 

Lake had changed. There were many more cottages, and many more people. The place was packed. 

Kenneth rented a rowboat, and one day he was out on the lake with Peggy and Bill and perhaps 

Carol, rowing around, when he saw Margaret come out on the dock waving and yoohooing. He 

thought she was clowning around, so he thought he would clown around too, stood up in the boat, 

and did a backflip out. However, she did not appear to be amused, so he climbed back in and rowed 

in, wondering what the matter was. She said a phone call had come in to the grocery store nearby, at 

Hickory Corners, and Kenneth was to go there at 2:30 that afternoon and call operator #36 in 

Washington, D.C. Kenneth remembered that Agnes Wright had had a baby in Union Station once 

400


and wondered, "Gosh, I wonder if Agnes has done it again!" He couldn't imagine who would call 

him from Washington. 

So at 2:30 Kenneth went over and phoned. It was very difficult to hear because word had 

gotten around and there people all around the area with their phones off the hook listening in. They 

were curious about the call from Washington too. Kenneth had to ask the operator to appeal to 

people to hang up so that he could hear. It was a man named Ernest Griffith and a Col. William 

Donovan, neither of whom Kenneth had ever heard of. Griffith told Kenneth that he was at the 

Library of Congress, so Kenneth figured he must be a librarian. Col. Donovan must have been 

embarrassed explaining who he was because he was a famous man. He said that the President of the 

United States wanted Kenneth in Washington as soon as he could get there to make a report and to 

give information on the Japanese in Indochina and what their intentions toward Thailand might be. 

What do you know about the subject? Well, Kenneth wasn't going to let anyone think he wasn't 

knowledgeable, so he told Donovan that he already had published an article in Asia and the 

Americas entitled "Siam Rides the Tiger," the tiger being Japan. Margaret had started the article; 

Kenneth had rewritten it and gotten it published. 

Margaret says that she wrote the article originally as an exercise in the class she was taking at 

the Medill School of Journalism in 1938. She wrote three articles for the class. This was a nonfiction 

class. One of the three, she sold. But when she sent this one to Asia magazine, it was sent 

back. So she gave it to Kenneth, told him to rewrite it a little, and send it in again, which he did. 

They promptly bought it, for $75. 

The two men said they would have to confirm Kenneth's coming to Washington, and would 

send him a telegram that would give him something in writing. They said they wanted him to come 

for three weeks, and added that they would pay him something, but he couldn't tell if they said $15 or 

$50 a day. Either was a fortune because Kenneth was only make $2250 for an entire year! 

Margaret points out that Kenneth was not enthusiastic about going to Washington, and 

Kenneth confirms it. He was preoccupied with philosophy. He expected to do that the rest of his 

life. "I loved Earlham College, and the president, and the student body. I was just having a 

marvellous time there." He worked hard. He taught fifteen hours of classes. No professor today 

would do that. He loved doing it. He had never taught any of the courses that he gave, so he had to 

write all his notes up from scratch. "I was learning an awful lot. I certainly learned an awful lot 

about philosophy in a hurry, just trying to keep ahead of the students. I'd assign them something to 

read, and then , G read it." 

It never occurred to either Kenneth or Margaret that the call from Washington was one of 

life's pivotal moments, that life would never be the same again. Margaret fully expected him to come 

back to Richmond after the three weeks. Sunday night, August 10, Kenneth took the train, arriving in 

Washington the morning of August 11, 1941, and that was that. 

6 

53:24 Kenneth had been told to go to the Triangle Building when he arrived, and so he went 

straight from Union Station. The Triangle Building was at the apex of Constitution Avenue and 

Pennsylvania Avenue, and when he arrived, Kenneth went up to see Col. Donovan. Donovan's entire 

staff at that point consisted of a receptionist and two secretaries. Kenneth was the first substantive 

employee of the Office of the Co-ordinator of Information, which later became the OSS, which later 

became the CIA. "This is all in the files of the CIA. I am regarded as one of their founding fathers. I 

was the first." He was there to provide intelligence on the Japanese in Indochina. 

Kenneth was given a nice big office. The next morning, when he arrived for work, he pushed 

the door back to enter his office and felt the door hit something. He looked to see what it was, and 

401


here was a tall, bald-headed, bony-looking fellow with his wrests sticking out of his sleeves, which 

were too short on him, who said, "Good morning, sir. I'm James Roosevelt. My father sent me over 

to ask if I could be of any help to you in getting you started in making your report to my father." 

Kenneth greeted him, and welcomed the help. He said he didn't want to tell the President what he 

already knew. Kenneth wanted to find out what intelligence the President already had on the 

Japanese in China. In reply, Mr. Roosevelt said that Kenneth would want to see G-2, which was 

"Intelligence." So Kenneth proposed that they go to G-2. Roosevelt made a phone call, and in fifteen 

minutes a big black limousine appeared, big enough to hold seven, and the two men went down, got 

in, and set off for G-2. 

They drove down Constitution Avenue and got out in front of the Navy Building, which was a 

temporary building, part of a complex of temporary buildings left over from World War I. Roosevelt 

escorted Kenneth up to the third floor and introduced him to a Major Pettigrew, an old Japan hand, 

and the head of G-2. Pettigrew asked Kenneth's interest, and Kenneth explained that he wished to see 

their files on Southeast Asia. So Major Pettigrew called the sergeant and instructed him to show Dr. 

Landon their files on Southeast Asia. "Yes, sir!" the sergeant said. 

The sergeant went over to the safe, rummaged around in it, and came up with a key. He took 

the key to a file case marked "Southeast Asia," unlocked the lock, pulled the drawbar, and opened the 

top drawer. It was empty. He opened the third drawer and the fourth drawer, and they were empty. 

He opened the second drawer, and inside there was one large envelope marked "Southeast Asia." 

The sergeant triumphantly handed this to Kenneth. 

Kenneth proceeded to open the envelope, and inside he found four articles from Asia 

magazine written by Kenneth Landon. 

Kenneth asked Major Pettigrew what he would do if he had to find out something about 

Southeast Asia, and the major answered that they had never had to know anything in the past. They 

would ask their allies, the British with regard to Burma and Malaya, the French with regard to 

Indochina—though they could not speak to the French now, because of the German occupation—and 

the Dutch for the Dutch East Indies. 

So the two men departed, and went back to their big black limousine that could easily hold 

seven people in the back, and drove back to the Triangle Building, where Kenneth thanked the 

President's son for his help. Roosevelt said that if he could help any further, he would be glad to try, 

and left. 

It never occurred to either man to consider the Department of State. 

402


HOUR 64 

Session #46 continued June 19, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (XB245) Kenneth continues on his first days in Washington. He went to work researching the 

questions that President Roosevelt and Col. Donovan wanted answered, and when he had his report 

ready, he accompanied Donovan to the President's office. 

Donovan had told Kenneth how he had come to seek Kenneth's services. The day President 

Roosevelt said to him that he should set up an office of information, Donovan asked him what the 

first information that he wanted was. Roosevelt's answer was that he wanted to know what the 

Japanese intentions in Indochina were, and their intentions toward Thailand. What would they do? 

When would they move? Donovan came out of the President's office, realizing that he did not know 

where to look for expertise on Southeast Asia. So he called Ernest Griffith, who was the head of 

legislative reference at the Library of Congress, and Griffith said that they would have to call 

Mortimer Graves at the American Council of Learned Societies, because Graves would know who 

would know something on the area. So Griffith called Graves, and Graves said, "Get Kenneth 

Landon." Graves then tried to locate Kenneth. But Donovan said that, as a person working in 

intelligence, he wanted to find out if Kenneth Landon really were the best person for the job. So on 

his own, he had his secretary call to the head of Far Eastern departments at several major universities, 

Columbia, Pennsylvania, Yale, Harvard, and Chicago. Every last one of them immediately named 

Kenneth Landon as the man to get. Kenneth said, "Colonel, this just shows you that trying to secure 

corroboration for your intelligence breaks down. You were in a box, and you didn't have a chance to 

get another name." Then Kenneth told him how Mortimer Graves had sponsored him to those very 

universities. They all had recent and personal knowledge of him! Donovan laughed his head off. 

[These universities had experts of their own on the area, but they knew that Kenneth was not 

only a scholar on the area but a man with recent, extensive, personal experience of it from 

having lived and worked there.] 

Donovan and Kenneth became very good friends. Donovan always called him "Kenneth, my 

boy!" 

One of the first questions they asked was, If the Japanese are going to attack, when will they 

attack? Kenneth said his answer had nothing to do with the Japanese, but only with his knowledge of 

Southeast Asia, and of the terrain and the climate. He said that the climate would not be suitable for 

the movement of heavy military equipment off the highways and roads until the middle or early part 

of December. This was because of the monsoons. And he said that the change in weather, which 

ZRXOG be suitable for the movement of such equipment off the highways, would run through April. 

So he said that the smart Japanese, if they ZHUH smart, would start their invasion in early December, 

because the time they would have to operate would be brief. If they delay, they will be wasting their 

opportunity. 

Margaret says that Kenneth also said that the attack, if there was to be an attack, was likely to 

be on the weekend, because the Thai bureaucracy closed down completely by Friday noon and didn't 

get back in operation until Monday or Tuesday. 

Margaret says that the first question was actually why the Japanese were in Indochina, and 

Kenneth answered that they were using it as a staging area for the attack on the rest of Southeast 

Asia. 

403


Then they also wanted to know how far the Japanese could drive if they attacked. Kenneth 

answered that he had an unusual background on this because he had organized a bicycle club of 

young men and boys who would ride forty or fifty miles through the jungle in a day. Kenneth knew 

that the answer to the question had nothing to do with the highways. He knew that Japanese bicycles 

were ubiquitous. He said that in his view the Japanese would not stick with the highways. They 

would go through the jungle, and they would go right straight down to Singapore. 

They asked if he thought the Japanese would go to Burma or the Netherlands Indies, and 

Kenneth said yes. 

He told them that the Japanese would take Singapore from behind. But they didn't believe 

that. They believed the rest of what he said, Margaret tells us, but they didn't believe this. The 

British and Australians didn't believe it, Kenneth says, because they had put all their military forces 

on the highways, expecting the Japanese to use them. They were sure they could stop them. But as it 

happened, the Japanese did not go down the highways. Margaret tells us that the Japanese landed, 

not at Bangkok, but farther down—at Kota Baharu in Malaya. They unloaded their bicycles, and off 

they went. They travelled down the back pathways, through the rubber plantations, straight down the 

peninsula. 

On the basis of Kenneth's information on the timing of a likely attack, Margaret says, the 

government called home all the diplomatic and consular records from that entire area, especially from 

Singapore and Bangkok. Minister Willis Peck was in Bangkok, and he gathered up the records there 

and sent them out. These would all have been burned otherwise. The staff there was the minister or 

consul, the second secretary, not a first secretary, but a second, a commercial attaché, and a naval 

attaché who had a little motorboat and whose main job, according to Kenneth, was to take visitors 

down to Hua Hin for vacations. 

During that initial three weeks, Kenneth had two offices, one in the Triangle Building, and 

one in the Library of Congress, a research office, with full facilities and the availability of the stacks. 

That was when he discovered all of the Thai materials that were lying on the floor, uncatalogued, just 

loosely bundled, in the stacks. Hundreds and hundreds of paperback books. He told Margaret about 

these, and later on she made use of the materials. Margaret says that the Thai government began 

sending materials in 1880 or so. Printing had come to Siam in 1835 with an American missionary, 

Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, who was a medical doctor, the first modern doctor there. He brought a press 

with him when he came. Printed books were very scarce until a custom was started of printing and 

distributing books at cremations of important people. Margaret thinks most of the books the Library 

of Congress had were books of some historic interest that were put together and printed at the 

expense of families and distributed at cremations of these important people. She says the books were 

in paperback and that Kenneth has almost a complete set of them, the same stuff the Library had. It 

was the French custom, to print in paperback and then have your book bound. 

Kenneth only made one call on President Roosevelt, he says, and he didn't say anything. 

Donovan did all the talking, presenting Kenneth's report. This was at the end of the three weeks. 

2 

12:15 After this, Kenneth said to Donovan that his three weeks were up, and he would be leaving. 

Donovan said why leave? We need you here! Well, the new semester at Earlham was soon to begin, 

and Kenneth had to go and prepare for his classes. Donovan said he couldn't leave yet and asked if 

he couldn't stay a few more weeks. Kenneth explained that colleges don't run that way. Donovan 

asked how long the semester would run, and Kenneth said until January. Donovan said that would be 

long enough. Kenneth would have given them all the information they needed by then. Would he be 

willing to stay if Earlham's president okayed it? Kenneth said yes. So Donovan called President 

404


Dennis, and Dennis gave Kenneth a leave of absence through that first semester of 1941. Kenneth 

would be expected back in January for the spring semester. 

But then Pearl Harbor happened, and all bets were off. 

During that period, there was quite an interest in Kenneth among various government 

agencies, which tried to get him away from Donovan. The military did. 

Donovan also set up the beginning of the OWI, the Office of War Information, which was a 

spin-off later. Kenneth made some of the earliest broadcasts in the Thai language with them. He also 

escorted the Thai minister, Seni Pramoj, who made his first speech after Pearl Harbor, addressed to 

Thailand. They recorded these broadcasts in the Department of Interior in a recording studio they 

had there; they did them on "platters," which were then flown out to San Francisco and broadcast 

from there. Kenneth worked regularly with that program, and so they wanted Kenneth to come to 

them full time for information and to supervise other programs in other languages. Kenneth made a 

couple of broadcasts in Chinese, in addition to many Thai broadcasts. 

One military group tried to pressure him to go with them by saying that, if he did not accept 

their offer, they would draft him and pay him less. 

Kenneth beat them to it and left Donovan to work with the Board of Economic Warfare. That 

was after a year with Donovan in the OCI. He continued doing the broadcasts however. At the 

BEW, Max Ways (SP?), of later prominence with Fortune magazine, was one of the bigshots. The 

number two man was Henry Wallace. Kenneth worked on bombing targets in Southeast Asia for the 

BEW. 

One morning a picture of a royal barge from Thailand was dropped on Kenneth's desk at the 

BEW by a young man who had joined the agency and whose parents had died. The picture was part 

of his inheritance, and he didn't know what to do with it. But he knew it had to do with Siam, so he 

gave it to Kenneth. The Landons believe it is an original painting from the seventeenth century, 

something fine and rare. They had it framed and hung it in their living room, where it is to this day. 

Kenneth's most amusing experience while working at the BEW happened one day when Max 

Ways said to him that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted someone who had expertise on elephants to 

come over and instruct them on the animals. Did Kenneth know about elephants? Yes, Kenneth 

said, he had travelled with elephants. Ways said that the military had a problem with the Stilwell 

operation, and they were trying to determine how much they could depend on elephants. [Lieutenant 

General Joseph W. Stilwell commanded American forces in the China-Burma-India theater at 

the time.] They thought they might have to use tractors. The Joint Chiefs were then meeting on 21st 

Street at C Street, which is the location of the old part of the present Department of State [a large 

addition was built some years after State moved there]. So Kenneth went in to brief the Joint 

Chiefs. It was a magnificent room that they had, a real war games room, with all sorts of sliding 

boards and maps and "all kinds of junk." So there Kenneth sat with this somber Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

They said that here was Gen. Stilwell in the Burma-China theater, having great logistics 

problems. Could they depend on elephants for transportation in the jungle? They had a list of 

questions, and the first question was, How many miles can an elephant go in a day? Sixteen, Kenneth 

said. "My God, he knows!" someone said. Kenneth did not tell them how he knew, but all the 

staging areas in all of Cambodia were sixteen miles, and also he had travelled on elephants, and he 

had never known an elephant that would go farther than that. 

The second question was, How much weight can an elephant carry on its back? Kenneth 

answered that they all had weak backs and so couldn't carry very much that way. Maybe four to six 

hundred pounds. That would be about it if you expected the elephant to go very far. Otherwise, the 

weight would break down its back. But if you put the load on a sledge, the elephant could pull a half 

ton to a ton as long as he's going. All the Joint Chiefs soberly took notes on this. 

405


The third question was, This is mountainous country. How steep a hill or mountain could an 

elephant go up with any kind of load? Kenneth said an elephant could go up the side of a hill as long 

as he can be on his front knees and shove with his back legs. If he's dragging something, he can drag 

it up behind him. He's very strong. 

The fourth question was, How steep a hill could an elephant go down? That was an easy one. 

Kenneth said he had seen elephants go down when it was almost perpendicular. The elephant sits 

down, puts the tail up behind, the trunk up in front, lets out a shout, and down he goes like a kid on a 

slide. He had seen elephants go sixty feet down the banks into the Mekong River, hitting the water 

and sending out a tremendous splash. The Joint Chiefs thought that was hilarious. 

Then they wanted to know how many hours a day they could expect an elephant to work. 

Four, Kenneth said, if you feed him rice. Two, if you don't. The Joint Chiefs were not impressed. 

But Kenneth explained that elephants had big bellies, "and they all have indigestion because of what 

they eat," and they have to browse twenty-two hours a day unless you give them unhulled rice. 

The conversation grew funnier as they went along. The ultimate outcome was that the 

military kept one herd of elephants, the Bombay-Burma Teak Company elephants, run by a man 

named Elephant Bill. By the most curious coincidence, Kenneth has his book telling about his 

experience with this herd of elephants in the Stilwell operation. That would not have come off, 

Kenneth thinks, unless the Chiefs had discussed this with Kenneth and concluded that elephants were 

practical in difficult terrain and could haul heavy loads up and down steep hills. 

Session #47 July 2, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

3 

22:37 Kenneth explains what the OCI or Office of the Co-ordinator of Information was. William 

Donovan was convinced that war was coming, and that the United States would get into it, and that 

we lacked intelligence information. We didn't know very much about the nations we would be 

fighting or about the parts of the world into which we would be going. We had a Secretary of War at 

that time who said, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail." But Donovan knew that war wasn't for 

gentlemen. He had been in World War I, during which he won the name "Wild Bill Donovan" 

because of the way he led the New York troops. So he began to work on Roosevelt, even though 

Donovan was a Republican, to authorize him to set up an intelligence operation that would go beyond 

the parochial intelligence systems of the armed services, such as ONI of the Navy, or G-2 of the 

Army. There were various other information services, "but it was all inchoate and unco-ordinated." 

Donovan pointed out to Roosevelt that some agency should be set up to bring all this intelligence 

information together, co-ordinate it, and provide a central intelligence information center. It wouldn't 

displace anything, but would supplement what already existed and "be on top of it." Of course, the 

service intelligence operations resented this and fought it. But Roosevelt, about six months or so 

before World War II, perhaps some time in July or August of 1941, became convinced and gave 

Donovan the go-ahead signal to set up the Office of the Co-ordinator of Information. His idea was to 

bring into his office knowledgeable people who were experts on various parts of the world and who 

could begin to collate information and provide the kind of understanding that was lacking. Roosevelt 

at the time just wasn't getting the kind of information that would help him understand what the 

situations were in various parts of the world. 

Then Donovan, as he told it to Kenneth, asked the President what his most pressing need for 

information was. The answer was first to know what the Japanese were doing in Indochina and what 

their intentions were toward Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia. Donovan said he would 

immediately get the best man in America to come to Washington and prepare that report for 

406


Roosevelt. Ernest Griffith told Kenneth later that every day, for several weeks, Donovan would pick 

him up and talk as they drove to the office. That was their time of consultation to determine how 

they would go about these operations. Griffith told Kenneth that immediately after Donovan's 

interview with Roosevelt, Donovan asked Griffith whom they could get to provide information on the 

Japanese in Indochina. He impressed on Ernest the necessity of getting the very best man in the 

country. Price was no object. Pay him whatever he asks and get him here. So then Ernest got in 

touch with Mortimer Graves of the American Council of Learned Societies, which was a repository 

of information on scholars who might know something. Kenneth says this Council still exists but has 

moved out of Washington and is up in New York somewhere. Graves put them on to Kenneth 

Landon, and they set out to find Kenneth and located him at Gull Lake. 

4 

29:54 Margaret interpolates a point, referring to a paper that John Lord O'Brian read to the Literary 

Society, of which she is a member. Lit Soc papers are all deposited in the Library of Congress. In 

World War I President Wilson discovered that we had no such thing as an intelligence service. The 

country had been penetrated by German spies in significant numbers. O'Brian was a famous lawyer 

whom Wilson called in to set up the first intelligence service this country ever had. Margaret finds 

this amazing. The French and British intelligence services go way back, but we had none. But 

Kenneth points out that we were an isolationist country, and our policy was not to become involved 

in foreign wars. So there was no feeling of need for an intelligence operation. And there ZHUH the 

diverse military intelligence operations. Margaret wonders what ever happened to the operation 

O'Brian set up. Kenneth explains that after World War I, the "war to end all wars," the operation was 

disbanded. There was seen to be no further need for it. "You always destroy everything that you 

build up" during a war, Kenneth says. 

Donovan brought a man named James Phinney Baxter down from Harvard to run the OCI, 

and he brought a number of men down from Harvard and Yale, and "the eastern seaboard boys began 

to take over." Both Yale and Harvard had Far Eastern departments. Pennsylvania had a department 

on Asia too, and particularly a man named Derk Bodde. Columbia University had a department too. 

Kenneth mentions that he was translating a Chinese history of Chinese philosophy in two volumes, 

which he was using in teaching Chinese philosophy at Earlham. Then Kenneth discovered that 

Bodde was translating the same history, and had the rights from the author to do so, so Kenneth 

stopped. "And lucky I did." 

What Donovan wanted from Kenneth were reports on the situation in Southeast Asia as he 

knew it. The French in Indochina and their relations with the Thai, for instance. They had been 

taken over by the Japanese, so their relations with Thailand were of significance for understanding 

the Japanese now in Indochina. Another report had to do with the British in Burma, and where 

Malaysia and Singapore fit into the picture. 

Margaret interrupts to clarify the name of the Baxter who came down to run the OCI. "I'm the 

kind who has to have it all!" she says puckishly. "That's why Kenneth gets irritated with me," she 

adds. "Well, I'm not a historian," he says. "Margaret's a natural historian. She does it the right way." 

Kip notes from Kenneth's letters that he was being paid $20 a day. He started out at $15 a 

day, then moved up to $20. Kenneth was negotiating for more. Ernest Griffith was a man of wealth, 

a Quaker business type who was determined to get everything as cheaply as he could get it, Kenneth 

says. Margaret says, "He really did you down," using the slang phrase. Kenneth says that this was 

why Griffith later had difficulty getting Kenneth to go to work for American University—where he 

had become president—all the years he kept asking Kenneth to come over, "because he was always 

trying to get a bargain. It was just the way he was. Any way to get you cheap." 

407


At the first meeting of the Far Eastern section of the OCI, Kenneth's new chief bawled him 

out for getting in touch with people all over the city that he thought might be of help to him. "Yeah. 

I never worried about protocol, so I never paid attention to the chiefs. So many chiefs found out that 

it was hopeless to try to stop me because I always got around anyway. If I didn't do it one way, I'd do 

it another." "They always wanted me to go through channels, and I didn't know anything about 

channels." 

Margaret returns to the name of Baxter. She is looking up Baxters in a biographical 

dictionary. James Phinney Baxter III. He was the president of Williams College from 1937 on, she 

reads. Lecturer, Lowell Institute. Cambridge University, 1936. His formal title at the OCI was 

Director of Research and Analysis for Co-ordinator of Information, August 1941 to June 1942. 

When the OCI became the OSS, he became Deputy Director of the Office of Strategic Services, June 

1942 to 1943. Then he moved to another agency. 

This was not the man who so infuriated Kenneth that he left the OCI. That was Charles 

Frederick Remer, the chief of the Far East section. Years later, after Kenneth appeared on CBS news 

one night [probably in 1971, when CBS Newsman Marvin Kalb interviewed Kenneth 

concerning the "Pentagon Papers," among the first of which were telegrams Kenneth sent in 

1946 during a series of meetings with Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi], Kenneth received a note from 

Remer, "Memories of happy times together!" 

5 

40:28 In connection with his work in the OCI, Kenneth had a research office up on the top floor of 

the Library of Congress, and he spent a lot of time working there. He locked it up every night, he 

says, once he got a key. 

Shio Sakanichi was the head of the Japanese section in the Library's Division of Orientalia, 

under Arthur Hummel. She was an employee of the Library, not associated with the Japanese 

embassy, though she was Japanese, not American. Hummel had brought her in because she had a 

thorough Japanese education. She was a Japanese librarian, and really knew her stuff in Japanese 

literature. "We all hung around together, Shio Sakanichi, Poleman, Bowles, Mead," and a German. 

Shio was "a real party girl." And there was a young Navy lieutenant who began to show up shortly 

before the war, who was bilingual in Japanese, educated in Japan, knew Japanese literature, and later 

became one of our ambassadors. He later went out with Douglas MacArthur at the end of the war 

and was MacArthur's principal advisor on the Japanese. [Reischauer ?]. 

Kenneth speaks of the Office of War Information that Donovan also set up and for which he 

made Thai language broadcasts. Owen Lattimore was brought in to head that up, and a man named 

Taylor who was a Canadian and who became a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

The first broadcast was made in December, after Pearl Harbor, when Margaret was visiting in 

Washington. The original idea for the broadcasts came from the Thai Legation, as early as October, 

1941, before the war began. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Thai government declared war on 

Great Britain and the United States. Great Britain responded with a counter-declaration of war. The 

minister from Thailand in the U.S., Seni Pramoj, went into the State Department to see Assistant 

Secretary of State Adolph Burleigh (SP?) and after him Secretary of State Sumner Welles to tell them 

that the declaration of war did not represent the Thai people and that he was not going to present the 

declaration of war. [Because of this, no formal state of war ever existed between Thailand and 

the United States.] He asked the Department and the U.S. government to permit him to stay here 

and help oppose the Japanese by propaganda or information or any other way. He also said that he 

would like to make a broadcast in Thai that could be sent out to Thailand to indicate that he was not 

408


going along with the declaration of war and appealing to the people not to support their government 

in supporting the Japanese. Kenneth had already met Seni Pramoj, and knew him, and when he had 

his speech ready, Kenneth was brought in to monitor it so that the American government would know 

what he was saying (and in particular know that what he was saying in Thai matched the English 

language translation he had provided them). Kenneth was the only man they had who could speak 

Thai. "It kind of stopped him dead when he saw me because he knew that anything he said, I would 

understand." 

That was the beginning of Kenneth's relations with the OWI and the making of broadcasts for 

Thailand, and he subsequently made a number of broadcasts himself. Kenneth remembers little of 

what he said in the broadcasts. He playfully speechifies, "Fight fiercely, fathers. We're behind you— 

so far behind you can't see us!" He says he still has the scripts of the speeches, a great many of them, 

in his files at 4711. [These would have gone to Wheaton College.] 

Then the Third Secretary of the Thai Legation, Anand Jinacananda (SP?), took over the 

broadcasting, and Kenneth accompanied and monitored him. 

In 1942, they talked about having Kenneth go to Chungking. He says he wasn't interested in 

that [though in his letters of the time, he sounded as if he were]. And then he knew he wasn't 

going to get anywhere with the Harvard crowd at the OCI. [He is starting to explain why he left 

the OCI for the BEW.] They didn't want him around because he spoke the kind of Chinese that they 

didn't understand. He hadn't learned his Chinese at Harvard or Yale, which made him suspect. "I had 

only learned it by brute strength and ignorance. I could speak it fluently. They could hear it. But 

they didn't know what it was." Margaret points out that he spoke the Swatow dialect, Taichu, that 

was commonly spoken among the diaspora of Chinese in Southeast Asia. Margaret says that 

Kenneth had this dialect down so perfectly that Chinese would marvel at him. They hadn't known 

any foreigners had lived in Po Leng, where his brand of the dialect came from. "I even had the nasal 

intonation. I didn't even know I had it." But the Chinese would imitate him and point out that this 

particular way of speaking Taichu was from Po Leng. He had picked it up from Ngiap Seng, his 

evangelist in Siam. The kind of Chinese spoken by the scholars from New England was the kind of 

surface Chinese you learned if you were "on top of the civilization." This was quite different from 

going out and working with the people who actually used the language. Kenneth had stayed with 

them, in their homes, shared their food. He knew them. 

6 

52:21 Once, when Kenneth and his evangelist were on a rubber estate, a Chinese family invited 

them to their home for supper. The two men noticed a man ride off furiously on a bicycle and 

wondered why. It didn't take that long to prepare Chinese food, but time passed, and more time 

passed, and finally this fellow came riding back. He had ridden fifteen miles out in order to get one 

fork, one knife, and one spoon for the farang to eat with. They thought he had to use them. He was 

aghast, and explained to the family that he didn't need these; he used chopsticks the way they did. 

"Ohhhh!" they said, and promptly sent the poor guy back with the tableware to return it. They were 

being courteous. 

Then it came bedtime, they insisted that he go to bed first. They were all sitting around, and 

he said he would sit up with them. But they insisted. "Oh no! You get into bed. You go to sleep. 

You go to bed." They finally just practically picked him up by the elbows—there were three Chinese 

men there, and two or three Chinese women—and they all herded him into his bed. It was a big 

room, all of them together. Kenneth lay down and fell asleep. He wondered why they had been so 

insistent, but in the middle of the night, he found out. He was awakened by the sound of roaring 

thunder. Then he wondered if it was an earthquake or something. The place was shaking. But no! 

409


"The snores that were coming from those people were simply incredible. They knew that if I hadn't 

gotten to sleep first, I never would have gotten to sleep." (This was probably about 1934.) 

Margaret says this was typical of Kenneth. During his time in Thailand, he just literally lived 

with these people. He knew them as only one who had lived with them could. The American 

scholars on the Far East had studied them from afar, living all the while as Americans, and they 

resented Kenneth. He had the kind of knowledge that was forever closed to them. 

In any case, the Board of Economic Warfare was starting up in 1942, headed by a man named 

Milo Perkins [and Kenneth joined it]. 

In conjunction with the OWI broadcasts, there developed a need to send messages to San 

Francisco regarding the broadcasts, and they wanted some sort of simple code that could be typed out 

for this purpose. Kenneth thought up the idea of having a Thai typewriter and an English typewriter 

side by side on either end. They would have someone type up the words in English on the one 

typewriter, then read the English and type it off touch-type style on the Thai typewriter as if it were 

English. The result, in Thai, was gibberish, of course. At the other end, a Thai who recognized the 

Thai letters would touch-type them on an English typewriter as if he were using a Thai typewriter, 

and the message would come back out in English. 

In the spring of 1942, Kenneth delivered the Taft lectures, three lectures, at the University of 

Cincinnati. In conjunction with that, he worked on reading in Chinese with a view to writing a book 

on Chinese philosophy. 

410


HOUR 65 

Session #47 continued July 2, 1982 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip 

1 

0:00 (XB650) For recreation, Kenneth would go out to Glen Echo, up the Potomac River outside 

Washington, where there was an amusement park, and swim in the public swimming pool. It was 

very crowded. 

Margaret returns to Kenneth's first weeks in Washington and the report he presented. She 

says that they knew, in the final years of their second tour in Siam, that the Japanese were getting 

ready to attack. And the British knew. She recalls one afternoon at the tennis club in Trang when the 

Governor was especially angry because he had discovered that the Japanese were mapping the 

coastline on the Bay of Bengal side of the peninsula. Another obvious thing was that in every large 

town and in many small towns there was one Japanese family. Usually, the man was a dentist and a 

photographer. These men were caught many times photographing sites of strategic interest. The 

British thought they would be able to repel the attack. What they didn't know was that Churchill 

would make a decision not to defend the area, Margaret says. Karp Kunjara (SP?), a colonel in the 

Thai army, went down to Singapore to talk to the British, and someone higher than he went to 

England itself. Sir Josiah Causby (SP?) wrote to the Thai government, Kenneth says, saying that the 

British would be behind them and that they should fight fiercely as well as they could. The British in 

Malaya thought their government would stand behind them. 

Kenneth recalls going up stay at a British hill station after his operation for appendicitis and 

listening to British gentlemen there discussing what they would do when the Japanese attacked, and 

of how easily a small group of them could link Malaya with Burma. They thought of setting up their 

main defense on the Kra Isthmus because it was narrow and easy to defend. 

In October, 1941, Kenneth had a tooth pulled at a "speed dentist's." The man had six chairs 

and was working them all at the same time, pulling out teeth. It was like a barber shop. It cost $2. 

Kenneth recalls the dentists he used in Thailand, the Japanese spy-dentists, and then a Danish dentist 

up in Bangkok whose idea of filling a tooth was first to kill the nerve. Escalen (SP?) was his name. 

That's how he lost so many of his teeth. Once, Kenneth had a toothache and went to the nearest 

Japanese dentist, who kept all of his tools in a biscuit tin. Kenneth had to sit in a straight-backed 

chair, leaning back against the wall, with his head against the wall, holding the man's tools in one of 

his hands while he worked in Kenneth's mouth. The dentist was poking around with this sharp 

instrument, found a hole, and jabbed the instrument into it. He jabbed all the way through the tooth 

into the gum, and thus ended the tooth! Ultimately, the Landons went up to Pinang for their dental 

work. 

2 

8:22 Shio's last party, the night of December 6. The liquor was flowing, with lots of sukiyaki. 

Margaret went with Kenneth and remembers it well, though she didn't write her mother about it—as 

striking an event as it was—feeling Adelle would be shocked. Shocked, that is, because of all the 

liquor at the party. 

When Ernest Griffith and the OCI were looking for an expert on Southeast Asia, Griffith was 

also trying to find someone to be the sub-chief under Hummel in Orientalia to have charge of the 

Indian collection. They needed someone who could read Sanskrit and Pali. On the record, Kenneth 

411


could. He has studied both languages at the University of Chicago. His name was up along with 

Horace Poleman's for the job, but Kenneth didn't want it. Horace was much more qualified. He 

knew that Kenneth was competing with him, but he got it, and found out Kenneth was glad he got it. 

The two of them became very dear friends. He was "one of the best friends I think I've ever had." 

He died recently. He was a very tall, cadaverous fellow with one lung, smoked all the time, did quite 

a bit of drinking, Scotch and then martinis. His wife Jennie was his second wife. Everywhere 

Kenneth went socially, he was with the Polemans. The night of Shio's last party, the Polemans were 

there. And Margaret. Mortimer Graves was there. The lieutenant who was the Japanese expert was 

there. He was a great friend of Shio's and had known her in Japan. 

The food was sukiyaki. She had all the makings and the vegetables on one end of a large 

coffee table. And then a charcoal burner. The cooked food would come out the other end. You ate it 

half raw. She had every liquor bottle in the house there. She was smoking constantly. He never saw 

her without a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She was about Kenneth's age. She was very 

excited, all stirred up, and they could see she was in a real party mood. She wasn't bothering to open 

the liquor bottles in the usual way. She would just smash off the top against the kitchen sink, where 

the broken glass built up in a pile. Everyone knew something was up. They knew that the Japanese 

embassy on Massachusetts Avenue was burning their papers, because the smoke rolled up every day 

as they burned them. It was obvious. The party went late. It broke up just before midnight. 

The next morning was Pearl Harbor, and the government picked her up. Kenneth did not see 

her again until the Library of Congress gave a party for her in the late 1950's or so. She came back to 

"apologize for the crimes of the Japanese." 

Kenneth says we would not have declared war on Japan if they had not attacked Pearl Harbor 

and the Philippines. He often said in his lecturing years later that, if they had not attacked these two 

places, they could have had Asia. We did not oppose the Japanese even when they were stripping 

China and murdering people by the millions. The American government didn't care. And it didn't 

care about the nations of Southeast Asia. There are many scholars who believe as he does; there are 

many who argue the other side. Roosevelt wanted to get into the European war; but it was the 

Japanese who gave him the excuse. It was ironic. 

3 

15:13 Kenneth talks about how his temporary job became permanent. It just happened, the initial 

three weeks extending on through the first college semester, as he told earlier, then becoming 

indefinite in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It didn't occur to Kenneth to leave after that. After a year 

with the OCI, Kenneth decided to go over to the BEW with Milo Perkins to select bombing targets. 

He told Donovan of his move, and said that he would be available to consult with Donovan's agency 

when needed, and would continue with the OWI broadcasts. So Donovan gave him the go-ahead. 

[We return to this later in the session, and the story is somewhat different.] 

Several other men from the OCI, including a man named Gordon Bowles, who was a graduate 

of Earlham College, went over with Kenneth to the BEW, which was setting up its offices on P 

Street, in an apartment building next to a bridge that has statues of buffalo on it. They took over the 

apartments. "We were fighting over who was going to sit in the bathroom." They all wanted a 

private office. They used living rooms and dining rooms for offices, and kitchens for their filing 

cabinets. Max Ways (SP?) was one of Kenneth's bosses; he later made a reputation with Fortune 

magazine. 

Kenneth picked out bombing targets, locating bridges, strategic buildings, and so on. They 

talked about "skip-bombing" the railroad that went up from Lao Kai (SP?) to Yunanfu (SP?), 

Kantung (SP?). There was a whole series of tunnels on the rail line, and they found out that, if they 

412


could identify them, a pilot could run up there, drop a bomb, and close a tunnel. It put the railroad 

out of commission. They bombed the bridge over the river in Hanoi. And so on. They bombed the 

railroad yards in Bangkok. 

Kip has been reading Kenneth's letters of the time to Margaret, who was still in Richmond, 

Indiana with the children. He was forever expressing concern about her health, and urging her to 

walk for exercise, something she was loath to do. "I just can't understand anybody who sits around 

the way she does. It would kill me. I'd be dead. I really would be dead if I didn't get out." 

4 

23:36 Pearl Buck wrote Kenneth at the end of January, 1942, and asked him to act as a member of 

the General Education Committee of her East-West Association. He accepted. She founded this 

association, and she held the first grand meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, and the 

principal speaker was Paul McNutt. Kenneth had been writing articles for Asia magazine for the 

editor Elsie Weil. At this first meeting of the East-West Association, Elsie Weil sat beside Kenneth. 

And across the table from him sat the editor of the John Day publishing company, Richard Walsh. 

Kenneth had in mind Margaret and her unsold book. Nobody appeared to want to buy it. So Kenneth 

began telling stories out of the book, ostensibly to Elsie Weil but in such a voice that he cast it across 

the table to Dick Walsh. Walsh was leaning forward, smoking a cigar, and he would hear the story to 

the end, then say to Elsie, "Elsie, get Ken Landon to write that up for Asia magazine. That's a good 

one." Walsh owned the magazine as well as John Day. Kenneth told five or six of these stories, one 

after the other. Walsh said, "My gosh, Elsie! Landon's got something terrific there. That's a great 

series for Asia magazine, and I'll bet it could be a book!" That was when Kenneth "jerked the line," 

"Well, Mr. Walsh, it LV a book. It's a book already." "Great!" Walsh said. "You've been holdin' out 

on us. Send it along!" Kenneth explained that there was one catch in it. The book wasn't his. It was 

his wife Margaret's. Walsh said that didn't matter; it was all in the family; no one had ever heard of 

her; put your name on it; she won't mind; everybody was familiar with Ken Landon on Thailand. 

Kenneth said that wouldn't be quite fair. But he would love to have Walsh see that book. Walsh 

said, Send it to Elsie. And so Kenneth made arrangements with Elsie Weil, and shortly, they sent her 

the book. In this way, Kenneth sold Anna to the John Day company. 

Kenneth went to a party and played the piano. Life magazine, Kenneth thinks it was, had an 

article on how to play the piano in four or five lessons. He sat down with that, figured it out, and did 

it. All he had to know was the melody, and it showed you how to go, and he could do it. Of course, 

after four or five tunes, they all sounded the same. The accompaniment was primitive. He didn't 

keep this up, and he lost the ability to do it. But he had a lot of fun with it. He could take any old 

tune, hum it, and sit right down and play it. 

5 

30:00 The Dolly Madison saga. February, 1942. Dolly Madison was Kenneth's secretary, and she 

was madly in love with a reporter for The Washington Post, and a good one. He regularly made the 

front page with his stories. He would come round and pick her up. Her name was Something-orother 

Madison, so naturally they all called her Dolly, after the famous historical figure. The reporter 

was named George Something. Kenneth still sees him from time to time at old-boy meetings at the 

State Department. In any case, George wasn't going to marry Dolly, and he was getting ready to 

throw her over. So she decided to force the issue by committing suicide, but to do it in such a way 

that she would bring Kenneth into the picture, and he would rush around, get George, and the two 

413


would go and save her. So here she was, dying and choking and calling Kenneth on the phone, 

telling him she was committing suicide because of George. She had also taken pains to make sure 

George knew she was committing suicide. Kenneth called him, and George was distraught and 

rushed around and saved Dolly Madison. Then followed a long period in which Kenneth comforted 

her, took her on long walks for long talks, helping her to get used to the idea of life without George. 

Kenneth's memory is that eventually George GLG marry her, but that came a good while later. 

In February, 1942, Margaret wrote Kenneth that Candy, the bulldog Kenneth had gotten as a 

pet in Richmond, had bitten a child. Kenneth wrote back that he felt Candy should be disposed of. 

He said he was very concerned. "She is a terrible engine of destruction if she got started, and she 

could at the very least scar a child for life." Kenneth has no memory of this incident, but it is of great 

interest to Kip, the interviewer, because Margaret kept that dog, and two years later, when Kip was a 

baby, on March 27, 1944, Candy took his head into her jaws intending to kill him. This was in the 

kitchen at the Brandywine St. house, and Peggy happened on the scene just in time to drive a shoe 

into Candy's belly so that she spit Kip out, covered with blood. And Kip was indeed scarred for life, 

though the scar was a small one. One of the dog's teeth went all the way through the baby's cheek. 

Then the Landons did dispose of Candy. 

6 

36:36 Kenneth went to deliver the Taft lectures at the University of Cincinnati. Margaret 

accompanied him. Cincinnati wanted Kenneth to join their department of philosophy, in which he 

would be their specialist on Oriental philosophy. They treated him and Margaret very well. He of 

course referred to his abortive studies in engineering many years before, and of his "flunking out." 

They had not realized that he had once studied at Cincinnati. Much laughter. He gave three lectures 

on three subsequent days, for $50 a lecture. 

The Chungking project. It was a possible venture in India and China to tap possible sources 

of information in Thailand and Indochina, and it was to be based in Chungking. Kenneth was 

seriously considering going out and setting up the organization to do the work. David Bruce was to 

head it. Donovan proposed the project. Presumably, the chief of intelligence would be a man named 

Hayden (SP?) from the University of Michigan, who was a professor on the Philippines. They 

wanted Kenneth to go because he knew the brand of Chinese spoken in southern China, the only 

person they knew of who did. But the project never panned out. To judge from Kenneth's letters, 

this was a very serious project for a time. Kenneth was making active preparations, studying Chinese 

intensely, looking for someone to take his place in the Far East branch of the OCI, cultivating 

contacts to get in touch with when he went out. He was seriously proposing Margaret as a consultant 

on Southeast Asia, since Kenneth would be gone. A Dr. Mien i Tsiang was to go with Kenneth and 

work with him. The two of them became good friends. It even reached the point that Kenneth 

urgently hoped Margaret would come and pay him a last visit before he went because he thought he 

would be leaving within thirty days. He didn't know when he would see her again, if ever. The 

departure would be in late April. And then, the thing fizzled out because the Japanese drove into 

southern China. Conditions changed in Chungking. Hayden didn't work out. It was a series of 

things. 

Kenneth ZDV involved with the Free Thai movement in southern China, which was running 

agents in and out of Thailand for intelligence purposes. 

One outcome of this episode was that Remer, Kenneth's boss, had found someone to take 

Kenneth's job, a man named Felix Keesing (SP?). For about three months, the OCI had been going 

on the assumption that Kenneth would be leaving them. In May, Kenneth wrote Margaret that he 

414


expected to be released from government service in June, and planned to return to Earlham. He also 

wrote about a proposed trip to Harvard to assess their materials on Thailand, and said that he was 

translating a book of Burmese letters into English. So clearly, Kenneth was out of a job unless he 

returned to Earlham or found something else in Washington. In early June, Horace Poleman offered 

Kenneth a job in the Library of Congress, working with the Southeast Asia collection. Kenneth 

turned it down, not wanting to be a librarian, and a man named Cecil Hobbs later took it. 

7 

48:07 A man at OCI named Gordon Bowles was going over to the BEW. Things were very fluid in 

Washington at the time, because of the war. "People were changing jobs very easily in those days 

because talent was in very short supply and demand was very high. I could have gone almost 

anyplace." He could have gone over to the Pentagon; they were after him all the time. In any case, 

he called a man named Shoemaker, the acting chief of the Far Eastern section of the Board of 

Economic Warfare, and asked him if he had a job for someone who was an expert on Thailand and 

Malaya. Shoemaker answered, "Yes, and his name is Kenneth Landon." He was ready to hire 

Kenneth on the spot, but Kenneth wanted to think about it a bit. The salary would be $5600 a year, 

quite a bit more than he had been making. By this time, the OCI had become the OSS, and so for a 

few weeks, Kenneth was a member of the OSS. His contract was up July 1. In any case, Kenneth 

took the job with the BEW. Kenneth also found a position for Dr. Tsiang at the BEW. 

Dr. Tsiang had an apartment in that area, and the woman living in the apartment under him 

had been married to a Chinese and had left him because he was sexually inadequate. Her apartment 

caught on fire, and in the aftermath, it was such a mess that Dr. Tsiang invited her to stay the night in 

his apartment, which she did, with everything that implies. She was so delighted with his "sexual 

prowess" that she married him. She told Kenneth this herself, he says. He was of a very wealthy 

Chinese family in Java, and he took her back there with him. He had been in this country as a 

student, taking his Ph.D., and had stayed in America because of the Japanese invasion. 

Kenneth explains why the OCI became the OSS. The OCI was concerned with developing 

and co-ordinating information, and its staff consisted of scholars on the areas of interest. The OSS 

included that function but also had other branches of "activists wearing uniforms" and operators 

behind enemy lines, which is to say, espionage agents who were taking direct action in the war. The 

new function required a new name for the agency. The purely intelligence part of the OSS moved 

over to the State Department. Kenneth found Ken Wells a job with them. 

8 

55:33 The Board of Economic Warfare was formed just for the war, and its purpose was to figure 

out how to get at the economics of the enemy in the war. It was involved in bombing factories, 

bridges, acts of sabotage, whatever would cripple the enemy's economic apparatus. It had offices 

initially in the Commerce Department building, then moved to an apartment building on P Street. 

Milo Perkins headed it, and the number two man was Henry Wallace. 

Session #48 July 6, 1982 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip 

Margaret says this would have been Evangeline's 77th birthday. 

In March, 1942, Kenneth wrote a handbook for soldiers in Thailand. We knew we would 

eventually be going in, and so there was a lot of talk about how to set up a military government. 

Somebody had to cook up a manual on this, and there ZHUH no manuals. 

415


HOUR 66 

Session #48 continued July 6, 1982 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip 

1 

0:00 (XB1075) Kenneth continues on the manual, which he was assigned to write. What he did 

was to secure sample manuals for European theaters, both British and French, to get the kind of 

pattern the military would react favorably to. That was the beginning of what later became military 

training for people who would go out and set up government in areas we would liberate from the 

Japanese. 

Kenneth was staying in a room, at $22 a month. When he moved over to the BEW and his 

salary jumped to $5600, he wrote to Margaret that he felt his future lay in government. The money 

was much better than he could earn in the academic world. 

In July, before starting work with the BEW, Kenneth drove home to Richmond for a visit with 

the family. 

Margaret refers to his trip home in March of '42 when Kenneth delivered the Taft lectures at 

Cincinnati. It was an exciting event because there was so much prestige attached to his delivering 

these lectures. "That was my beginning as a professor of Oriental philosophy," Kenneth says. It was 

stimulated by the course in Chinese philosophy that he presented at Earlham. The lectures were 

published, Margaret says, but the Landons do not have a copy of the publication. 

In 1943 at Yale University Kenneth delivered another set of lectures on Oriental philosophy. 

This, along with the Taft lectures, drew the attention of the editor of the Journal of Philosophy at 

Columbia University, Herb Schneider (SP?), who made Kenneth his principal reviewer on all 

publications of Oriental philosophy. He held that position for ten years. During that period he wrote 

a book review that caused laughter and hilarity throughout the philosophy departments of the United 

States. It was on a book about Buddhism and Hinduism by a man named Kumaraswami (SP?), an 

Indian at a famous museum in Boston. Kenneth's review said the book was interesting because it 

showed the Indian mind at work, in contrast to the Western mind. While Westerners were busy 

taking the general and rendering it specific, breaking the large into the small, down to the atom, the 

Indian mind was taking the infinitesimal and expanding it into the universal, taking all the colors of 

the rainbow and turning them into gray, and having the philosophic horseman at the crossroads of 

ideas leap upon his horse and ride off wildly in all four directions "simultumultuously." "That is the 

Indian mind at its best." This review "destroyed Kumaraswami emotionally." Two years passed, and 

then the author wrote Kenneth to say he had read the review. "You may be the scholar," wrote 

Kumaraswami, "I the learner." 

Herb Schneider of the Journal said it was one of the most successful reviews they ever had. 

Margaret speaks again of the Taft lectures, and of the possibility that Kenneth might have 

found a job with Cincinnati University. But she comments that when Kenneth joined the Department 

of State in 1943, "That was his true calling. When he got there, he was in the place where he had 

belonged." 

2 

9:20 Kenneth had one further temptation to leave government when, in 1947, Chicago University 

invited him to deliver the Haskell lectures in comparative religion. These were the most prestigious 

lectures in religion in the United States. They paid $400 apiece for a one-hour lecture. The lectures 

416


were published and became the basis of his book Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions. The idea 

was that A. Eustace Haydon, who was retiring, wanted Kenneth as his successor. Harley Farnsworth 

McNair, the principal Orientalist philosopher of history, also wanted the position, and so did two or 

three others. When Kenneth delivered lecture number one, all "the pious religious boys" turned out. 

Most of them never returned. Instead, as Kenneth delivered lectures two and three, the 

anthropologists and Orientalist scholars started turning up. Finally, the Chicago people rather 

tentatively probed him to see if he were interested in Haydon's job, and he asked what it paid. $6500. 

Kenneth was earning over twice that already, in the State Department. He couldn't afford to take a 

cut like that. "The religious people were delighted. They didn't want me," Kenneth says, laughing. 

Kenneth worked on a pamphlet on nationalist movements in Southeast Asia for the American 

Council of Learned Societies. They paid him $50 and put out ten to twenty thousand of the 

pamphlets. He recalls that initially it was published in a learned journal, and that the Council paid the 

journal for copies of the article, which they then distributed. 

Kenneth knew now that he was going to stay in Washington and began looking for a house for 

the family to move into. He considered one house out in Falls Church, Virginia, but ended up renting 

at 2910 Brandywine St. in Washington. A professor from Northwestern University named Franklin 

Scott had rented the house for his family, with a lengthy lease that he now wanted to dispose of. 

They met several times. He said many people were interested in that house, but he wanted Kenneth 

to have it. The owners lived in Mississippi. So Kenneth assumed the lease. 

There were many houses for sale at the time, but few rental properties available. 

Downpayment to buy was very small, $1000 or less. People were anxious to sell. 

Kenneth had some doubts about moving his family to the East coast because of the fear at the 

time that the Germans might bomb Eastern cities. 

Rent on 2910 Brandwine was $100 a month, which Kenneth felt was high. It was almost a 

third of his salary. But then he began to get raises, and it ceased to be a problem. 

The Landons bought 4711 Fulton Street in the fall of 1944, after Margaret began earning 

money on Anna. They considered buying a house in Spring Valley. But then they found 4711. They 

liked the five bedrooms. The terraces in front of and behind the house did not intimidate Kenneth, 

but they frightened off many other potential buyers. There was no landscaping to speak of. Not a 

blade of grass. The place was barren, covered with weeds. Everything remained to be done. It 

looked like an insurmountable task, "but I was so young, I didn't think of that." The house was wellbuilt, 

and the price was good. Furthermore, when they made their offer, they asked that certain things 

be done, such as that iron railings be put on the walls and along the stone steps to protect the children, 

and a fence around the back of the property, a closet in the attic, a trunk room for storage in the 

basement that could also be a maid's room, plus a bathroom in the basement, and an elaborate set of 

shelves and cabinets in what was to become Margaret's office. All of these things the Miller people 

who had built the house agreed to do. And so the Landons bought the house. They saw it on a 

Friday, and bought it on a Saturday, Kenneth says. He recalls the price as $32,000 or so, which they 

paid off over the next twenty years. Instead of putting her money into paying off the mortgage, 

Margaret used it to redo the rooms in the house. There was one four-month period in which they 

spent some $40,000. Initially, the mortgage had a rate of 4%, then rose to 4½%. 

The house was built in 1942, and the Miller people could neither rent it nor sell it—probably 

because it wasn't quite finished. The attic was never completed, and of course the landscaping. Mt. 

Vernon seminary for girls, which was then up on Ward Circle and later became Mt. Vernon College 

on Foxhall Road, needed dormitory space, and so they rented the house for some of their girls. 

417


3 

29:00 Kenneth's work with the BEW began with a study of Southeast Asian countries to select 

bombing tragets that would be significant in hurting the enemy's abilities to control the area. They 

began with important bridges, machine shops, roundhouses, electrical plants, pinpointing their 

latitude and longitude and evaluating the effect of bombing them. 

One particular project Kenneth worked on was becoming expert on the dyke systems in the 

Hanoi-Haiphong area of Indochina, Kenneth was astounded to discover the significance of these 

dykes, and their vulnerability. He saw that, if they hit the dykes at the right time, at floodwater time, 

they could inundate the entire major population area of North Vietnam. And this was done. "That 

was part of my dirty work." There was no point doing it at low-water time. So they waited until the 

waters were high, twenty to thirty feet above the level terrain of the plain. Some of the dykes were as 

much as ninety feet across at the base and wide enough to carry two-lane traffic on top. Incredible. 

They had been built through the centuries. "We just knocked the hell out of them." And the water 

went all over the plain, ruining the crops. In 1946 Ho Chi Minh told Kenneth personally in Hanoi 

that over two million people starved to death that year. The point was to deprive the Japanese army 

of the crops that would have been grown in the area. But of course it was the people who suffered 

the most. 

The Americans also bombed the port area of Haiphong. They tried to knock out bridges but 

found it very difficult. Almost impossible. They had better luck with tunnels. They could "skipbomb" 

a tunnel, aiming a bomb at the tunnel along the line of the road or railroad tracks so that the 

bomb literally skipped at and even into the tunnel, causing a major blockage. 

The Pentagon regularly sent over questions for the BEW people to answer. That was the 

period in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff had Kenneth over to tell them about elephants. 

The Free Thai movement developed simultaneously among Thai students in Britain and the 

United States. It was under the direction of the Legation in Washington and probably under the 

principal military attachés in Britain. But the British movement didn't amount to much. They didn't 

have many students or volunteers. Here, there was a military attaché named Karp Kunjara, and an 

assistant, who acted as training officers, and a colonel who worked for the OSS whose name Kenneth 

cannot recall. He did much of the training. Kenneth was involved in planning how to use the agents 

in Thailand, and how to infiltrate the country. They learned very early that the Regent, Luang 

Priboon Sunkraun (SP?), when the Japanese came in, resigned from the government, in which he had 

been minister of finance or something of the sort, in order to become Regent, which was a titular 

position. This took him out of the political scheme of things. He was then not responsible for 

anything the Japanese did. It gave him a free hand to maneuver. He was "our boy," and he was 

given the trade name of "Ruth," a code name used in coded and secret communications. Another 

man, the head of the police department, Lungaduhn Aduhndecharat (SP?), was called "Betty." These 

were the names of the girlfriends of the two fellows who were running the communications system, 

who were quite lovesick for their lady friends. 

We were able to infiltrate our agents through Dai Li, the Chinese head of secret service, 

working through the Chinese underground, to get a message to the Siamese Regent that we were 

organizing a Free Thai movement here in the U.S. and would like to work with him if he would head 

it up inside the country and help provide facilities. He agreed, and he sent two men to Washington to 

represent him, who stayed here for a good part of the war. They would go back to the appropriate 

place in China to get messages to him. He offered the so-called Rose Palace, the Suagalop (SP?), as 

the headquarters for the Free Thai movement. Initially, our agents all went to China, set up an 

encampment in southern China, where they had something to do with Admiral Merry Miles (SP?), 

who represented our military establishment in inland China. We had several Thai agents who were 

418


supposed to go down into Thailand. But Dai Li at this point became very jealous and had two of our 

men killed. He wanted any agents who went down into Thailand to be KLV, and to be Chinese. 

4 

39:33 Clearly, we needed a different route. By this time Lord Louis Mountbatten's command was 

active in Colombo, and we had a General Timmerman in Colombo with him. Kenneth remembered a 

beautiful beach in Thailand not far from an island out in the Bay of Bengal which he had explored 

while a missionary there, a very unusual island. Kenneth had a double-extension bellows Graphlex 

camera, and some fishermen there, who were friends of his, asked him if he wanted to see "the most 

beautiful cave in the world." And he said yes. They had to go at low tide and "lurk around" waiting 

for the tide to run out. Kenneth remembers doing this a couple of times. They watched the water 

rushing away from this island, which was limestone, a mountain—a sheer mountain right up out of 

the sea, and only about a quarter of a mile across and perhaps 600 to a 1000 feet high. The dramatic 

thing was that when the tide hit the bottom, for about thirty minutes, the rush of water from inside the 

mountain revealed a cave mouth that had been underwater. Inside there was a cavern, and when you 

went in, you could see light coming down from above. If you went in, you had a short time when 

you could climb up above the water level, and then the tide reversed and closed the cavern up. There 

was no way in or out for the next twelve hours or so except deep underwater. It was just like a 

fairyland inside, like a marble palace with stalactites and stalagmites, and a huge skylight where the 

top of the mountain had caved in, letting in the sunlight. It was just beautiful. Kenneth says it was 

not a volcano. It was limestone. 

Kenneth took many pictures inside there. He and Ngiap Seng had flashlights in case they got 

stuck too long. Finally, the waters receded, and Kenneth, who had climbed way up inside the 

moutain, climbed back down to meet the fishermen who had agreed to come back and pick them up, 

only to find that he had climbed down on the wrong side. Here he was with his heavy Graphlex 

camera. And he was barefoot. The rocks were sharp. There was a chasm of a couple of hundred feet 

down between Kenneth and where he had to get to. "And without a thought I just took off and 

jumped." Ngiap Seng grabbed him and hung on. If he hadn't jumped, he could never have gone up 

and come back down in time to meet the boat. "I often think back on it, 'My, was I a damn fool!'" 

They watched the water race out of the cavern mouth until it was down far enough that they 

could duck out. And there was the boat. They were two or three miles offshore. No way to swim 

that distance. But the fishermen knew the timing. 

So during the War, Kenneth said that this was the place to stash their OSS equipment and 

agents so that they would be off the beach and available. Then the OSS would get a radio message 

from Bangkok that a plane would pick them up on the beach at a certain time. And that was how it 

was done. We went by boat from Colombo to this mountain, timing it with the low tide. We had 

abundant supplies in there. Then at the right time, the agents would come out in the boat and go to 

the beach, and a single-engine plane would land, pick up the agents, and fly them straight into 

Bangkok. The agents were mostly Thai, but some were Americans. Howard Palmer was flown in 

this way, and so was Dillon Ripley, and Jim Thompson. They eventually got to the point that they 

didn't use the cave any more, going into the beach directly. The Japanese never caught on. 

This was all run by the OSS, and Kenneth was peripheral to it. "But I kept in touch with it 

because I was the leading expert on Thailand in the U.S. government. There wasn't anybody around 

who knew what I knew. I was the darling in the Pentagon. I provided them with more maps than 

they'd ever seen on that area. And this map operation out here [referring to the Defense mapping 

agency out MacArthur Boulevard, just outside Washington], I was their darling. . . ." He 

supplied them with maps. His ten-year collection of Thai newspapers was useful also. "I was the 

419


best intelligence officer that they had." "Everybody around town knew Ken Landon. If you wanted 

to know anything about Thailand, you asked Ken Landon. I had no competition." 

Then the joker of it was that some congressman up on the Hill made a speech in which he said 

that he certainly was glad for a certain member "of the Friends persuasion from Earlham College" 

who had joined the State Department. It's on the record, in the latter part of 1943, probably. He read 

quite a piece in there about Kenneth as a professor of philosophy and so on; made quite a thing of it. 

5 

50:33 Kenneth continued working with Donovan in an unofficial way, though he was no longer 

with the OSS. He helped with the Free Thai movement. And then he started drafting telegrams to 

Gen. Timmerman in Colombo. The response to the first of these did not come through OSS 

channels. It came to the State Department. Kenneth learned of this from some of his military friends 

in the Pentagon, and went over to the State Department to get the replies. He went in to the Far 

Eastern bureau and saw one of their desk officers there, a man "of great humility," and scared the life 

out of him by saying that two telegrams had come in, classified Top Secret, numbers this and 

numbers that—numbers which he had gotten from his pals in the Pentagon who had seen references 

to them. The fellow turned as white as a sheet. He was so upset. He asked Kenneth to wait a minute 

and went down the hall, returning in a few minutes with Larry Salsbury, who was the senior Foreign 

Service officer in the bureau under the head of the office, a man named Ballantyne, and under the 

political officer, Stanley Hornbeck. Salsbury came in and "blew up a storm." What did Landon 

mean coming in there? and how did he get those numbers?!!! and so on. Kenneth realized 

immediately that with a man like this you either knuckled under or you hit him. So Kenneth leaped 

to his feet and called him a dummie and typical of what one would expect from the Foreign Service; 

Salsbury had telegrams coming in from Colombo and didn't even know what they meant, didn't know 

who had drafted the outgoing, and if he wanted to know, then he could take a good look at Kenneth!! 

It wasn't drafted by any stupid Foreign Service officer. Amazingly, "I couldn't have said anything 

better. He was just delighted. He shared my view of the Foreign Service." The next thing Kenneth 

knew, Salsbury, who was a Japanese language officer, took him down the hall to meet Ballantyne and 

Hornbeck. 

Hornbeck decided that the best thing to do was to hire Kenneth. They had no one there who 

knew anything about Thailand. And they saw an "awful lot of rowing" in their future unless they did 

hire him because Kenneth told them there was going to be a lot more traffic of this sort—that is, 

communications. They decided they had better keep it in the family. They invited him to join the Far 

Eastern bureau, "which I did." That was in October, 1943. 

By this time, the Landons' fourth child, Kenneth Perry Landon, Jr., had been born. Margaret 

was hard at work on the book, trying to finish it up. The people in the BEW concocted a cradle 

which they set up in the central office, with a baby in one end of the cradle and a book in the other, 

and they ran an office pool on which would be born first—"the book or the babe." They would try to 

find excuses to see Margaret, to get a reading on her. She was unaware of all this. Margaret finished 

her book at about 3:00 in the afternoon, July 23. As she pushed back the chair, having written 

"Finis," she felt the first birth pain. She herself didn't believe it at first; thought she was imagining it. 

She told Kenneth nothing when he came home from the office. Finally, when they were well into 

dinner, she had a hard labor pain and told him. Her previous experience in giving birth was of 

extended labor. It took two days to give birth to Carol. So neither of them felt there was any hurry to 

get to the hospital. But then, at 2:00 in the morning, she woke Kenneth up and said she had to go. 

They got into the car to drive to Garfield Hospital on Florida Avenue [one of the most confusing 

streets in Washington because it just seems to wander without purpose at certain points], and 

420


Kenneth got lost. Then he got scared, thinking, "Gee, what was I going to do?" Finally, they found 

the hospital, and Margaret hardly got into the delivery room before Kip was born. It was about 3:00 

a.m., July 24. She was very surprised how fast the baby came. 

The gap between Carol and Kip was ten years, and Kenneth and Margaret had thought their 

family was complete when to their surprise Kip came along. 

Margaret really was racing to get the book done before the baby was born because she knew it 

would be very difficult to complete it afterward. Kenneth says that he turned up most of the raw 

materials that Margaret used in writing the book. It was Kenneth who made the contact through 

which Anna's letters became available to Margaret. He turned up the Thai language materials in the 

Library of Congress. And then, being in Washington, Kenneth introduced Margaret to the National 

Archives, and the two of them began to study the consular and ministerial records. Also, Kenneth 

persuaded Horace Poleman to put together a program for some $9000 in which the British 

microfilmed their Thailand consular and ministerial records from the nineteenth century. Since Anna 

Leonowens was a British citizen, these records contained material on her, and Margaret was able to 

do research in this material also. 

421


HOUR 67 

Session #48 continued July 6, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

1 

0:00 (XB1690) Kenneth continues on the project he cooked up with Horace Poleman to have the 

British microfilm their consular and ministerial records from Thailand. There were some 200 

volumes of these. Fortunately, Kenneth says, the British wrote back that, sad to say, they would have 

to wait to do this until the war was over because all of those records were down in a salt mine for safe 

keeping. Otherwise, Margaret might still be working on Anna to this day! She is so meticulous. 

When Kip was born, Kenneth said, "This boy and I are going to get acquainted." It was 

impossible to find anyone to come in to the home and help. He took annual leave for two weeks, 

brought Margaret and Kip home from the hospital, and took care of both of them. The baby still had 

an umbilical cord a foot long dangling from his belly button. One day, after taking care of the baby 

for a few days, Kenneth said to Margaret, "You know what I have discovered about babies? They are 

like rubber, and they're practically indestructible." He would be giving Kip a bath, and Kip would 

slip, and Kenneth would grab him, and he was just like rubber. Another discovery was that when a 

baby slipped underwater, he instinctively held his breath instead of inhaling. Kenneth inadvertently 

tested this out any number of times before getting things under control, and the baby was just fine. 

Needless to say, this was Kenneth's first experience of caring for a baby. "I've often said, 'We've had 

three children and one baby.' Literally. We never took care of the babies out there in Siam. We had 

amahs who did all the bathing and the cleaning and the washing and the nursing. . . . And then you." 

After two weeks, Margaret was up and around and took over. Peggy was sixteen at the time. 

"That's why I coined that famous phrase, 'If you're going to have a baby, the first thing to have is a 

sixteen-year-old daughter,' because she'd come home and help with the baby." She was going to 

Wilson High School. So was Bill. Carol was ten and going to school at Alice Deal Junior High. 

Kenneth discovered that Carol could take care of herself very nicely. One night, he collapsed 

when he and Carol were alone in the house—this was after the family moved to 4711 Fulton Street in 

Wesley Heights—and she was perfectly confident that she could get the doctor from down the street 

to come. As she said, "After all, he takes me to school every day." "She knew the power of a woman 

already." (Evidently she did get the doctor, and Kenneth recovered.) 

Kenneth comments on how much the family's life had changed over the past few years. He 

had expected to spend his life as a Presbyterian minister. He had fully intended to do so. But then he 

couldn't get a church "that was worth lookin' at, and I resented that," so then he became a professor at 

Earlham, and expected that he would spend the rest of his life as a philosopher and teacher. But that 

only lasted a couple of years. The next thing he knew, he was in government, and there he just took 

off. 

Kenneth talks about his experience leaving the OSS for the BEW, when the OSS tried to keep 

him from going. The experience served him well years later when he left the State Department for 

the White House staff in the 1950's. There was an undersecretary of State who was hostile to 

Kenneth, and so Kenneth knew he had to be "sly" about leaving, which he was. State didn't learn of 

it until too late to stop him. 

422


2 

7:35 Kenneth speaks of what an informal situation it was in Washington at the time. "You could 

freewheel—and, boy, did I know how to really freewheel around this town in all the government 

agencies. I had my own phone book that I made up of all the Joe's and Sally's who were useful to me 

and that I needed to know, whom I could call and say, 'What's cookin' on this, that, or the other, Let's 

get together, Let's do this.' It might not have been within my official range at all, but within my 

knowledgeable range, which was useful in the war effort, yes. So often we would wheel and deal 

around town and have lunches together in Chinese restaurants and cook things up that our superior 

officers knew nothing about. You could do it in those days. And I, as a political desk officer, I think 

I got away with murder because I went on the assumption that, if you don't ask permission, you don't 

have anybody to tell you no, and you just keep doing what you think is the thing to do within policy 

and for the good of the operations until someone stops you. Well, you can't do that anymore." 

When he moved over to State, he continued co-operating with the BEW, the OSS, and the 

OWI in various projects, and visited regularly over in the Pentagon with the military types. "I was 

known around town." His official title in State was International Relations Officer, Southeast Asian 

Affairs. His job changed according to what was happening. He worked chiefly with Thailand to 

begin with. Then for a time he also handled Indonesia. It depended on where the problems were. 

Then they brought someone in to be the Chief and Kenneth became the Assistant Chief. The office 

was reorganized periodically. But he always did basically the same work. He was a political desk 

officer, who tried to hold on to the reins of activities of his area all over town. 

When he later worked on the Operations Co-ordinating Board, he often said that he had been 

given the best outdoor job in town. He was officially assigned to follow up on all operations to carry 

out U.S. policy in countries from Afghanistan to the Philippines to Indonesia. "I was really a roving 

character there." He was the co-ordinating officer of many committees, depending on what the area 

was, a committee on China, or a committee on India, and so on. The chairman in each instance 

would be the political desk officer of that country in the State Department. "They were very jealous 

of being chairman even though they didn't know anything. Well, they'd know VRPHWKLQJ, of course." 

On a country's committee, there would be someone from the Pentagon, someone from USIA, 

someone from AID, someone from CIA, someone from budget, and from the economic side, all of 

them discussing what the policy of the U.S. toward that country was and what our operations there 

were, to see that these were being carried out in a co-ordinated way. Kenneth was the one who coordinated 

this among them all, with his authority to do so flowing from the White House. He worked 

directly under Elmer Staats, who was the principal co-ordinator of the OCB staff, who in turn was 

under the advisor on national security affairs to the President, "whoever KH was, Gordon Gray, or 

Bobbie Cutler, or whoever." "So I was a foot soldier." 

3 

13:51 Kenneth cannot remember Ballantyne's name. He was the head of the Far East section of the 

State Department. People called him "Baldy" Ballantyne, but not in his presence. He had a 

deliberate stutter which he had developed to a fine art. When in doubt as to what to say when 

speaking to foreign diplomats, he would stutter. He would keep it going until he found the word he 

wanted, and then his speech was fine. He was the man who carried on our discussions with the 

Japanese almost up to Pearl Harbor. He was very proud of his memos of conversation. He urged 

Kenneth to study them. "They're classics," he said. "Absolute classics. There isn't anybody who 

could lay a glove on me." What he meant was that they were so filled with evasion and ambiguity 

that no one could ever get anything on him. 

Ballantyne gave Kenneth the octagonal seal and told him exactly where to put his "L." Not a 

423


piece of paper would be filed until his "L" appeared in the northeast corner of the octagon. 

Ballantyne's "B" went in the middle. So Kenneth saw every piece of paper dealing with Japan or 

India as well as his area of Southeast Asia. It was a small office. There were only eight of them. 

Hornbeck was the political advisor on Asia to the Secretary, but he arrogated to himself the 

responsibility of advisor to the Secretary on anything. He was a ponderous, pontifical sort of man. 

He was over Ballantyne. "Ballantyne practically was on his knees in front of him every time." A 

very pompous man. He would send out a memo saying, perhaps, that he wished that members of the 

section preparing letters to go out over his signature close letters to persons not intimate with him, 

"Sincerely yours." When the letter was to someone he was friendly with, it was to close, "Yours 

sincerely." He provided them a list of these people. This was typical of him. 

Hornbeck once called Ballantyne and Kenneth in to his office over something Kenneth thinks 

he did, and Hornbeck walked up down, ponderously, with his hands behind his back, delivering an 

elaborate lecture—but all in indirection. Finally, he stopped and looked at them. "Well," he said, 

"what have you got to say." Kenneth stood up and said, "Well, it's first time I have ever experienced 

administration by charades." Hornbeck was flabbergasted. Kenneth thought Ballantyne was going to 

faint. No one had ever said anything like that to Stanley Hornbeck. Ballantyne thought Kenneth was 

going to be fired, but "I knew I wasn't because pompous asses like that, they don't know what to do 

with a person like me." Hornbeck did nothing. They got up and left, and that was the end of it. "I 

think he was afraid of me. Or at least, he respected me, and he knew that I was not afraid of him. I 

didn't care whether I got fired or not. I've always worked with my hat on. If he didn't like it, I'd go 

elsewhere." 

Hornbeck had a requirement that no officer could leave his desk until he, Hornbeck, had 

finished reading his morning mail. If he wanted an officer to come with regard to some piece of the 

mail, he wanted one to come immediately. There was a secretary who would give them the signal 

when they could leave their desks. It happened that there was an officer named Meyers (SP?). "I 

called him Murley Twirly Meyers." He was a short little man who had served in China, and he had 

weak kidneys and a small bladder. Kenneth would see "that poor guy" squirming and twisting in his 

chair, waiting for the signal that he could get up and go to the toilet. It was that kind of office. 

It didn't stay that way, though, as the war really got going. People started coming in from the 

field, like John Davies, Jack Service, and fellows that got cashiered later on in the McCarthy era. 

John Davies was fired. Service made a fool of himself by making a document that had been drafted 

by Ken Wells but went out over Service's name available to Amerasia, which printed it verbatim, 

Service's name and all. 

4 

21:45 Ken and Margaretta fled from Thailand to India when the Japanese invaded. Kenneth was 

here when they reached this country in early 1944, and he found Ken a job with the State Department 

in the research section. What Ken did was much more "sedate" than what Kenneth did. "He was 

always respectful of authority, and I wasn't." 

Kenneth was the first political officer FE ever had who had lived in Southeast Asia and spoke 

a Southeast Asian language. Up to that time, all matters having to do with the Dutch East Indies had 

been dealt with by the Netherlands desk, the Dutch desk. Matters having to do with Malaya or 

Burma had been handled by the British Commonwealth desk. Anything on Indochina was handled 

by the French desk. All FE ever did "was to nod their heads and sign off." Now, all of a sudden, the 

"drafting officer" was Kenneth. He now handled matters for Southeast Asia. The people who now 

had to agree or disagree with policy were the European officers on the Dutch, British, and French 

desks. And naturally, they didn't like this. They regarded these Southeast Asian areas as colonial 

424


territories that didn't amount to much and never would. Now, suddenly, comes a man who says the 

colonial days are over. The old order is gone. Get ready for the new world. "This was the line I 

took. And that was a shocker. That was inherent in all the papers that I drafted." 

Kenneth was given the job of drafting the first paper to articulate Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 

policy that no French should return to Indochina. Kenneth drafted and redrafted that paper forty or 

fifty times before he could get it past the French desk. He even had trouble getting it past Ballantyne 

and Hornbeck because they knew what the French desk would say. Finally, it got down to the petty 

details. And by this point, the President was demanding that paper. Something had to go up. It had 

to go up through the Far Eastern chiefs, Jack Hickerson and Doc Matthews. Hickerson was the 

deputy director and Matthews the director of the European bureau. Then it had go through James 

Dunn, who was up the line, under Sumner Welles. And then it had to go across to the White House. 

"And I can still remember the cold chills going down my back when finally it came down from the 

White House through Welles, through Dunn, through Matthews, through Hickerson, through the 

French desk to little old me. And there in the margin was written in a very tight script—I can see it 

as plain today as the day I first saw it; FDR wrote it—'I want no French returned to Indochina. FDR.' 

That was it. And that remained the policy until Potsdam, under Harry Truman." 

The question then became how the colonial areas should be brought to independence and selfgovernment. 

The French desk said, Let Landon draft the papers. And Landon said, "I'd be delighted 

to draft the papers!!" He drafted the scheme for bringing the French Indochinese to independence, a, 

in five years, b, in ten years, c, in twenty-five years, and so on, under an international trusteeship. 

There was then the inevitable committee that had to pass on this. It was met with the utmost 

indifference in the European office because they didn't believe the plan would ever come off. They 

knew that probably there weren't ten people in the United States government, if there were five, who 

believed that colonialism was dead, and that the British, the French, and the Dutch were not going 

back to their colonies as usual at the end of the war, which we expected to win. Kenneth believed it 

because he had been in Asia and had seen the rising tide there. He had written the article "Siam 

Rides the Tiger," which caught the spirit of the times. Also, the Japanese were the instrument that 

drove out the white man, who had completely lost his prestige as a consequence. This could never be 

regained. "I was convinced of it." 

One of the reasons Margaret and Kenneth resigned from mission work was because of the role 

of the national church vis a vis the missionaries. They both believed the mission was absolutely 

backward and without vision, that they were not raising up a national church, as they should, and 

were failing to do the obvious things to create an indigenous, Thai church, instead of just having 

missionaries running around and being important. This led to a big mission meeting in New York 

City over this issue, with missionaries called in from all over the world, the conclusion of which was 

to go on as usual. In response, the Landons resigned in twenty-five, double- spaced, typewritten 

pages, "well stated." Kenneth insisted that they be put on the record. 

So Kenneth had the background of thinking on the issue and was convinced from his 

experience in Thailand that the Thai, the Burmese, the Indonesians, and so on, were going to run their 

own show. They were no longer willing to be colonies. They were going to fight. "I knew I was 

going to be right on this. I had no doubt in the world of it." But the State Department didn't believe 

it. EY didn't believe it. And at the end of the war, in 1946, when Kenneth came back from the 

British-Siamese negotiations, Abbot Low Moffat, Kenneth's chief, said to him rather patronizingly, 

"Ken, you'd better take my advice and get out of Southeast Asian affairs in the Department of State 

and indeed Southeast Asian affairs anywhere. There's no future in it for a fine mind. There's no 

future in it. As for me, I'm going to Greece with George McGhee." And he did. He was typical. 

Moffat "parroted my line all the time because he didn't know anything." He tried to plagiarize 

425


Kenneth's papers. "I had a real showdown with him." He would take Kenneth's papers into his office 

and redictate them, right down the line, top to bottom, and then put his name on at the bottom as the 

drafting officer. That didn't go on for long. Kenneth found out about it, went in, and had a big row 

with him, threatening to go down to Ballantyne with it. And he did, which made Ballantyne very 

unhappy. "So Moffat apologized and backed off, and he hated me the rest of his life." 

Moffat had been brought in by Joseph Grew, whom Kenneth often called Moffat's "father-inlaw 

once removed," because his brother married Grew's daughter. Moffat was always doing the 

wrong thing. He was involved in New York politics, but he openly opposed Thomas Dewey, who 

retaliated by driving him out of the Republican party apparatus. Suddenly, he was unemployed, and 

Grew had to find a slot for him. Grew was quite important, having been ambassador to Japan, and 

was now with the Department. So he brought Moffat in and put him over Kenneth. 

The Assistant Secretary was Adolph Burleigh (SP?), known as "Two Bathtub" Burleigh. 

There were only a couple of assistant secretaries, who were over Hornbeck. 

At this point, taping was suspended for two and a half months. We resumed 

September 24 with sessions on the Siam years that I have numbered 43, 44, and 45 because 

of the historical sequence. Finally, in mid-November, we returned to the State Department 

years that we were taping in July. 

7$3( ;, 6LGH 

Session #49 November 12, 1982 Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

5 

35:15 Kenneth refers to letters he and Margaret have just received from William and Elaine 

Atwood, friends in the Literary Society. Elaine [founder of The Woodpussies of the World], 

always calls Kenneth "Sir Wild Thyme." He shares from Elaine's letter. On the Atwoods' 100-yearold 

cuckoo clock. 

Kenneth tells the story of the office chair caper. There was a fellow named Monroe Hall, 

known as Rody Hall, who was a giant of a man—hyper-pituitary, six feet nine inches tall, and built in 

proportion—who had an incredible reputation in Asia. He was a China language officer with a 

stentorian voice as big as his size. In China, he led a fairly wild life, which in that climate wasn't 

difficult. There were many prostitutes around. He had a mistress as well as a wife. When he was 

coming home, he wanted to bring his mistress along with his wife, but that was too much. He was 

delighted to be getting away from a fellow Kenneth called Murley Twirly Meyers, the Consul 

General. Meyers was giving a farewell party for Rody and his family, at which Rody got so drunk, 

and was so happy to be leaving, that he went over and kicked a hole in a big bass drum. "This has 

gone down in the Foreign Service annals as a high point in his career." He went home to sleep it off; 

they were all packed to leave the next day; the next morning, papers arrived ordering him to stay on 

for another year. 

When Kenneth was first in the State Department, in late 1943, both Meyers and Hall were 

there together. Kenneth and Rody Hall were given a small, narrow office in the Executive Office 

Building, where State was then located, with twenty-four foot ceilings. The room was long. 

Kenneth's desk was next to the swinging doors to the hall. They were like barroom doors, which 

swung on hinges, and didn't go down to the floor or up to the ceiling. They let the air flow. In the 

middle of the room was Hall's desk. "And he ate twenty-four hours a day. I never saw him stop 

426


eating. He always was crunching." At the window was Larry Salsbury. [This window overlooked 

the White House.] 

Kenneth has always had a problem sitting on a hard-bottomed chair "because I have a small 

bottom. I do not have much padding on my bottom." But here he was sitting in a miserable, hardbottomed, 

swivel chair at a mean little wooden desk next to the corridor, and then Monroe Hall at a 

larger desk, and finally Salsbury at a very substantial desk, since he was a class one officer. This 

little room was next door to Breckinridge Long's office, the Assistant Secretary. He was from a very 

prominent family, of great wealth, and a friend of Roosevelt's. Suddenly, the swinging doors opened, 

and a very small, old black man wheeled in a magnificent, leather, executive office armchair. It was 

beautiful, and new. It had leather arms and a leather seat, and it swivelled, "and it looked just 

beautiful." The little man said that he had a chair for Assistant Secretary Long; where should he put 

it? "Right here!" Kenneth said. "I was waiting for it." Kenneth leaped to his feet, kicked his old 

chair out, rolled the lovely new one behind his desk, and told the man to take the old one away. "I 

won't need it any more." There was dead silence in the office. Here were these two higher echelon 

officers, and then Kenneth, who had only been in the Department a few months, co-opting the 

Assistant Secretary's office chair. Dead silence. The little man said that Kenneth would have to sign 

for it. "Fine!" Kenneth said. The paper was proffered, and Kenneth scratched an illegible signature 

in the appropriate spot. "Certainly no one could read what I wrote. I couldn't have read it myself." 

He handed back the piece of paper, and the man took the old chair and disappeared. 

Kenneth never looked back at the two gentleman behind him in the office. The new chair had 

a high back, so they could only see the top of his head. And Kenneth sat there happily in his new 

chair. Then out of the silence, Kenneth heard Rody Hall's stentorian voice, "Well, I'll be goddamned!" 

Then Salsbury said Kenneth couldn't get away with that. "Well," Kenneth said, "if you 

keep your mouth shut, why not?" "I could have gotten fired for this, you know. But I was 

uncomfortable!" Neither man said anything further. Except that Rody lumbered over after a while 

and asked to try out the chair. Kenneth wouldn't let him. Said he would tell him how it felt, if he 

wanted to know. 

A girl came in to take dictation from Salsbury, and looked astounded at the sight of Kenneth's 

chair. She kept looking over at Kenneth and the chair. She said nothing, but Kenneth knew when 

she left that she would be spreading the word in the office pool. Sure enough, in a few minutes, 

another of the girls came sailing in and asked if the gentlemen wanted any coffee? By the end of the 

day, every girl in the pool had made a pass through the room to see the chair. Kenneth felt confident 

that the girls wouldn't tell on him. But at the same time, he knew he might be cashiered. 

Fortunately, none of those girls liked Breckinridge Long. They were secretly very pleased. 

Furthermore, Salsbury was in the process of doing a memorandum on Long with the purpose of 

getting Long fired. So he wasn't going to tell on Kenneth. "And Rody Hall simply fell in love with 

me right then and there because he decided that I was 'his kind of man'!" He could hardly pass 

Kenneth without giving him a punch on the shoulder, or something of the sort. 

The days passed. After about two weeks, a memorandum came around, signed by 

Breckinridge Long, saying that an executive leather armchair designed for his personal use had 

disappeared. Its whereabouts were mysteriously unknown. If anyone could arrange for its delivery 

to his office, no questions would be asked. "Dead silence. I sat in that chair for the rest of twentyfive 

years. It went with me to whatever office I had." He took it with him to the OCB in the 1950's, 

when he was on the White House staff. And then he took it with him back to the State Department in 

1962, in the Foreign Service Institute. "I had one of the best chairs in the Foreign Service Institute. 

Better than the Director's." 

Such items as desks, chairs, rugs, and so on, were prescribed according to rank in the 

427


Department. "In the State, War, and Navy Building, which then became the State Department 

Building after Black Jack Pershing's offices were closed and reorganized—which were still there 

when I went there in October, '43—the really posh offices for Assistant Secretaries and for political 

advisors like Warren Beck (SP?) or Undersecretaries would be very large rooms with high ceilings. 

All the ceilings were twenty-four feet up." What determined the quality of the room was its size, and 

whether you had a fireplace or not, and also a mirror. There were huge mirrors in the numbers one, 

two, and three offices, running almost from the floor to the ceiling. When Nelson Rockefeller was 

there as Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs, he managed to have his chimney opened. 

Many of the chimneys were not in working order. One day Kenneth had occasion to go in there— 

Rockefeller was not there at the time. Kenneth had seen something going down the hallway and had 

wondered about it, so he followed down the hall to find out what was going on. It was a load of birch 

logs from the Northeast that must have been four feet long, wrapped in cellophane. And they were 

taken in to Rockefeller's office for use in his fireplace. "Yes, he wouldn't want to get his hands 

dirty!" He could pick up and put in a cellophane-wrapped birch log to burn in his fireplace whenever 

he wanted to. His office was posh in every way, with a huge mirror, fireplace, big lounge chairs, a 

couch, and so on. 

The Secretary of State at that point was a man named Cordell Hull. But he was ill. The 

Undersecretary of State, Edward Stettinius, ran the Department and reported to Hull, who lived in the 

Woodner Hotel. Kenneth tells how Stettinius once spoke at the same occasion as Margaret, the two 

of them having written books, and of how openly disgusted he was to learn that she was married to 

Kenneth, who was beneath his notice. "Nevertheless, it was a small department, and when I had to 

see the Undersecretary of State, I could telephone the office, and ask to see him, and the usual 

question was, 'Well, Mr. Landon, is it very urgent, or could you wait twenty minutes?' I mean, that 

was the kind of department it was in those days. It was small. There were only eight of us who ran 

all of East Asian affairs. And I was the RQO\ officer on Southeast Asia." He had to deal with the 

French desk, the British Commonwealth desk, and the Dutch desk, since they all were concerned 

with his areas. The Philippines were under the Department of the Interior, so State had nothing to do 

with them. 

Dean Atcheson came in with Truman. Stettinius succeeded Hull in 1944. 

Edward Stettinius's wife's parents owned the property that the Cosmos Club bought and that 

continues to be the Club's headquarters to this day. The Thompsons. They themselves owned a big 

estate down along the Potomac. 

Roosevelt died before the end of the war, of course. Joseph McCarthy got going about 1949. 

By then, the State Department had moved from the State, War, and Navy building, which is now 

called the Executive Office Building [and in 1995, the Old Executive Office Building, next to the 

White House], over to the present State Department Building at 21st and C Streets. Up to that time, 

that building had been the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Subsequent to that time, there 

was a construction program to enlarge the building, so that it now is two blocks long. Kenneth came 

into his office there one morning to find that his files had been dumped all over the floor. 

428


HOUR 68 

Session #49 continued November 12, 1982 Kenneth, Kip, Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (XIA135) Kenneth continues on the McCarthy era. In 1947 Kenneth delivered the Haskell 

lectures at Chicago University, and in 1949, his book, based on these and entitled Southeast Asia: 

Crossroad of Religions, was published. In it, there was one paragraph concerning Ho Chi Minh, 

commenting on his fluent use of the English language and his wide knowledge of political 

philosophies. Kenneth's problems began in about 1951 or 1952 and continued through the 

Eisenhower period until he moved over to the White House. He was questioned numerous times by 

two or three FBI inquisitors who would ask him all sorts of searching questions. Did he know Owen 

Lattimore? Sure he knew Owen Lattimore. Why? Well, he said something about you. Why would 

he like you? "Everybody likes me," Kenneth says. So what? Well, he said something very favorable 

to you. Did you agree with Owen Lattimore? Well, Kenneth certainly agreed that he, Kenneth, was 

a nice fellow. He didn't know what Lattimore had said, and they wouldn't tell him. Then they 

wanted to know why he had written the paragraph favorable to Ho Chi Minh. What made it 

favorable? Kenneth asked. You said he was a very able man. Well, he was! 

They would go away, then come back, then go away. 

State had documents prepared by the research section where Ken Wells had worked. There 

was a manuscript that had been classified confidential, but then was declassified because all of the 

information had become public. It was a useful document, so Kenneth asked to have a copy, and he 

brought it home and put it in one of the cabinets in Margaret's office. He didn't have an office at 

home in those years. Then one day he went to look for the document, and it was gone. He asked 

Margaret about it, and she couldn't find it either. About a week later, Margaret suddenly let out a yip 

and called him. Did he remember that document he was looking for? Well, it was there, right where 

they had looked. It had been put back. In those days, it was very easy to break into 4711. [Kip 

himself did so several times when he forgot his keys.] 

Carol had a bedroom that was directly over the door from the basement to the garage. 

Kenneth rarely closed the garage door itself. For several nights, Carol lay in bed in terror listening to 

people in the basement as they talked in low voices. [The sound came up through the heating 

ducts.] She was too frightened to come and tell her parents. She only told them later. "And our files 

were simply ransacked from end to end." Then came the day when he came into his office to find the 

files all over the floor. May Bellamy was his secretary, a handsome black woman, and she was 

outraged. She kept those files, many cases of them, and they were strewn all over the floor. Some 

people had spent the night in there hunting for evidence against Kenneth. 

Nothing ever came of it. "No, they couldn't hang anything on me. 'My strength was as the 

strength of ten because my heart was pure.' They didn't have a thing on me, and couldn't find 

anything. It was very disappointing." They interviewed a lot of people about him, but all they ever 

got were favorable comments. 

Kenneth feels sure the FBI had listening devices in 4711. "We did know that our phone was 

tapped during a period when Carol had a girl friend over on the next block, and they spent hours on 

the phone discussing a turtle named Myrtle. And we were just delighted to think that all that went on 

tape and hoped that they read it all." They could tell the phone was tapped because in those days 

tapping was crude. There was a difference in the sound of the line when someone else was on the 

429


line with you. 

2 

7:45 When Harry Truman became President, the Potsdam conference changed the war theater for 

MacArthur. This brought Lord Louis Mountbatten's command into Thailand and the Indochinese 

states south of the 16th parallel, with Chiang Kai Shek north of that. Roosevelt's policy on no return 

of the French to Indochina aborted right there at Potsdam, courtesy of Harry Truman. That was a 

dramatic change. 

At the end of the war, the British put twenty-one demands on the Thai. We had a General 

Timmerman in Ceylon who was attached to Mountbatten's command and who reported these twentyone 

demands. "And then our people began to fly in what we called P S A. By that time, it was the 

Philippines and Southern Asia. We had the Philippines by then. And Burma. Burma was tossed 

back and forth between the South Asian people and ourselves. Nobody wanted it Actually, nobody 

wanted Burma. It was just a never-neverland." So State went to work on the twenty-one demands, 

which led to Kenneth's going out at the end of the war. 

There was an amusing incident when the Thai minister, Seni Pramoj—there was no 

ambassador; only the minister—got into a quarrel with his military attaché, Karp Kunjara, who was 

in charge of the Free Thai movement. This was an intelligence operation that was supposed to 

function with Dai Li out of China, Dai Li being the head of Chinese intelligence for Chiang Kai 

Shek. Pramoj was so small-minded that he wouldn't even issue sheets and pillowcases and ordinary 

household necessities to Kunjara, who was a colonel. At that time, all of the Thai money in this 

country was frozen. But then the U.S. unfroze it on an agreed basis, so much for the running of the 

Legation and for the maintenance of their staff. Kenneth called the minister in and said that the 

quarreling and bickering with Colonel Karp Kunjara was going to end immediately. He was not to 

deprive his military attaché of any of his basic needs, not while the war effort was on. Kenneth added 

that, if Pramoj failed to comply, he, Kenneth, would stop all moneys going to the Legation until he 

did. Pramoj was so angry with Kenneth that he went back to his office and wrote a letter to the 

Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Burleigh (known as "Two Bathtub"; Bill Landon had dates with 

his daughter). He was regarded as a genius. He took the letter up to the Under Secretary, wondering 

what to do. The letter said that Kenneth was an enemy of Thailand, doing a disservice to the Free 

Thai movement, and that he should be removed from office and have nothing more to do with 

Thailand. This letter, according to the normal bureaucratic procedure, was sent down to Kenneth as 

the desk officer for Thailand for the drafting of a reply that would go out over the signature of the 

Assistant Secretary. 

Kenneth proceeded to draft "a beautiful letter, dispassionate, objective, disinterested, but 

indicating very clearly that the staffing of the Foreign Service was a matter for the officials 

responsible in the Foreign Service in the Department of State, and his remarks would be taken into 

consideration and given due weight, or something like that." In other words, "Nuts to you, brother, in 

a very nice and polite, official, diplomatic fashion." Kenneth took the draft down to Burleigh. 

"The reason he was called 'Two Bathtub' was that his words of genius were so remarkable that his 

wife hated to miss a one of them, and she had two bathtubs put side by side in the bathroom, so that 

when he took a bath, she'd take a bath, and they could continue their talks." 

The military attaché, Karp Kunjara, later told Kenneth that he had no further problems. As a 

consequence of this incident, Pramoj's brother, who was one of the leading politicians in Thailand, 

Kukrit Pramoj, who has been Prime Minister, "is just a relentless enemy of mine." He even wrote 

about Kenneth in his newspaper, running him down, saying that Kenneth spoke and understood Thai 

so badly that he could not communicate. Kenneth was in the country at the time, speaking to the 

430


Rotary Club that very week. He referred to the article, speaking in Thai, and said, "You'll all be 

delighted to know that I cannot speak Thai and that you cannot understand me." They just roared 

with laughter. He proceeded to deliver a twenty-minute speech in Thai "just for the hell of it." 

3 

16:48 During the war, the Regent, who was the head of the Free Thai movement in Thailand— 

Luang Pradit Menuthom (SP?), which was his title, or Pridi Panomyong (SP?), his name—was 

known as "Ruth" to the OSS. The head of the police was known as "Betty." These were their 

codenames. There were agents from the Free Thai movement here in Washington during much of the 

war, and the Landons had them in their house a good deal. 

When the war ended, Seni Pramoj was called home to be Prime Minister. Kenneth was sent 

out at the same time to advise our negotiators in the British-Thai negotiations. 

Before that, when the end of the war had come, our troops overran Germany and liberated a 

group of Thai, including Queen Ramphai Barni, the widow of King Prajadhipok (SP?), along with 

her entourage, and a Thai minister and his staff, and a number of students. There must have been 

about thirty-five to forty in their group, and they were all housed in one hotel in New York, on one 

floor. Kenneth was sent up by the State Department because the Thai were "pretending" that they 

didn't speak much English. They would talk amongst themselves, of course. Since Kenneth spoke 

the language, he went up to communicate with them and find out what they wanted to do. Did they 

want to go back to Thailand? stay in the U.S.? Where did they want to go? 

Kenneth arrived and went up to the floor the Thai were staying on. They were all in a large 

ballroom, all speaking in Thai, when Kenneth walked in. They looked at him with indifference. 

None of them knew him. He walked around amongst them, listening to them talk. Finally, he broke 

out into Thai and asked who was in charge of their group. He wanted to speak to their leader, and of 

course, this was the minister. "They were stunned. They were absolutely stunned because never had 

they heard a foreigner speak fluent Thai as I did. It was a very novel, unusual, startling experience." 

They were in a terrible flurry for a time. Kenneth had a list of their names, and he worked to identify 

who was who, and what they wanted to do. 

One young man said he was a student and would like to return to Germany or England. Was 

that possible? Kenneth wasn't sure, but assured him he could continue his studies somewhere. The 

man was definite that he wished to return to Europe. So Kenneth promised to try to arrange that, 

which he eventually did. The man returned to England and completed his education. He later 

became the Thai ambassador to the United States. Once, when Kenneth made a speech before the 

Thai-American Association, he turned up. Kenneth didn't recall his name, but when the ambassador 

told him of the incident at the hotel in New York, Kenneth remembered. He was very friendly. He 

was soon recalled to Bangkok to become the minister of foreign affairs, so he was one of their top 

people. 

Most of the rest of the Thai wanted to return to Thailand. 

When Kenneth returned from his trip to Southeast Asia in March of 1946, the Queen and her 

entourage were here in Washington. Kenneth had brought back with him a large phonograph 

collection of traditional Thai music. These were 78 rpm records. The Queen sent word around that 

she would like to come to dinner at the Landons' home. She named the night and the time, which was 

the royal prerogative. The Landons had the dinner catered here at 4711. They stationed their 

daughter Carol, who was thirteen at the time, in the breakfast room, next to the formal dining room, 

with the job of playing these records on the phonograph. There were twelve for dinner, and as the 

dinner was served, the classical Thai music began to emanate from the next room. And the Queen 

suddenly burst into tears. She apologized for her emotion, but she explained that the piece they were 

431


hearing was the music that her husband most loved to hear played while they had dinner in the 

Palace. It was one of his favorites. Kenneth had not known, of course. He knew the pieces were 

classic tunes played by the royal orchestra, the Pin Pha (SP?), but that was all. The Queen was quite 

touched. 

In 1950, when he was in Thailand, Kenneth called on the Queen. Initially, she could not 

remember him, but then quickly remembered. She was in the sun gardens down on the eastern side 

of the Gulf of Siam at an estate that she had. She wanted to know why Kenneth had bothered to call 

on her, and he answered that he always liked to call on people, if he could, who had had dinner in his 

house. "I've had dinner in your house?!" Yes, and as Kenneth told her, it all came back to her. 

4 

27:18 Kip remembers that, when he was very young, there was an article in the newspaper about 

the Landons working to put in a special new kind of grass on their terraces. There was a picture of 

Carol hard at work. Kenneth recalls it too. When they moved in late 1944, there was no grass, no 

shrubbery, no trees except for some Virginia scrub pines out behind the house. Oh, Kenneth recalls, 

there ZHUH six shrubs. The Landons decided to turn the liabilities of the bare terraces into something 

special. Out back, what they did was to put in a rock garden. But the first thing was to get some 

grass growing on the three front terraces. Kenneth called the Department of Agriculture, Division of 

Grasses, out in Beltsville, their experimental station, and asked the head of the division if he could 

recommend a "self-cutting, weed-proof terrace grass." The man recommended something 

experimental, called "Korean grave grass." It was a variety of zoysia, not zoysia japonica, but a fine, 

slow-growing grass that in some climates never had to be cut, called zoysia matrella. It had not been 

grown this far north. The man gave Kenneth an address where he could buy three square yards of the 

stuff. It was like buying a Persian rug. Very expensive. $12 a square yard, or so. 

When Kenneth began to plant the front terraces, he found them so full of rocks that there was 

no place to plant grass. Kenneth had to "de-bone" the terraces as he went. Initially, he tried planting 

plugs of the grass on the theory that it would grow in, but that didn't work. The terrace was too steep. 

So he ended up taking heavy tin shears and cutting long strips of the grass, two inches wide, laying 

them in a little trench. He prepared the ground first with generous doses of sheep manure, on the 

theory that this would "release its goodies over an extended period of time." 

Those first three square yards of zoysia, planted in strips, survived the winter. So Kenneth 

wrote Miss Nell Pickens, Sleepy Hollow Farms, in North Carolina, and ordered a lot of the grass. 

Then Bill got into the act, with Margaret, and they began to saw up the grass using a pair of boxes on 

which they laid the grass, which made the task much easier. The result was that the terraces were 

"just beautiful." Kenneth only had to cut them two or three times a year. 

5 

32:44 The Landons' next-door neighbor was a Dutchman named von Bredenburg (SP?), who was 

the counsellor of the Netherlands embassy. The Landons were told when they moved into 4711 

Fulton Street in 1944 that he would have nothing to do with them. He didn't want to know his 

neighbors. He was the kind who would come out in white duck trousers, wearing white gloves, 

carrying a little pair of scissors to snip things on rose bushes. That was his idea of gardening. He 

didn't think much of Kenneth because here Kenneth was in muck, wearing shorts, no shirt, no shoes 

either, as he worked on his terraces. "I was just in mud, I was a mess. He wanted nothing to do with 

me." Well, the grass became famous. Kenneth had telephone interviews from the press about it. 

They were quite interested. 

Subsequently, von Bredenburg went over to the State Department one day, and called on the 

432


Dutch desk officer, Jack Morgan. This would have been about 1947 or 1948. The Dutch were trying 

to get military assistance from us to help them regain control of the Dutch East Indies. He asked Mr. 

Morgan what had happened to his appeals for aid. He had written them and communicated 

repeatedly, and nothing had ever happened. Why not? Why can't you help us? We're your allies. 

Morgan replied that he had written up recommendations that the aid be granted, including arms and 

logistics support, but then the memorandum had to be cleared with the Southeast Asia desk officer, 

Kenneth Landon, who was von Bredenburg's next-door neighbor, and he always rejected it. When 

Jack told Kenneth about this conversation, Kenneth asked how von Bredenburg had reacted. Morgan 

just made a sound, "Ooomph!" Von Bredenburg naturally assumed that Kenneth was angry about his 

attitude and was doing it to get back at him. But in fact, Kenneth didn't care about that one way or 

the other. The real reason was Kenneth's opposition to any attempt to reinstall colonialism. 

The very next day or so, the photographers came out from The Washington Post to take 

pictures of Kenneth's grass. They asked Carol to pose sitting in the grass, it was so beautiful. Von 

Bredenburg's young children came bustling over, all dressed up, to get into the picture. But even that 

didn't get the Dutch the aid they wanted! 

6 

36:40 In 1942-43, the winter was terrible. The Landons didn't have enough oil to heat the house 

because the oil was rationed according to the use of previous winters, and the family that had lived 

there had always gone south in the winter so that hardly any oil had been used. Margaret was 

miserable, pregnant with Kip, working to finish her book. Kenneth was still with the BEW. He tells 

again of the office pool, and the cradle with the book and the doll on either end. People at the BEW 

were literally finding excuses to go out to the house at 2910 Brandywine St. so that they could get a 

look at Margaret and perhaps change their bet. Margaret finished the book July 23, immediately after 

which she had the first labor pain. Kenneth describes getting lost on the way to the hospital, in the 

middle of the night, with the streets empty and no one around to ask for directions. But he found his 

way, and Kip was quickly born. 

Kenneth believes the final manuscript of the book weighed more than the baby at birth, once 

it was all wrapped up to be sent to John Day. The actual publication was in 1944. The book was 

such a smashing success that money began to come in, and the Landons decided to use the money to 

get a house. And so they bought 4711 Fulton Street. Kenneth comments again on the deplorable 

condition of the grounds, which had frightened off other buyers. The other houses on the block had 

been inhabited for some time and had landscaping. 4711 was the last house built on the block in that 

initial period. [One house was built three houses up the street many years later.] 

Peggy experimented with quite a number of boys in her dating. One night she went out with a 

tough Italian boy who came to the house trying to look respectable, but "he was a real tough." 

Margaret got very upset about it, weeping all through the evening. She expected a real tragedy to 

ensue. She could scarcely believe it when Peggy came home alive, and on time! Peggy never dated 

that one again. 

She always had lots of boyfriends. One of them hoped to become a professional baseball 

player. Another went on to West Point, Lou Schalk. He became a test pilot. 

Peggy decided to give a party. That meant they had to take up the big rug in the living room, 

which Kenneth had to do. And wax the floor. When the party was going, a whole bunch of kids 

crashed the party uninvited. "Well, Peggy, she's little but oh my, and she just told those fellows how 

they were going to have to behave. My night was made, however, when one of them. . . ." He goes 

on to say that they were hunting for a bottle of liquor, but that there was none in the house. 

"Margaret and I didn't drink anything at that time. I couldn't have had a bottle of wine or whiskey in 

433


this house without losing my ears. I wasn't inclined to lose my ears. . . ." In any case, this one young 

fellow was determined to find a bottle of alcohol, and he snuck into the kitchen. There, under the 

sink, he found it, or so he thought! It was actually a bottle of fish oil from China or Japan, with 

unintelligible characters all down the label, and it looked as if it could have been a bottle of white 

wine. That guy jerked the cork out, upended the bottle, and glug glug glugged it down before it 

dawned on him that this was not liquor. Kenneth walked in just at that moment. The guy let out a 

wild cry, threw the bottle in the sink, and made a dash for the back door, and then Kenneth heard the 

most awful retching outside, accompanied by agonizing groans. After that, the kid and his friends 

left. They weren't going to stay at a party where they couldn't drink. "And I was so cheered by it. I 

just laughed and laughed and laughed." The party was a great success. Peggy was "always a very 

sociable type." 

7 

51:05 Bill was an absolute natural golfer. "He could have been a professional golfer if he had 

wanted to." He had good timing, the co-ordination, the grace. There was a golf team at Wilson High 

School. But what Bill wanted to do was to run the mile, so he went out for the track team. Margaret 

and Kenneth dutifully went to his meets, as all good parents should. And Bill would run with 

everything he had, coming in last, "running with all his might, up and down in the same spot." 

Kenneth kidded him about it. 

Later on, when Bill was living in Seattle, he took up race-walking. He studied the technique 

and learned the rolling gate and become quite expert. He could really cover the ground then. 

Unfortunately, he injured himself, so he gave up race-walking and began jogging. 

In 1945, Kenneth went out to Thailand for the British-Thai negotiations, and one of his first 

trips out of Bangkok was to Cambodia. "I had, you might say, liberated an old beat-up Chevrolet car 

that had been owned by some foreigner, probably an Englishman, pasted a big American flag in the 

windshield, over the right side of the windshield, and I had a jeep with two OSS officers as my escort 

officers wearing their uniforms and .45 Colt automatic pistols. . . ." One was a man named Walter 

Bella (SP?), who later became a scholar and has written the definitive study to date on Rama III, the 

third monarch of the Chakri dynasty. They hadn't gone more than an hour or two out of Bangkok 

when they saw a huge cloud of dust up ahead of them. They thought it was buffalo at first, but when 

they drove up behind it, they discovered to their dismay that it was a Japanese army marching under 

its own power, with no allied military about at all, under its own command to a camp to await 

repatriation to Japan. [And every soldier was fully armed.] Kenneth learned later that it was the 

crack Japanese army back from Burma, some 90,000 troops. The escort officer asked Kenneth what 

they should do, and Kenneth said they would blow the horn and drive through them. The army 

would have to move. So the Jeep and the car both blew their horns as they drove up behind the 

marching army. The soldiers looked back, and the officer at the rear immediately saluted, seeing that 

it was an official car with an American flag. The troops began to move over, and it was like passing 

a boa constrictor as the two vehicles drove along. They had to go slowly. It took several hours to 

drive past them until they could turn off on the road to Cambodia. 

They reached the border, and the district officer there gave them lunch and offered them lunch 

when they returned. They drove on to the city of Battambang, which was the home town of one of 

Thailand's prime ministers, Kuanga Phaiwon (SP?), later on, a very wealthy man. His brother was 

the governor there. Well, before Kenneth left Bangkok, the OSS chaps had told him he ought to 

carry a revolver, just in case, and they suggested he take a .32 Colt automatic. Kenneth didn't have a 

place to carry this, so he stuck it in his belt. The trouble was that, when he went to the tropics, he lost 

weight at the rate of about a pound a day, until he reached 133 or 134 pounds. "I got thinner and 

434


thinner as I went." He had "this wretched gun" stuck in his belt when he walked into the marble 

palace to meet the governor, Apaiwong (SP?), the brother of Kuang. The governor knew Kenneth 

was coming, because Kenneth had telegraphed ahead to make an appointment to see him. As 

Kenneth walked toward him, he was about forty to fifty feet from him when suddenly "this wretched 

gun" slid out of his belt, down his trouser leg, skidded off the front of his toe, and skated along the 

marble floor, ending up at the governor's feet. The man stood there, looking down at this gun, then 

looking up at Kenneth, and he laughed, "Why, Mr. Landon, have you come to assassinate me?" 

Kenneth laughed too and explained that he was just too thin and the damn gun fell out of his belt and 

went down his trouser leg. And besides, there were no bullets in it. The governor picked it up and 

checked. That was right; there were no bullets in it. He asked if Kenneth wanted it back, and 

Kenneth said yes because he had to turn it in to the OSS when he returned to Bangkok. The governor 

thought the whole thing was just hilarious. 

Kenneth stayed with him, then went on to Angkor Wat, where he was met by the curator of 

Angkor, a Frenchman. 

435


HOUR 69 

Session #49 continued November 12, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

1 

0:00 (XIA500) Kenneth went on to Angkor, where he was met by the curator of Angkor, a 

Frenchman, who brought his wife, two of his daughters, and perhaps a son. Kenneth spent most of a 

week there. During the week, the French curator took Kenneth to the inmost temple of the Angkor 

collection of temples, which was deep in the jungle and was known as "The Children's Temple" 

because it was in miniature. It had been built by one of the emperors for his children. The doorways 

were all low. The facilities were all of a miniature nature. 

While they were there, all of sudden, out of the jungle came a band or thirty or forty savagelooking 

individuals with blowguns, bows and arrows, and knives. Kenneth thought, "Oh my gosh, 

this is the end of Landon!" But all the men wanted was to sell these items to the white men, whom 

they regarded as tourists, the first they had seen in years. They were determined that the whites 

should buy their weapons. Kenneth was very relieved. Didn't buy anything. Wouldn't have known 

what to do with blowpipes. 

Session #50 November 19, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

2 

1:48 The cost of Kenneth's trip was $1367 one way by plane to Bangkok, plus $342 for his 

baggage! He flew on a C-54 military plane. The C-47 was the workhorse. But the C-54 was much 

more substantial. He flew from New York City, flying out over the fleet as it was delivering a 

twenty-one gun salute to President Truman. 

On a later trip, Kenneth recalls, as he flew up to New York, a little boy was sitting next to him 

on the plane and asked, "Where are you going, sir?" very politely. And Kenneth told him, New York. 

And where was he going after that? Kenneth answered that he was taking the Stratocruiser from 

here. The boy turned around and looked at Kenneth thoughtfully, then asked, with an absolutely 

straight face, "To what planet, sir?" And he meant it. "I've never forgotten that exchange because it 

was so serious." To him "Stratocruiser" meant outer space. He didn't think it strange at all. "He 

looked at me with considerable interest." 

The 1945 flight from New York landed in Ireland, then in London, where Kenneth visited the 

bookstores. He then flew to Paris. Margaret had just "gotten in the chips" because of Anna, and had 

some money to spend. They had agreed that he would buy books along the way, wherever he could 

find good collections. Many of the items that Margaret now has are from the collection of an English 

scholar who wrote two books on Thailand, a three-hundred-pound man whose name Kenneth cannot 

recall, who carried a funny little knife attached to his belt in all his travels. He had decided to sell off 

a good bit of his library. (Kenneth goes to locate the name. Quaritch Wales. The Quaritch 

Publishing Company was one of his sponsors.) One of his books concerned Thai government 

ceremony, which was derived from the Cambodians in the fifteenth century. It was a fine study, 

based on materials Wales got from Prince Damrong, who was also a fine scholar. At any rate, in 

London Kenneth bought many books that had belonged to Quaritch Wales, including books of old 

photographs taken by one of the most famous of English photographers of the early period. 

Then in Paris, Kenneth went into a French bookstore and found a large section on Southeast 

436


Asia, and particularly on Thailand. Kenneth began taking items off the shelves and setting them on a 

table as he went along. The owner of the shop became agitated as he saw everything coming off the 

shelf. Finally, the man said to Kenneth that it would be so much better if he just took out the books 

that interested him and returned the others to their shelves. Kenneth replied, "Why, I'm taking them 

all!" The man just practically swooned because he saw almost his entire stock being sold. Finally, 

Kenneth had virtually everything he had on Thailand out on the table, told the man to put them in 

boxes, figure out the bill, and ship them off to Margaret in Washington. Kenneth explained who he 

was, and showed his identification. He said Margaret would send a check. And amazingly, with no 

other assurance than this that he would be paid, the man did it. 

3 

11:40 Kenneth's preparation for the trip were very simple. He knew that he would be travelling all 

over Southeast Asia and that he would probably have to handle his own baggage, so he knew that he 

needed to keep his baggage to a minimum. What he settled on became his classic "baggage 

complement." He carried a briefcase shaped like a small satchel, and in that he always carried the 

usual things for personal comfort, such as shaving kit, toothbrush, soap, some sort of alcohol, perhaps 

an eau de cologne, so that if he had to splash alcohol on anything, it would smell good, an extra pair 

of glasses, paper and envelopes to write letters on, a couple of books, a change of underwear, a shirt, 

two or three pairs of socks, a sweater—because even in the tropics, if you were flying two or three 

thousand feet up in a plane, it was cold. If he were separated from his suitcase, he would be able to 

get by. 

He wrote regular letters to Margaret during his travels because that was the way he had 

decided to keep a record of his trip. He didn't want to keep a diary with him, other than a small book 

"for jottings" with a bare minimum of details on who he saw or was going to see and when. He also 

wrote regular letters to his office in the State Department that included information of more 

diplomatic interest and less family interest. 

In his one suitcase—actually a small trunk—he carried a small mosquito net that he could 

drape over his head while sleeping. He used it often. He carried suits that he could wash and hang to 

dry, two or three of them, and of course shirts and underwear and so on. He also carried a medical 

kit, including 1000 pills of sulfaguanidine for dysentery "because I knew I'd get it, and I knew I'd run 

into people everywhere who had it. . . ." It was one of his most welcome contributions in Southeast 

Asia as he travelled around. People would do almost anything to get these pills because they had 

nothing comparable. Four of these pills, they would call them "GI cement." You took four to start 

with, and then two every few hours thereafter. "They'd stop you." 

He also carried quinine, iodine, some sort of salve, band-aids, and so on. 

He had a little tin trunk, fatter than any suitcase would be, with no amenities inside. He could 

lock it with two little Yale locks, which he generally did. 

For money, Kenneth carried some cash, and money orders, but what he really depended on 

were his travel orders. He carried a sheaf of these which he wrote himself as the need arose. He was 

the assistant chief of the division, and he authorized Kenneth P. Landon to make this trip. (As things 

came up, he would write up a new travel order, authorizing Kenneth Landon to travel to such and 

such a place on official Department of State business.) He could go to any embassy or any consulate 

and draw money, which he did over the five months of the trip. 

4 

19:20 From Paris, Kenneth caught another C-54, which was a propeller plane. After flying on this 

sort of plane for a few days, you seemed to continue hearing the propellers. You really felt it. Those 

437


planes made an awful racket. The stops were fairly frequent because those planes had to be refueled 

fairly often. For some reason or other, the passengers kept getting breakfast wherever they set down. 

It would always be ham and eggs or bacon and eggs, and terrible coffee. "I can still remember it with 

a sense of horror." 

On that part of the trip, they flew down over Ba'albek, then down over northern Africa past 

the pyramids. As they flew over northern Africa, they went right over Rommel's battlefield. It was a 

dramatic scene because you could see where the battles had been fought, and you could see all those 

tanks and discarded vehicles and weapons of various sorts, just lying there abandoned. It was a scene 

of devastation. 

They went on across India, landing first in Karachi and then at Calcutta. From Calcutta, they 

flew to Rangoon, Burma, and finally to Bangkok. When he arrived in Burma, the consul general, 

Glen Abby (SP?), briefed him on conditions in the country. Abby was later fired during the 

McCarthy period on the grounds that he was a homosexual. Kenneth knew nothing about that, but 

found him to be "very fine person to work with." Burma was disturbed politically. The British were 

very cautious because they discovered that if they rode around in their jeeps at night, they were 

sitting ducks. They would be silhouetted against the light of their own headlights, and they were 

being assassinated all over the place. So if they went anywhere, they quickly learned to drive without 

lights. This added "a certain quality, you might say, of interest to the trip." Kenneth travelled around 

with them when he had to. The Burmese were travelling the roads carrying guns and shotguns, ready 

to use them. They were preparing to rise up against the English. 

Glen Abby had made himself known to Aung San (SP?), the leading Burmese general, and to 

Sachin "So" and Sachin "This" and U Nu and others. Kenneth met them all at that time, through 

Glen Abby. They were absolutely determined to drive the British out. Admiral Lord Louis 

Mountbatten recognized this. There was a British government which had been a government-in-exile 

which returned to Burma to take over, and inevitably this was going to lead to a civil war. At that 

time, Lord Louis was meeting with Aung San, and Aung San went on to London, with Lord Louis' 

support for his demands for self-government and independence. Mountbatten avoided a civil war 

there by doing this. It was he, of course, who later became the "High Mucky Muck" of India and 

fostered the independence of India and its division into India and Pakistan. He did so for the same 

reason, to avoid all the unnecessary bloodshed. The outcome was inevitable anyway. In this, 

Mountbatten and those who supported him were much smarter than the French, who were determined 

to stay in Indochina. In a sense, Mountbatten was in opposition to the Churchillian doctrine, which 

was that he was not in office to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire. That was exactly 

what Lord Louis Mountbatten ZDV doing. When Kenneth was in Burma, this issue was very hot, and 

there were people being shot every night. 

One night, according to Kenneth's letters of the time, prowlers came around, and Kenneth 

scared them off. But Kenneth has no memory of this. 

The nationalists in Burma came around to Glen Abby's house every night to talk, and Kenneth 

spent a good deal of time with them. 

From Rangoon, Kenneth went on over to Bangkok. There was an OSS mission in Bangkok, 

represented by James Thompson. On the Legation side, only one other American was there, having 

arrived the day before Kenneth to represent the USIA, Ted Grundahl (SP?). He was really a public 

relations fellow, there to publicize whatever was going on. He welcomed Kenneth. 

Kenneth's job was to meet with the Thai officials and to inspect the American Legation to 

ensure that everything was in order for the arrival of our Chargé d'Affaires, Charles Yost, who was 

due a day or so later. The Legation had been used by the Japanese as a stable, so it had been like a 

barnyard. But the Thai had thoroughly cleaned it up. When Kenneth went to inspect it, he found the 

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Chinese staff that had staffed the Legation before World War II. They were back on the job. Some 

of them had known Kenneth as a missionary. The Thai, of course, knew he was coming, and they 

had him on their CID list—Central Intelligence Department—because of some articles Kenneth had 

written for Asia magazine, and particularly "Siam Rides the Tiger," before the war, concerning 

Siam's relations with Japan. This had annoyed a number of high officials, particularly in the Thai 

ministry of foreign affairs. When they found out that Kenneth was coming out as a representative of 

the United States government, they scrubbed his name from the list. 

5 

30:40 The overall purpose of Kenneth's trip was initially to be political advisor on the negotiations 

between the English and the Thai. The British had made twenty-one demands on the Thai, which 

would have made Thailand virtually a British colony. The negotiations went on simultaneously in 

Bangkok and in Colombo, with delegates going back and forth. Kenneth didn't go back and forth; he 

stayed in Bangkok with Charles Yost. But we had Americans in Colombo too. The Thai 

representative who did shuttle back and forth was Prince Wiwat (SP?), who Kenneth knew from his 

missionary days and had come to know well more recently. He was a banker and a very fine 

gentleman. The British representative in Bangkok had been their consul general in Chiang Mai 

before the war, a man named Byrd. The State Department was busy sending out orders and 

instructions on what to do and not to do on these demands, with the hope of beating the British back. 

Kenneth had arrived in October. By December the demands had largely been diminished to one. The 

British were demanding that Thailand, which had come through the war in good shape, unhurt, 

undamaged, with three million tons of rice in storage, contribute all of this rice free to Burma, 

Indonesia, Malaysia, which were in need of food. Things were especially difficult in Indonesia, 

though they had done well agriculturally, surprisingly. Kenneth took the point of view that the Thai 

didn't have the rice; it was the Chinese merchants who did. And they weren't going to give anything 

to anyone. 

The negotiations went on week after week. Kenneth would interrupt now and then, or give 

Charles Yost some advice, or make some observation. Finally, Mr. Byrd decided to dispose of him. 

He spoke to Kenneth, saying that he was assuming a knowledge of the country of Thailand that he 

really didn't possess. "We all admire your father as a scholar, and his books, which we regard as very 

scholarly works on this country. But you can't claim to know what your father knew." Prince Wiwat 

was sitting there, and his eyes "got big and round" as he realized that Byrd didn't know Kenneth had 

written the books. Kenneth smiled and said, "Why, Mr. Byrd, in the language of One greater than I, 

'I and my father are one.' I wrote those books." It just took the gas out of him, really. That was 

virtually the end of British opposition while Kenneth was there. Mr. Byrd was "crushed" to have 

made such a booboo. 

At this point, in December, King Ananda returned from Switzerland with his younger brother, 

Phumipol, who is the present king. They were unmarried, still boys. King Ananda had to make a 

little speech when he arrived, and his speech had to be in Thai, and was written for him. 

Unfortunately, he didn't speak Thai as well as Kenneth did. It was striking. He just stumbled and 

stumbled like a schoolboy, trying to read the speech, which he could not have written himself. His 

mother was there. They arrived by boat at the riverside, and the diplomats were all out at the dock to 

greet them. 

The royal family, that is, King Ananda, Phumipol, their mother, Charlie Yost and his wife 

Irena, and Kenneth had meals together several times. Kenneth had not taken any formal clothes on 

the trip. Just white duck suits. When the King entertained at dinner, it had to be formal, since it was 

in the palace. 

439


One of our OSS fellows, named McDonald, gave King Ananda and Phumipol a number of 

items that he had there, one of them a jeep, and these two kids would practically scare the life out of 

everybody in the royal palace because the roadways in the palace grounds were hardly wider than the 

jeep. The two of them would come racing down those narrow roads, and people would simply leap 

for their lives to get away from them. What could they do with the King and his brother? McDonald 

also gave them a .45 Colt automatic, which was the gun that was used later to kill King Ananda, 

when he was murdered in 1946—after Kenneth had left. 

When Kenneth had first arrived in Bangkok, he had to have a place to stay. He didn't stay at 

the Legation until after the Yosts arrived; they then invited him to stay with them. Until then, he 

stayed where the OSS mission was staying, in the Rose Palace, the Suigalop (SP?), where our agents 

had worked from inside the royal palace during the war. He was a bunkmate of Major James 

Thompson and was with him when he received a Dear John letter from his wife telling him she was 

divorcing him because he had said he wasn't ready to come home yet. Kenneth suspects that there 

were serious differences between them. He was very much enamored of Bangkok and wanted to stay 

out there, and she was not inclined to. And she had found someone else who wanted to marry her. 

Thompson was in tears when Kenneth came into the room. It was a long letter, page after page. 

After the letter, Thompson said he was not going to return to the U.S. ever. 

During the next few days, he and Kenneth talked on and off about his future there. He said he 

thought he would go into the silk business. Kenneth told him about all the bums he had seen during 

his ten years living in the country, and predicted a dismal future for Thompson if he stayed. Well, 

Thompson said he had made the acquaintance of a whole village of Lao weavers, and he was going 

into the silk weaving business. But he needed to have some truly fine designs. He didn't speak Thai, 

and he never did learn to speak Thai in all the years he lived out there. He did speak a terrible 

French, just as bad as Kenneth's. "I mean it was just incredible how awful his French was. I mean it 

was a monotone, and it just went along in a way that was almost unbelievable." But the Lao villagers 

could understand him in French because they had been in French Indochina. So Kenneth took 

Thompson around to the "thieves' market" to buy silks, and introduced him to a good many of the 

Thai officials and sought their help in obtaining silks and patterns for him. Then Thompson began to 

make arrangements to buy the yarn and get the dye lots. By profession, he was a professional 

architect, so that he knew about building and construction and so on. The upshot was that he set up 

in business, and maintained a very nice business, neither getting rich nor getting poor. And then 

Margaret's book was turned into The King and I 

Rodgers and Hammerstein needed some help on the costumes, so Kenneth put them in touch 

with Jim Thompson, who did research in the museum at Bangkok on the costumes of the Mongkut 

period, had sketches made, and got their approval for the manufacture of the clothes and garments for 

the play. He produced the silk, had his weavers weave it in the appropriate patterns, had dressmakers 

put the costumes together, and that made him rich. He did all the costumes for both the Broadway 

and the London shows, which came out almost simultaneously. Kenneth saw the show in both 

places, in London in 1953, he believes. The costumes were identical in both shows. And the 

business in both productions, the movements and gestures, was identical. The actors had been trained 

by the same people. 

Thompson had to continually renew the costumes, so he had a constant stream of new 

clothing going out to these shows as they continued year after year. He eventually opened up outlets 

in New York and Paris. He became quite wealthy and well known. Tourists to Thailand knew of 

him and wanted to meet him. 

His success did him in. The wife of Marshall Sarit, the Prime Minister, decided to take over 

Thompson's business. She confiscated the total silk crop of the whole country for her own 

440


productions. That was in about 1960. Thompson was forced to look outside the country to buy raw 

silk for his business. Kenneth saw him again on his 1966 trip to the country. By that time Sarit was 

out of the picture, and Propot (SP?) was in power, but Thompson was still struggling to find silk to 

carry on his business, travelling around the world to buy it. Shortly after that, he was murdered. 

6 

45:28 Kenneth was buying many books in Thailand, over 1000 of them. 

An amusing business was going on with the Regent, Pridi Panomyong (SP?), whose title was 

Luang Pradit Manuthon (SP?). He had been the leader of the coup d'état that had overthrown the 

absolute monarchy in 1932. He was the hero of Kenneth's first book, Siam in Transition, which 

dealt with the first five years of the new government. In the back of that book, there was Pridi's 

economic plan for revising and recasting the total economy of Thailand along socialist and 

communist lines. Pridi didn't call it that. But it put virtually everyone on the payroll of the 

government. It was a classified document, not in the public domain. Also in the back of the book 

there were the minutes of a meeting of the Siamese cabinet, their council of state, to declare Pridi a 

communist, and require his departure in exile from the country. This too was a secret document, 

never published. Kenneth obtained the two documents while still a missionary in Trang. Prince 

Dhani (SP?), the minister of education at that time—in the 1930's, perhaps 1935 or so—came all the 

way down from Bangkok to read Pridi's economic plan in Kenneth's house. The only place of 

privacy was in the toilet. It was the only room in the house where you could lock the door, though 

the "lock" was only a little hook. Kenneth told him where the document was, under a pile of 

newspapers. So the prince betook himself to privy, sat on the toilet, and carefully read the precious 

documents that interested him. 

The story of how Kenneth got hold of these documents is a curious one. There was a Thai 

who was an aide to Pridi who wanted to marry a girl in the church at Trang, a Christian girl. He was 

not a Christian. He came to Kenneth to speak of his desire to marry this girl. Kenneth knew that he 

was an aide of Pridi, and an intimate of Pridi. Kenneth also knew about the economic plan, and 

suspected that there were minutes from the meeting that had forced Pridi to leave the country. He 

had been forced to leave and then had managed a second coup d'état and returned, re-establishing 

himself. So Kenneth talked to this man about Pridi, and showed great interest about his plan, and 

intimated somehow that he would be much more sympathetic to his marrying the girl if he had this 

document on Pridi's plan for the nation. Kenneth was already working on his book about the political 

change in Thailand which had come about through the revolution, and was gathering documents. He 

was getting together a ten-year newspaper file of Siamese newspapers and magazines, anything he 

could get, much of it ephemeral material. The man was disconsolate at the thought of Kenneth's 

opposing his marriage to the girl, feeling Kenneth wasn't going to let him, and he said he'd have to go 

off and think about what he could do. When he came back, he presented Kenneth with a copy of 

Pridi's economic plan, plus the minutes of the council of state, a very unusual document. 

It was like a CIA operation. 

Kenneth agreed to marry the couple but required that the man promise certain things. 

Kenneth wrote the marriage ceremony in Thai. He would have to promise that he would be loving 

and true to his wife, with all her Christian virtues, that he would always be faithful to her in sickness 

and health and so on, and that he would cling to her and to no other woman. This was an astounding 

thing for a Thai Buddhist to promise, that he would have only this one wife and no other. He 

blenched a little. And then Kenneth said that as witnesses of the marriage, he was going to have the 

governor of the state and the chief justice of the court. When Kenneth approached the governor and 

then the chief justice, Pra Duhn Duhnnarot (SP?), they were both astounded that the man would 

441


promise this sort of thing, and in front of witnesses. But the man was desperate to marry the girl. 

Word passed all over town about the wedding, which was held in the girls' school, where 

Margaret was the principal. It was held in the first floor auditorium, with all the double windows 

flung open. Not only was the auditorium filled wall to wall, but people were hanging in the windows 

to see this amazing event. 

Then Kenneth had a problem with the documents. They were illegal for him to have, and he 

could have gotten into serious problems if they were found. So he put them in a pile of newspapers 

that he kept in the toilet. Kenneth believes that Prince Dhani learned of the documents from the same 

man who gave them to Kenneth, who was Dhani's intimate also. 

7 

54:19 In 1945, when Kenneth arrived in Bangkok, he had only been there a few days when Pridi 

gave him an official dinner. At the dinner, Pridi said he had read Kenneth's book and commented 

that it was a very fair book. It had said many nice things about Pridi and about the figures in his coup 

d'état. He had no objections to it. But, he said, he was very much interested in those documents at 

the back of the book. How did Kenneth get them? Kenneth said he couldn't reveal his sources, and 

said he felt he had used the documents well. Pridi agreed to that. Then Kenneth said there was one 

document that he wanted to acquire, and wondered if Pridi could help him. Pridi was being very 

friendly to Kenneth, and helping him acquire a great many of the books that Margaret has in her 

library. Kenneth thinks that he got 600 to 700 books from Pridi alone, who sent an order to the 

library in Bangkok to give two copies of each desired book to Kenneth, one for his own use, one for 

the Library of Congress in Washington. This put the Library of Congress in business regarding 

important Thai publications. "Their whole Thai collection was shipped directly from the Legation to 

the Library of Congress courtesy of the Regent and Ken Landon, so that my name is with that 

collection up there as the person who procured it." 

The document Kenneth desired dealt with Pridi's career and his economic plan. It was King 

Prajadhipok's (SP?) comments RQ Pridi's economic plan. Pridi sat back and laughed. He had a head 

of hair with a short brush of hair standing up. And he spoke English the way a Frenchman would 

speak it. He said, "Hah, Mr. Landon, I suggest, Mr. Landon, that you obtain the document containing 

the observations of King Prajadhipok in the same fashion in which you procured the economic plan 

originally. Ha ha ha ha," he burst into laughter. Kenneth thanked him anyway. Four month later, 

when Kenneth was departing in March, 1946, Pridi gave Kenneth another dinner in farewell. At the 

dinner, Pridi reminded Kenneth of their earlier conversation concerning King Prajadhipok's 

observations. Did Mr. Landon get a copy? "Yes, I did," Kenneth answered. "I knew you would," he 

said. "I knew you would!" He was quite pleased that Kenneth had managed to get it without his 

help. 

Kenneth never used that particular document, fascinating as it was. He regretted not having it 

when he published his book. The years passed; the 1960's arrived; and then one day he received a 

letter from a French scholar who was writing his dissertation at the University of Paris for professor 

So and so, who was an American Kenneth had known at the University of Pennsylvania. Could 

Kenneth provide him with copies of the economic plan and other documents? Kenneth obliged and 

microfilmed them for him, including King Prajadhipok's comments as an extra gift, which had never 

been published and was largely unknown. Weeks passed, and then a letter came from the Frenchman 

saying that he was in trouble with his advisor. 

442


HOUR 70 

Session #50 continued November 19, 1982 Kenneth and Kip 

1 

0:00 (XIA975) Kenneth continues the story of the Ph.D. candidate from France. He wrote Kenneth 

to say that he was in trouble with his advisor in Paris because of the Prajadhipok (SP?) document. A 

professor at the University of Paris who had lived in Bangkok and read Thai alleged that the 

document was in the public domain, contrary to what Kenneth had said, and had been published. 

Kenneth wrote back and suggested that he have his advisor write him, that is, Kenneth, which the 

advisor did. Kenneth then wrote the advisor that the Thai-speaking French professor at the 

University had been misled by his ignorance of the Thai language. Kenneth pointed out that the 

Prajadhipok document had been printed in the heavy punishment prison and never distributed. 

Kenneth heard nothing further until he received a copy of the book the student had written for his 

Ph.D., which included the document. 

(We discuss the time Kenneth met the royal family at the dock. His letters of the time 

indicate that they came by rail from Singapore, not by boat. The time he met them at the dock was 

probably in 1950. Kenneth adds that, when the King arrived in 1945, Pridi turned over his office as 

Regent to the King.) 

December 14, 1945, there was a dinner at the Legation during which Kenneth became 

violently ill, supposedly from food poisoning. 

There were Thai in Bangkok who were very suspicious of Kenneth for several reasons. One 

was that he knew too much. And then they weren't used to having Americans who were as fluent as 

he was in the language, and knew the countryside as he did, and knew as many people. "I was 

something of a phenomenon. Very few of the missionaries could speak Thai the way I did." 

On the other hand, when the British caved in on their demands, there was a big celebration, 

and "it was the first and only time in my life that I've had Thai rush and hug me and hang garlands of 

flowers around my neck." This was in late December. 

One of Pridi's aides regarded Kenneth as an enemy. "This 'illness'—the Thai here in 

Washington apparently knew who had done it and knew what he gave me. Which was probably 

some form of arsenic." Charlie and Irena didn't become ill at all. Kenneth was hauled off to the 

French hospital. "I vomited and excreted all night." The doctor kept giving him morphine through 

the night. By morning, Kenneth was recovering. "I bounced back very quickly. I always do. 

Always have." The aide believed to have poisoned Kenneth was one of two who were especially 

close to Pridi, who were often compared to the two figures closest to Buddha. He was the "mohkala" 

(SP?) aide. He later became ambassador to China. "The Thai gave me to understand that he was the 

chap who'd had me poisoned. Enough so as to make me deathly ill, and if I died in the process, he 

wouldn't be sorry." 

Many years later, after years of having many skin cancers removed, Kenneth had to find a 

new skin doctor, and when he first went to the man, the doctor asked Kenneth, "Were you ever 

poisoned with arsenic? This looks to me like arsenic poisoning, these lesions that you have on your 

skin." Kenneth recalled the dinner in 1945. 

2 

10:00 There was a lot of partying during Kenneth's time in Bangkok. He went dancing almost 

443


every night. When the Japanese were in the country, there were no nightclubs. There was no 

recreation or entertainment for the Japanese by the Thai. But when the allied forces came in, this all 

changed. Most of the troops were either Gurkhas or Indians, with some British. By the time Kenneth 

arrived, there were 130 nightclubs in operation, going every night, far into the night. The Saranarong 

(SP?) Gardens were for the upper class, the officer class and people like Kenneth, high class Thai. 

"All the gals would come out to entertain." Kenneth and a dozen or so others all showed up every 

night at the nightclub. "They'd all bring extra girls for me. I'd have girls dancing around. I hadn't 

done any dancing for years. Margaret never danced, so I never danced all the years I was a 

missionary. So, it was kind of fun." 

One night, at the Saranarong Gardens, one of the officials wanted Kenneth to meet a man who 

might become the Thai ambassador to Washington. Brought him over with his wife and his daughter, 

who was perhaps twelve years old, with pigtails down her back, and a longish skirt. "A cute little 

girl." The father and Kenneth talked awhile about Washington. They were all dancing, and Kenneth 

invited the man's daughter to dance with him. "She was quite pleased, and we danced, and I held her 

by both hands. As we went on, we danced around the floor, and I talked to her in Thai." She is now 

the Queen of Thailand. She would later marry King Phumipol. Her father was actually sent to 

London instead of Washington, which was a break for his daughter. She was up on jazz; knew all the 

songs. While Kenneth was dancing with her, she would sing the songs. "She was really a very cute 

kid." She could play the piano, including jazz piano. In London, the Thai would go over to visit with 

the Thai in Switzerland, where Phumipol was back in school. 

In 1946, King Ananda was killed—"killed by his brother, either intentionally or accidentally, 

by the gun the OSS guy had given them to play with." After that, Phumipol returned to Switzerland 

to finish his education. And when this girl came over, he played saxophone, she played piano, and he 

fell in love with her. He loved jazz. At the same time, Prince Dhani, Kenneth's old friend, who had 

come down from Bangkok to read Pridi's economic plan while sitting on the toilet in Kenneth's 

bathroom, had a daughter whose marriage he was trying to arrange with King Phumipol. The thing 

was that Prince Dhani was a scholar and insisted on all kinds of protocal procedure, including calling 

on the Queen Mother, and other formalities. Dhani knew all the procedures. Well, Phumipol 

couldn't be bothered. So he decided he would marry the girl he liked. This really upset Dhani. But 

he did himself in. 

3 

17:07 The electricity in Bangkok was erratic. The lights might go off at any moment, and you 

wouldn't know when they would come back on. One night, Charlie Yost, Irena, and Kenneth had 

gone to the Royal Palace, and were standing about having "pre-prandial drinks," which for Kenneth 

were non-alcoholic at that time, when the lights went out. Phumipol didn't smoke, but he always 

carried a cigarette lighter for his mother, who did. Suddenly, standing in this pitch black hall, he lit a 

cigarette lighter and held it under his chin, so that everyone was in shadow, while he was illuminated. 

And he grinned and laughed and said, "Look at me! I'd make a better king than my brother." Then 

he snapped off the light, and they all stood in darkness until aides came with candles. "To me it was 

a prophetic thing." He was a very cheerful young man. Ananda was a sobersides. He was not 

amusing. Didn't play anything. Neither of the boys spoke Thai very well. They preferred French. 

The British couldn't understand why the Americans objected to their twenty-one demands. 

They pointed out that they had a state of war with Siam, whereas the U.S. did not, which was true, 

since the U.S. had laughed it off. Didn't take it seriously the way the British did. The Thai minister 

in Washington, Seni Pramoj, had refused to extend the declaration of war. The British were puzzled 

by our involvement. What business was it of ours? It was WKH\ who had been officially at war with 

444


Thailand. Kenneth pointed out that the United States had won the war in the Pacific, not the British, 

and that we had a real interest in Southeast Asian affairs and did not want Thailand to become a ward 

of ours. We were the people who were going to have to pick up the tab, not the British. We wanted 

Thailand to be financially independent, which the British demands put under threat. If Thailand were 

independent, and could take care of its own needs, feed its people, and so on, it would be one area 

that picked up after the war on its own—not like Manila in the Philippines, which was wrecked. Or 

Singapore. Or Burma. The Thai had not resisted the Japanese and so had escaped with little damage. 

"They fought valiantly, to the last drop of blood, for four hours. That was it." 

The climax of the negotiations was December 22, when the British gave in. Then the 

celebrations began. The Thai especially wanted to honor General Timmerman, who was the 

American negotiator in Colombo. They invited him to come to Bangkok, and the King and Queen 

and all the cabinet gave him a dinner. Lord Louis didn't want that "to get out of hand," so he showed 

up, which led to a big argument between Charlie Yost and Mr. Byrd as to the seating arrangements. 

Mountbatten outranked Timmerman, and the British wanted the seating arranged accordingly, with 

the result that the dinner would now be in honor of Lord Louis Mountbatten. General Timmerman 

solved the problem by not coming, and went to Singapore instead. Byrd also insisted that he have 

precedence in the seating because "B" came before "Y" in the alphabet. Yost countered by saying 

that "A" for "American" was ahead of "U" for "United Kingdom." 

In any case, the dinner was held, and a Dr. Thongpleo delivered an eloquent speech of 

gratitude to the Americans. He was one of their "senators," and was quite an orator. He expressed 

elaborate appreciation to Kenneth for all he had done, and to the Americans for all they had done for 

the Thai people. "When they want to flatter you, they can really flatter you. And of course, I loved 

it. Listened to it all." 

At some point, Kenneth went down to Singapore, then over to Batavia, the Netherlands East 

Indies, over to Saigon—in January, 1946, it was. Kenneth closes the session with an impromptu 

singing of "Good Night, Ladies." 

After this session, Kenneth again called an end to the taping. But four months later we 

did one more session before truly stopping. 


4 

27:07 Margaret tells the story of her winning the letter-writing contest in the fall of 1939. That was 

the time when they moved from Wheaton, Illinois, to Richmond, Indiana. They had been living with 

Margaret's mother, Adelle Mortenson. 

Margaret gives her background "where writing is concerned." Her parents moved from 

Racine, Wisconsin, to Evanston, Illinois, when she was about three years old. Her father had found a 

position in Chicago. They chose to live in Evanston, just north of Chicago, because it was an 

excellent place to raise children, famous for its quality schools. At that time, it was a relatively small 

suburb, and was strictly regulated. It was limited to single-family homes. There was a great deal of 

wealth there, but most of the people were middle class. Margaret says she has never known another 

city or town that had public schools of the quality as in Evanston. 

The high school was divided in two parts. The part Margaret and her friends went to was for 

students who would be going on to college, and was run strictly as a preparatory school. The other 

part was the commercial part, for students who planned to go to work right after high school. Dr. 

Beardsley, the principal of the Evanston Township High School, set very high standards, and the 

445


teachers were excellent. 

Classes were held in the morning. The afternoon was devoted to tutoring, which was free. It 

was of a "very high caliber." The education Margaret received, she says, duplicated what the very 

best boarding schools offered. 

Among Margaret's teachers and one of the most brilliant was a Miss Effie Wambaugh. She 

taught the third year of English. The students were required to take four years of Latin. Greek was 

elective. Four years of English. Three years of French or German. Two and a half or three years of 

mathematics. They worked very hard. Later, when Margaret went to college, she coasted the entire 

first year. She had already covered the college material. Miss Wambaugh was more concerned about 

teaching her students to think than about teaching them to remember what they had read. She wasn't 

an easy teacher and used to scare Margaret's friend Mary Peabody to death because "she would 

pounce on you and question you this way and that way. But if you could think, you could get by, and 

she wouldn't mind an error here and there. . . ." The thing you could not get away with was not 

thinking. She put on plays, too, by classic playwrights. The students put them on before live 

audiences. Margaret had the lead in one, "Riders to the Sea." 

5 

34:43 "My great delight, actually, from the fourth grade on had been sports. I just instinctively 

loved sports." She had good grades but was never competitive. She graduated 14th in a class of 187, 

and that satisfied her. 

But one day, as she was walking through the halls, Miss Wambaugh came up behind her. 

Margaret was taller than the teacher, but Miss Wambaugh put her hand on her shoulder and whirled 

her around. "I can still hear her voice. She said, 'Margaret, you have the gift of words. Now do 

something with it.'" Margaret was startled, and the experience lodged in her mind. 

She had given no thought to her career. The courses she later took at Wheaton gave her no 

help toward a career in writing. But nevertheless, Miss Wambaugh's words stayed with her through 

the years that followed. 

So, Margaret went to Wheaton. Married Kenneth. Went to Siam with him, and worked very 

hard. As time passed, she began to think more about what Miss Wambaugh had said. "Yes, I think I 

might like to write." But there was no time for it. In the evenings in Siam, she would be too tired to 

do anything that took effort. If Kenneth were home, the two of them would read to each other. Dr. 

Bulkley had a complete set of Dickens, and they read the entire set to each other. If Kenneth weren't 

there, Margaret would read books Muriel Fuller sent her from America. 

The Landons came home in 1937, and rented an apartment that the University of Chicago had 

for its students while Kenneth studied for his doctorate. Evangeline went in to the city before they 

came to look the apartment over. It was furnished, but she bought some things for them, inexpensive 

curtains, and fixed it up for them. She and Evan met the Landons when they arrived and took them to 

the apartment, which was at the end of the campus behind the university hospital. Peggy and Charles 

were entered in the university grade school, with a full scholarship for Bill. 

So there they were in Chicago. Margaret already knew about the Medill School of 

Journalism, which was part of Northwestern University just north of the city. Margaret had thought 

to herself of stories she would like to write, but she didn't want to do it unless she had the ability to 

do it professionally. She tells of her friend Margaretta, who wrote well but lacked something 

indefinable and necessary to professional writing. Muriel Fuller could have written professionally, 

but lacked the discipline to rewrite and therefore never succeeded. Margaret made up her mind to go 

up to Medill, if she could get in, take some courses, and see what she could learn. 

She had no trouble getting in. The courses were evening courses taught by regular professors. 

446


One course she took was in short story writing, and another was in feature writing. Mr. Martin Ross 

taught the short story course, and Elmo Scott Watson taught the feature-writing course. He was the 

editor of the kind of syndicate that distributed columns to newspapers around the country, so he was a 

professional. Mr. Ross was a professor. Margaret got a great deal out of both courses. She wrote a 

story for Mr. Ross about royalty, and he advised her that he ought to write about what she knew, not 

about royalty and such. He then invited her to come in and talk to him about her writing, and then, 

when she came in, was not there. He had forgotten about it. 

Elmo Scott Watson had a class of fifty. Each student had to write three articles. He read 

either two or all three of her articles to the class, probably two. One of these she tried to sell to Asia 

magazine, and they returned it. She asked Kenneth to take the article, change it enough so that he 

could put his name on it, and send it in under his name, which he did, under the title "Siam Rides the 

Tiger." Margaret did all the research and the thinking for the article. She may have chosen the title, 

or Kenneth may have, she is not sure. When he sent it in, the magazine promptly bought it. It dealt 

with the danger involved in Siam's dealing with Japan. The magazine paid $75 for it, which meant a 

lot during that year when Kenneth was out of work. 

6 

43:32 Margaret then wrote an article entitled "Hollywood Invades Siam," an amusing piece that 

told about the influence of Hollywood movies in little towns in Siam, where people would squat on 

the ground at some fair and perhaps a ten- or fifteen-year-old picture would be shown. Margaret 

remembers one movie she saw playing in which a child kept running up and down the stairs, but there 

had been so many breaks in the film, and so many repairs, that the action made no sense. Still, the 

people sat enraptured, watching the picture. 

One amusing incident in the article came from Kenneth's many travels, evangelizing in the 

towns and hamlets of the Thai peninsula. He was totally fearless. Went everywhere. "He was 

incredibly successful. He never tells you how his boldness and his effectiveness in the use of the 

Thai language and his personality—how actually successful they were." He had the total confidence 

of the Governor General of the whole south of Thailand. She tells of the Governor's lecturing the 

monks on Kenneth's methods, and of his helping Kenneth distribute his Scripture portions throughout 

the peninsula. She tells too of his pastoral letters to the Christians throughout the area. In any case, 

Kenneth got off the train with his evangelist, Ngiap Seng, at a little station in one of the towns of the 

south. A very well-dressed Thai met him there, obviously a person of some importance in that town, 

and the man invited Kenneth and Ngiap Seng to stay in his house, which they did. Everywhere 

Kenneth went in the coming days, his host went. People practically went down on their hands and 

knees when this man passed, but Kenneth couldn't find out who this man really was. Then one day 

Kenneth slipped away and asked people who the man was. They told him that the man was the "chief 

gangster of all south Siam." Kenneth went back immediately and asked the man if this was so, and 

the man confirmed it. 

The gangster told Kenneth how simple it was to arrange things. Murder was not expensive. 

Kenneth asked how much it would cost to have him, that is, Kenneth, killed. The answer was that, 

because he was a foreigner, it would cost about $200. It was an amiable conversation. The gangster 

went on to say that many of his best ideas came from Hollywood movies. He had watched them 

intently and learned a lot from them. To dress his men up like policemen, for instance. 

Margaret put this in her article. Mr. Watson liked the article, helped her revise it, and she 

then sold it, her first professional sale. She received $15 for it. Later, Margaret got a letter from a 

book company asking to buy this article for publication in a book of essays, and she received $25 for 

that. Then she had the horrid thought, Suppose they bought it as an example of bad writing!! But in 

fact, that wasn't it at all. She still has the book. Essays for Discussion, edited by Anita F. Forbes. 

447


Margaret found herself in the company of Francis Bacon, Washington Irving, Samuel Johnson, and 

lots of other important people. At the end of the list was Margaret Mortenson Landon. They 

changed her title to "Celluloid Heroes Capture Siam." But she likes her original title better. That 

was her first book publication. 

7 

52:57 The third article Margaret wrote for Mr. Watson's class was called "And Deliver Us From 

Authors." That one he read to the class, and when he was done, he said to them, "Ladies and 

gentlemen, you are not to quote this article." He said it was libelous, but fascinating. It told stories 

of Somerset Maugham and of how he got his characters and plots and of the destructiveness of this. 

One example Margaret knows about—she does not recall if she put this one in her article—happened 

when he went to Shanghai, she believes, and uncovered a scandal. He had a gift of uncovering 

scandal. There was a highly respected man there whose life in that area had been exemplary. But he 

had an ugly incident in his early life that Maugham picked up and wrote. The result was that the man 

took his life. 

There was a well-known writer of the period who went up into Cambodia, where the Christian 

Missionary Alliance missionaries were, who were very poorly paid, and asked them to organize a 

pony train in connection with his work. They did this for him, and when he was done, he went off 

without paying the bill, leaving the missionaries to pay it for him. 

There was the story of a professor at Northwestern University—a figure Watson recognized 

immediately, though Margaret did not use his name—who wanted to get into Tibet. In those days the 

British were still in India, and you couldn't get into Tibet, or if you did, you didn't get far before you 

were picked up and thrown in prison. This man intended a book on Tibet, and indeed GLG write a 

classic on Tibet, though it was entirely the product of his imagination and of what he could find in 

other writers. The British refused him permission to go into Tibet, but he went anyway, and they 

then had to send the troops in to get him out. 

Mr. Watson liked the article but told Margaret not to try to publish it because of the libel. 

At the end of the class, Elmo Scott Watson summed things up for the students. He said, in a 

brusque way, that of the fifty students, there were three who could write professionally. He named a 

man who was already a reporter, working for a big Chicago newspaper. He named a woman who 

was doing publicity for one of the big stores. And Margaret. 

"That was a tremendous boost for me. The fact that I made a sale. And that he who was an 

editor had that confidence, that I could write professionally. So then I made up my mind that I 

would. And I chose Edna Cole as the book I would write first." 

She thought she would write articles too. 

After Kenneth received his doctorate in 1938, he and Margaret decided not to return to Siam. 

There were many reasons for this, she says, one of them being the children. They had seen the havoc 

that the missionary life had worked among children. Then too there was the politics of the mission 

field, and particularly of a man named Paul Eakin, who was their enemy. The Landons were 

conservative Christians. Though ostensibly Presbyterian, she says, "he was actually, I think, in his 

beliefs a Deist, or a Unitarian. So we were everything he was against. And furthermore, we were 

very able." Years later, in Washington, a man who had known them at the time, a Thai who was a 

Christian, told them that the Thai Christians in Bangkok regarded the Landons as the most able of the 

young missionaries in the country and wanted them moved to Bangkok to work at the college there. 

It was a year before Kenneth found work, and so they moved in with Margaret's mother, 

Adelle. Eventually, Kenneth found a position as a professor of philosophy at Earlham College. 

448


HOUR 71 

Session #51 continued March 11, 1983 Margaret, Kip, and Nona Beth 

1 

0:00 (XIA1450) Margaret continues the story of how her writing career began. 

In 1939, Margaret's friend Muriel Fuller was working for Redbook magazine. She was very 

generous about books and magazines, sending them to the Landons in Thailand. Margaret 

remembers one large box of forty books that Muriel sent. 

Muriel and Margaret were "very close friends" until 1951, when Muriel brought an end to the 

relationship. Margaret does not know why, except perhaps that she had always longed to write a 

musical play for Broadway, and had even tried to do so. "And I was given one, so to speak, without 

ever having wanted it." Perhaps this was what did it. Muriel had argued with Margaret not to sign 

the contract, saying that the William Morris Agency was cheating her. "Well, they were," Margaret 

says, then qualifies: "It wasn't so much that they were cheating me as that their concern was for 

Gertrude Lawrence." They were willing to sacrifice Margaret's interests to hers. 

In any case, Redbook was having a letter-writing contest on the theme, What do you like 

about Redbook? what's good about the magazine? There was a $1000 prize for the letter that won. 

While Margaret was still in Wheaton, she decided to try a letter, which she still has a copy of. Muriel 

wrote Margaret that, when the letters came in, someone was designated to read them and select a 

small group that was then turned over to a Mr. Edwin Baumer (SP?), the editor of the magazine. 

Margaret told Muriel that she was going to write a letter, and so Muriel kept an eye out for it. When 

Margaret's letter came in, the man designated to read the letters threw it into the wastebasket. Muriel, 

without his seeing her, picked the letter out of the wastebasket and slipped it in with the letters to go 

to Mr. Baumer. She didn't try to influence him; she had no influence with him anyway. She just 

made sure he saw the letter along with the other finalists. And in fact, it was Margaret's letter that 

Mr. Baumer picked as the best. 

The Wheaton Journal wrote it up, and Margaret still has the clipping. She also has a copy of 

the check, which would be worth $5000 today. And the telegram: "Happy to inform you your letter 

awarded $1000 prize. Edwin Baumer. Redbook magazine." By that time, Kenneth had found work 

at Earlham College and the family had moved to Richmond, Indiana. It was the fall of 1939. 

Margaret opened an account at the bank, depositing her $1000, the first money of her own that she 

had had for many years. 

Mr. Baumer wrote her a gracious letter. 

Margaret shows us the "poor little letter" which won the contest. And then reads it. 

Editor of Letters 

Redbook Magazine 

230 Park Avenue 

New York City 

Dear Sir: 

Frankly, I do not like all that Redbook publishes. But I do endorse the 

principle governing selection even of what I most dislike. To my mind, the 

449


controlling principle is integrity, or concern for truth. The search for essential 

truth underlies all that is best in literature. Its presentation may be unpleasant, 

witness the stories of Ella St. Joseph and Starr Paret, or amusing, witness Rose 

Frankins, or informative, witness the articles of Sheehan and Van Luhn. But 

however presented, it is this underlying concern for essential truth in the life 

we moderns live which gives Redbook its distinction. 

[Spellings of writers' names are guesses.] 

450 

Sincerely yours, 

Margaret Landon 

"So that was how I got my $1000!" Margaret shows us her little checks "from that first great 

experience," that is, the checks she made on her account with the bank. 

Muriel later sent Margaret a letter to the editor which came in when the contest was over, and 

Margaret reads it, a letter of somewhat ambiguous praise for her winning entry. 

The $1000 bought the children their winter coats. It bought a set of furniture for Peggy's 

bedroom, made of maple, including two single beds, a chest of drawers, a dressing table, and other 

items. 

"That was, in a sense, the rather hesitant beginning of my professional career." 

As I wrote earlier, Kenneth called an end to the taping after session #50, and except 

for this 1983 session with Margaret, we did not record for five and a half years. This time, I 

thought the project might truly be dead. Kenneth was set against doing any more sessions. 

As before, I knew I must not raise the subject again too soon, and so waited for a time when it 

would feel right. 

In 1986, Kenneth began experiencing intense pain in many parts of his body, and in 

July was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery in August, which freed him from the 

pain, and life almost returned to normal for the next three years. He continued running his 

home in his retirement, doing all his own shopping and cooking. I cleaned the house for 

them. And life slowly and inexorably changed, as it always does. 

Finally, in the summer of 1988, I began to know that I could raise the subject of taping 

again. Enough time had passed; enough had happened and changed. 1982 seemed like 

ancient history by now. And in July, when I asked him, Kenneth said he was willing to record 

again. We agreed to keep the taping anecdotal, and to tape less often than we had done in 

the past. 

Session #52 July 22, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, and Carol Pearson 

2 

11:15 Kenneth tells of a letter he received today from Mrs. Campbell Brower of Cambridge City, 

Indiana, who was a member of the church he pastored there from 1939 through 1941. "In my


American incarnation as a preacher, I've had only two small churches, one in Columbus, New Jersey, 

and one in Cambridge City. . . ." This was while he was the head of the philosophy department at 

Earlham College. In both cases, the people in the churches have kept in touch with the Landons 

through the years. The last member of the Columbus congregation died this past year, Agnes Wright. 

Today's letter from Evelyn Brower was quite touching, recalling the happy times together all those 

years ago. "So maybe I wasn't a complete flop as a preacher after all." 

When Kenneth was a student at Wheaton, there were Gospel teams, and Kenneth joined one. 

They went testifying in big black churches and white churches, and one church they visited was the 

Christian Science Church right there in Wheaton. The team always sang some songs. And then the 

members of the team rose to give their testimonies, one by one. Finally, it came Kenneth's turn. He 

wasn't used to giving testimonies, but he knew that he needed a text, followed by the testimony. So 

he stood up, having in mind an experience with a woman that he felt he had provided guidance to. 

And for his text, he recited, "A strange woman came to me, and I took her in." Well, there followed a 

long moment of silence, and then the church collapsed into laughter. "The church just rocked and 

roared. And I really had nothing more to say." [Much laughter.] "That was my beginning as a 

preacher." 

3 

19:04 The story of Ah Peh and the viper, from the Siam years. "Ah Peh" wasn't a name; it meant 

"Uncle." Ah Peh was clearing out the pineapples out behind the house, under Margaret's direction. 

There were hundreds of them, making a haven for cobras and vipers. The pineapples were thrown 

down the wells to fill them up, to remove the danger that one of the children would fall into one. As 

Ah Peh worked, a viper struck him in the lower leg, and he became very sick. Kenneth rushed him 

down to the hospital, run by Dr. L.C. Bulkley, who always kept anti-venom there. Bulkley gave Ah 

Peh a shot, and within a short time, Ah Peh seemed to be fine. By the next day, he seemed to be back 

to normal, showing no ill effects. 

A considerable period of time passed, two or three weeks at least, and Ah Peh began to 

malinger. He had been very industrious before. He was the coolie on the compound. But he became 

so sickly that finally Kenneth took him down to see Dr. Bulkley again, who examined him and 

declared that he could find nothing wrong. Ah Peh was simply malingering. Kenneth needed to 

scare him a bit, shoot off a gun behind him or something to get him going. But Kenneth wasn't 

convinced, and kept thinking about it, and finally returned to Dr. Bulkley a third time with Ah Peh. 

Kenneth and Ah Peh had been talking, in Chinese, and Ah Peh had pointed to a specific spot where 

he was in pain. He had been unable to communicate this to Dr. Bulkley, because Ah Peh did not 

speak Thai well, and Bulkley did not speak Chinese. The spot was on Ah Peh's back, but when 

Bulkley examined it, he could find nothing wrong. Then Kenneth said, "Let's suggest that there's a 

devil in there, and you're going to let the devil out. And you can tell Ah Peh, and I'll tell him that 

you're going to let the devil out. And you just make a little hole right in there. . . ." Dr. Bulkley 

thought that was a pretty good idea, so he did it. He gave Ah Peh a shot of something or other to ease 

the pain, and then made an incision. To his astonishment, "he struck a well. He got out over a quart 

of pus. And he was absolutely stunned." As for the coolie, he was quite sure the devil ZDV coming 

out! He was very pleased. Bulkley said he had never seen anything like it. The viper struck at the 

ankle, but the problem developed in the back. The coolie felt much relieved, and cheerful, returned 

to work, and was his old self. 

451


4 

25:41 We return to Kenneth's trip to Southeast Asia in 1945-6. (Margaret joins the taping.) Before 

he went out, he knew he was going to have to travel to Indochina, where all the officials spoke 

French. He figured that he should be able to understand the French language, and say a few words, 

so he took a "hurry-up" course for a couple of weeks in spoken French with a Frenchwoman at the 

Foreign Service Institute here in Washington. After that, he had a smattering of French with which 

he could get along. "I have often said, I've gone generally on the assumption that French was English 

misspelled and mispronounced, and that's how I learned to read it so well. But I never really had 

learned how to pronounce it." 

After the British-Thai negotiations ended in Bangkok, Kenneth travelled over to Saigon and 

called on the High Commissioner, who was Admiral D'Argenlieu. He had been sent out by 

DeGaulle. D'Argenlieu had left his admiralty to live as a monk in a monastery, and was in a cloister. 

But DeGaulle called him out from that to serve the nation as high commissioner in Indochina. 

D'Argenlieu, the former monk, apparently decided he might as well go all out, and so he brought a 

mistress with him, Madame Galsworthy "of the famous family that has been written up in the Forsyte 

Saga." She was from the French side of the family and spoke both French and English fluently. The 

Admiral had been informed in advance that Kenneth didn't speak French, so he had Madame 

Galsworthy there as interpreter. Kenneth found her a very handsome woman, a charmer. "After all, 

she was good enough to be a mistress, so she had to have something on the ball. And she really did. 

A lot of charm. Very friendly." The Admiral gave Kenneth a nice lunch, with a few other officials 

there, and Madame Galsworthy, of course. 

Admiral D'Argenlieu spoke beautiful French. Exquisite French. His articulation was so good 

that Kenneth had no difficulty understanding him. Nevertheless, he appreciated Madame Galsworthy 

since he was familiar with the Galsworthy family of the Forsyte Saga, and he kept looking at her, 

wondering if she was the one on whom the character of Fleur was based. The Admiral naturally 

wanted to know what Kenneth was up to, and the answer was that Kenneth was there to see what the 

situation was. Also, Kenneth wanted the Admiral's assistance getting to Hanoi. The Department was 

thinking of opening a consulate there. During the war, we had run an OSS mission in Hanoi, but then 

had brought an end to it because it began to play politics. Kenneth, in fact, was the person who 

pulled them out of Hanoi. Now he wanted to go to Hanoi to see where a consulate might be opened, 

and talk to officials there, including the French officials. Their minister in Hanoi was named 

Saintenay, a famous man. Also, the Chinese were still in Hanoi. General Lo Han, the warlord of 

southern China, was there with his army for the surrender of the Japanese and their repatriation to 

Japan. Kenneth wanted to meet him and his officials too. 

Kenneth looked forward to meeting with the Admiral again after their luncheon, but sadly the 

Admiral decided he didn't need Madame Galsworthy's assistance at the meetings, and so left her out 

from then on. 

D'Argenlieu was of course working to get the French back in power in Indochina, with the 

help of the Chinese. But at the time, he was in the ironic position of not being able to control the 

Saigon area without the assistance of the Japanese and the British. General D. Gracie was there, but 

he had very few soldiers with him. So the help of the defeated Japanese was essential. Even then, 

the Viet Minh were active, sponsored by Ho Chi Minh from Hanoi, but they were still weak in the 

south. 

5 

35:28 Kenneth actually travelled to Batavia before going to Hanoi. He was responsible for the 

whole of Southeast Asia in the State Department, so he went to Burma, before arriving in Thailand, 

452


and met various Burmese leaders. Then to Thailand, of course, for the Thai-British negotiations. 

And during an interim in the negotiations, he took off in a plane with a colonel who was assigned to 

the newly opened Legation in Bangkok to go down to Singapore and Batavia—the Dutch name for 

Djakarta—in Indonesia. 

Kenneth had been working for several years, off and on, on a book about an American 

adventurer named Walter Gibson. Gibson had gotten crosswise with the Dutch, and they had thrown 

him into a prison called Weldebreton. He had been tried for various activities. Kenneth had done a 

lot of work on the book and still has the manuscript in the basement. When Kenneth landed in 

Batavia, he hoped to do some research on Gibson. 

He landed in the middle of the day, and went over to the consulate to see Uncle Billy Foote, 

who was the Consul General. Foote had spent the war years in Australia. He was much older than 

Kenneth. When Foote was in Australia, waiting out the war, he saw that all the diplomats from other 

countries who had likewise fled to Australia were wearing uniforms. So he decided he should have a 

uniform and proposed to the Department that he have a uniform comparable to the uniforms worn by 

the Dutch, British, and French. The head of State's office there, a man named Valentine, discussed it 

with some of his officers and decided to send Foote a letter saying that a uniform would be okay just 

so long as it had an insignia that was not too conspicuous, such as a set of gold buttons on his fly. 

Uncle Billy got the message. No uniform. 

When Kenneth arrived, Uncle Billy was taking his afternoon nap at home. There was no one 

at the consulate. The whole staff was gone except for a couple of clerks. "I thought, Oh, happy me! 

I'll seize the opportunity, and I will go and visit the prison. . . ." He had driven right past it on the 

way in. It was within easy walking distance, so Kenneth set off. The prison was 150 to 200 yards 

back from the road in a stand of trees. "And it was a huge thing, in a sense, that is, the walls were 

about forty feet thick!" He knew what the pattern of it was, having studied it. There was a 

passageway within the walls to form rooms where prisoners could be chained and cared for in a sort 

of octagonal pattern, with an open court in the middle. You walked in the outer door, and the next 

thing you saw would be a passageway in either direction you could follow, and there would be rooms 

and chains and places to imprison people all around the circumference. On top, there were 

guardhouses that looked down on the center of the prison. 

Kenneth was very pleased with himself for taking advantage of this opportunity. He would 

look all around and get a real feeling for the prison Gibson was incarcerated in. He stepped on in, 

past the outer wall, past the passageways, and on in to the center. "The minute I got past, there was a 

rush of feet, and I was surrounded by men who were Indonesians with knives ready to chop me up! 

Well, I quickly sensed my danger, and I just began to say, 'I'm an American! I'm an American! I'm 

an American! I'm not Dutch! I'm not Dutch! I'm an American! I'm an American! I'm an American! 

Here I am, I'm an American! I've come to visit you! I'm an American! I'm an American! I'm an 

American!'" The men held their knives back. "They didn't cut me. They were about to." He learned 

later that they were killing Dutchmen all over the place. Every morning, there'd be bodies of Dutch 

floating in the canal. 

The men spoke to each other in Indonesian, which of course Kenneth did not understand. But 

there was quiet suddenly, and one of them said. "You American?" And Kenneth said, "Yes!" "What 

you do here?" Kenneth said, "I'm from the American government, from the American State 

Department, and I'm here to see what the situation is." "Oh. You American official government?" 

Yes, was the answer. But what was he doing there, in the prison? Kenneth explained that he was 

writing about an American adventurer who had been imprisoned in this prison. Oh, came the answer. 

This appealed to them. They asked the name of the American, and Kenneth answered that his name 

was Walter Gibson, who had been tried by the Dutch in the courthouse, which Kenneth also wanted 

453


to see. Kenneth explained that this happened in the previous century, "when the Dutch were very bad 

people." The men agreed that the Dutch were bad people. Again, they asked what Kenneth wanted 

to do at the prison. He wanted to see it, Kenneth answered. 

Well, the men said, okay, come see the prison. They pointed him down the alley, and 

Kenneth thought, Oh boy, here's where they chop me up. "But what could I do?" So he thanked 

them brightly and stepped right out to look around, waiting for the first knife. But nothing happened. 

Kenneth looked all around, "the whole wretched thing," including the rooms where prisoners 

had been tortured. At the end, they came back to where they had begun. "There," the spokesperson 

said, "now, you've seen prison." "Thank you very much," Kenneth said happily. "I'm certainly 

grateful to you!" 

"You not come back," the man said simply. "You not come back. Next time you come back, 

you die." 

Kenneth thanked him, and walked back to the consulate general. 

In 1950, Kenneth was still working on that book, and on a second trip, he travelled all over 

Southeast Asia, including Djakarta, the new name given to Batavia by the Indonesians after 

independence. Walter Gibson had become prime minister of Hawaii very briefly, and he had quite a 

record there. Kenneth looked into the archives there, and they had a large amount of material on 

Gibson that was relevant to Kenneth's book. He talked to a Navy wife who was working in the 

library and asked her if he could employ her to do the research on Gibson for him. They came to 

terms, and Kenneth was "as happy as could be" to think he was going to get his book done. Then he 

boarded a plane, and while he was in the air, the Korean War started. That was the end of his 

adventure with Gibson because the Navy was called into action; the husband went over to the war; 

and Kenneth never heard from the man's wife again. 

In his 1946 trip, Kenneth also visited the old courthouse or Stadthius. He talked to Uncle 

Billy Foote, as they all called him, and went to see the Stadthius, where he saw the great clock, and 

many of the things that Gibson described in his book, including the rooms where he was tried. The 

whole basement of the building was flooded. The archives had been ruined. Later Kenneth learned 

that the Indonesian guerrillas, who were swimmers, would go in through the windows of that 

basement and swim to an area where they could shack up for the day. They would go out at night 

and kill Dutchmen. They had a safe haven right in the middle of the city. 

In any case, the book never came off. "And maybe I couldn't have written it anyway, I don't 

know. But I had fun trying." 

6 

50:13 The Weldebreton Prison had originally been the Prins Hendrik fort, which was built to 

defend against the British. Once the need for it passed, they turned it into a prison. 

After the trip to Batavia, Kenneth returned to Bangkok for the rest of the negotiations, and at 

the end of the negotiations, to Saigon, from which he travelled north to Hanoi with General Salan. 

That trip was set up by Admiral D'Argenlieu for Kenneth. There was no regular transportation 

between Saigon and Hanoi except under the authority of the French Admiral or the British General 

Gracie. At the time, there was only one plane in Saigon, a C-47, with bucket seats down the aisles. 

One of our OSS men, the son of a U.S. Senator, was murdered at that airport by the Viet Minh, who 

thought he was French. When Kenneth was preparing for the trip to Southeast Asia, the Senator 

called on him at the State Department and asked him to try to find out more on what happened to his 

son. Which Kenneth did. It was a famous case at the time. 

454


7$3( ;, 6LGH 

7 

53:02 D'Argenlieu arranged for Kenneth's transportation with General Salan—"of later infamy in 

Algiers," when he rebelled against DeGaulle in his, Salan's, belief that the French must get out of 

Algeria—who at the moment was supposed to be the commanding officer of any French troops in 

Indochina. He was travelling to Hanoi to take over his command, which was non-existent. Any 

French military or citizenry were inside what was called the Citadel, which was protective custody, 

actually. So General Salan had no troops. Just a couple of aides and a few supporters. Kenneth was 

told that he should report to the airport at a very early hour, six o'clock or so. He had to get himself 

there somehow, so he arranged for a taxi to come pick him up "at a great price" to take him to the 

airport. He knew what had happened to the Senator's son out there. The airport had no buildings at 

all. It was just an airstrip, and not a very good one. The taxi took him out there, dropped him off, 

"and left hastily." So there he stood, with his baggage, "and I was the only person there, with the 

plane." The plane was standing forlornly at the end of the runway. 

Kenneth hadn't had any breakfast or coffee. He hadn't shaved or bathed. "There I stood." He 

looked around and felt very much like a target "for anyone who didn't like me." Time passed. Hours 

passed. General Salan didn't turn up till almost ten o'clock. Thank you very much, General. He was 

well fed, well wined. He smelled of champagne. He looked at Kenneth dourly, with no pleasure 

whatsoever, but he had been instructed to take Kenneth to Hanoi. Kenneth hauled his baggage on 

board. Nobody gave him a helping hand. He was carrying a small steel trunk from which he could 

live for months, with a mosquito net included. The baggage was heaped in the aisle, down between 

the bucket seats. 

The pilot told everyone to lean on the baggage as they took off. They hadn't warmed the 

engine up. "That was one reason we called it Air Chance." They warmed the engine up as they were 

going down the runway. If it was warm enough at the end of the runway, you took off, and if not, 

you didn't. Kenneth speaks highly of the C-47's, real workhorses, very reliable. We speculate that it 

is the same plane as the DC-3 used in the Berlin airlift, and in civilian aviation. Those planes are still 

flying, used by companies all over the world. Kenneth tells of General Stilwell's son who took off 

from the U.S. for Hawaii in a C-47 and was never heard from again; obviously crashed. 

So the plane rolled down the runway and took off. After they had been in the air for a while, 

Kenneth realized they were turning west, and they soon landed in Laos. The General wanted to make 

a stop there. They were in Pakse. 

When they took off again, Kenneth tried to talk to the General, starting out in English. The 

General just shook his head. Then Kenneth tried Chinese. And he just shook his head. Kenneth 

knew there was no point trying French, because his French was so poor. He tried a few words, but 

the General just looked blank as if he didn't know what language Kenneth was speaking. Finally, 

Kenneth spoke to him in Thai, and the General perked right up. He understood that, and responded in 

Lao. Kenneth spoke in his high, biblical Thai, and General Salan spoke in a form of Lao that he had 

learned from his Lao mistress—in fact, from quite a few Lao mistresses. Salan wanted to know more 

about Kenneth, and vice versa. 

455


HOUR 72 

Session #52 continued July 22, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Margaret, and Carol Pearson 

1 

0:00 (XIB40) The conversation with General Salan played out after a while. There was nothing to 

eat or drink on board. They arrived in Hanoi late in the afternoon. By this point, Kenneth was "just 

miserable," having had nothing to eat or drink all day. He was dehydrated. "I just was desperate for 

something to eat and drink." He thought that maybe the French would give him a ride into town. Not 

so! The plane stopped at the end of the runway. They all got off. Kenneth dragged his little trunk 

off the plane. No one helped him. A large party was there to meet the General and soon roared off in 

a caravan of jeeps, leaving Kenneth there alone, twenty-some miles out of the city. They were "on 

the wrong side of the river," also, and Kenneth knew they would have to cross a bridge that he 

himself had selected as a bombing target during the war. It is difficult to bomb a bridge out of 

existence, at least from the air, but the bridge was in poor condition. 

So there he was. A few hangars were located there, but Kenneth saw no one about. He 

hauled his trunk along the ground. "I was feeling too despondent to carry it, and I just hauled it 

along, dragging it behind me, over toward the hangar." As he got to the hangar, he suddenly smelled 

food. Food cooking. He brightened up right away. He turned the corner, and there was one Chinese 

G.I., squatting over a charcoal brazier, with a little iron pot, cooking a Chinese stew, which was 

bubbling happily away in its pot. Kenneth hauled his little trunk over there, "and boy, did I ever let 

loose with my Chinese! I was fluent, I want to tell you! I called him brother. 'Oh, brother!'" 

Kenneth cuts loose with his Chinese now. He told the man how thirsty he was, how hungry he was, 

and how he wanted to buy part of his meal. And he pulled out some money. The soldier looked at 

him blankly and seemed unsurprised to hear a redhead, an "Ang Moa" (SP?), speaking Chinese. He 

understood Kenneth perfectly well, and answered that what he had was his whole dinner. It was all he 

had. He wasn't going to sell it to Kenneth. "You can't have my dinner! This is P\ dinner!" But 

Kenneth was persistent. Then the man retorted that he only had the one bowl. But Kenneth said, 

"Brothers only need one bowl between them." Then the man retorted again, "Oh, I only have one 

pair of chopsticks!" But Kenneth said, "Brothers only need one pair of chopsticks. We pass them 

back and forth." The man's eyes got big. "You pass the chopsticks back and forth?" "Yes," Kenneth 

said, "we're brothers." 

The soldier thought this was awfully funny, "and by gosh, he did it. I squatted beside him. 

And we cleaned that bowl out between us." "Ah!" Kenneth said with relief. "You saved my life. I 

think I'll live. I thought I was going to die of hunger!" The soldier laughed and laughed. 

Then he asked the soldier if he could help Kenneth get into Hanoi, twenty miles away. The 

soldier answered that many of their men would be going into town for rest and recreation, that is to 

eat and be merry with the girls. "Well," Kenneth said, "I'd like to eat and be merry with the girls too! 

Can you arrange for me to go in with them to eat and be merry with the girls?" The soldier himself 

wasn't going, but he said, "Okay!" in English, and took Kenneth over to the road where a truck came 

along with some thirty or forty Chinese standing up, "with their black heads jammed together, all of 

them going into town." There was no room to sit down. The cab was filled. The soldier shouted at 

them to take the Ang Moa with them, and Kenneth began calling out to them also that he was an Ang 

Moa Chinese, a red-headed Chinese. They took his trunk and threw it up, and then they hauled 

Kenneth up, and he stood up with all the Chinese soldiers all the way into Hanoi, he wearing his hat, 

456


chatting with them in Chinese all the way in. "I was quite cheerful then. My belly was pretty full of 

Chinese food." 

They dumped him off in front of the Hotel Metropole. Kenneth hauled his little tin trunk in to 

find out who was in charge and could he get a room? Well, all the rooms were filled. There was no 

place that he could sleep in there except in the hallway. So he said, Okay, he'd sleep in the hallway. 

And he did, sleeping on the marble floor with his mosquito net over him. There was an OSS radio 

wireless operator with quarters in the hotel, and in the morning he helped Kenneth get some 

breakfast, clean up and shave, and make himself presentable. Kenneth left his trunk with the OSS 

man and told him he was going over to see if he could talk to Ho Chi Minh. The OSS man asked, 

"You're just going over and walk in on him?" And Kenneth said, "Yes." Figured it was worth a try. 

So Kenneth walked across the street and into the old high commissioner's palace, which was 

just a few hundred yards from the hotel. He asked to see Ho Chi Minh, and they asked him who he 

was, which he told them. No one asked him to prove it. "The next thing I knew, I was taken right in 

to Ho Chi Minh." Ho wanted to know who Kenneth was, and Kenneth explained and told him why 

he was there. Ho asked how long he was going to stay, and Kenneth said that he planned to go back 

with the plane he had come in on, in two or three days. (The plane would then fly back to Saigon, 

stay there a few days, then return to Hanoi. That was its routine.) Ho looked at Kenneth reflectively. 

"He spoke flawless English. And it was unidentifiable English. It was what I call t.v. 

English. It had no regional accent. It wasn't Canadian. It wasn't British English. It wasn't American 

English. It wasn't British English. It was just English. And he spoke it beautifully, and with no 

identifiable accent." In further conversations, Kenneth found out that Ho had learned English in 

Indochina, and had later lived in England and worked in a hotel there. 

2 

10:28 Ho asked Kenneth if he could stay longer, and Kenneth answered that he would like to stay 

longer but had nowhere to stay. Didn't know where he would be staying that night. Ho said that was 

no problem. He would arrange something for Kenneth. Ho suggested that he stay for ten or eleven 

days, that is, for another full cycle of the plane. That would give Kenneth a good opportunity to get 

around Hanoi and see how things were. Then Kenneth said that he needed wheels to get around, and 

Ho said he would assign a car to him with a driver. The car he assigned to him was a French oneseater, 

with a front seat wide enough for the driver, and a back seat wide enough for one passenger. 

It was just like a bathtub. It had four wheels. The driver spoke only Vietnamese. Didn't understand 

a word of French. Knew no English or Chinese. Kenneth had a map of Hanoi which he had brought 

with him from Saigon because he wanted to tour the city to see where the U.S. might put a consulate. 

So with map in hand, he gave directions to the driver by leaning forward and pointing where he 

wanted to go. At every crossroads, there were sandbag gun emplacements cater corner to each other, 

one Viet Minh, the other Chinese, facing each other. They were ready to shoot at each other if need 

be. The guns might only be rifles; not very big guns. But there were a lot of the emplacements, all 

over town. The Viet Minh were very smartly dressed in blue uniforms, blue shorts, and little hats. 

Black stockings up to their knees, and black shoes. 

Kenneth had to sit on his trunk because there was no room for it beside him, so he was 

perched rather high as the driver took him out to a large house. There, the driver let out some yells, 

and some women came out to see what it was about. There was a certain amount of chattering 

among them, in Vietnamese and then French, and Kenneth was told to come on up. So he went up 

and was escorted to a bedroom. This house, or mansion, was the dwelling of an American graves 

mission that was out there hunting for the bodies of flyers who had been shot down over the area 

during the war. Their mission was to go out into the countryside, locate planes that had been shot 

457


down, and find the bodies. They had interpreters who spoke French. The men were all gone during 

the day. The bevy of women were probably prostitutes, the mistresses of these Americans, assigned 

to take care of them. One of the girls immediately wanted to know if Kenneth wanted a mistress of 

his own, and he politely declined. They thought he was pretty poor sport. They spent most of their 

time drinking wine, playing cards, and playing an Electrola which they wound by hand. They had 

"squeaky French records" playing. 

Almost every day for the next ten days, Kenneth would be invited to share at least one meal 

with Ho Chi Minh, always either lunch or dinner. Ho's interest in Kenneth was to try to get him, who 

represented the State Department of the U.S. government, the first official of his kind there, to carry 

letters from Ho to President Truman and to the Secretary of State. Before Kenneth left, Ho had 

prepared letters to both men appealing to the Americans to keep the French out of Indochina, 

according to Roosevelt's wartime policy that no French be allowed back into Indochina. Kenneth 

told Ho that he was the man who had drafted that policy, which really put him in tight with Ho. 

Kenneth told him how the memorandum went up to the President and then came back down with the 

President's hand-written note in the margin saying, "I want no French returned to Indochina. FDR." 

"Well, Ho Chi Minh just practically embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks. I mean here was 

the guy that had drafted the policy!" "So he was really very hospitable. And we had many 

conversations." 

One night, Ho wanted Kenneth for dinner, and so did General Salan, and so did General 

Saintenay. Kenneth mentioned it to Ho, wondering what to do, and Ho said that he should just eat a 

course with one, and then go and eat a course with another, and so on. So Kenneth had a big night. 

(Saintenay's name was a pseudonym, Kenneth says, not his real name at all.) 

Years later, U.S. News and World Report had a "Where Are They Now?" on Saintenay and 

Kenneth Landon, asking the question where they were today. CBS picked it up, and Marvin Kalb 

came out to 4711 with a big crew to tape Margaret and Kenneth for the Walter Cronkite news show 

that evening. It took them all day to get what they wanted for their program, and it filled a full 

minute and a half on the broadcast. (Kip thought this was in connection with the Pentagon Papers 

scandal in 1971, when a Dr. Ellsberg released the papers to a reporter for the New York Times, who 

made them public. It was highly controversial. The papers had been secretly pulled together during 

the Nixon administration to show how the United States became involved in Viet Nam. Among the 

first of these papers were telegrams Kenneth sent from Hanoi in 1946 concerning his talks with Ho 

Chi Minh. However, Kenneth says this had nothing to do with CBS' interest in him. [Indirectly, it 

did. See #88, index 6.] Kenneth's old professor A. Eustace Haydon of Chicago University sent 

him a letter, "Saw you on Cronkite show. Memories of happy days. Eustace." 

3 

22:19 While Kenneth was in Hanoi, he often asked Ho about Bao Dai, who had been the emperor. 

Bao Dai had abdicated in favor of Ho Chi Minh. His palace had been at Hue. Now he was a virtual 

prisoner of Ho in Hanoi, but had his own compound. 

Kenneth kidded Ho about Bao Dai. Ho "was very amiable with me. He told me a story that is 

almost unbelievable, and I think I'm the only person in the United States he ever told it to, the only 

American." About the time Margaret and Kenneth went out to Siam, Ho came down from Shanghai 

to try to infiltrate Hanoi. He came down to Siam in 1927, to the Phuphon (SP?) hills area on the 

Mekong River, right across from Laos, which would provide a trail through Laos into Hanoi, going 

past the Dien Bien Phu area. In Siam, for cover, he wore the robe of a Buddhist monk. "That means 

he must have shaved his head." Also, he must have been able to speak Thai, "I should think." "And 

he ZDV a linguist. I mean, he spoke flawless English. He spoke Chinese. I could understand a 

458


couple of dialects in Chinese, and he spoke them beautifully. He spoke other dialects. He spoke 

German. He spoke Russian. I mean, this man was really a genius." 

Many of the discussions Kenneth had with Ho were in the field of political philosophy. 

Kenneth had taught a course in political philosophy at Earlham, "and I thought I was pretty smart, 

and I knew something or other. But he knew far more than I would ever catch up with. This guy was 

really well read. He read the books." 

Anyway, Kenneth told him he wanted to see Bao Dai. Could he arrange it? Yes, he could 

arrange it. Kenneth knew it would be a "sterilized, sanctified" meeting, because the Emperor was a 

prisoner, even though he had abdicated with full honors and was supposed to be an advisor of some 

sort to Ho Chi Minh, "which was a laugh. Nobody was ever going to advise Ho Chi Minh on 

anything. He was the guy that told everybody what to do." So Ho set it up. And it was very funny. 

Kenneth was told that his driver would be instructed to take him to a certain spot and park in the 

shade under a certain tree. A limousine would then come and stop and the door would open and 

Kenneth would get in and the limousine would take him to the Emperor. It was like something from 

a mystery story. So this "bathtub of mine took me out" and parked at the side of the road under a big 

tree, and Kenneth stood there waiting, leaning "against this bathtub." Up came the limousine, a big 

one, an American car. The door opened. There was a driver. Kenneth got into the back seat. The 

limousine shot off as if being pursued by the Devil, and went whipping hither and yon. "I suppose 

they didn't want me to know where I was going." All of sudden, the limousine stopped, turned into a 

driveway, the gates opened, they drove into a yard, and there were a couple of men standing there 

waiting to take Kenneth into the house. He was escorted in. It had been bright sunlight outside. He 

was taken into a dark, cool room and left there. 

Kenneth's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness as he wondered what was going to happen 

next. And then, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he realized that he was sitting across 

from a man sitting in a big chair ten feet away who was wearing dark glasses. Bao Dai was there. 

He was an educated man, and Kenneth had no problem conversing with him. Kenneth asked 

him about his experiences, why he had abdicated, did he expect to regain his throne, and of course, 

Bao Dai said all the things Ho would want him to say, in particular that he hoped the Americans 

would help to keep the French out. He was an interesting person. Well built. A young man, 

obviously in his prime. He offered Kenneth tea, and they had tea and biscuits. Finally, he got up, 

and that was it. Kenneth thanked him very much and hoped to meet him again. 

In 1950, on another trip, Kenneth took with him a picture from Harry Truman autographed to 

Emperor Bao Dai in Saigon, and Kenneth went up into the hills to his hill station where he "sulked 

and refused to co-operate with the French, who would not provide him with the facilities and the 

freedom to lead his people to freedom, and to be independent of the French. He was determined to be 

independent." He had co-operation from the Americans. 

That trip, Kenneth says, was "awe-inspiring in speed" because there was a sheer cliff drop off 

the side of the road, and the driver was a "race car" driver. This huge limousine "just rocked" up the 

road. Kenneth sank back and waited for the end while they went whipping up through the hills. 

Once there, he reminisced about his first visit with the Emperor, who remembered him. They had a 

very nice conversation. Kenneth presented the Truman picture to him. Bao Dai wanted to know if 

Kenneth, on behalf of the State Department, could give him some assurance of American pressure on 

the French to give him more power in his own country. He was supposedly chief of state of an 

independent state in the south, and he just couldn't get any help from the French. So he refused to cooperate. 

He lived well. Drank well. Went hunting up in the hills with his guns. He was a good 

marksman. 

Going down the mountain road was hair-raising. Kenneth finally just "slunk back" and shut 

459


his eyes. He couldn't bear to look. "The driver seemed to think that because I was a diplomat, he had 

to race." Finally, they made it down to the plains, with Kenneth thanking God that he was going to 

see his wife and kids again. 

Those were the only two times Kenneth encountered Bao Dai. 

4 

31:33 In that 1946 period in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh expressed great concern about the Chinese. He 

badly wanted them out of the country also. He described them as pests. He couldn't get rid of them. 

They stuck closer than a brother. They would manufacture and print phony Vietnamese currency up 

in Shanghai, and their officers would come in with briefcases full of this counterfeit and buy 

everything in sight, anything they wanted. They were stripping the Vietnamese of everything in 

Hanoi. 

Kenneth became well acquainted with the Chinese in Hanoi on his own. The political advisor 

to General Lo Han was a man named Yuan Tser Quien (SP?), a philosopher. General Lo Han was 

the warlord of southern China who was there to accept the surrender of the Japanese and repatriate 

them. His nephew presently owns the Yenching Palace restaurant in Washington, D.C., where we get 

our Chinese food. When the people at the restaurant found out years ago that Kenneth was familiar 

with and friendly with General Lo Han, he could hardly pay for things. He'd walk in and they would 

immediately serve him tea for free, and present him with a cocktail, while he was waiting for carryout 

food. These days, the owners no longer hang around at the Yenching; they're out in Alexandria now. 

The political advisor to the General was the man Kenneth talked to for the most part. He met 

with him many times in Hanoi, to find out what the Chinese really expected. What happened was 

that, when Kenneth went back to Saigon, he learned what was really going on. On the plane, there 

was a French political advisor to General D'Argenlieu, who later became ambassador to Bangkok. 

Kenneth cannot recall his name at the moment. Kenneth had met him when in Saigon. He had been 

up in Chungking negotiating with Chiang Kai Shek for Chinese help to get the French back into 

Hanoi. The agreement they hammered out in Chungking was that, yes, the Chinese would help the 

French get back into Hanoi, but required a concession of freedom of port for the Chinese in 

Haiphong, Hanoi, and along the railroad up into Yunnan province so that the Chinese would have a 

great economic and political influence there. The reason they wanted to do this was not to help the 

French but because they were asking at the same time that the Soviets help them get back into 

Manchuria ahead of Mao Tse-tung and his troops. As the Russians would do unto the Chinese, the 

Chinese were willing to do unto the French. And they were using this noble example of "Look what 

we're willing to do for the French!" to persuade the Russians to do the same for them in Manchuria. 

This was the Chinese thinking that Kenneth got from Yuan Tser Quien. The French political advisor 

on the plane spelled out the whole agreement to Kenneth that had been reached between France and 

China. Kenneth was the first American to have that knowledge. When he landed in Saigon, he 

rapidly wrote it up, and the OSS mission there, headed by Alexander Griswold of Baltimore banking, 

had a wireless radio communication line with Washington. Kenneth sent the whole thing through 

them, breaking the news to the American government. "And my name was simply the hottest item in 

Washington and in the State Department because I had really a scoop on everybody in the United 

States." 

Shortly after that, he went back to Bangkok, then over to Calcutta, got a big plane, and flew 

back across the Pacific. When he arrived home in Washington, he was simply besieged to get more 

information. How much more did he know about this agreement? Washington had it as soon as the 

French government had it in Paris. 

460


5 

38:02 Through the entire trip, Kenneth sent a steady stream of telegrams home to the State 

Department. Some of those messages appeared in the Pentagon Papers. Also, every day at the end of 

the day, Kenneth wrote a letter to Abbot Low Moffat in the Department, telling him what had 

happened that day. And he wrote another letter to Margaret, telling her in other terms. The file of 

letters to Moffat are somewhere in the Department archives, and some of Kenneth's students came 

across them while he was teaching at American University. 

Ho Chi Minh knew he couldn't give Kenneth a gift, and didn't offer him one. He was a clever 

man, and what he did was give Kenneth a tortoise shell vanity case for Margaret. Margaret tells us 

that the change in climate affected the tortoise shell, which cracked. She did not throw it out, storing 

it up in the attic. 

One night in Hanoi, Kenneth and his driver were going along at night in the little "bathtub" 

car when the driver lost control of the car at a crossroads. They drove head on into one of those 

sandbag gun emplacements. "Well! You should have heard the screaming and the yells and the guns 

being fired off in the air to scare off whoever was supposedly attacking. But they didn't see who it 

was." Finally, it was all straightened out, but it was a frightening experience. Kenneth thought they 

might get killed. They were driving back from a party, probably. There was a party every night. 

Dances. Lots of French girls were out there. 

One of the things Kenneth talked to Ho about was the many people he saw dying of smallpox. 

Kenneth had had shots to protect him, so he wasn't greatly concerned. But he saw people with pox 

all over them. People were emaciated. Ho told him that the starvation there was terrible. He said 

that during the war the dykes had been bombed. The Red River always overflowed its banks, so they 

kept building up the banks, which were way up above the plains, like small mountains. They built 

them higher and higher year by year. If a small crack develops, it can wash out an entire 

embankment. Well, that was one of the bombing targets Kenneth selected during the war. He knew 

the allies could drown out the whole Red River valley if they could break up some of those dykes, 

which they did. Ho Chi Minh said the devastation must have cost 2,000,000 lives. "It was very sad. 

But in war that's the sort of thing you do. You try to make it impossible for the enemy." 

When Kenneth returned to Bangkok after his trip to Hanoi, he met Ken Wells getting of the 

plane. 

The plane Kenneth caught from Calcutta was a military plane that took him to the Philippines. 

On the plane from the Philippines there were only two passengers, the commanding general in the 

Philippines and Kenneth. There was no place to sit. They simply rolled up in blankets and slept. 

There was nothing else to do. The general wouldn't talk to Kenneth, and Kenneth wouldn't talk to 

him. "We just slept our way across the Pacific." 

Kenneth recalls flying in over San Francisco and seeing the Golden Gate. When he got back 

to Washington, he was overwhelmed by attention from the European officers and the French desk 

officers, and also by his Chinese office friends in the Far East office over the agreement between the 

French and the Chinese. 

6 

46:13 Kip mentions the time when Thailand was admitted to the U.N. and a significant gift was 

given to Kenneth, but Kenneth does not recall it. He was involved in some way. The gift was from 

the family of the Thai ambassador. "In those days there wasn't so much fuss about small gifts of that 

sort to the diplomatic officers like myself. Nowadays that would be called graft and corruption of the 

worst sort. . . ." 

In 1947 Kenneth delivered the Haskell lectures at the University of Chicago. When Kenneth 

461


was a student there under A. Eustace Haydon, Kenneth was "a very conservative Calvinist," and 

Haydon was one of the two leading humanist philosophers in the U.S., he and Max Carlotto (SP?). 

So Kenneth would challenge his premises, which Haydon was not used to. Haydon would challenge 

Kenneth's premises right back. "So we'd go at it hammer and tongs." This went on every class 

period. Haydon would start his lecture, and after a few minutes, Kenneth would interrupt him and 

argue that he had made assumptions that were erroneous. "I said to him one day, 'You wouldn't be a 

humanist unless you were in good health.' I said, 'If you found that you couldn't solve your problems 

successfully, you'd begin to call on God just like all the rest of us ordinary human beings. And you 

might not know which God to begin to turn to, but I'll betcha you'd find one in a hurry.'" This went 

over great in the class, with lots of laughter, as the two men went at it. "I thought to myself at the 

time, Well, I'll never get a degree from this guy." He figured he had infuriated Haydon. But finally, 

Kenneth finished his dissertation, and completed his French and German exams after working on his 

own, without taking courses in either language. Then he had to take his written exams, which ran for 

six days, from about nine a.m. to around five p.m., writing on a typewriter as fast as he could go, 

because he had a lot to say concerning each of the questions asked. He figured Haydon wouldn't like 

what he had to say, but to his astonishment, he received special commendation as one of the 

outstanding students in his class, with an A++. So he got his Ph.D. in three quarters, nine months of 

work. Margaret bought him a beautiful silk gown to wear in the graduation ceremony. 

"I had the pleasure of having the president of the university, Hutchins, when he handed me 

my degree—which he handed me—he had a note there, and he said, 'Says here you got your Ph.D. 

under my plan, under the Hutchins plan, and did it in three quarters. That's all I've ever required of 

anybody if they could do the job. Did \RX do it?' I said, 'Yes, I did.' 'Well,' he said, 'I always 

wondered who the damn fool would be who'd try to do it. Well, congratulations!'" 

After the ceremony, ten-year-old Peggy took him down a peg by dancing around chanting, 

"Daddy's a doctor! Daddy's a doctor! But not the useful kind!" That brought him back to earth. 

Anyway, in 1947, Kenneth received an invitation to give the Haskell lectures. That was the 

most prestigious series of six lectures in the United States if not the world in the field of religion and 

religious philosophy. $400 a lecture. One a week. He accepted, naturally. He took leave without 

pay from the State Department. Loaded all his materials into trunks and boxes, arranged for an 

apartment in Chicago, and set out. He didn't have a single lecture written when he arrived on 

campus. Not a one. He had a week to prepare the first one. And each week he spent the week at his 

typewriter "working my head off" to do those Haskell lectures. 

Before he began, Haydon had arranged for Kenneth to make the main address to a convention 

of Unitarian ministers. Kenneth wondered what a Calvinist Presbyterian could say to a bunch of 

Unitarian ministers. He decided to give them a lecture on Chinese philosophy, "and it went over 

great." He had a history of Chinese philosophy which he had used at Earlham, and had worked to 

translate. Also he had given a series of lectures in Chinese philosophy already for the Taft lectures at 

the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati had wanted him to be their professor in Oriental philosophy. 

So Kenneth had little difficulty preparing a talk on the subject for the ministers. He figured they 

wouldn't know what it was all about anyway. 

Then he gave his first Haskell lecture. The audience was almost entirely theological students. 

The second lecture, only a few of them turned up, and in their place a group of anthropologists and 

sociologists. By the third lecture, he didn't have any interest from the theologians or the department 

of religion as such. The audience largely consisted of anthropologists, sociologists, and historians. 

He was breaking absolutely new ground in the field of comparative religion. It had never been done 

before, "and it's never been done since." Kenneth expected to come out of those six lectures with the 

basis for six books. He envisioned building each one into a book. Which he never did, however. 

462


[The six lectures became a book entitled Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions, published by the 

University of Chicago in 1949.] 

Kenneth was invited to give those lectures because A. Eustace Haydon was retiring and 

wanted Kenneth to succeed him. He welcomed Kenneth there, and gave him a big hug. He said, 

"You know, Landon. I'll never forget you," and went on to tell how he would prepare for his class 

lectures and then try to figure out what "that son of a bitch Landon" would attack in the presentation. 

Sometimes, he could figure it out; but sometimes, Landon would surprise him. "And we just had a 

circus. And I want you to have my job, if you want it." 

There was another candidate for the job, and the people there in the field of religion didn't 

want Kenneth. None of them were ever friendly to him. Not one of them in the department ever 

invited him to lunch or dinner. So, before he left, KH gave a dinner in the apartment. Peggy and Bill 

came in for dinner a couple of times from Wheaton, where they were both in college now, at his 

apartment in Chicago. In any case, he got up this dinner. "But in my usual fashion, I suppose, I 

overlooked a good many things." For one thing, he didn't eat bread at dinner, so he didn't serve any. 

He didn't drink much at table either. So no bread, no butter, no water. "And I don't get dirty eating, 

and I didn't have any napkins." He had paper napkins out there in case of need, but he just didn't 

think of them. So there was his dinner, all prepared and in the oven. The guests arrived. He didn't 

serve them any drinks because at that time he didn't drink alcohol at all. They sort of sniffed around, 

and he sat down and chatted with them for a while. There was no evidence that they could see that 

any preparations for dinner had been made. Kenneth recalls having four couples for dinner beside 

himself, the professors and their wives. Finally, he announced that it was time to eat, and he went out 

to the kitchen and started hauling in the dinner. Then someone asked if he had any napkins, and, oh 

sure, he had napkins, and he went out and brought in a pile of napkins. 

463


HOUR 73 

Session #52 continued July 22, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Margaret, Carol Pearson 

1 

0:00 (XIB395) Kenneth continues on the dinner. Did he have any bread and butter? Sure! He 

went in and got some bread and butter and set them on the table. Any water we can drink? Oh, 

water! "I was just thinking of food!" That kind of broke the party up. They talked about how they 

hadn't gotten to know him, and wondered why he hadn't been to the faculty club. But he pointed out 

that he was never invited. They asked him if he were going to apply seriously for the position, and he 

answered that he had found out what it paid. "I couldn't afford to." It wasn't half the money that he 

was already earning. That really pleased them. 

Kenneth says that the book based on the lectures was published not only by Chicago 

University Press but also Oxford University Press, "as my two previous books had been," Siam in 

Transition and The Chinese in Thailand This one was called Southeast Asia: Crossroad of 

Religions [My copy of Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions was published by Cambridge University 

Press, while my copy of The Chinese in Thailand was indeed published by the Oxford University Press. I 

do not have Siam in Transition.] 

Session #53 July 29, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Carol Pearson 

2 

2:31 A story from Kenneth's childhood. His brother Bradley was home from his studies at the 

University of Cincinnati for a time. It was fall, and very wintry, and very cold. One day Bradley 

suddenly said, "Kenny, let's do something. Let's go canoeing." He knew that in the summer they 

would sometimes get girls and canoes and paddle up the Cassawaga River. It was a narrow river, 

even narrower than French Creek. It had a fairly deep channel, ten to fifteen feet deep most of the 

way, and you could go for miles in a canoe. If you went far enough, you would draw near the 

Pymatuning Swamp, where later on they developed an enormous lake. It was a small lake at that 

time. Kenneth said okay, so they walked down to the Interurban and rode it out to the river. They 

were the only people there. Most of the canoes had been put away for the winter. The guy there 

thought they were mildly crazy, but he hired out a canoe to them, and off they went, paddling 

upstream. They had a lunch with them. 

To begin with, Bradley sat in the rear, being the elder, and Kenneth sat in the front. They 

paddled a number of miles, talking and kidding away, then decided to eat in the canoe. The woods 

grew right down to the bank, and they were rather thick. It was hard to find an open spot to beach the 

canoe. So they pulled in to the bank and hooked on to a tree and sat and ate their lunch. 

Then, Bradley decided that the two of them ought to change places. Kenny would sit in the 

rear and do most of the paddling going back downstream. "Okay," Kenneth said. "Well, darned if he 

didn't stand up!" It was bad enough standing up in a canoe, but unfortunately there was a branch of a 

tree directly overhead. Bradley reached up, grabbed hold of the branch, and ordered Kenneth to walk 

past him. At that moment, the canoe went out from under him, and he was left hanging on to this 

"twig" with both hands. The canoe flipped over, and both of them found themselves in over their 

head. The water was ice cold. They struggled to right the canoe, and hauled themselves into it. 

They dipped out as much of the water as they could, and then began paddling downstream. "We 

464


knew we were in trouble because it was so cold." They were sitting there in icy cold water, paddling 

like crazy. They could feel themselves turning into lumps of ice from the waist down. It seemed to 

take forever to get back to the canoe place. And then they had to beach the canoe, haul it up, and pay 

for the use of it. They had to wait a good while for the Interurban, dancing around to try to keep 

warm, and when it came, they both splashed messily onto the car only to be told by the disgusted 

driver to stand on the back platform where they wouldn't make such a mess. By the time they got 

into Meadville, they were both so miserable and frozen that they feared they had frostbite. They ran 

all the way home, a mile and a half, burst into the house ripping off articles of clothing and fighting 

over who was going to get into the bathtub first. "As it was, I think we both got into the bathtub 

about the same time!" Their mother was dancing with anxiety outside the bathroom as her two boys 

horsed around in the tub. What on earth had they gotten up to this time? 

Kip says he has never seen a picture of Bradley, and Carol and Kenneth tell of the pictures 

downstairs. Some show him in a military uniform, even one with a monocle he got after Kenneth had 

given him a watch. "This big brute with a monocle!" 

3 

13:00 Kenneth retells the great stout story. The brewer's big horses. Is he willing? "Oh, I'm 

perfectly willing. I mean, my memory is quite cerise!" 

"My father was chief chemist of the Erie Railroad. But he was driven by his antagonism to 

Demon Rum." The reason that he was so personal about it was that when he was dating Mae Agnes 

Fletcher, he carried a hip flask all the time to keep himself going. He had gotten started doing this 

when he was working in a pharmacy, and he was used to being able to drink drugstore alcohol 

whenever he wanted to. That was when Mae discovered that he had Bright's disease. A real struggle 

developed to get him off the bottle. Between Mae and Dr. Salsbury, who invented the salsbury steak, 

Brad became convinced that he would die unless he got off alcohol. And it left him with an 

antagonism to Demon Rum. It was the day of Prohibition, and Brad was "very religious, and 

aggressively so" and would go around preaching against Demon Rum on the street corners. He 

would take his two sons along with him to sing, "to help him make a noise" so that he could draw a 

crowd. They would sing, "The brewer's big horses can't run over me!" a very popular hymn of the 

day. Brad had all the verses memorized. 

So here was Brad, outspoken against alcohol, working toward prohibition, which was to come 

in 1919. But Mae was feeling run down and ill, and Dr. Clawson came to look her over one morning. 

"I was the kind of kid that hung around the fringes wanting to listen to what was going on." The 

three adults were up in the bedroom, and little Kenny was sitting on the stairs, peaking around the 

corner to see. He couldn't hear what was going on other than the tone of the voices gradually 

becoming more antagonistic. Brad's voice sounded more and more outraged. Finally, there came a 

wild cry from Brad who then burst out the door and rushed downstairs, his face dark with anger. He 

had been told by the doctor that Mae was anemic, and that she should have a stout or dark beer that 

would help her overcome her anemia. This was standard procedure in those days. She was to have a 

drink at noon and a drink at night every day until she improved. That meant that Brad was going to 

have to provide his wife with alcoholic beverage. 

"Well, his reputation was at stake. He knew people would have trouble understanding. . . ." 

They would think KH was drinking. But Mae was adamant that she must do what the doctor said. 

The doctor left quietly, and then Brad told Kenneth that he was about to order a keg of dark beer or 

stout for his mother, and when it came, he wanted Kenny to tap it and give her a drink. He gave his 

son a tap, all nice and clean, the type Kenneth was familiar with from the age of twelve on, when he 

had begun handling barrels of oil and chemicals in the manufacture of ATV. "ATV CLEANCO. 

465


'ATV-Adds to Varnish. Cleanco-Cleans, Polishes, and Disinfects in One Operation. One quart 50 

cents.'" Kenneth manufactured it in a huge vat in the garage that was as big as any bathtub you could 

imagine. The paddle he used to stir things up was about six feet long. The oils would come in fiftygallon 

barrels, and Kenneth knew how to handle them and tap them and so on. So Brad handed 

Kenneth this tap and told him to tap the barrel of stout and draw a drink for his mother to have at 

lunch. 

"Yes, Dad." "I was just absolutely astounded and delighted with all this new excitement." 

Brad made his telephone call to the brewery, and then went off to work. About an hour and a half 

later, Kenneth was still waiting for the sound of the brewer's big horses, and then he heard them 

coming up Walnut Street. They were the kind of horses you sometimes see in Budweiser ads today. 

Huge horses. A great big wagon. They came banging up Walnut Street to the Landons' corner, 

Fairfax Avenue, which was only two blocks long. They turned the corner and came up the steep side 

hill beside the house. The driver backed the wagon into the curb to take the weight off the horses, 

and put the brake on. He put a big block of wood behind the wheels. There wasn't a thing in the 

wagon except this one keg of stout. The driver put a board down from the tailgate and rolled the keg 

down the board, then rolled it down the small, steep terrace that approached the house, finally 

upending it and banging it up onto the porch. "There you are," he said. 

Kenneth said, "We want it in the basement. Would you put it in the basement?" 

And the driver said, "I deliver to, not in," turned around, and walked off. 

So there was the keg, sitting on the back porch. "Well, that didn't bother me much. I was 

accustomed to handling bigger barrels than that." So he knocked it over, rolled it over to the door, 

and upended it through the door, and rolled it across the kitchen, and got it to the cellar door. The 

steps were very steep and had no backs to them. They ended about two and a half feet from the 

concrete wall in the basement. Kenneth looked the situation over, and looked the barrel over, and 

contemplated rolling the barrel down the steps. But he knew he couldn't handle it that way. Then he 

thought, perhaps if he had it with the front end on, he could maneuver it to the edge of the top step, 

and with him in front of it, he could sort of slide it down the steps. "This was what I thought." So 

Kenneth, a kid in kneepants, and skinny, got under this thing and edged it over and edged it over a 

little more until finally it tipped over against him. "And then it suddenly became like a live thing. It 

lunged into me. And my skinny legs just flew back down those stairs with this thing pursuing me and 

my hands on it trying to hold it. And when I hit the bottom, I knew that I'd be smashed, my legs 

would be broken to pieces. I don't think I did any thinking. I just did acting. I sidestepped that thing. 

And it crashed head on into the wall, [taking a chip out of the wall,] and bounced. It bounced! I 

think it bounced three or four feet into the air! And bounced all over the basement! I mean, it was 

going!" It was an oak barrel. No leaks. It was solid. Kenneth chased it around the basement and 

finally lassoed it. He rolled it where he wanted it, upended it, and then sat on it. And he thought, 

"Well, darn it, I've got it here anyway." He sat on it for a few minutes, then thought, Well, might as 

well get the tap. 

He went upstairs for the tap and then returned. In addition to the tap, he had a cone-shaped 

cutter with a screw on the end that you screwed down into the wood. It had a cutting edge that ran at 

an angle to the surface of the oak barrel head. As the screw pulled it down into the wood, the cutting 

edge would cut shavings very evenly to make a hole into the barrel. The screw would go on through, 

followed by the cutting cone, and you would begin to see little spurts of liquid coming up around the 

screw, and you knew you were down to the point that it would take just a few turns with your own 

muscle, without the help of that screw, to get on through. So Kenneth applied his cutter to the barrel 

of stout, turning the screw down through the wood, forming the hole into which the tap would fit, and 

when he reached the final stage, he paused for a moment. He could see a bit of liquid appearing 

466


around the screw, and hear a quiet sizzling sound. He had to calculate the size of the hole he was to 

make to fit the tap that he had. It had to be a precise fit so that the tap would screw in tightly and 

make a good seal. Kenneth saw that after he got through the wood, he would still have to go down 

quite a little way to fit the size of the tap. The tap was not really designed for beer kegs. It was 

designed for oil barrels, and the aperture was larger than necessary for beer. Kenneth figured, Okay, 

that's easy, I know how to do that. 

So he summoned his energies and with a flourish gave the cutter a strong turn. The next thing 

he knew his instrument flew to the ceiling. The thing broke through and the cone cutter just danced 

right up to the ceiling on this firehose of stout. Kenneth had his tap there and tried to put it into the 

hole, but he knew it wouldn't fit anyway. There wasn't a thing he could do about the tap. He had 

nothing else to put in there. He tried to hold it down with his hand, and of course, he couldn't. It was 

shooting all over the place. "So finally I climbed aboard and sat on it. Well, I had this beer shooting 

up around my bottom and through my legs and hitting the ceiling. And I sat there, and this thing ran 

and ran and ran. And then I could hear the trickle as it ran across the floor. And I could see it first 

washing clean rivulets through the black coal dust—we had coal in the basement, and the basement 

floor was full of coal dust. It made all these little rivulets. And then it gradually washed them clean. 

And then I could hear the drain gurgling, gurgling, gurgling, and me sitting there, thinking, 'Oh my 

God, what will my father do to me!'" 

He was sitting there. He really had a bath. Finally, it stopped spurting. And he was still 

sitting there. He heard a chuckle behind him. "And I looked around. There was my mother in a 

nightgown, beautiful big black braids dangling in front of her, looking around at me, laughing at me, 

'Kenny. Kenny. Well, Kenny. Well, you are going to have to get cleaned up, Kenny. Take off all 

your clothes. I don't want any of those clothes to go up out of this basement. Just take them all off.'" 

And then he was to go up, get in the bathtub, and wash himself from top to bottom, including his hair. 

"Yes, Ma." 

So he stripped down and went upstairs. He asked her, "Gee, what's Dad going to do?" And 

she said, "I'll take care of him." 

The bathroom was at the head of the stairs, and the phone was on the landing at the foot of 

those stairs, between the kitchen and the front door. It was easy for Kenneth to hear the conversation. 

She dialed Brad's number. "Brad? This is Mae. That stout was rotten! It was spoiled! You've got 

to send it back. I won't drink that nasty stuff. Yes, it's spoiled. Well, it burst the cask right here in 

the basement, and it's just gone all over the place. And it's spoiled rotten. And you've just got to 

send that stuff back." Kenneth heard sputterings coming out of the phone, but Mae plunged ahead. 

"Yes, it's all over the basement. All over the basement. The house just stinks with that stuff. That's 

rotten stuff, and you send it back." And after a silence, "Well, it isn't Kenny's fault. I can tell you 

that. It isn't Kenny's fault!" And she hung up. 

She looked up, and Kenneth was peaking out of the bathtub at her, and she went back to bed. 

When Brad came home, he looked things over, and "he just looked at me in disgust." And 

that was the end of that. There wasn't enough stout left in that keg to give her more than a half a 

dozen drinks. She did have some of it, then. 

4 

33:00 The sequel was even more hilarious. "My mother was ill, and there was a visiting committee 

for the ill who visited people in the church who were housebound with illness." So the committee 

came to visit. There were three women. Mae was up, and thanked the women for coming. But when 

they came in the door, they stopped cold and began sniffing. Mae graciously invited the women into 

the living room, where they all sat. And the women kept sniffing. "The place smelled like a 

467


brewery. It was terrible, it really was. It just smelled like a brewery." The women all looked at each 

other. They knew Brad Landon's reputation for sobriety and his preaching against Demon Rum, and 

who would be drinking it but his wife?! "The poor fellow! He had an alcoholic wife!?" Mae 

realized what was going on and began to feel outraged. But she explained nothing. 

We resume with Kenneth's career in the State Department. 1949. The communist 

organization in Calcutta was the headquarters for southern Asia, and they sent out orders to 

communist cells in the Philippines, Indochina, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and so on to have a 

general uprising of all their guerrilla forces simultaneously. The U.S. had intercepts and knew the 

orders had been sent, but no one knew what it meant until it began to happen. It started in Burma and 

Thailand. There was a strong force in Malaya left over from World War II. The first State knew 

what was really happening was when our consul in Kuala Lumpur sent in an urgent cable stating the 

situation there, that people on tin mines and rubber estates were in jeopardy. People were being shot 

on the highways and dared not drive at night. He gave the numbers of Americans in peril on these tin 

mines and rubber estates, all unarmed, and could the U.S. government send them carbines, rifles, 

pistols, and the like so that they could protect themselves? The British authorities could not protect 

them out in rural areas. Kenneth received that cable. The Assistant Secretary was a fellow named 

Drumwright, a Foreign Service officer and a good friend, but he was not in his office at the time, or 

Kenneth would have consulted him. Kenneth had a private phonebook of his own with the names of 

various key people in various agencies of the government, and he promptly called a man in the 

Pentagon about the situation. Could they send a planeload of small arms out to the Americans in 

Malaysia? The man said that would be easy. They had great quantities of small arms at Guam. How 

fast could they get a planeload off? "As soon as you hand me an order signed by the Secretary of 

State," the man said, he would put it on "the hooter" to Guam, and Guam would send the arms as fast 

as they could load them on the plane. "Fine," Kenneth said. "I didn't even call the Secretary. I 

simply sat down at my typewriter. I wrote out the orders for this materiel. I signed it for the 

Secretary of State per Kenneth P. Landon, drafting officer. I took a copy up to the Assistant 

Secretary's office and dropped a copy in his In box, not near the top but a little down a way so he 

wouldn't see it too soon. And I got my Chevrolet, which I had down there, and I drove over to the 

Pentagon, and I stopped in front of the guard. I said, 'I've got an urgent action for guns and 

ammunition and whatnot, and I have no place to park my car. You watch it, soldier. I'll be right out 

as soon as I deliver this action instruction.'" The guard was dubious, but Kenneth just walked away 

from the car with the paper and took it to the office of his friend. 

It had taken an hour and a half from the time Kenneth had received the cable. "I had the 

authority to do it," Kenneth says, "but I had to take the rap if it was disapproved later." So the 

message went out. The plane flew from Guam the very next day to Kuala Lumpur. The consulate 

there contacted Americans all over the area and had them come in to pick up their guns. 

The Secretary of State, George Catlett Marshall, was out of the country at the time. He was a 

"very irascible man" if he didn't know what was going on. He was on a mission to Europe. A couple 

of days later, he came back and called a press conference to debrief himself on his mission. It was in 

the Department of State, and there were 125 to 150 reporters from all over the country. When he 

concluded his statement, he said that he would take questions. The first reporter bounced to his feet 

and said, "Sir, has our policy toward colonial powers been changed ?" Were we rearming colonial 

powers? Last night a planeload of American arms landed in Kuala Lumpur from Guam. What did 

this mean? Marshall answered that he knew nothing about it. Neither did his press officer. Marshall 

told the press officer to get the man down there who did know about it and let him answer the 

question. "I will listen with interest!" The press officer soon ran Landon down with a few 

468


phonecalls. "There was Ken Landon exposed to the wind." Kenneth hustled down to the auditorium. 

"General Marshall knew me." The General explained that a reporter had a question to ask him, and 

that he, the General, would be listening with great interest to Kenneth's answer. So the reporter asked 

the question, and Kenneth answered that there was no problem, no change in policy whatsoever. He 

went on to explain about the cable, and the urgent need to distribute arms for the protection of 

Americans in exposed areas in Malaysia. Kenneth closed by saying he hoped that was a satisfactory 

answer, and General Marshall said "Thank you." "And I crept off." 

Years later, after Kenneth had resigned from the State Department and was teaching at 

American University, an experienced Foreign Service officer came to take a course he was teaching. 

Kenneth wondered why he wanted to take the course, and queried him about it. After several class 

sessions, they were talking, and the man explained. The reason he was taking the course was that "I 

was in Malaysia at the time that you had arranged for the small arms to arrive." And he said, "I want 

to tell you that the whole American community out there fell down in praise of Kenneth P. Landon 

because they knew who had done it." Many of them had told him to see Ken Landon in Washington 

and express appreciation for what he had done. He told Kenneth that the Americans had their small 

arms long before the British did because of the speed with which Kenneth acted. 

5 

46:47 Kenneth speaks of the three books he has written. All of them were "primary studies" that 

had never been made before. Siam in Transition was a seminal study that all subsequent studies had 

to begin with, "whether they liked it or not." His second book, The Chinese in Thailand, was the 

first book in the English language on overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The only other book of 

any extent was on the Chinese in Indonesia, and only on their shopkeeping and their economic side. 

It didn't deal with their society. The first book dealing with their social life, their role in society, and 

how they got there was written by Kenneth Landon. A few articles had been written by a man named 

Berthold Lauffer (SP?), a fine scholar at the Field Museum in Chicago. The third book was 

Southeast Asia; Crossroad of Religions, and this also was a first. It has never been replaced by 

anything with the same approach. 

As Kenneth recalls, The Chinese in Thailand was published in 1941, just before the war. 

The astonishing thing was that the whole first edition just "vanished." People who had an interest in 

the subject just couldn't find copies. The Japanese had bought up the edition. Kenneth didn't know 

this at the time, but he found out years later. Fortunately, he had a few copies, and book reviewers 

had copies. But most colleges and universities couldn't get the book. After the war, quite a few years 

later, Kenneth was at a conference at the Shoreham Hotel here in Washington, and when he walked 

into the auditorium, he saw a Japanese sitting in a long empty row and went over and sat down beside 

him, introducing himself. "I'm Kenneth Landon." The man had a powerful, visceral reaction to the 

sound of the name and drew in his breath. His eyes got big. "You Dr. Kenneth Landon?!" The man 

said he had come to Washington to meet Kenneth! They started talking, and the man asked many 

questions. He showed great interest in Kenneth. Finally, he told Kenneth that he had his book The 

Chinese in Thailand in Japanese. He had been a Japanese intelligence officer in Thailand and 

Malaysia during World War II, and Kenneth's book was "the most useful handbook" the Japanese 

had. He had carried the book in his knapsack all through the war. Kenneth said it was certainly 

flattering to learn he had been such a great help to the Japanese! 

The man told Kenneth that he had brought his copy in the hope of meeting Kenneth and 

giving it to him. He came out to 4711 and presented Kenneth with a Japanese version of The 

Chinese in Thailand. It was the very copy he had carried in the war. He autographed it to Kenneth. 

469


"That book was incorporated in two other books." A man named Skinner, a professor at 

Cornell, studied The Chinese in Thailand, and came out with own book on the Chinese in Thailand 

which consisted mostly of Kenneth's book. He did make reference to Kenneth and to the help 

Kenneth's book had been to him. But it was an act of "outrageous plagiarism all the way through." 

Skinner later became a fine scholar. 

Kenneth's "field work" for that work was not intentional. He had simply "slogged" all over 

the area as a missionary and developed a direct knowledge of the Chinese and their life in Thailand. 

He was reflecting his experience in his book. 

Then a man named Purcell (SP?), who was an advisor to the Chinese in the British service in 

Malaya, and who had been sent to China before the war to study Chinese, decided that he would 

write a book like Kenneth's on the Chinese in Malaya, which he did. Subsequently, Purcell decided 

to put together in one volume all the information available on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, and he 

included Kenneth's book in a shortened form, which he acknowledged doing. 

6 

56:22 Kenneth had a regular ritual at State when coffee break time came. He had learned early on 

that the most important people to him were the messengers and the secretaries. With a messenger, 

you could get your stuff to go where you wanted it to go and when you wanted it to go—if he was 

your pal. Also, you could learn where various documents you wanted to know about were going. 

The secretaries were just invaluable, because when you took a memo to a man's office, you gave it to 

the secretary, who would put it in the In box, where it might get lost under an avalanche of other 

papers. Kenneth would say to Betty or Jill that, if his memo began to sink out of sight, it would be so 

nice if she could resurrect it and let it float to the top. Every day, Kenneth made a point of having a 

coffee break with the messengers and secretaries. 

The doors in State had slats from the bottom half down for the passage of air. They were 

metal. Kenneth would walk along and at each one would take the side of his shoe and run it down 

those slats, Brrrrm! "It would sound like a gatling gun going off." By the time he got to the end of 

the hall, the girls would begin to come out. There'd be eight to ten girls down there, and a couple of 

fellows. 

Kenneth had a variation on that. He discovered that a paperweight "was a fabulous tool." He 

would take a paperweight and spin it and then walk off. It would go for quite a long time. You could 

hear the thing whirling noisily until it finally crashed. He would get six to eight of these things going 

all the way down the hallway. That would be the signal for coffee. 

The whole mob of them would go down the stairs to the floor below where the coffee bar was. 

Half way down the stairs, there was a huge firehose all coiled up and ready to go in case of an 

emergency. There was a wheel that you whirled to turn the water on. 

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HOUR 74 

Session #53 continued July 29, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Margaret, Carol Pearson 

1 

0:00 (XIB795) Kenneth continues the firehose story. Kenneth stood there and looked at the 

firehose one day, with the whole crowd behind him, and said rather dreamily, "You know, one of 

these days, fellows and girls, I'm just going unleash that hose and turn that tap and run like hell!" 

Then they went on down. Well, later in the year that happened. "I didn't do it. But I got the credit 

for it. I got the credit for it all over the Department. 'That damn Landon! He GLG it!'" The water 

poured down the stairs, a regular river going down. "They didn't know who did it. But they all knew 

it was me." Larry Salsbury told that story over and over through the years. Kenneth would just 

shake his head and say, Well, I didn't do it. And Larry would just laugh and say that they all knew 

who had done it all right! 

When Kenneth was in the State Department, there was a time when the CIA was "getting 

ready to try to dispose of Sihanouk" and then to kill off Sukarno. Word was out. This started in the 

Truman administration and continued in the Eisenhower administration. "And then one of these 

really buccaneer types came into my office, very confidential, and said, 'Well, Dr. Landon. Is there 

anybody you'd like to get rid of? We can take care of him.'" Kenneth thanked him cordially but 

pointed out that they hadn't had much success with either Sihanouk or Sukarno to date. "Or Ho Chi 

Minh. You could begin with Ho Chi Minh, if you want to." Kenneth was being jocular. But the CIA 

man was very serious about it. 

"The CIA has always had a sort of an odd relationship with me because they were convinced 

that I was more of an agent than I appeared, and they couldn't figure me out. You see, they knew that 

I was Wild Bill Donovan's first substantive employee. They knew that I was with Donovan when we 

repatriated the KMT troops out in Siam. They knew that I knew most of the political leaders in all 

the countries of Southeast Asia. They knew that I knew the Lao general in the interior of Laos. They 

couldn't figure me out because it was not the usual pattern for a State Department official or a 

Foreign Service officer, to know so many different kinds of people that were none of his business. 

And to this day, they claim me as one of the founding members of the OSS. I QHYHU was in the OSS. 

I was in the Office of the Co-ordinator of Information, and then, with Donovan's agreement, I left to 

select bombing targets for the Board of Economic Warfare. I still worked for Donovan making 

broadcasts in the Thai language. So I'm one of those shadowy people in their minds who probably 

was one of their secret agents, all the time. They're convinced of it. They're sure of it. And, as I told 

you, when they had their last 'old boys' meeting—and they've been trying to sign me up to be one of 

their OSS 'old boys,' and they want me to put down on paper where I served and what I did and that 

sort of nonsense. Of course, I won't join. And I wouldn't fill out that sort of thing, which merely 

enhances my reputation. And when they sent out their notice at this last year's meeting, which was a 

national meeting of former OSS officers, it started with, 'And when Ken Landon came to 

Washington. . . .' It started off like that. And they quoted from a book on Donovan which also had 

quotes about me in it. I thought it was kind of ridiculous. They claim me as one of their 'old boys.' 

But I never go to their meetings, and I never admit that I was. The only time, you might say, that the 

CIA actually had a finger in my life again was when I was on the White House staff, and they did the 

executive office work. They ran the payroll. And the man who was the secretary for the National 

Security Council was sent over from the CIA. That was under Truman's administration. And when I 

471


went over to join Elmer Staats, his executive officer was from the CIA. And he was the man who 

told me when I was moving over there that it would probably be four months before I'd be cleared. 

He told me that on a Tuesday, and I was cleared by Thursday, I guess. And he was stunned. He said, 

'I didn't realize that you had such a background.' He said, 'They've got a file on you a foot thick over 

at the CIA.' He said, 'You're clean, man! You're in!'" 

Kip asks who the Lao general was that Kenneth knew. Kip suggests General Vang Pao, the 

leader of the Lao hill people, who assisted the United States in the Vietnam War, and Kenneth says 

yes, that sounds like the one. He agrees that this was during the Vietnam period. "And I had agents 

come in from Laos and call on me up at American University to bring me regards from the field." 

Kenneth does not recall specifically how he came to know Vang Pao. He says he also knew the 

leadership of the revolutionaries, the Korin (SP?) leadership, over in Burma. They called on him in 

Bangkok "just to know me." 

"So you see I'm really a phony. 'Cause I wasn't. I wasn't in the CIA. And there's Josie 

Stanton, the wife of Ambassador Stanton, long after Ed had died, and she was coming back here— 

she was almost blind; just a few years ago—and she said, 'Now Ken, level with me. All the time, you 

weren't really State Department. You weren't really State Department. You were CIA, weren't you?' 

There you are. People right in the Foreign Service!" 

2 

9:34 In 1950, Kenneth traveled to Southeast Asia, one of his most successful tours. A big story. 

Kenneth puts it off until later. 

Margaret tells the story of her Chinese pictures of Christian scenes. It began when the 

Landons were living in Siam. About Christmastime, one year—probably 1930 or 1931—Margaret 

received from the mission board in New York a magazine for women that contained a picture of a 

Madonna done in the Chinese manner. Margaret had never seen anything like it, and was enchanted 

with it. "It caught the feeling of the Madonna that one gets in Italian art, but it had something else. It 

was Asian. And it was very simple. And I said to Kenneth, 'If I ever could, I would like to have a 

copy of that painting.'" She didn't imagine it was possible. The original of the painting had been sent 

to the Pope in Rome. 

The years passed. The Landons came home. The war began. And Kenneth became involved 

with the Free Thai movement that was sending agents into Thailand. Most of the men in the 

movement were educated men, and among them was a man named Na Ranong—a name familiar to 

Margaret from her years in southern Thailand. The Na Ranong family were descended from an 

impoverished Chinese who arrived in Thailand with nothing but a hopstick and proceeded to become 

so successful and wealthy that he could loan money to the king. One of his grandsons, Chok (SP?) 

Na Ranong, went to Harvard and there met a girl who was named Lydia Tan. She was a Chinese, and 

yet not really a Chinese, but a Manchu, of the ruling class [which was of Mongolian heritage]. She 

was one of two children of a General and Mrs. Tan in Peking. Lydia's mother was a lady-in-waiting 

for the last Empress, and so Lydia grew up in the court. [One of her vivid memories was 

participating as a young girl in the wedding of Emperor Pu-yi. She rode with him.] One year, 

both Lydia and her brother came down with polio. Her brother died, but Lydia survived, crippled by 

the disease. She had a brilliant mind. Because of the lameness she suffered as a result of the polio, 

her mother told her that she had no future in the court and that her future depended on the use of her 

mind. So she was sent abroad to get the finest education possible. She learned to speak four or five 

languages. When the government changed, her father was sent as ambassador to several countries in 

Europe. She completed her education by going to Harvard, where she earned her Ph.D. And there 

she met Chok (SP?) Na Ranong and married him. 

472


Margaret met Lydia in the early 1940's, after moving to Washington, and realized that she 

was very lonely. The wives of the other men in the Free Thai movement were all Thai, and she was 

more highly educated than they. Margaret heard that Lydia was pregnant, living in a little apartment 

over on the 15th Street, and not feeling well, so she decided to go over and see her. It was a shabby 

little apartment in a shabby area of the city. Lydia was lying down. She was quite touched by 

Margaret's visit. And so began a friendship that has lasted through all the years. 

During the war, Margaret happened to mention the picture she had seen years ago of the 

Madonna done in the Chinese manner, and Lydia answered matter-of-factly that she knew all about 

it. Margaret said that she had always wished she could own such a picture, and Lydia said that this 

could be arranged. Her mother and father knew all the artists, and her mother could arrange it. Lydia 

then told Margaret the story of how the paintings came to be made. 

Margaret refers to an issue of Life magazine that came out December 22, 1941, with a story 

on the Vatican collection of Chinese paintings of Christian scenes. Lydia's story of the paintings 

differed from the story in the magazine, she says. 

According to Lydia, the Pope sent to Peking an apostolic delegate whose name was Elsio 

Constantini, probably an archbishop. He was a connoisseur of Chinese art. One day Constantini said 

to someone in his entourage that he was going to call on the owner of the house in which he was 

living. The house was owned by a Manchu prince, who rented it to the Catholic church. He had once 

had great power, but of course lost it with the change in government. Constantini's attendants urged 

him not to visit the man, but to summon him. But Constantini went anyway, honoring the prince. 

The two of them got to talking about art, and it turned out that the prince was a connoisseur of 

Chinese art. During the conversation, he told Constantini that a Chinese artist would be given an idea 

and then would rapidly paint it on a scroll. This intrigued Constantini, who told the prince a Bible 

story on the spot. The prince got his paints and promptly painted the story. He himself was an artist. 

The story was the woman at the well [from John 4], says Kenneth. This led to Constantini's having a 

whole series of pictures painted of Bible stories, which he sent to the Pope in Rome. 

When Lydia told this story, she said that all Margaret had to do was tell her what she wanted, 

and Lydia would send to China to have the paintings made for her. Margaret chose nine of the 

paintings that she liked the most, and especially the Madonna. She said to Lydia that she didn't want 

them on scrolls. She wanted them suitable for framing. Lydia said that was fine; just specify the 

size. Margaret also asked that the artists sign the paintings and in Chinese characters briefly indicate 

the biblical stories on which the paintings were based. 

Kenneth says that Lydia told them her mother was the patron of the artists. It really was a 

simple matter for Lydia to have this thing done. 

Lydia was going out to China herself, and needed money for the artists, so Kenneth got her a 

thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills which she carried with her. Kenneth told her that, as the artists 

completed their paintings, they should turn them over to the American embassy there, designated for 

Kenneth, which would then send them to him at the State Department. This would have been in 1947 

or 1948. 

The first seven pictures came by diplomatic pouch before the 1949 revolution. The two large 

pictures, the feeding of the 5000 and the Madonna and child, had not yet been completed. The 

Landons' friend, Norman Hanna, was at the consulate general in Shanghai with John Cabot, the 

consul general, right up to the end in 1949. When China fell to the communists, he and Cabot got out 

just in time. Kenneth thought to himself that he and Margaret would probably never see those last 

two paintings. But then one day in 1950, the phone rang, and it was John Cabot calling to say that he 

had a couple of paintings for Kenneth that had been delivered to him just before he left Shanghai. So 

all nine paintings made it out. 

473


Margaret tells us that, at her request, Lydia's father had each picture mounted on silk before it 

was sent. 

The Life article has pictures of two of the most famous artists, Luhang Nien (SP?) and Luke 

Chen, a nobleman who converted to Christianity. 

The Landons had the paintings framed at a shop on Dupont Circle. 

The pictures are not truly copies of the scrolls in the Vatican. The same artists painted the 

same stories or scenes, but they did them originally. There are many differences in the paintings 

from the Vatican paintings. 

One day Margaret commented to Lydia that in Italian paintings, the Madonna usually wears a 

blue robe. The Madonna done by the Chinese artist in Peking was wearing a light rose robe. Why 

was that? Lydia was scornful in her answer. "Blue is an old woman's color," she said. 

Kenneth comments on the enjoyment he has taken through the years in these paintings, which 

hang in the living room. He pays tribute to Margaret for having them done. Margaret says, "Well 

that really was the fulfillment of a dream." 

3 

33:17 [Candy, the bulldog, which the Landons owned from 1939 to 1944.] Whenever visitors 

came to the door, Candy would become very excited. As they stepped in the door, she would go up 

to them, look up beseechingly, and then throw up on the rug at their feet. The whole thing would go, 

Kenneth says. "Aaaargh!" Then she would look up at them, tail wagging, seeming to say, "I hope 

you appreciate me." And the whole mess of vomit lay at their feet. "She did it again and again." 

Margaret would have to get down on her hands and knees and clean up the mess. 

On Kenneth's birthday, March 27, 1944, when baby Kip was eight months old, Candy's life 

with the Landons came to an abrupt end. Peggy was in high school and was dressed up in her high 

heels for the birthday party. This happened at 2910 Brandywine Street in Washington. Margaret was 

standing at a work table preparing the dinner. The stove was an old-fashioned kind that stood on 

legs. Margaret turned and saw, on the floor, Candy and the baby—except that at first it didn't make 

sense. The baby had no head. It took a moment to realize what she was seeing. The baby's head was 

inside the bulldog's mouth. Carol tells us that she—who would have been eleven at the time—saw 

Kip pull on Candy's tail. The dog was heading for the stove, to go under it, when the baby grabbed 

its tail. Candy quickly turned and took Kip's head in its mouth. At that moment, Peggy came in the 

kitchen door and without hesitation moved to the dog and drove the heel of her high-heeled shoe into 

Candy's belly. Candy spit out the baby's head. One of the dog's teeth had gone through Kip's cheek, 

which bled freely. 

Carol remembers that they cut the baby's clothes off. There was a problem finding a doctor. 

The Group Health man refused to come. Carol recalls that a neighbor, Mrs. Simpson, knew first aid, 

and so they went to her for help. She came over, and they all took the baby upstairs, put him a 

bathtub, and cut his clothes off because they were so bloody. Either that night or the next day, they 

took the baby to see a doctor, who examined him carefully. There was no serious damage. 

The next day, Kenneth took Candy to a place which quickly found a new home for her on a 

farm. 

Kenneth originally bought Candy when he went to Earlham College. He wanted a dog that 

would make him look impressive. He wanted a show dog that he could take around with him on 

campus. He wasn't as confident of his abilities at the time as he made out publicly, and he wanted to 

do something to help his cause. The ploy worked, he tells us. He was immediately "in" with the 

students on campus because of that dog. He also bought a handsome sportscoat to go with the dog, 

figuring this would be "very collegiate." "And I thought I would make a splash on the campus as the 

474


new professor with this handsome bulldog." Carol says Candy wasn't much fun as a pet. But 

Kenneth says he wanted a bulldog because a bulldog was "noticeable." Candy was a handsome 

bulldog "as bulldogs go." 

4 

41:32 Margaret tells how she first learned of Anna Leonowens. She begins by giving the 

background, describing the general shape of Siam, then describing the city in the south they were first 

stationed in, Nakhon Si Thammarat. She tells of the mysterious, abandoned chapel that was torn 

down in Nakhon, which probably was a Portuguese chapel. Then she tells of the enmity between Mr. 

Snyder and Dr. McDaniel. She tells of Mr. Snyder's foolish letter criticizing the Thai government. 

She tells of the day Mr. Snyder suddenly died. And the funeral service which Kenneth conducted. 

After the Landons moved to Trang, Margaret would occasionally visit the McDaniels in 

Nakhon, and once she went over, leaving the children in Trang. She travelled by train. This 

particular time, the McDaniels were going out to the leper asylum the doctor had established. 

Margaret was not interested in going that day. She had visited the asylum a number of times. So Dr. 

McDaniel looked around for something that might be of interest to Margaret while they were gone. 

He said, "I have a book here you might enjoy reading." He told her that the Siamese government had 

been so opposed to the book that they had tried to suppress its publication or buy up the entire 

edition. He said he had a copy which he kept hidden behind a line of books in his bookcase. He 

pulled it out and handed it to her. It was The English Governess at the Siamese Court. 

So the McDaniels drove off, and Margaret sat down on the porch to read. "And it was as if I'd 

dropped into another world. If I had read it elsewhere, I don't think it would have had the impact that 

it had. For one thing, there were yellow-robed priests passing here and there. There were elephants 

ambling along. And there was one elephant that charmed me. It had been taught, like the others, to 

get down on its knees and bow to the temples. Well, there was a temple just across the street and a 

little distance from Dr. McDaniel's hospital. And that elephant would not bow to that chapel. It 

would come across the street and bow to Dr. McDaniel's hospital, and nothing the driver did could 

make it do anything else. But that sense of the past was so tremendous, you see. There were still the 

great city walls. It had been a walled city." The walls were at least forty feet thick at the base. "So 

there was the feeling of this old, old city which had once been of great importance. All right. There I 

sat reading, and I was absolutely entranced. And when I finished the book, Dr. McDaniel had the 

other book." The Romance of the Harem The two books had been out of print for many years, 

and Margaret didn't think it possible to find copies. She knew of one woman who found one of them 

in England but had to pay a high price for it, more than Margaret could pay. 

Margaret told friends in America who wanted to get a feeling for Siam to read Anna 

Leonowens' books. Many libraries had them. 

Kenneth interjects that, at the same time, he was busy collecting all the information he could 

get hold of on the first five years of the new government that came in with the overthrow of the 

absolute monarchy in 1932. At the time, Margaret was baffled by his acquisitions and asked him 

what he was about. He remembers telling her that he was going to write a book on that period. He 

recalls Margaret telling him after she had read Anna's two books that perhaps she would write an 

article about Anna one day. If he was going to write a book, she would write an article. 

Margaret now begins to retell the story of how her dream of writing began, in high school. 

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HOUR 75 

Session #53 continued July 29, 1988 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Carol Pearson 

1 

0:00 (XIB1320) Margaret continues the story of how her dream of writing began. The day in high 

school when Miss Effie Wambaugh came up behind her in the hall and challenged her, "Margaret, 

you have the gift of words. Do something with it!" Margaret says, "I was stunned. I just stood 

there." 

After her year at the Medill School of Journalism, Margaret decided that she would write 

professionally, and she further decided that she would write a book about Miss Edna S. Cole. She 

had been told by Elmo Scott Watson that she should write about what she knew. And what she 

especially knew was the world of missionaries and missionary education in Siam. 

Edna Cole went out to Siam in 1879. She had taught after the Civil War in the American 

South, which had been a bitter experience because of the hatred of the Southerners for Northerners 

like her. She subsequently became interested in Siam, applied to the mission board, and was sent out, 

initially to Chiang Mai, where she opened a school. After a short time there, she was asked to come 

down to Bangkok and take over the girls' school there temporarily. She was so good, she became the 

head of the school. The school was on the grounds that had been occupied by the Third King, though 

he wasn't actually called that. It was called the Wang Lang School. She was a small woman, a 

brilliant teacher, and very quick to figure out what would work. Her students became very desirable 

as wives. Miss Cole struck up a friendship with Prince Damrong, the most able half-brother of Prince 

Chulalongkorn. He was working to set up an educational system in Siam. He saw Miss Cole's ability 

and would come to call on her. 

In 1939, Margaret spent a week visiting with Miss Cole at her home in St. Joseph, Missouri. 

It was a marvellous week. Miss Cole liked to talk about her experiences in Siam. But even more 

interesting, she had a box the size of a suit box full of letters, written from 1879 to 1923, when she 

retired. They were written on onionskin paper because postage was so expensive. Many of the 

letters were written across and then written up and down as well. "It was agonizing to read." As long 

as Miss Cole was willing to talk to her, Margaret listened. Then she would have a nap and then read 

letters. Miss Cole had written them to her sister in this country. Margaret saw that the only way she 

could do a book would be to take what Miss Cole gave her orally—Margaret still has the notebook in 

which she recorded her conversations with Miss Cole—and work from the letters. She knew she 

could only do it if she had the letters. But sadly, Miss Cole would not permit her to take them. Not 

only that, Kenneth interjects, Miss Cole destroyed letters as Margaret read them. Margaret says, "I 

let that happen only once." It was a letter in which Miss Cole recorded a feud that took place when 

she was in Chiang Mai, and Margaret made the mistake of reading the letter to Miss Cole, who 

promptly took the letter and tore it up. 

Margaret realized then that a book on Miss Cole would be overwhelmingly difficult. To do it, 

she would have to spend large amounts of time in St. Joseph, interviewing Miss Cole and working 

with the letters. With a husband and three children to care for, this was impossible. Furthermore, 

Miss Cole would want to control what was written, Margaret realized. Margaret would not have a 

free hand to write the story as she saw it, and as the letters portrayed it. As she had done with the 

letter she destroyed, Miss Cole would strictly censor the story. 

476


2 

10:20 And then something happened. While Margaret was with Miss Cole, she received a letter 

from Kenneth, reporting an event that was to change Margaret's direction dramatically. Kenneth 

says, "Well, my end of it was really very incidental, I suppose, but very crucial." He had made a 

"splash" in the Presbyterian world in Chicago, because he was not only working for a doctorate but 

also trying to get a church. The clergy knew about him. He was invited to be the speaker of a 

meeting of the ministers of the Chicago area, which was interdenominational, Episcopalian, 

Presbyterian, Baptist, and so on. The meeting was at Northwestern University and ran a full day. So 

Kenneth went and made his speech on Siam. When he completed his talk, a man came up to him and 

said, "Dr. Landon, I'm Canon Moore of St. Luke's Cathedral. And I was fascinated by your lecture." 

He said, "My mother had a very dear friend in Siam named Annie. And she would like to meet you. 

She would be fascinated to meet you." Kenneth said that would be fine, and then, as he went over in 

his mind the women he had known in Siam, he realized that the only "Annie" he had ever heard of in 

connection with Siam was Anna Leonowens. He mentioned this to Moore, who said, "Oh, that's the 

woman! My mother and Anna Leonowens were great friends!" Kenneth began doing arithmetic in 

his mind and said, "Well, it would have been nice to have met your mother." Moore looked at 

Kenneth and laughed, getting the point, and answered that his mother was very much alive and well. 

She was ninety-six, mind clear as a bell, and she lived just a few blocks away! [She was actually 

ninety-three.] 

So the two men set out to meet Mrs. Moore, who lived in an apartment. She was a delightful 

woman, and they had a wonderful conversation about Anna Leonowens. Kenneth spoke of the two 

books Anna had written, and told them of Margaret's interest in writing an article about Anna. He 

then told Dean Moore that Margaret would like to meet his mother. Could he bring her to tea? And 

the Dean said yes. So shortly thereafter, Kenneth wrote Margaret about this, and a short time after 

that, the two of them went in to Chicago for tea with Mrs. Moore. By this time, knowing that she 

would be unable to do the book on Miss Cole, Margaret was very much interested in doing an article 

on Anna. 

Not long after this, Dean Moore got in touch with the Landons to tell them that a 

granddaughter of Anna Leonowens from Toronto was coming to Evanston for a visit. They hoped 

that the Landons would come in to meet her. 

Margaret tells us that Moore's full title and name were The Very Reverend Gerald G. Moore, 

Dean of St. Matthews Episcopal Cathedral. Kenneth is surprised; he thought it was St. Luke's. 

Edna Cole was born in 1955. A woman took care of her house and cooked for her. Margaret 

said to the woman that Miss Cole's letters were valuable and urged her to save them when Miss Cole 

died. Margaret gave the woman her address and asked her to write her when the time came. But 

Margaret never heard another word. She and Kenneth both speculate that the letters were just thrown 

away after Miss Cole's death. 

Miss Margaret McCord, who had taught at Wang Lang in Bangkok, had retired and now lived 

in Baltimore. She used to go out to St. Joseph to visit Miss Cole in the summers, and she read many 

of the letters. Some of them she sent to Margaret, and Margaret saved them. Some of them she 

destroyed. "And I don't know what happened to the rest." 

Mrs. Moore remembered Anna Leonowens coming to her home in Enniscorthy, Ireland, 

wearing a diamond belt buckle that the King of Siam had given her. Anna's husband was related to 

the Moore family. [According to the account Margaret wrote for the jacket of Anna and published in 1944, 

Dean Moore told Kenneth on their first meeting that "one of my aunts spent some time in Siam" and described 

her as "Aunt Annie." Presumably, then, this family relation was through her husband.] 

So. The Moores were expecting a visit, the first in ten years, from Miss Avis Fyshe, the 

477


youngest granddaughter of Anna Leonowens. She lived in Toronto, Canada. She suffered from 

epilepsy. The Moores had told Miss Fyshe of Margaret's interest in Anna. When she came, Margaret 

and Kenneth went in to Chicago to meet her at the Moores. She told them that she was the only one 

in the family who had an interest in her grandmother. Her brother James had gone out to Bangkok 

for one term, and people showed him the house Anna had lived. They said, "That was the house of 

the White Angel." 

"So, she evidently thought about it, and then she came out to Wheaton to Mother's house. I 

can see her now, standing in the living room of the apartment at 301 E. Seminary Avenue, and 

turning over to me an armload of material. She had tried to write it herself, but she said she had no 

knowledge of the Far East, no knowledge of Siam, and she simply couldn't do it." 

Dad interjects that, at the tea, when they first met Avis Fyshe, the Moores and Miss Fyshe 

knew he had just finished a book on Siam, Siam in Transition, and they knew he was working on 

another book. They knew that Margaret was interested in writing on Anna. They figured that the 

Landons were a literary family that could write. What they envisioned was that the two of them, 

Kenneth, who had already written a book, and Margaret, with her interest in Anna, would do the book 

as a team. So they asked if the two of them would be interested. Would Margaret be interested? 

Kenneth answered, "Yes, but only if we had a free hand to do it. No one who writes can write with 

someone looking over their shoulder to require changes or to require some particular line. Neither 

Margaret nor I could write anything about Anna Leonowens if someone were looking over our 

shoulder." It was after that that Miss Fyshe came to Wheaton with her materials. 

Kenneth required and Margaret agreed that Avis Fyshe would write Margaret a letter, which 

Margaret has in her safety deposit box to this day, giving Margaret a free hand to write whatever she 

could write about Anna. Miss Fyshe agreed to it. Margaret says she was a charming woman of 

middle age. After agreeing to the letter, she turned to Margaret and said, "But I really must warn you 

that you are likely to find little interest in the story from a commercial point of view." Kenneth 

remembers it with laughter. Miss Fyshe was very gentle about it. Kenneth points out that he and 

Margaret never did anything for commercial purposes. They did what they did because it seemed the 

right thing to do. 

3 

25:50 Margaret says that she did not yet have Anna's books. [According to her account on the jacket of 

Anna, she found both books in the winter of 1938.] She and Kenneth went down to the Economy 

Bookstore, where he looked for books he could use in his research. The two of them often went to 

bookstores in this way and found a lot of useful material concerning their interests. Margaret took off 

on her own. She saw a section marked "Out of Print Books." She went down along the line and 

could hardly believe it when the name Leonowens leaped out at her. The book she saw was The 

English Governess at the Siamese Court. [The jacket account says it was The Romance of the 

Harem.] Margaret hardly dared open the cover to see the price, fearing it would be too high. She 

stood there and clutched it to her chest, says Kenneth, wondering if they could afford it. Margaret 

says, No, that wasn't it at all! But Kenneth says that she finally opened the book and discovered that 

the price was $1! "Anyway," Margaret says, "I had to withstand the impulse to run to the front of the 

store with my dollar. I was so afraid somebody else would get it. But nobody else was there. We 

were up on the third floor." 

About a month later, Marshall Fields, a department store that had a third floor where books 

were sold, put some 50,000 old books on sale. They had the books in bins, says Kenneth. Margaret 

went down and found The Romance of the Harem in one of the bins. [The jacket account says it was 

478


The English Governess at the Siamese Court ] Fifty cents, says Kenneth. No, says Margaret, it 

was seventy-five. But Kenneth says again that he thinks it was fifty. [The jacket account agrees.] 

Margaret says that she gave both books to her daughter Carol, who is sitting with us tonight, 

and Carol confirms that she has both books. She will check the prices marked in them when she goes 

back home in South Carolina. 

Margaret also had hundreds of pages of text that Avis Fyshe had written before she gave up 

on the project. And she had a box of letters Avis had given her, including several autographed letters 

from King Mongkut that the Landons had not known existed. Margaret says she returned them 

[presumably to Avis Fyshe once the book had been completed]. They returned everything. 

The only thing that did not go back was a book of clippings. 

4 

30:03 The next thing that made Anna possible happened when Ernest Griffith and "Wild Bill" 

Donovan brought Kenneth to Washington. "And I came to Washington to save the nation in three 

weeks. And I haven't saved it yet. I'm still here. And I had two offices, one in the Triangle Building 

with Bill Donovan, and the other at the Library of Congress for research." The first thing he did in 

the Library was to find out what they had on Siam. And he found on the floor a huge stack of 

Siamese language paperback books from Bangkok. These, he tried to sort out and made available to 

Margaret for her research. She got a lot of her information on the royal family from them. 

Then too Kenneth took Margaret to the Archives for the ministerial and consular records, and 

the two of them delved into those together. 

In addition, he had a program intended to microfilm about 15,000 pages of ministerial and 

consular records in Britain. The idea was that the Library of Congress would pay for it. Fortunately, 

the records were down in a salt mine for their protection during the war and so not available for use 

until after the war. "And thank heavens they weren't! Otherwise, you'd still be writing Anna and the 

King of Siam. And that is the literal truth!" 

Margaret tells of a time when Kenneth went out to Siam and purchased an enormous number 

of books, but Kenneth says this was in 1945-6, after Anna had been published. He bought many 

books in London and Paris. Then in Bangkok Pridi Panomyong (SP?), the Regent, learned of 

Kenneth's interest in books on Siam, and wanting to do something nice for this representative of the 

American government, he ordered that the national library give Kenneth a copy for him and a copy 

for the Library of Congress of everything it could spare on the history, religion, and so on of Siam. 

So boxes of books went to the Library and boxes came to 4711. 

Kenneth briefly retells of getting the secret documents on Pridi's economic plan for Thailand 

in the early 1930's, and of his now getting the document of King Prajadhipok's (SP?) comments at the 

time. 

In any case, with Avis Fyshe's gift of papers, and the materials Kenneth found in the Library 

of Congress, Margaret had what she needed in order to write Anna. 

Kenneth says that Peggy was a great help in the writing. She would come home from school 

and say, "Mother, what can I do to help?" "And Margaret could unload on Peggy and have time for 

herself [to write]. Otherwise, she couldn't do much. Peggy was an enormous help to you in that 

period." This was both in Richmond, Indiana, and here in Washington. 

Margaret began the work shortly after the Landons moved to Richmond in 1939. She didn't 

know anyone there, but she was able to get a maid for $8 a week. That didn't last all the way 

through, but it made a great difference. "I couldn't have done it without some help." 

Kenneth says that he remembers her writing and rewriting some of the chapters twenty or 

479


more times. "And one of the things that astounded me about your way of writing: you could write 

any chapter anywhere in the book that you were interested in. You could write your first chapter; you 

could write your last chapter; because you had the whole book in your mind. That absolutely 

astounded me." 

Carol remembers how she would say to people who came to the door that they must be quiet 

because Mother was working. Even at Hallowe'en. She also remembers that the two books Margaret 

gave her of Anna's were QRW the ones Margaret found in Chicago and used in writing the book. 

Margaret says she had two copies of each of Anna's books that she used in writing Anna. Carol says 

she remembers that Margaret filled one of each with notations. The copies Carol received were not 

either set of the two books, she seems to say. Margaret says that she must have given the two sets she 

used to Peggy. But she thought she was giving one that she used to Carol and one to Peggy. One of 

the two Carol received had pages missing, Carol says. At the end, she seems to say that she received 

one of Margaret's two working sets, while Margaret kept the one with notations in it. Confusing. 

Session #54 August 20, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Will and Pat Landon 

5 

41:01 Kenneth remembers the first time he went to the theater, at age eight or nine, when living on 

Randolph Street across the street from the Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins worked as a printer for The Evening 

Republican. Bobby Jenkins was "a hunchback and a little spoiled kid." Alice Jenkins was a 

beautiful little blond girl about Kenneth's size. "It was her dress and hat and whatnot I wore in that 

picture that you've seen of me dressed up as a girl." Kenneth was good at catching baseballs, so his 

brother Bradley would have him stand on one side of Randolph Street while he stood on the other 

side throwing to him. "The day I dressed up as a girl, there I was in Alice Jenkins' dress and hat after 

the party, and my brother whacking these baseballs at me, and of course me throwing them back 

easily, and people were astounded to see a little girl acting like that!" 

Mrs. Jenkins decided to take her children and Kenneth to a matinee. He had never been in a 

theater before. "I was absolutely astounded at the people on the stage acting and doing things. It was 

burlesque, I suppose [pronounced burleecue]. Well, this fellow came out—he's the one I 

remember—he was dressed up like a Dutchman, with clogs on his feet, doing a dance, with his hands 

in his pockets, singing, 

A vivid memory. 

And my hands in my pockets, 

and my pockets in my pants. 

I grow a little wiser every day, 

EVERY day!" 

From the Thailand years. The leper who used to come and beg. Just out the road about a 

quarter of a mile, there was a stand of trees, and just beyond the trees there were several lepers who 

put up a little shack. No houses had been built out that way, and no one bothered the men. They 

would beg for money, being unemployed. One fellow in particular would come once a week to the 

Landons' house and stand under the verandah, which was about ten feet off the ground—he knew 

where Kenneth's office was—and he would stand there, looking up, and cry, "Lo lo dalang! Lo lo 

dalang!" Kenneth says it was a Chinese dialect he didn't understand, and he presumed the phrase 

480


meant, "Please give alms!" The family came to know the man as "Lo lo dalang!" because that was all 

he ever said. They never learned his name. The man came weekly for several years, and Kenneth 

realized that "he was my beggar. He owned me, and I owned him. We were stuck with each other. 

He was so regular. Once a week. Never any more than that. And I would always go out and look 

down. He would hold sort of an old straw hat, and I would drop some coins down into his hat. And 

he would say, 'Lo lo dalang!' And bow, and bow, shake his hands a couple of times, and go off." 

The day came when the man arrived and stood under the verandah as always, but this time he 

said, "Lo lo dalang! Lo lo dalang! E pah wahsi! E pah wahsi!" (SP?) For the first time, he added 

something to his basic phrase. And this Kenneth understood. "He has struck me dead!" the man was 

saying. "He has struck me dead!" Kenneth went out onto the verandah, and the man almost 

collapsed from weakness below. Kenneth went down and took the man to the hospital in his car. In 

a day or so, he was dead. His body was cremated, and that was the end of him. But the Landons 

have always remembered him because of the way he adopted them. The others didn't come for some 

reason. 

6 

49:14 [Will and Pat join the taping.] Kenneth remembers Bill running the mile in high school, "all up 

and down in one place." Will remembers his one moment of glory running the mile. 

We begin on Kenneth's 1950 trip to Southeast Asia. The new King, King Phumipol, was 

going to get married and be crowned, and he was going to cremate his brother, King Ananda, before 

the marriage and coronation. Our protocol department decided to send out a gift of Steuben glass to 

the new monarch. Kenneth found out about this and went down to Protocol and protested. He 

explained that the new king played the saxophone. His bride played jazz piano. She had been in 

England and had come over from England to vacation with the fellows in Europe. He would play 

jazz on the saxophone, and she would play jazz on the piano, and so they were drawn together. 

Prince Dhani (SP?) had a daughter that he intended to marry Phumipol. But the Prince was very 

protocol conscious, and he felt that the arrangement had to be completed with the royal matriarch of 

the previous dynasty who was living up north of Bangkok, and so he stalled the arrangements. 

Phumipol tired of this and decided to marry his jazz pianist friend. Kenneth had met her as a child in 

pigtails in 1946, at the end of the war. Her father was sent as ambassador to England later. Kenneth 

danced with her one night, holding her by the hands. 

So Kenneth urged Protocol to send a gift that the King and his new Queen would really 

appreciate. He suggested they send the latest model of a Fisher phonograph, preferably in a jazzy 

model that would be really handsome, with a whole set of Gershwin records. Protocol said they 

couldn't do that without the approval of President Truman, because it was a gift from him. So 

Kenneth said he would write a memorandum to the President, asking for his approval, which would 

pass through the Protocol section. He did so; the memo went up from Protocol, with its approval; 

and then came back down to Protocol with President Truman's approval. Kenneth went out and 

helped select a fruitwood-bodied Fisher phonograph with a whole set of the Gershwin records. 

Kenneth flew out with the gift. The ambassador in Bangkok was Edwin Stanton. His wife 

was named Josie. The Thai were very fond of Stanton, who had been born in India of missionary 

parents, and had met his wife in China. According to protocol, the ambassador was the one who 

would present the gift to the King. Kenneth recalls setting the thing up with the ambassador so that 

Stanton would know how to demonstrate the phonograph for the King. Kenneth did not actually 

attend the presentation. 

He also represented the State Department at the ceremonies. They didn't send out some 

"higher muckety-muck, although why they didn't, I can't imagine because he was a monarch and a 

481


king. They should have sent at least an assistant secretary of State. But they didn't. They left it up to 

Ed Stanton and Ken Landon." All the ceremonies were very formal, white tie, tails, and top hat. It 

was "beastly hot." Every morning, during the ceremonies—which went on for several days, first the 

cremation, then the wedding, which Kenneth didn't attend, and finally the coronation—they would 

climb into these formal outfits. There would be a ceremony in the morning, a parade or whatever. 

Then they would rush back to the embassy, strip off their pants and coats, which were soaked 

through, and the servants would take them outside, turn them inside out, dry them out, repress them, 

while the two men ate. Then after lunch, they would climb back into their formal togs and return for 

the afternoon ceremonies. 

482


HOUR 76 

Session #54 continued August 20, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Will and Pat Landon 

1 

0:00 (XIB1880) Kenneth continues on his 1950 trip to Southeast Asia. A staff photographer for 

The National Geographic magazine, W. Robert Moore, was out there to take pictures of the events. 

[He lived in Wesley Heights, just a few blocks from the Landons.] He came down with 

appendicitis and was rushed to the hospital. So Bob distributed his cameras to a number of people, 

including Kenneth. One of the most active was a Thai photographer friend of Moore's who did fine 

work. Kenneth took many of the pictures that later appeared in the magazine. Partly, this was luck, 

and partly, it was because of his advantage. Kenneth was part of "the show." The photographer had 

to try to get near it, whereas Kenneth was LQ it. Periodically, even in the parade for the cremation, 

Kenneth would step out of the line and take pictures of the other diplomats and Thai officials and 

whatnot and then hop back into line, top hat and all. For the coronation ceremony, His Majesty was 

dressed up in traditional Thai garments and was being carried on a palanquin. Kenneth was right 

there, and so he got some of those pictures too. As the King was being carried along, Kenneth 

hopped up on something to get a good view of him, which put him above the King's head, contrary to 

all protocol and properness. In fact, it was wrong to get above DQ\ERG\ V head. But there Kenneth 

was, top hat and all, and as he took a picture of His Majesty, someone took a picture of Kenneth 

taking the picture, and that appeared in The National Geographic too. The newspaper the next day 

came out complaining about a certain foreigner who should have known better looming over His 

Majesty's head to take a picture, which was an outrage. Everybody knew that Kenneth was the 

culprit. Many of the pictures Kenneth took, the Landons have copies of in the house at 4711. "It was 

quite a trick to handle all these cameras and also participate in the ceremonies." 

After the King was married and went on his honeymoon, Kenneth was able to report to the 

State Department that the only wedding gift the King took with him on his honeymoon down on the 

train to Hua Hin at the seaside was President Truman's gift of the Fisher phonograph with the 

Gershwin records. All the rest of the wedding gifts were left behind. 

Will comments on how difficult the photographic job Kenneth did was. The film in those 

days was ASA 12, and no more than 25; very slow film. But of course, the scenes were flooded with 

bright sunlight. Kenneth says, "I took some of the pictures inside the royal palace grounds, you see, 

when he was being married." Will says he has a copy of the Geographic with Kenneth's pictures in 

them. 

Will remembers the amazing picture Kenneth took of the rice fields in various stages of 

cultivation. Possibly on this trip. 

After the ceremonies ended, Kenneth went over to Saigon with a picture of Harry Truman 

autographed by the President to former Emperor Bao Dai, who had escaped from Ho Chi Minh "with 

Ho Chi Minh's connivance, I guess." Bao Dai had fled from Hanoi up to Hong Kong, and then later 

had come down to head up the so-called government of South Vietnam with the French promising 

eventual independence. However, the French wouldn't allow him to do very much, and he sulked 

most of the time up in the mountains outside of Saigon, or in Paris. Everyone came to see Bao Dai as 

nothing but a playboy, but he was playing politics, and doing it as best he could with no power. 

Bao Dai sent an official driver to pick Kenneth up in a big limousine. "Well, when we got to 

483


those mountains, and went up into that mountain eyrie where Bao Dai was staying, the road was 

along the edge of a cliff practically all the way and just snaking up the side of the mountains. And it 

was really breathtaking. And I thought, Gosh, we're going over this cliff at any minute. There were 

no guard rails or anything! And the idiot who was driving was sure that I was so important that I had 

to drive at high speed. I just closed my eyes and quit! I mean, it just takes your breath away to be 

driven like that. You feel the back end of the car going VVVKXVK off over toward the edge of the cliff 

and the guy going rrrrrrr and jammed on the brakes and the turns and all the rest, showing me that he 

was a terrific driver. And I guess he was!" 

They arrived safely, and Kenneth presented the picture. Bao Dai remembered meeting 

Kenneth in 1946, courtesy of Ho Chi Minh. They laughed about that meeting because of their 

problem of communication. Bao Dai had to be very careful what he said. "And of course my French 

is from nowhere." The two men had to improvise. That was the high point of Kenneth's visit in 

Saigon. 

2 

8:25 Then Kenneth took a plane up to Hanoi, where he was the guest of Governor Tri. The reason 

he was sent was that a man named Phillip Jessup was supposed to have a special mission on behalf of 

President Truman to Hanoi to be Tri's guest and to survey the situation in the countryside. When 

Kenneth was in Saigon, he was instructed to impersonate Phillip Jessup because Truman had 

switched Jessup's orders and sent him post haste to India. Kenneth was met at the station by 

Governor Tri, who knew there had been a switch. There were huge banners at the station and huge 

banners down the streets where they drove which read, "Welcome Phillip Jessup Mission!" So 

Kenneth rode along impersonating Phillip Jessup, waving to the crowds who were cheering. The 

Vietnamese had been ordered to come out and greet him. Hanoi is one of the most heavily populated 

places in the world, so there were great numbers of people, all dressed in their black pajama suits and 

waving flags. American flags, little American flags! There were people three and four deep for 

miles along the roads, welcoming the Phillip Jessup mission into Hanoi. 

7$3( ;,, 6LGH 

3 

10:32 Then Governor Tri gave a dinner in Kenneth's honor. The menu was in French, beautifully 

embossed. The Landons have the menu in their 1950 file. Kenneth read the menu, which didn't 

mean anything to him, and Governor Tri sat there and laughed at him. There were twenty-some 

courses, one after the other. After each one, Tri would ask Kenneth, "Now what do you think you 

ate?" And Kenneth would laugh and say he didn't know, and Tri would laugh uproariously and say 

that he would tell him when they were all through. When they finished, Tri ran through all the 

dishes, all of which had been delicious, and they included all kinds of stuff Kenneth had never even 

heard of. There were ants. Shelled things. Dogmeat. Snakes. 

The next day, they got into a convoy of cars with motorcycle escorts and machine guns, 

because they were going way out into the countryside "into Ho Chi Minh land." Kenneth was 

astounded as they drove along the road to discover that all of the telephone poles, which were made 

of concrete and were as big as our American poles, had been snapped off at the base by the Viet Minh 

and trotted off on their shoulders to be used in constructing WKHLU highways and revolutionary 

headquarters. It was that way mile after mile. Every last one of the telephone poles was gone. As 

they drove along, hordes of Vietnamese, three and four deep on both sides of the road, waved flags 

and banners that read "Welcome Phillip Jessup Mission!" "And me continuing to impersonate Phillip 

484


Jessup." [Kenneth mimes his graciously waving to the crowds on either side.] 

Kenneth says that, when he spoke to people, they addressed him as Mr. Jessup. He wasn't 

"Mr. Jessup" to Governor Tri, of course. But to everyone else he was. "I was saving his face. After 

all, he had all these lesser officials out there to welcome me, village by village and district by district 

as we went along. Shortly after that, Governor Tri committed suicide because of, I don't know, 

discouragement," and also he knew that the Viet Minh were going to win. He saw that he had no 

future. He would be captured and tortured. So he just killed himself. 

In any case, the Phillip Jessup mission was a success. "Oh, absolutely. I was viewing 

agricultural produce. They had produce to show me of what they were growing." There would have 

been something more substantial to the mission, but Kenneth had no great matters to discuss with 

Governor Tri because he didn't know what the mission was supposed to be about. Except agriculture. 

And the show of American interest. "I showed a lot of American interest!" 

From there, Kenneth went to Saigon, and then to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where he had a 

three-day visit with King Sihanouk, who had not yet abdicated his throne in favor of becoming a 

politician. "I never will forget walking in through the palace on a floor of silver. A whole floor was 

silver from the beginning to the end. It was just an incredible flooring." Sihanouk gave Kenneth a 

nice protocol dinner, and also had a couple of working lunches with him. Sihanouk was a "puckish 

sort of person." "He had become king and selected by the French when he was a young man, very 

young, and they thought, pliable and would be amenable to anything they wanted. They didn't know 

that he had a will of iron and was not going to be their puppet." Sihanouk knew that Kenneth didn't 

speak French too well. Kenneth had a Foreign Service officer assigned to him who was fluent in 

French who travelled along with him in Saigon, Hanoi, Cambodia, and Laos. Knowing this, 

Sihanouk arranged the seating at the long dinner table with himself, Sihanouk, at the middle, and 

Kenneth across from him, and then Kenneth's interpreter at the far end of the table, "well out of 

reach. We couldn't even shout at each other to communicate. And on either side of me, there was a 

Cambodian on one side and a Frenchman on the other. . . ." On either side of Sihanouk there was 

also a Cambodian and a Frenchman. So there they were, six of them "bracketed in," and Landon. 

"Well, I am not easily embarrassed, if it's possible. I knew that I was being 'taken' by Sihanouk, and I 

was not about to be taken. And as you've heard me say, as I've dealt with French, I have considered it 

as English misspelled and mispronounced. And so, inasmuch as the conversation was entirely in 

French, that was agreeable with me! But I had a learned a lesson in how to handle an impossible 

situation from General George Catlett Marshall, with whom I had consorted at dinner a number of 

times while he was Secretary of State. George Catlett Marshall did not like to be queried or 

interviewed or questioned or have to answer questions at a dinner. And so what he would do, he 

would sit there and pick up his food and stuff his mouth [Kenneth makes chewing movements and 

noises], and choke it down, take a big spoonful and forkful and begin to talk. And he would be 

talking steadily as he held this in front of his mouth, and finally he would slap it into his mouth, chew 

vigorously in the middle of a sentence [more chewing and swallowing movements and noises], choke it 

down—by this time he had another great big forkful—and he would go on, so that he could not be 

interrupted. Well, so I decided that that's what I would do. And I did! And I started in, and I knew it 

had to be pretend French, so I started right off making it up as I went. And I didn't know the words, 

but I just Frenchified them. And Sihanouk was just bug-eyed! Looking at me! Put down his knife 

and fork. And the French people were absolutely insulted! They were just furious! And of course 

that delighted him! And finally he said, 'Ha!!! Monsieur Landon!! Monsieur Landon!! Oh! Oh! 

You! You are so funny!! Ho ho ho ho! You are so funny! Ho ho ho! And I understand you! I 

understand you! Ho ho ho! Oh, so funny! Ho ho ho!' It killed the Frenchmen It just killed the 

Frenchmen. And he and I got on famously from then on. And he could speak English, when he 

485


wanted to. He saw that I didn't use French, and wasn't about to be put down by the problem, so we 

came to terms and had an enjoyable evening. Had a nice long dinner. And the French just sat there 

and fumed. They were absolutely insulted." 

By about ten o'clock, he said they would now go to the theater. They walked out, at night, 

and the minute His Majesty stepped out the door of the palace, an attendant stepped over to him with 

a huge white umbrella that would be big enough for two or three people to walk under. It was 

enormous, with a ten-foot handle. The umbrella was symbolic of his rank as the King. Sihanouk 

invited Kenneth to walk, not under the umbrella, but beside it. They walked across the compound to 

the theater. Then he stepped out from under the umbrella, and they went in. There were plush seats, 

and a stage, and an orchestra, and all the rest of it. The dancing girls came on, and every one of the 

girls was in costume and would bow before His Majesty to show respect, and he would nod and say 

to Kenneth, "Got a little girl by that one. Got a boy and girl by that one. Oh, that one, well, she's 

pregnant; doesn't show yet; but it will soon." And so it went. There were twenty-five to thirty of 

these women. Kenneth said to him, "How many wives do you have?" and Sihanouk answered, 

"Wives!? Ha ha! I'm bachelor!" Kenneth said that he understood. The show went on for about an 

hour, and then at eleven, they returned to the palace, and Kenneth went to bed. 

The next day Kenneth "wandered around" and took pictures. There was a fair of some sort 

going on. Kenneth took pictures of boys trying to climb a greased pole, and other festivities. 

4 

24:02 The day after that, Kenneth took off in a plane to meet with the Lao cabinet in Vientiane, 

Laos. The C-47, which was his own plane to take him around, was based in Bangkok. The pilot was 

very nervous about the airport in Laos, not the airport at Vientiane, but the airport where the king 

was, in Luang Prabang, which had a very short runway with a mountain at one end of it and a temple 

stupa at the other. You had to plunk down past that stupa as you landed and then stop short of the 

mountain. 

They landed in Vientiane, and Kenneth was put up as a guest of the cabinet. The Lao cabinet, 

about twelve men, and the French Resident, met with Kenneth. The Resident expected that things 

would go on as usual in French. Kenneth surprised him by addressing the group in Thai. The Lao 

speak a variation of Thai. He understood Lao, and they understood Bangkok Thai. So they could 

communicate fluently. "And they were delighted. I was the first American diplomat they had 

encountered, and they thought, 'My goodness! American diplomats speak Thai!?' So we had a 

wonderful time together while the poor old French Resident had things explained to him, if at all. 

They thought it was a new age dawning for independence for Laos with the great American's help." 

After a day there, he flew up to Luang Prabang. They made the landing, but it was scary. 

The pilot told Kenneth that the only plane accustomed to landing there was a stubby German type 

that required little runway. The King was the son of his predecessor, whom Kenneth had previously 

known, if slightly. He addressed Kenneth in French to begin with, but Kenneth addressed him in 

Thai, "and we got along famously. . . ." He realized he could speak his own language to Kenneth. 

"And the curious thing happened. He knew that when we were speaking in his language that one of 

us was superior to the other and one of us should be addressing the other with the language of 

respect. Well, he started off using the high language to me as though , were the king. Because he 

knew one of us was superior, and he was being polite. And then I stopped him, and I used the 

common language, which was the only language I could use fluently at that time." Then they stopped 

speaking to each other and laughed. The King was used to using the high language to his father. 

And here he had used it to Kenneth Landon. So Kenneth suggested they both just used the common 

language, and the King agreed. 

486


Then the King gave a dinner, and his wife came to the dinner. He had told Kenneth that she 

never came to dinners for foreign diplomats because she didn't speak any language but Lao. But 

when she learned that Kenneth spoke Thai, she decided to come. So the King, his wife, Kenneth, and 

a few of the courtiers had an enjoyable evening together. 

That king was later captured by the communists and very badly treated. He is now dead. 

After that meeting, Kenneth returned to Bangkok. Then down to Singapore. Kuala Lumpur. 

[A bit of confusion there. Kenneth may have meant that he went to Kuala Lumpur LQVWHDG of 

Singapore, or that he went to both of them.] And from there, to Djakarta, Indonesia. In 1950, the 

ambassador in Djakarta was a great big heavyset man, Merle Cochrane, who weighed about 400 

pounds. He had negotiated between the Dutch and the Indonesians for the independence of 

Indonesia, and "he brought it off in 1949," so that they were an independent state when Kenneth went 

there. Kenneth was the desk officer for all these areas of Southeast Asia, so here was Ken Landon 

from the Department of State visiting the new nation of Indonesia. 

The rate of exchange on the black market was simply incredible. But the official rate of 

exchange was impossible. The ambassador insisted that all Americans exchange their money on the 

official rate of exchange. But if you took your money to the black market, you could buy much more 

with it. "Well I never have been intimidated too much by officials, and I decided that I was going to 

go on the black market." So he did. Some Indonesian friends did it for him. "And it was while I was 

there that I became lonesome on a Sunday, and I called the desk in the Hotel Dezan (SP?), where I 

was staying," and said he wanted to call Washington, D.C. Kenneth heard the phone ring, and then 

Margaret picked up the phone and said hello. He said hello, and she said, "Kenneth! Where are 

you?" He said, "Djakarta." And she said, "Oh, where in Kansas are you?" He explained, and she 

could hardly believe it. He sounded as if he were so near by. But it was just an excellent connection 

by cable all the way round the world, left by the Dutch. The two of them talked for five to ten 

minutes, at a cost of a little more than two dollars. 

5 

33:55 Merle Cochrane gave Kenneth a dinner in which the meat, which was pork chops, was so 

tough that he could not cut it. Cochrane sat there and laughed as Kenneth toiled away on the pork 

chops. The only way he could get anything off a pork chop was to pick it up and gnaw on it. 

Cochrane said that this was the only kind of meat they could get there. 

There was about to be an election, which was another reason Kenneth went there, to see how 

the new government was acting. He was also meeting the top officials, amongst them a man named 

Sharir, whom Kenneth had first known in Washington. He was one of the revolutionaries and had 

come as a special emissary in the late 1940's to Washington. The Secretary of State was out of the 

country at the time. The highest official on Asia was W. Walton Butterworth, an Assistant Secretary, 

whom Kenneth called "Old Hamhands Butterworth," because he had great big ham hands. And 

Kenneth was the desk officer. Sharir had an interpreter who spoke English. Sharir pretended he 

didn't speak English, but in fact he was fluent in English. He had written books in English. Kenneth 

entertained him and tried to engage him in conversation, but he wouldn't say anything because he 

thought he was being denigrated. He didn't meet high enough officials. He regarded Kenneth as 

nothing but a dogbody. He wasn't impressed by Butterworth. He felt that no one less than the 

Secretary was sufficient, but of course, the Secretary was not in the country. So Sharir was insulted. 

But now, in Djakarta, in 1950, when Kenneth met Sharir, they embraced and spoke fluently in 

English. "I said to him, 'Why did you not speak a word of English even to me?' He said, 'I was not 

about to speak to anybody until I was properly received at least by the Secretary of State or his SUR 

WHP. . . .'" 

487


So now Kenneth met Sharir, Sukarno, and several others. Also, he arranged with Cochrane to 

have a tour of the islands. Cochrane had a marine colonel with a two-engine Beechcraft, and a copilot, 

six feet four tall or more, and Kenneth toured Java. They went over to a volcano, the highest 

mountain on the island, and they started up the side of the mountain to get to the top, and "the darn 

thing" ran out of gas. All of a sudden the prop stopped turning, and they began to fall down the side 

of the mountain while the co-pilot was muttering, "Damn quiet up here. Damn quiet up here. Too 

quiet up here!" He was pumping away to get gas flowing from another tank. And then they got the 

plane aimed downhill, and the props turned over, and the engines fired up again, and they turned 

around and flew up to the top of the volcano. The colonel said, "Uh, Doc, here we are. You want to 

look down in the volcano?" Kenneth said, "Yeah, I want to take some pictures down the volcano." 

"Okay," the pilot said, and so he began to circle around. But then Kenneth pointed out that the wings 

were in the way. "Oh that's all right," the pilot said. "I'll take the wing off," and he slung the plane 

over to the side and scooped down into the volcano. "We were flying sideways, right down through, 

into the crater. I could see right down in where the volcanic action was bubbling away. And the hot 

air was coming, and I was taking pictures, leaning against the window, hoping I wasn't going to fall 

out of the plane, and all of a sudden, phffft, the plane leaped into the air, and I went unconscious for a 

moment. I passed out. The hot air apparently caught the wings just right and just threw that plane up 

into the sky. I said, 'Colonel, I passed out!' 'So did I!' he said. I thought that was cheery." 

6 

39:31 From there, they went over to Bali, where he talked to "the people" [the leaders?] insofar as 

possible. There was an artist on the beach in Bali, with a magnificent looking "dancing woman," 

who was one of the more famous dancers. "And all the women were bare from the waist up. And 

we'd sit at dinner, and this woman, she was a teaser. I had the colonel, and his co-pilot, and myself, 

and the artist, and a couple of serving girls, and then this woman who was his mistress, the artist's 

mistress, would come around, and she had great big bosoms, and she would lean down and stick them 

right in front of your face, and then she'd begin to serve you. It was a rather unnerving experience to 

one not accustomed to it. And the artist would sit there and just laugh at you while she was putting 

on this kind of a show, a teaser." They were very friendly. 

Kenneth toured the rest of the island of Bali, and kept asking questions, and talking about the 

elections. He and his pilots hedge-hopped around some of the other islands, finally returning to 

Djakarta. 

Merle Cochrane was convinced that the administration that had been set up in Indonesia 

would be re-elected. It was an interim government. Kenneth was convinced there would be a change 

and told Cochrane who he thought would be elected. The two men argued about it. But Cochrane 

insisted that Kenneth accept KLV opinion. He demanded that Kenneth not make a report to the State 

Department on the election that would be in conflict with KLV report. Kenneth said that he had to put 

on the record what he had observed. But Cochrane resented this very deeply. 

When Kenneth got on the plane the next day, he found that Cochrane's DCM was flying with 

him, Jake Beam, who later became ambassador to Moscow. Jake Beam was a very tall man, a nice 

man, very intelligent. His mission with Kenneth was to travel to Singapore with him to convince him 

not to make his report in conflict with the report of the ambassador. Kenneth told Jake that he didn't 

have a chance on that score. Jake said he understood, but he just wished Kenneth wouldn't do it. 

Kenneth said, "Well, you go back and tell Merle Cochrane that you and I knelt in prayer." "I can't," 

Beam said. "I can't tell him anything because I'm airsick," and he began to throw up. The plane had 

hit rough weather, and everyone on the plane except the pilot and Kenneth became airsick. All the 

488


Chinese and Indonesians on board were vomiting. The plane was "plastered" with vomit, and stank 

accordingly. They were hitting the monsoon wind. The plane got to a point that it could not go 

forward, and had to go sideways over the edge of Sumatra and land on its belly, without wheels, on a 

paddy field. It was easy to land because of the powerful wind, which held the plane up to the last 

moment. The pilot cut the engine at the last moment and dropped the last few feet. "Well, we sat 

there quietly for a few minutes, got out of the plane, found that we were within a mile of Palembang, 

and we could walk in to the headquarters nearby" of an oil company. [Could be Standard Oil, but 

hard to tell.] 

[Kenneth later realized that the following incident occurred on a subsequent trip, 

though in 1950 he did stop over in Palembang.] The plane Kenneth was riding on was a twoengine 

Beechcraft that needed a lot of repair. The instruments on the dashboard didn't work. There 

were no indicators at all. The pilots had to measure the gas in the tanks with a yardstick they stuck 

down into them. After the plane landed, it was tanked up with gasoline again, using five-gallon cans 

of gas, so that it would be ready to take off the next morning. They spent the night there in 

Palembang. In the night, the Colonel became sick with dysentery. When morning rolled around, 

Kenneth was having a good breakfast when the Colonel came in, looking pale and saying that they 

couldn't go that day. He was too sick to fly. But Kenneth had his sulfaguanidine tablets with him, 

and he gave the Colonel four pills. Two hours later, though you weren't supposed to give more than 

two additional pills so soon, Kenneth gave him four more. "I know that would freeze him up tight. 

He just couldn't do anything except contain it, because it just froze him like cement." So they went 

out to the plane, and took it out to the end of the runway, preparatory to takeoff. 

Then Kenneth told the Colonel to check the gas again, but the Colonel said, "Oh Doc, let's go! 

You saw we had the gas tank filled up last night." Kenneth said, "Maybe so, but let's check it." The 

co-pilot groaned, got the yardstick, and went out on the wing, unscrewed the cap, stuck the yardstick 

down into the tank, pulled it back out. And it was dry. 

The plane had been sabotaged in the night, and all the gasoline had been drained out. So they 

took the plane back in and retanked with a procession of five-gallon cans of gas. They took off and 

flew to Maidan [SP? Must be something obvious, but I can't find anything like it on the map], 

where the U.S. had a consulate. 

If they had taken off on their empty tanks, they would have made it into the air. But there 

were mangrove swamps virtually the entire way from Palembang to Maidan on the coast, and they 

would surely have crashed in these. There was no place to land. 

They had a brief stop in Maidan, and Kenneth talked to the consul. And then he flew to 

Singapore, and from Singapore to Bangkok. 

Will asks if Kenneth visited Borobudur on this trip [a site of ancient ruins in Java]. Kenneth 

is not sure, but he thinks so. He remembers climbing the monument, one of the earliest of Buddhist 

monuments in Southeast Asia. 

As for the election, it turned out that Kenneth was right, and Cochrane was wrong. 

In his youth, Merle Cochrane had spent time in France, and he had acquired a magnificent set 

of French furniture, including a set of spindly chairs with little legs that were "just about as big as 

your little finger." When Cochrane sat in one of these, the chair would disappear. "It would look as 

though he was levitating, sitting levitating in air. You couldn't see any chair. There was no chair 

there!" When Cochrane finished his assignment in Djakarta, he sold that furniture to the government 

for a fancy price, enough to finance his retirement because the furniture was antique and valuable. It 

proceeded to fall apart and disintegrate. 

489


7 

53:57 Kenneth met General Sarit for the first time on that trip in 1950. Kenneth had been reading 

the Siamese language newspapers. "You have to read between the lines when you read a Siamese 

newspaper to find out what the real news is, or what they're talking about." And Kenneth noticed 

there were many side remarks concerning General Sarit, who was the general of the First Army Tank 

Corps in Bangkok. So Kenneth said to Ambassador Stanton that he would like to meet Sarit, and 

Stanton said he would ask his military attaché to make the arrangements. A day later, the 

Ambassador came back to Kenneth saying that his military attaché refused to arrange things with 

Sarit. As the military attaché, he handled all military matters, and if there were to be any contact 

made with General Sarit, it would have to be by KLP. Kenneth could tell him what he wanted to ask 

Sarit, and he, the attaché, would relay it to Sarit for an answer. Stanton was worried about this 

because he knew Kenneth wouldn't accept it. "I said to Ed, 'Just forget it.' He knew what that meant 

because then I would, I GLG speak to some Thai friends," and they passed the word to the General. 

Sarit sent back word, "I don't speak English." Kenneth told his friends to send word to the 

General, "I don't speak English either!" This amused Sarit, and he sent his official car for Kenneth, 

which took Kenneth to the headquarters, "through barbwire entanglements and whatnot, in a 

circuitous fashion, because he was always having to be careful not to be assassinated." 

So they met. They talked entirely in Thai. "He told me later on he found my Thai very 

amusing because he said, 'You talk just like the Bible.' Of course, that was the language that I'd 

learned." Kenneth had very classical references in his language. He also had some southern Thai 

words that they didn't use up in the main part of the country, such as sina'plao (SP?) for trousers 

instead of gang gain (SP?). When Kenneth used VLQD SODR the first time, Sarit made a funny 

expression. The two men got along beautifully. Sarit asked why Kenneth was interested in him, and 

Kenneth answered that he believed Sarit was going to be a very important man in the politics of the 

country. "He looked at me owlishly and he said, 'You think I'm going to war?'" Kenneth answered 

that he didn't think so militarily, but yes, politically. "Oh," said the General. Sarit was a heavy 

drinker, and his doctors kept trying to get him to stop. "He and I hit it off right away." 

Sarit asked, "Well, how are you going to find out what I'm going to be up to?" and Kenneth 

said, "I'll just read the Siamese language newspapers. And there will be articles in there that will be 

very informative if one knows how to read them." "That's right," Sarit said, "that's right." That was 

the beginning of their friendship, which was to run on for ten years. "And he did become a good 

friend, and he trusted me." 

490


HOUR 77 

Session #54 continued August 20, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Will and Pat Landon 

1 

0:00 (XIIA250) Kenneth explains that he was the person in our government who arranged for 

military assistance to both Thailand and Viet Nam, initially, when the State Department was still in 

the Old Executive Office Building, "and when General Lyman Lemnitzer only had two stars and not 

four. And when I suggested that we should try to help both Thailand and Viet Nam with the military 

assistance for ten million dollars—which was, of course, peanuts—and he opposed it entirely. He 

said they couldn't use it. And then he said, 'Anyway, who'd pay for it?' And I said, 'You will.' And 

he didn't like that, but it ended up that way. And so Lemnitzer and I stayed in contact even after he 

got to be four stars. I saw him again much later on in Korea when he was there." 

Kenneth also arranged, when William Donovan became the ambassador to Thailand in 1953 

and Kenneth travelled out with him, for a police assistance program for the police general and a 

military assistance program for Sarit "because, as Sarit said, if you're going to give forty-some 

million dollars of aid to General Pao (SP?), the police chief, you ought to give at least thirty to forty 

thousand [million?] dollars to me!" So they did. "In those days you could do things like that." 

Margaret tells of her trip home from Thailand on the first furlough, 1931. While Kenneth 

travelled around the world one way, so as to visit the Holy Land, she travelled around the world the 

other way, with Peggy and Bill. Peggy was four, and Bill was three. The Landons didn't have 

enough money to take the whole family to the Holy Land. And Margaret was eager to get home to 

see her mother, who had had a series of setbacks. Adelle had lost a large sum of money in Uncle 

Chris' business, which had gone bankrupt. The plan was that Margaret would go on the Dollar line of 

ships across the Pacific. To do so, she had to take a small ship from Bangkok to Hong Kong, where 

the larger ship would sail. Almost at the last minute, the people in charge in Bangkok decided to give 

Margaret the responsibility of escorting home a woman named Mrs. Leila Knox, who was going 

home to have her third or fourth child. She had two children, Gaylord, known as Gay-Gay, who later 

became a doctor, and Jean. Gay-Gay was about nine. Jean was the same age as Bill. 

The first leg of the voyage was frightening for Margaret because of the shape of the ship, 

which she says was not intended as a passenger vessel. It had several cabins, but it had gaps in the 

railings. And Gay-Gay was the kind of boy who enjoyed knocking down smaller boys. Margaret 

worried for fear that Gay-Gay would push Bill overboard. The trip to Hong Kong took most of a 

week, and throughout, Margaret tried to watch the children constantly for fear of what might happen. 

Mrs. Knox "never did a thing about her dah-ling children. Sooo sweet! Well, I would have gladly 

pushed them through the holes!" [Loud laughter.] 

In Hong Kong they all had to wait most of a week to embark on their ship. There was a fine 

hotel where they all stayed, the three Landons with a room nowhere near the three Knox's. It was an 

enjoyable week of sightseeing. Then came the day for boarding. Hong Kong is essentially an island, 

and there was a substantial crossing to be made to board the ship, a mile more. They went down to 

the dock with their baggage to wait for the launch that was to ferry them to the ship. But it didn't 

come. They could see the ship across the harbor. Finally, a small boat appeared that could take Mrs. 

Knox and the four children across. But it was not possible to get the luggage on. There was too 

much of it, and some of the trunks were too big. "You can imagine my feeling, standing there on the 

491


dock with all these things. But I couldn't abandon them. And nobody came! And I looked across the 

harbor, and I saw the steam was up. There I was, alone, standing on this dock! My children with a 

woman I didn't trust. And the ship about to sail. And then along came a rather large boat. . . ." The 

people in the boat were men and women together and saw her dilemma. They were private 

individuals, Americans, out for a jaunt. They came over to the dock and asked her if she wanted to 

get on the ship, to which she replied that she very much did! So they loaded her luggage in their boat 

and set off at top speed across the harbor. They reached the ship, and the coolies carried the luggage 

up onto the ship. "And I put my foot on the ladder that went up. It was like a long flight of stairs, in 

a sense. And it came up behind me. And the ship sailed." 

The hotel was supposed to have arranged for a launch to pick her and the Knox's up, but 

failed to do so. 

2 

13:34 The ship was comfortable. The cabin was nice. The food was good. The children ate before 

the adults. But Gay-Gay would bring a pin or something like that with him, and would stick it into 

Bill and Peggy's legs. 

They put in at Shanghai, and a very dignified woman boarded and was assigned to their table. 

The steward had set Leila and Margaret at a table next to the dance floor. Leila was heavily pregnant, 

poorly dressed, and of course, Margaret didn't dance. Little Jean didn't like to be left alone, so Leila 

would get her ready for bed, dressing her in her nightgown, and come in to have dinner. Then, each 

night, the child would come in on the other side of the room, which must have been seventy-five feet 

wide, walk across the dance floor, climb up onto the table, and sit there happily playing with the 

radishes and other dishes. "I just hated every minute of it, but there was nothing I could do." After 

several nights of this, the woman from Philadelphia, whose name Margaret cannot recall, but who 

was obviously a propertied person, and highly intelligent, looked at the child, looked at Leila, and 

said, "If that child comes into this room another time and climbs up on this table, I will make a scene 

that no one in this room will ever forget." Leila knew the woman would do it. So from that time on, 

Leila ate at the children's table with her children, and never returned to the adults' dinner table. "So 

we crossed the Pacific, Mrs. Philadelphia and I, and we had a delightful time." 

The ship disembarked at San Francisco, where Margaret was met by Mrs. Bovee. The three 

Landons boarded a train for the Midwest. The two children were talking to each other in Thai, and 

tried to talk to the porter in Thai. Eventually, they gave this up because the other children would 

laugh at them. The train stopped in Wheaton, and there was Adelle, Evangeline, and Betty, waiting 

for them. 

3 

20:15 We resume the story of the writing of Anna.. Margaret started the writing in Richmond, 

Indiana, where the Landons had moved in the summer of 1939—Kenneth having found work at 

Earlham College. They had a rented house there. "I decided the time to start had come. So I set 

everything up and began. . . ." She was able to afford a maid for $8 a week, which helped. She paid 

this out of the $1000 she had won in the Redbook letter-writing contest. The maid stayed only a few 

months, but it was enough so that Margaret could build sufficient momentum in the writing to carry it 

forward. "So then I just counted the time when I could write. And I'm very slow because I rewrite. 

There were chapters in that book I rewrote twenty times." They moved across the street to a more 

comfortable house, and the writing continued. 

Then Kenneth was called to Washington in August, 1941. In that second house in Richmond, 

Margaret had only a half-time maid, who came in the afternoon. That gave her time to work on the 

492


writing and rewriting. "Writing and rewriting. Writing and rewriting. I don't think there's any—I 

loved to do it. So that it was as if I 'went away' when I sat down to write." She wrote in the morning 

and the afternoon. In the evening, she would be occupied with dinner, and the children, and putting 

them to bed. By then, she was too tired to work and just went to bed. 

Margaret talks of that year living alone with the children in Richmond. Each morning she had 

to walk Candy, the bulldog, then tend to the antiquated furnace in the cellar, then attend to the 

children. It was a hard year. "But of course, the hardest thing was that my sister Evangeline was 

killed in an auto accident. And somehow or other, I really eliminated almost entirely any form of 

social life, and just worked on it [the book]. So that I was well along on it when we moved to 

Washington." 

They came in the fall of 1942. Kenneth had found a house to rent at 2910 Brandywine St., 

NW. Kenneth tells of the friend from Northwestern University who was leaving and rented the house 

to him. 

Peggy helped a great deal in the house when she came home from school, freeing Margaret up 

to work. That made a big difference. 

The book was substantially completed before the move, on February 12, 1942. Muriel Fuller 

was trying to sell the book for Margaret. But Kenneth McCormick, the editor at Doubleday, 

considered the most influential editor in New York in those days, told Muriel after reading the 

manuscript that there would be no interest in such a story among the American public. Margaret 

remembers taking walks with Kenneth on Sunday afternoons and saying, "Well, if 2000 people buy 

the book and read it, I'll feel it was worth the four years it took to write it." [This was after the 

move to Washington, after the book had been sold to John Day.] 

Muriel sent the book around to several publishing houses and got negative letters in every 

instance. 

Margaret tells about her classes at Northwestern University's school of journalism. She tells 

of Somerset Maugham's way of digging up scandals on people and writing them up. The one 

respected man who committed suicide as a result. Then Margaret tells of the man who wrote the 

definitive book on Lhasa, Tibet, which he had never visited. 

4 

32:46 Kenneth had written several articles for Asia magazine, of which Elsie Weil was the editor. 

The magazine was a publication of the John Day publishing company, of which Richard Walsh was 

the head. Kenneth was invited to a dinner at the Mayflower hotel on February 12, 1942, 

"Announcement Dinner, the East and West Association." Pearl Buck was setting up this association. 

Kenneth takes over this part of the story. Paul McNutt, who had formerly been governor of 

Indiana, and also at one time had been governor-general of the Philippines, was Pearl Buck's choice 

to be the principal speaker at the foundation of the East-West society, which was supposed to link the 

East with the West "and all that sort of thing." There were a couple of hundred people at this dinner. 

Richard Walsh came down from New York with Elsie for the dinner. One reason Walsh came down 

was that the fortunes of John Day were connected to Pearl Buck, who had written The Good Earth 

and made the company rich. Kenneth was there because he had been writing articles for Asia. 

McNutt and Buck were up at the head of the t-shaped table, and Kenneth found himself sort of at the 

center, sitting next to Elsie Weil and across from Dick Walsh. Suddenly, Kenneth realized that he 

had a golden opportunity to plug Margaret's book. "So I turned to Elsie Weil and ostensibly was 

talking to her. But actually I was throwing my voice at Dick Walsh across the table. And I told her a 

story out of Anna and the King of Siam Oh, she was fascinated. Dick Walsh, of course, listened to 

493


me rather than Paul McNutt. And he leaned across and said, 'Elsie, hey, get Ken Landon to write that 

up for Asia magazine.' And then I told a second one. And he said, 'Hey, Elsie, get that one in Asia 

magazine too. That's a good one!' And then I told a third one. And a fourth one. And Dick said, 

'Hey, Elsie, Ken Landon's got a series here! We can really do something with this. A fine series.' 

And then I told another story or two. And he said, 'My goodness! Why, I think there's a book there!' 

He said, 'Elsie, you've got to look into this. I think there's a book there!' And then I said, 'Well, Mr. 

Walsh, these are stories LQ a book that's already written.' 'Oh, for goodness sakes! Why didn't you 

tell us this sooner? Send it up!' 'Well,' I said, 'there's one catch in it, Mr. Walsh. It's not my book.' 

'Oh? Whose book is it?' 'Well, it's my wife's book, Margaret Landon.' 'Oh. Your wife's book?' I 

said, 'Yes.' 'Oh, well, no one ever heard of her. Everyone knows about you. Just put your name on it 

and send it up.' And I said, 'We'll be delighted to send it up. But I'm not going to put my name on it.' 

'Well, send it up to Elsie anyway.'" 

So Kenneth sent the book up to Elsie. It wasn't finished in the sense of having been polished, 

though the substance of the book had been completed by then. Even a year and a half later, after Kip 

was born, and they were about to send the finished book up to the publisher, Margaret said, "'Don't 

send it, Kenneth. I've got to write it one more time.' I'm like that." And Kenneth said, "I'm taking it 

away from you. You aren't going to write another word." 

In any case, the book went up the first time in 1942, addressed to Miss Weil. 

When the manuscript came in, the reader to whom it was assigned was a young woman who 

had just graduated from Vassar, whose uncle was a man named Robert Moses, a prominent politician 

in New York. The young woman read the manuscript and then wrote across it, "Nothing but a 

Sunday school story. Send it back." However, since the manuscript had been addressed to Miss 

Weil, it had to go to her before being returned. When she saw what was written on the manuscript, 

she went in to Richard Walsh with the manuscript and said, "Dick, I believe in this book. I believe 

this is going to be a success. But you read it, and if you don't agree, well, all right, send it back." 

5 

40:07 "Well, the day I arrived in Washington, the first piece of mail I opened was the offer of a 

contract. Oh, that was thrilling!" This would have been in October, 1942. Kenneth had brought the 

children earlier so that they could start school on time, but Margaret had to close out the house in 

Richmond and didn't get to Washington until October 6, she thinks it was. "But it was a great day to 

open it and be offered a contract." 

Margaret decided right away that she would not join any clubs or organizations in the church. 

The Landons went to the National Presbyterian Church, which was downtown at that time. She felt 

sure the book needed one more rewrite, and she decided that she would devote herself entirely to that 

until it was done. "And rewrite," says Kenneth. "And rewrite. And rewrite." "And rewrite," 

Margaret agrees. "And rewrite." Kenneth points out again that she rewrote some of those chapters 

twenty times, perhaps even twenty-five times. "Well," Margaret rejoins, "it's disgraceful, but it's 

true." 

"Anyway, I can still remember very clearly the afternoon of July 23, 1943. I was sitting at the 

end of a table just like this, a dining room table, except that it was a frilly table, the kind they used to 

carve the edges. And I sat there, and I wrote, 'Finis.'" The last rewrite was done. "As I sat there, just 

somehow stunned by the fact that I had finally reached what I could call an end, I felt a tremendous 

pain go across my body. I was pregnant, you see. And I thought, 'For goodness sakes, be sensible. 

You've finished the book. That doesn't mean that the baby's coming immediately after the book's 

finished. Stop being so silly!' So I got up and I got dinner, and the pains kept getting worse and 

worse. And I said, 'What the imagination will do is just amazing!'" 

494


Kenneth tells of the office pool that was running at work, as people bet on whether or not 

baby or book would come first. 

All through dinner and the subsequent evening, the pains kept coming, and Margaret kept 

telling herself what nonsense it was. It was all in her imagination now that she knew the book was 

done. "And about 10:30," after going to bed, "I got up, and I didn't say anything to Kenneth. I went 

into the bathroom with a tablet, and I wrote on it, 'Peggy'—she knew I had a very poor doctor—'if I 

don't come back, please take over and help the children.' And I signed it. And then I went in and 

woke Kenneth up." They dressed and left in the car for Garfield Hospital, which has since been torn 

down. "And I got lost," Kenneth says [because Florida Avenue, on which the hospital was, is one of 

the most confusing streets in the city.] As they drove through the night, trying to find their way, they 

discussed what name the baby should have if it were a boy. "And I wanted him named for Kenneth. 

And Kenneth said, 'Well, I just don't want it. He'd be "Kenny."' And I said, 'Well, I've thought of 

something. He could be "Kip."'" They argued about this as they drove. 

They finally made it to the hospital at about midnight. Margaret tells of her lack of 

confidence in the doctor. Two weeks earlier, she had fallen the full length of the stairs to the 

basement, mostly on her back. When she went to the doctor, he sneered at her, she says. "Guess you 

didn't hurt yourself very much." "And I knew, I just had this deep conviction, that if it cost him any 

inconvenience, my death would mean nothing to him." She found out later that he was regarded that 

way. 

Margaret was put in a small room, lying down, and a young nurse came in, leaned over her, 

and asked her age. Thirty-nine. "Gosh!" the nurse said. "I hope I look like you when I'm thirtynine!" 

Thinking how she must look at that moment, Margaret just laughed. 

Another pair of nurses appeared and realized that the birth was imminent. They rushed her to 

the delivery room, and after a while "the doctor looked up and said, 'You have a fullback.' And Kip 

was there." 

Kenneth points out how long Margaret's previous labors had been, in each case. Whereas Kip 

was born "all of a sudden." But Margaret points out that she had gone into labor at three in the 

afternoon, so the birthgiving had actually taken twelve hours. 

6 

48:53 The way the title of the book was chosen. Margaret says this was Elsie Weil's doing. When 

several of the stories were published in Asia, Miss Weil gave them the title, Anna Leonowens and 

the King of Siam "And when it came to Dick Walsh, he took out the Leonowens. I didn't make up 

the title." Margaret had no working title of her own. 

After Kip's birth, Kenneth told Margaret he would type up the finished manuscript and send 

it. Margaret pled with him not to, saying she now felt she must rewrite it one more time. Kenneth 

points out that most of the rewriting she had done had been at Dick Walsh's suggestion. He was a 

fine editor. He altered the order of the beginning of the book somewhat, for instance. Kenneth 

overrode Margaret's inclination to continue rewriting, typed the final copy, and sent it off to J ohn Day 

for publication. "We were still hoping for at least 2000 copies," he says with a laugh. 

The winter of 1943 and into 1944 was very difficult for Margaret. Fuel oil was rationed 

because of the war. The previous owner had used very little oil, and because of that, the Landons 

could not get enough to keep the house warm. Kenneth came down with pneumonia. Much of the 

time Margaret kept the baby in the kitchen, where the stove gave off warmth. Kenneth recovered 

slowly. 

The telephone was on the first floor. Margaret was upstairs one day when the phone rang. 

She was feeling so exhausted that she didn't want to go downstairs. She feared that if she went down, 

495


she wouldn't be able to get back up. "But the telephone rang and rang and rang and rang and rang!" 

So she went down, and it was a telegram from Dick Walsh. "The Literary Guild has bought the book, 

and the first printing will be 200,000 copies." Which was in addition to the first edition of 9000 

brought out by John Day. [Margaret forgets to say, as she usually says when telling this story, that she 

simply flew back up the stairs, effortlessly. All her exhaustion had vanished.] 

The day before the book was published, in June, 1944, Margaret went up to New York at John 

Day's invitation. They had a lovely luncheon for her. After the luncheon, she went out into the city 

wondering what she should do. "I've got to do something. This is so exciting." So she thought she 

would go to a bookstore and look at old books. [We laugh.] "I walked into the store—you aren't going 

to believe this—but I walked down the line of books on Asia and found the only copy of 

Anna's book autographed by her to somebody else that I have ever seen. I think Peggy has it. I gave 

it to her. It seemed such a fitting thing to have happen." This was one of the original books. 

The actual day of publication, Margaret had a dental appointment with her dentist, Dr. 

Adams, on I Street. When she came out, she thought of going to Brentano's on F Street to see if they 

had her book, but she was so tired, and it was so hot, that she just took the bus home. She found out 

the next day that the entire window at Brentano's was full of her book. "And I didn't see it. My own 

fault." Kenneth says the books were piled high in the window. 

7 

56:33 When she got home, Margaret found that the book had been reviewed in The New York 

Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In those days, the Tribune was an important 

newspaper, and it gave Anna a front-page review. This was completely unexpected. "Oh, startling!" 

says Kenneth. "It was absolutely stunning." Margaret says that it began something like, "How to 

describe this marvellous book?" It was a rave review. "And within one week, I had offers from 

seven Broadway producers." They all wanted to bid on the rights. Kenneth adds, "And Teresa 

Helburn!" Yes, Mother agrees, Teresa Helburn of the Theatre Guild, who called Margaret directly. 

The Theatre Guild was a powerful organization in those days. Margaret and Kenneth belonged to it 

and always got four tickets to the plays, to which they would take guests. "I was coming up the stairs 

from the basement with a pail of diapers," Margaret says, "when the telephone rang. And—life goes 

on! The telephone rang, and I picked up the phone. 'This is Teresa Helburn speaking.' Well she was 

a big, big name in the theater in those days. She said, 'I've read your book, and I called the John Day 

agency to find out who represents you, and they said you were QRW represented. I did not believe that, 

so I'm calling you. Who represents you? Who's your agent?'" Kenneth says that he didn't think she 

had an agent at that time, but Margaret insists that she did. The William Morris Agency. Her agent 

was Helen Strauss. This was something else Muriel Fuller did for Margaret, referring her to Helen, 

whom she knew. 

496


HOUR 78 

Session #54 continued August 20, 1988 Margaret, Kenneth, Kip, Will and Pat Landon 

1 

0:00 (XIIA700) Margaret continues with the story of Anna. The motion picture people came in 

with offers on Anna too. The way it was then, she says, was that if you sold your work to the motion 

picture company, you got the money, whether it turned out to be a success or not. If you went with 

one of the Broadway producers, you made money only if the play made money. Because of the 

family's need for money, Margaret decided to go with Twentieth Century Fox. Kenneth points out 

that Teresa Helburn kept trying to find playwrights and actors who would satisfy Margaret, and 

Kenneth and Margaret went up to New York several times to meet with people like Ethel Barrymore 

and various "angels" who were promoting various plays. Neither Landon was impressed suitably 

with the people he or she met. Helburn wasn't thinking of a musical play. Only a straight play. 

Margaret says that William Morris was very helpful, because they knew Broadway. William Morris 

told Teresa Helburn that there were only four playwrights that they would accept. Unfortunately, all 

four of them were committed to projects at the time. So Margaret decided to go with the movies. 

Fox offered $75,000, she says. Kenneth says $60,000. But she insists that it was $75,000. 

The Agency took its cut, of course. The amount was paid over three years. 

The book immediately became a best seller. It went to at least fifteen foreign countries. It 

was translated into French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and various other languages. It was also 

translated into Thai, but the Thai just took it. They never paid. 

"So it was an adventure," Margaret says. 

The movie came out in 1946. Rex Harrison was brought from England to play the king. 

Kenneth interrupts to say that the first edition of 9000 sold out, but unfortunately John Day 

ran out of paper because of the rationing in the war. They could have had Doubleday or some other 

company make additional printings, but John Day wouldn't agree to it. Margaret lost a big Christmas 

sale that year as a result. But, she says, "I got some." 

And adds, "I still do. But not so much now that Yul Brynner's dead." 

Kenneth comments, "Here we are in 1988, and Margaret's masterpiece of 1944 has been going 

on for forty-four years. And I think it will go on for a hundred more!" Margaret says she's not so 

sure. But Kenneth says, "Well, I think so. I think it's one of those stories that is limitless in time." 

When the movie came out, Margaret says she was in bed with rheumatic fever. Kenneth says 

he didn't see the movie either. Will interjects that at that time, he was going to Wheaton College in 

Wheaton, Illinois. It was the fall of 1946. He knew that once he signed the pledge at Wheaton, he 

wouldn't be able to see the movie. [The pledge at that time forbade going to movies.] So Will routed his 

ticket so that he went via New York, where he would have to change trains. While in New York, he 

went to see the movie, then continued on to Wheaton, and signed the pledge. 

The next year, Will was working in the Department of Commerce in Washington during the 

summer. He had learned to operate the stenotype machine. He could go up to 150 words a minutes. 

His boss was a man named Rice. Will was working on forms for interviewing nurses and doctors. 

When the forms were ready, they went up to Staten Island in New York to do the interviews. One 

night, Will got tickets to a play, "Anne of a Thousand Days," starring Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer, 

and took his boss to see it. After the play, Will took his card—a formal calling card Margaret had 

had made for him—and wrote on the back of it, "Mother wrote Anna. May her son sees its star?" He 

497


bribed the doorman with a dollar, and waited with his boss. Finally, the doorman called him, and 

there was Rex Harrison in a pair of jockey shorts with his wife and attorney and one of the people in 

the play. He was very gracious. They talked about the book and the movie. Harrison invited Will 

and his boss to go to a bar with him, but Will explained that he was underage. Harrison autographed 

Will's playbill. Also Lili Palmer. 

2 

10:52 Years passed. Then one day, Margaret came home from some event [she says a football 

game at Kip's school, St. Albans, but that could not have been until the fall of 1952] when she 

found a letter from Helen Strauss of the William Morris Agency. "I have kept all the 

correspondence." By that time, Margaret had finished her second book, Never Dies the Dream, 

which was published in 1949. The letter said, "Don't pay any attention to the newspaper accounts 

that Gertrude Lawrence is considering doing Anna and the King of Siam on Broadway." Margaret 

hadn't seen any notice of it. She soon learned that Gertrude Lawrence had just played the mother in a 

play by Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie. Lawrence was a famous and sophisticated 

English actress, and was unconvincing as an impoverished, rather simple Midwestern housewife, her 

role in the play. So the play was a flop. Accordingly, Lawrence and her people were looking around 

for something she could do that would fit her image. She had not been on Broadway for several 

years. Lawrence was known for the stage, not for movies. In any case, someone had the idea that 

Anna would be right for her. She could do that. 

Her people considered who could write a play for her. The top of the line at that time were 

Rodgers and Hammerstein, who had done Oklahoma and South Pacific, both great successes. At 

that time, R&H were working on a play based on one of Graham Greene's novels. [And though 

Margaret does not say so in this telling, the story is that when they were initially approached, they rejected the 

idea of doing Anna because of their commitment to the Greene play.] The opening was at New Haven, 

Connecticut. Many plays opened there in those days. The play was such a total flop that they didn't 

even try rewriting it. They never brought it to New York. Suddenly, the two men found themselves 

without a project. So they contacted William Morris to say that they might be interested in doing 

Anna for Gertrude Lawrence after all. Negotiations began and went on for quite a while. At some 

point in all this, Kenneth says, Gertrude Lawrence made an announcement that she was going to do 

Anna and that she had chosen Rodgers and Hammerstein to do the play. "She just made that 

announcement." 

This all happened in 1950. Kenneth was out of the country on his trip to Southeast Asia while 

the R&H negotiations were going on. Teresa Helburn was furious with herself for not thinking of 

R&H in connection with Anna. Her Theatre Guild had put on one of those first two successes R&H 

did. Margaret cannot recall which. Kenneth thinks it was Oklahoma. 

The negotiations went on for a long time, Margaret says. "Rodgers and Hammerstein had an 

enormously high opinion of themselves. I've never met them. I FKRVH not to." When the Agency 

proposed a certain arrangement to Margaret, she was not satisfied with them and called Helen up to 

tell her to cancel the negotiations. She was not interested any more. However, William Morris ZHUH 

interested. They had never had a musical, Margaret says. And Kenneth says that they also 

represented Gertrude Lawrence, so that they stood to profit from her involvement. So the Agency 

ignored Margaret's order and went ahead, signing the contract with Howard Rheinheimer, 

"considered the most able theatrical lawyer in New York." "And I was really angry, because I had 

said certain specifications. They were very reasonable." She belonged to a guild that she had to 

belong to as an author whose book had been made into a movie, and it had guidelines on what was 

498


considered a fair contract. R&H were demanding less. Margaret had called to say that either she get 

what should be the right amount or the negotiations should be cancelled. The really serious loss in 

the contract William Morris signed with R&H was that it cut Margaret out of any movie rights. And 

there were other losses, Margaret says. 

A couple of months later, in an article in Variety, Howard Rheinheimer gloated about getting 

this contract because he knew that Gertrude Lawrence did not own the rights, that Margaret Landon 

still owned them. He tricked the William Morris Agency into accepting that idea, that is, that 

Lawrence owned the rights. "They should have known better. I owned the rights. They had nothing 

they could do. But the William Morris Agency just gave me away." Kenneth points out that they 

could do nothing without her signature on the contract, no matter what they had negotiated. She had 

that leverage. But he was out of the country and could not advise her at the time. She recalls feeling, 

"Well, if Kenneth were here, I wouldn't be in this dilemma." She went along with what the Agency 

had done, and signed the contract. 

"So they profited. But I profited too. But I've never forgotten it. And I never asked to meet 

them. And they never invited me." When the play went on Broadway, Margaret wrote Helen to buy 

eleven tickets to the premier, which was what the family was then, and the answer came back from 

R&H that she would be allowed to buy two tickets only, at full price. Helen told her it was one of the 

rudest letters they had ever received. Margaret bought the two tickets, but she didn't go. She gave 

them to Carol and Kenneth, who both went. This was 1951. And when Kenneth came back, he said, 

"It's going to be a hit." 

In 1953, Kenneth says, he was in London when the play opened there and went to the 

opening. That was when he bought his first pair of John Peel shoes. "And my feet are sole to sole as 

soul mates with Laurence Olivier. . . ." [Kenneth is cut off. I believe that either the company used the same 

last for both men or that the two sets of lasts were kept side by side. Something like that.] "And I've never 

met Rodgers and Hammerstein," Margaret says, "or Yul Brynner. I never asked to." Nor did she 

meet Gertrude Lawrence. 

3 

25:21 Mary Martin was a more "broad-minded" person than Gertrude Lawrence, Margaret says. 

Margaret thinks she considered herself for the role of Anna, but she wouldn't have been right for it. 

In any case, she wanted to meet Margaret, so Helen Strauss took her around after a play in New 

York, "and we had a lovely time. She was a charming person." She had been in South Pacific with 

Ezio Pinza of the Metropolitan Opera, which was a "revolution" on Broadway. When the people 

working to cast The King and I proposed opera stars to Gertrude Lawrence for the role of the king, 

however, she rejected every one. Then they began on well-known actors, and she refused every one 

of those too. They began to be frantic. She had the right in her contract to control the casting of the 

person who would play opposite her, and she didn't want any competition. It was going to be KHU 

play. Then Mary Martin, "charming little Mary Martin," whom Rodgers and Hammerstein loved 

after her performance in South Pacific, told the King and I people of a man she had performed with 

in a play called Lute Song. This had not been a success, but was a charming play. The actor's name 

was Yul Brynner. Nobody had ever heard of him. 

Yul Brynner was invited, with others, to come and try out for the part. And he won it. He 

went through all the rehearsals, learning his part and his songs "very nicely." [In telling this story, 

Margaret normally depicted Brynner as holding back in all the preparations because he understood the danger if 

he showed what he could actually do.] Gertrude Lawrence was pleased. "Everything was just the way 

she wanted it until the night of the dress rehearsal, when he let go and did what he could do. He 

499


made it. And she was absolutely wild. And she made them take out a song. She tried to practically 

eliminate him from it. But he had the contract. And he came on. And he was a tremendous success 

from the very beginning, you see. And she fought him so that it actually helped the play." He was 

fighting to stay on, and she was fighting to belittle him. "So the contest between Anna and the King 

was very, very real." 

The play ran on Broadway for hundreds of performances. It was a great success. Lawrence 

herself developed liver cancer and died, unfortunately. The actress who took her place was not a 

person of the same stature. [So ironically, from early on, the play became the king's play, rather than Anna's, 

and so it remained throughout Yul Brynner's reign.] 

Kenneth says, "Margaret was given the privilege of investing in the play and having a piece of 

the action, and she didn't have to put out any money—they would take it out of the first receipts from 

the play—and she didn't have enough confidence in it, and she turned it down." 

Margaret had written a letter to Rodgers and Hammerstein, which was unusual for them, 

because part of the agreement was that she would comment on their script for the play. She criticized 

the play, showing them its weaknesses from her point of view, which antagonized them. They 

thought she didn't like the play. Somewhere in her records, Margaret has the letter she sent them. 

She does not recall her criticisms now. Kenneth points out that the strength in the play lies in the 

conflict of cultures and the conflict between Anna and the King, and he says that Margaret wrote that 

she felt they hadn't made the conflict sharp and clear enough, that it was an issue of the dignity of the 

individual and so on. R&H were mainly concerned with producing a successful piece of theater. 

Then, of course, a movie was made of The King and I, with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. 

[In 1956. Brynner won the Academy award for this.] But of course, Margaret earned nothing whatever 

from the movie. 

She did not see the play until it had been playing for six weeks, she says. "I couldn't bring 

myself to go up there. I was so angry." She went up with Kenneth and another couple. Her feeling 

about the play was "curious," she says. "I saw why it was a success, but I didn't feel it. +Iiii!" she 

says as Nona Beth comes in. 

Session #55 September 9, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Elizabeth Amsler, Peggy 

Schoenherr 

4 

35:40 Peggy tells of preparing for Margaret's birthday two days before, asking her mother what sort 

of cake she would like. The answer was a simple cake like the ones KHU mother used to make. So 

Peggy asked Aunt Betty and learned that Adelle would make a simple cake with egg yolks. So that's 

what Peggy did. She also had very much in mind the delicious cakes Margaret would make when she 

was a child in Thailand. So at the dinner, she told of her memory of Margaret and Kenneth eating 

cake and drinking tea on the mook, the front porch. As a child, she would stand in the back of the 

house and watch. Kenneth would be out in the jungle anywhere from four to six weeks at a time, and 

when he came home, Margaret would plan a little celebration tea. She had in the kitchen an old-style 

stove on legs with the oven above and the burners beside. The fuel was kerosene. The stove was 

used only for baking bread and cake and so forth. Ah Sim did all the cooking for regular meals on a 

black, iron wood stove. Margaret would frost her cakes with a marvellous, fluffy white frosting, "and 

I would be right there beside her and get to lick the bowl." Margaret would set the table, a round 

wicker table in the center of the mook, with a lovely white linen tablecloth. On either side would be 

a wicker armchair, with cushions, and around the mook would be ferns and palms that she had 

growing there. And the two of them would sit at the table with the pot of hot tea and "her beautiful 

500


creation." "And I would stand back in the dining room, beyond the mook, and watch them, and think, 

'Oh how I would love to be in on the party.' But I knew it was their special time together, so I did not 

intrude." Later, the children would get pieces of cake too. "But that is a very special and lovely 

memory I have of Mother and Daddy as a child." 

Kip recalls Kenneth's commenting on Peggy's boyfriends when she was in high school. 

Kenneth says she was very popular with the boys. He will never forget her first boyfriend, "a little 

Italian kid." Cute, snappy black eyes, black hair, swarthy. Kenneth says that he and Margaret trusted 

their children's choice of friends, up to a point, though he recalls one time that Margaret tried to force 

a particular girl friend on Carol and that Carol resisted. Finally Carol had to explain why she didn't 

want that girl as a friend. "She's bad, that's why. And I just don't like bad girls." Which nonplused 

Margaret, who then backed off. That was over at 2910 Brandywine Street in 1942-3. 

Kenneth recalls the young Italian coming to the door and taking Peggy off. The hours passed, 

and the time when the couple was to return came and went. Margaret became very upset. Kenneth 

must "do something." Something dreadful was happening.. "Finally she couldn't stand it. She went 

down into the basement to be by herself." Hours late, Peggy turned up with her date and said goodby 

sweetly to him and went off to bed. Margaret then went off to bed with Kenneth. The next day, 

Peggy asked her father what he thought of her date. He threw the question back to her, and she said 

she thought she could do better than that. She would never date that one again. "Well, I agree with 

your judgment," said Kenneth. Margaret was very relieved when Kenneth told her. 

Then Peggy dated a boy who wanted to play professional baseball, Bill Torrey (SP?). She 

would ask Kenneth what he thought of Bill, and Kenneth liked him well enough. Torrey was the 

president of the senior class at Wilson High School. He never made it in baseball. Peggy went to the 

prom with him, and Aunt Betty remembers something about that. She was here visiting at the time, 

in the spring. Peggy was to wear a beautiful white dress, but she wanted a ruffle around the bottom 

that had slits in it so that she could put ribbon through them. Betty knew someone in Ohio who had a 

Singer sewing machine with the right attachment for making the ruffle and slits, and so she took the 

dress with her, did the job, and sent the dress back to Peggy, who led the promenade in her beautiful, 

ruffled dress. The ribbon was black velvet. 

Another boyfriend was going to West Point, and he wanted to take Peggy up for a weekend at 

West Point. His name was Lou Schalk. Margaret had trepidations, but Kenneth knew that the couple 

would be chaperoned. So Peggy went. She asked Kenneth's opinion of Lou, and his opinion was 

high. Lou would be a success in the military, he thought. This was true. He became a successful test 

pilot. 

Then Peggy went off to Wheaton College and met a former marine named Charles 

Schoenherr, a handsome young man and a big football name on campus. "And she set her cap for 

him, and she used to stand at the stairs where she knew he'd be coming so that he'd practically have to 

stumble over her to get by. And he noticed her. And she was cute." They began to date, and it soon 

became serious. Kenneth recalls Charles' coming to visit in Washington. By this time, Charles had 

decided that he wanted to marry Peggy, and she was just waiting for him to say the word. The 

trouble was that her old boyfriends from high school kept calling her up, and this put Charles off. He 

had been carrying a ring in his pocket, ready to ask her to marry him, and she wanted him to, but he 

kept holding off. Finally, though, there was a "confrontation," and the great event took place. They 

became engaged. 

Lou was distressed by this and gave up his suit with great reluctance. Years later, after Lou 

had married and had children, he brought his family to 4711 to call. "And I've often said, 'I always 

went with her boyfriends. And they continued to go with me!'" Peggy says that Lou was awarded 

the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was a brilliant man, and courageous. 

501


Kenneth says that he thinks Peggy ended up with the right guy. 

5 

53:52 In 1953, William Donovan became ambassador to Thailand. A woman named Ruth, who 

headed the passport office, warned him that he needed to cultivate a relationship with the desk officer 

for Thailand if he wanted things to go well. She was an old friend of Donovan's. He had been named 

ambassador to Thailand as a "reconciliation appointment" by Eisenhower. He had established the 

OSS, of course, which Truman had abolished after the war. Everyone knew that there needed to be 

something equivalent, some sort of intelligence operation, which led to the establishing of the Central 

Intelligence Agency under Eisenhower. Ike knew Donovan fully expected to be named the head of 

the CIA, having headed the OSS. But Eisenhower wanted John Foster Dulles to be his Secretary of 

State, and Dulles had a brother named Allen who had been in the OSS and had been the principal 

officer in European affairs and had been very active after World War II. John Foster Dulles 

convinced Eisenhower that it would be best for the country in its foreign relations if he were 

Secretary of State and his brother his counterpart in secret international relations in the intelligence 

field. This appealed to Eisenhower, and he did it. The two brothers would work together. Donovan, 

of course, was very upset about this, but Eisenhower said that he needed him, and asked him to go 

and represent the U.S. as ambassador to Thailand. This was not the greatest appointment in the world 

for a man of his pride, but he realized this would probably be his last important assignment in the 

U.S. government because of his age—he was around seventy—and so he accepted. 

Donovan went to visit with his friend Ruth, a famous woman at the time whose last name 

Kenneth cannot recall, and she asked if he knew who his desk officer would be in the State 

Department. He said that he did not. He knew nothing about his assignment, and while he had asked 

several times for an appointment with Walter Robertson, the Assistant Secretary for the Far East, 

Robertson had not given him an appointment. "Well," she said, "Bill, the most important person for 

you is the political officer on the Thailand desk. You'd better find out who he is because those little 

boys can kill you. They write your orders. They send out your instructions." 

"Well, I was sitting in my office, and I heard this soft Irish voice in the hallway outside. 

'Could someone tell me where I can find the political officer for Thailand?' He always spoke in a soft 

voice—a soft, Irish voice. And I recognized Bill Donovan's voice. Well, I didn't move. I thought, 

'Well, he'll find it.' So in a few moments, sure enough, someone led him to the door. The door 

swung open, and General Donovan walked in. And he looked at me. And his eyes got big. He said, 

'Are \RX the political officer for Thailand?' 'Yes I am,' I said. 'Thank God! Thank God!' And he 

walked over to me and put his arms around me. 'I'm saved!' We were old friends. Then he sat down, 

and we began to talk." Donovan said that he could not get Walter Robertson to give him an 

appointment. Robertson had wanted Walter Judd to be appointed ambassador and had actually put 

forward his name. 

502


HOUR 79 

Session #55 continued September 9, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Elizabeth Amsler, 

Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIA1140) Kenneth continues on William Donovan's appointment to Thailand. Robertson 

had wanted Walter Judd, a congressman who had put forward his name to be Assistant Secretary for 

the Far East, to be ambassador to Thailand. Judd had a low opinion of William Donovan, and so 

accordingly did Robertson. Kenneth was shocked that Robertson refused to see Donovan. "Well," 

he said, "that's intolerable. I'll see about this." Kenneth dialed the office and got Robertson's 

secretary. He explained who he was and told her that he had the new ambassador to Thailand sitting 

beside him, that the ambassador had not seen the Assistant Secretary, would be leaving shortly, and 

must see the Assistant Secretary, the man to whom he would be reporting from the field. The 

secretary said that Robertson had no time at all to see the ambassador. "I knew that Robertson had 

put her up to this." Kenneth said that this was not tolerable and that he was afraid he could not accept 

it from her. "So would you kindly connect me with Mr. Robertson?" She agreed reluctantly, and 

Robertson came on the phone. "Robertson was a little afraid of me. You see, I had quite a 

reputation. He knew that when I started after something that there's going to be some problems. So 

he started right in, 'Ken,' he said, 'I just absolutely do not want to see Bill Donovan.' He said, 'I know 

him. I know all about him. I don't like him. I don't want to have anything to do with him. And I 

don't want him to come into my office. I'm just too busy a man.'" Kenneth explained that a new 

ambassador going out to his post without having met with the Assistant Secretary was in a very 

precarious position, and at this, Robertson went into a tirade. 

At that moment, Kenneth handed the telephone to Donovan. "This was a dirty trick. I handed 

the phone to Donovan, so Donovan had it to his ear.. And he heard the whole tirade through. And 

this tirade went on for about five minutes. And all of a sudden, Donovan, in his gentle, soft, Irish 

voice, said, 'Walter, this is Bill.' And the phone went dead. 'I would like to see you, Walter.' 

[Silence.] 'I'm leaving for Bangkok this next week.' [Silence.] 'Thank you, Walter! I'll be right 

up!' [Thump.] He put it down. Looked at me. He said, 'You son of a bitch, I love you.' That was 

the kind of relationship I had with Donovan." 

So Donovan went up and had his visit. "Robertson, of course, was furious with me. 

Absolutely furious. I was probably the only guy in the whole area there who would have the 

presumption. . . . You see, I've always worked with my hat on. I didn't care whether I got fired or 

not. It gives you great advantage. And Walter Robertson knew it. And he also knew he couldn't fire 

me. I did have a good reputation." 

Kenneth didn't look forward to his next meeting with Robertson, but he decided to just play it 

cool and pretend that nothing untoward had happened. Robertson had a meeting of desk officers in 

his office for some reason, and of course Kenneth went. Robertson never said a word. Not a word. 

"He knew what I'd done to him. And he knew I had done it deliberately. And he knew he was out of 

order, and that I was right. If I'd been wrong, well, then he could have been righteous and at least 

bawled me out. But he knew he was wrong. So Donovan got to see him. And then I took Donovan 

and went out with him to help establish him in Bangkok. That was 1953." 

Kenneth briefed Donovan extensively on Thailand before he went, and also during their trip 

together. Once in Bangkok, Kenneth took Donovan to call on the Foreign Minister and the Prime 

503


Minister, "both of whom I knew very well." Donovan took out two lawyers from his law firm to be 

his aides. One of them became prominent in U.N. legal affairs in New York. The two aides went 

with Kenneth and Donovan on their calls. 

In the course of this process, Donovan got "the whole feel" on Thailand and its place in 

Southeast Asia. Kenneth explained Thailand's relations with Burma, with Laos, with Cambodia, 

Vietnam, Malaya, Indonesia, and so on. These conversations went on constantly during the several 

weeks Kenneth was in Thailand with Donovan. 

"I was with him when we went up together up into the extreme northern part of Thailand for 

the repatriation of the KMT troops, who were the refugees from Mao's China and had come down 

into the Shan states and had set up controls over the opium traffic." They were a plague to the 

Burmese government. Our previous ambassador, Ed Stanton, and David Key, who was ambassador 

to Burma, had both been told to assure their respective governments that the U.S. government was 

not sponsoring or helping the KMT's in any fashion whatsoever. "Which was a dirty lie." When 

Dave Key found out that it ZDV a lie, he resigned from the Foreign Service. Ed Stanton was outraged 

too. Any ambassador would be. "But as I said to both of them, that's what ambassadors are for. 

Their appointment is meant to indicate that an ambassador is a man who goes forth to lie for his 

government. Everybody knows that. Ed Stanton accepted it, but Dave Key didn't. He was a man of 

high integrity." 

In any case, there was an agreement that had been reached and been accepted by all the KMT 

troops, who would be flown over by the Flying Tigers, who were actually an arm of the CIA. So the 

Flying Tigers flew in to the extreme north of Thailand, which bordered on the Shan states of Burma, 

and these KMT troops were supposed to come down with their women and kids and get on the planes 

and be flown to Taiwan. "Well, I know the Chinese so well, and I wondered how in the world they 

were going to work the thing. I think they had round-trip tickets." They were supposed to bring in 

their arms, and all they brought in were old carbines, and guns that wouldn't shoot, which were 

stacked up to be burned. They weren't really giving up anything. The Americans had the marines up 

there with the officials at the time. 

2 

10:28 Every day, Donovan would takes walks. He was a very vigorous man. Close to seventy at 

the time. The marines had to go with him to protect him, and he walked so fast that they complained 

about it. "He just walked the legs off the marines." Kenneth said to him, "Uncle Bill, you want to be 

careful, taking all these walks in the heat of the day and everything and even exhausting the marines. 

You might have a heart attack." Donovan retored, "Kenneth, my boy, what's wrong with that?" 

"That was his attitude. He was a very courageous guy. Everyone who worked with him loved him, 

admired him at any rate, and knew that he wouldn't ask anybody to do something that he wouldn't do 

himself. He would go into the most dangerous and hazardous situations, to the consternation of the 

people working under him, who didn't want him to put his life in jeopardy. But he would do it an y 

time because he expected them to. He was that kind of a person. 

"Then, sitting around in his embassy one night, he said to me, 'Kenneth, I want to do 

something big before I end this assignment. This is going to be my last assignment, for me to do 

something big for the United States. What big thing can I do that's bigger than Thailand that will be 

important to a great part of Southeast Asia? You tell me what I can do.' 

"'Well,' I said, 'You know the Mekong River and how it flows down from China and takes a 

jog around Laos and around Cambodia and flows down between Cambodia and Vietnam and flows 

out into the South China Sea. Now,' I said, 'here's all of this area that needs power, needs hydraulic 

power, and here's all of northeastern Thailand which is an area which gets inadequate rainfall. If you 

504


could just dam the Mekong River at Vientiane or a little north, and turn that river in across 

northeastern Thailand, and let it flow across northeastern Thailand, and out south of northeastern 

Thailand, and on down into the South China Sea, you would become famous because you would be 

able to generate power that would provide power for all of mainland Southeast Asia. And 

furthermore you would change this arid northeastern plateau area into a very productive agricultural 

area, where it's arid now.' 

"He said, 'You know, that's a great idea, Kenneth.' He said, 'I'm going to write a letter to 

President Eisenhower on this. I'm going to write Ike a letter about this.' I said, 'Don't you do that. If 

you write a letter to Ike, I can tell you what'll happen to it. It'll just drop into the file. If you really 

want to be noticed, you want to develop and have your staff develop a series of airgrams, top secret 

airgrams, "Eyes Only, the President."' 'Well, what's the difference?' he said. 'Eyes Only, the 

President!' 'Well,' I said, 'the difference is that if it's "Eyes Only, the President," there'll be about a 

hundred at least senior officers who have to receive copies of anything that's "Eyes Only, the 

President" to know what the President might be up to. And that will scatter your ideas all through the 

whole senior element of the United States government. Everybody's concerned. I mean, not only the 

State Department, but in the Pentagon, and in the CIA, and in the USIA, and the economic division, 

and the Treasury. They've got to know what the President is going to be seeing, or if it's international 

relations. And if you send in these airgrams as airgrams,, top secret airgrams, "Eyes Only, the 

President," you will have hit the whole top level of the U.S. government. But don't send them in too 

fast, maybe one a week or something like that. But you've got to have your aides do a little research 

work and write this up about the Mekong River and the river flow and things of that sort, and then 

you want to make a recommendation. And the recommendation should be that the Mekong River 

should be redirected by American engineers who are quite capable of river control and directed 

across the northeastern plateau of Thailand and let it come out at the southeast corner—it would go in 

at the northwest corner, out the southeast corner—and back into its original bed. And it would 

sidetrack and bypass all the rapids which are presently impassable and would make the Mekong 

River navigable all the way up. So,' I said, 'you would have done something terrific, Bill.' I was just 

kidding him along, you know. I was just making it up as I went. I thought he was an Irishman; he 

would see that I was giving him a dreampuff. 

"Well, he took it seriously. He said, 'Kenneth, that's a great idea. I'll do it just as you said.' 

And he did! And he sent in twelve airgrams, one a week, "Eyes Only, the President of the United 

States," on this subject. The upshot of it was that General Wheeler of the New York Port Authority 

fame, who was a great river engineer and harbor engineer, was appointed with a two-million-dollar 

kitty to go and inspect the situation and see what could be done. And that was the beginning of the 

Mekong development operation which profoundly affected Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, South 

Vietnam, and succeeded before the Vietnam War in establishing hydraulic production areas at several 

points along the Mekong River. They didn't redirect the whole river, but—and we have in this city a 

fellow named Jasper Ingersoll, who was sent out as an anthropologist from Catholic University—he's 

still teaching there—to be an advisor as to the people involved along the course of the river. And that 

was the making of Jasper Ingersoll, and I had recommended his name in this situation. And I have in 

my files out here in my office quite a bit of the Mekong River development literature that was 

produced as they began these projects. 

"So out of a wisecrack and an Irish daydream to an Irishman some great things began to 

develop. And it will be renewed some more because it's a good idea." 

Kip comments, "And it all started with you." 

"It all started with a wisecrack conversation between two Irishmen, me and Donovan. It was 

the Irish in me leaking out, I'm sure, when I cooked this thing up. Yeah." 

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3 

17:55 Another thing happened with Donovan that is of interest. Donovan had been in intelligence, 

of course, and he had a natural affinity in Thailand with General Pao (SP?), who was their 

intelligence bigshot. Donovan was paying no attention to General Sarit, or Marshall Sarit, who was 

the head of the military. Donovan was all for sending American aid to his opposite number, General 

Pao. "He cooked up with me an aid program for General Pao to promote the police and intelligence 

operations and things of that sort. But I said to him, 'You're making a mistake if you don't call on 

General Sarit, because he is a comer, and he is going to be very important in the politics of this 

country, and very important to the United States. Whereas General Pao will never be more than a 

policeman, General Sarit might very well become a Prime Minister.'" Donovan hadn't thought of 

that. But Kenneth had been watching Sarit since 1950, at the time of the coronation of the King, 

when he had noticed in the Thai newspapers that Sarit was a comer. Kenneth retells the story of 

calling on Sarit during that 1950 trip. He told the story to Donovan in 1953 during their time together 

in Thailand. "Donovan accepted the idea, and he then cooked up an aid program for General Sarit 

too. And he called on Sarit, and Sarit was mollified, because he was rather put off with Pao, and it 

wasn't very much longer after that when Pao left for Switzerland and Sarit became Prime Minister, a 

few years later. 

"I had a very good relationship with Donovan. And Donovan finished out his term as 

ambassador there, and came back." 

During that trip in 1953, Kenneth travelled up to the Pakisan (SP?) or northeastern area of 

Thailand, where he had proposed the Mekong River development. He wanted to visit all the 

settlements of the Vietnamese refugees from French Indochina. They had settled at Korat, Nakhon 

Phanom, Rukthahan (SP?), Sakon Nakhon, places like that along the river and in the interior. He 

wanted to see what they were up to. Kenneth informed the police chief, General Pao, that he wanted 

to go up there, "and he laid on a trip for me with jeeps and policemen, of course, to watch what I was 

up to and to listen to me." And they visited all the places along the river. This was part of Kenneth's 

looking things over for Donovan with the Mekong River project in mind. Of course, General Pao 

knew nothing about that. "At any rate, I was very much impressed with the Vietnamese because I 

found that where the Vietnamese refugees moved into a marketplace that was dominated by Chinese, 

within a year or two the Chinese began to leave. The Vietnamese could outcompete them. They 

would get up before dawn, when it was still dark. If they were blacksmiths, you would hear their 

hammers ringing on the anvils before light, and going right on till night. They ate nothing but rice 

and muet nong (SP?), which is a kind of rotten fish which has all the vitamins in the world crawling 

around in it. And they still could raise seven or eight children, and have this kind of energy, and the 

Chinese just couldn't compete with them. So they began to take over all these marketplaces." 

Kenneth and his crew drove into a village one night and asked what home industries they had 

there. And someone said that in one house, the people made mua nok yung (SP?), that is, peacock 

feather hats. Kenneth was very interested in seeing that because the peacock feather hat was not the 

feathers at all but the quills split and woven into the hat. "In my day, when I was a missionary, the 

only people who could afford them and have them were people like governors and lieutenant 

governors and people on up the line. And they were made by prisoners who made them in prison." 

But here was a family that had once been in prison, had learned the trade, and made these hats on 

order. You had to shoot your three peacocks and take them to the family, and then they would treat 

the quills for a month to get them so that they were soft and pliable. This, at least, is what the family 

told him. Then it would take them another month to weave the quills into the hat. Theoretically, it 

would take two months of labor. "Whether it was so or not, I have no way of knowing. They were 

impressing me, of course." The work was done under the house. A number of hats at various stage 

506


of manufacture were there, and for the fun of it, Kenneth picked up a couple of them and tried them 

on. 

7$3( ;,, 6LGH 

4 

25:06 Kenneth asked them if they could make a hat for him, and they said no. He would have to 

shoot his three "pheasants." [Kenneth has gone over from speaking of peacocks to pheasants.] Then 

Kenneth looked up into the house, which was built on stilts, and there saw a hatrack with a hat 

hanging on it. "So without a by-your-leave, I walked up the steps into the house and picked it up and 

put it on my head and my gosh, it went on. And I came back down and said, 'Hey, here's a hat that 

fits me. I'll buy this one! You want to sell it to me?'" Oh no, the man said, that was his brother's hat. 

He couldn't sell that. By this time, there was a big crowd of villagers who had gathered to listen to 

the farang speaking fluent Thai. So now Kenneth began bargaining for the hat. He knew he couldn't 

hurry it. The bargaining would take some time. Around the hat inside there was a snakeskin band. 

There wasn't anything on the outside. It was sort of shapeless and stood up straight. But that didn't 

matter. It went on! That was the important thing. Kenneth explained that the man could make 

another hat for his brother. Indeed, Kenneth would be willing to pay him for two hats! Well, the 

man said, it was an old hat. But Kenneth replied that hats like this never got old. They never wore 

out. He knew that. They were indestructible. If they got dirty, all you had to do was slosh them 

around in Lux and they would be as good as new. Then the two men got down to price. The crowd 

kept getting bigger and bigger. They were all outside, cheering the two men on. "They all knew I 

was going to get the hat. And the fellow knew he was going to sell it to me. And finally, we came to 

an agreement, and I got the hat." Kenneth paid. Eight dollars, or something like that. "They were 

very rare hats!" 

So Kenneth folded his new hat up and put it in his baggage to bring home. This kind of hat 

can be rolled up without being damaged. 

Kenneth came down with a terrible fever there, and he was so sick that a plane was sent up 

from Bangkok to take him down to the hospital. Must have been bad water. But he recovered. 

Kenneth removed the snakeskin sweatband from inside the hat, and when he returned to 

Washington, he went down to G Street, near the White House, to call on Lewis Saltz of Lewis and 

Thomas Saltz, the pre-eminent men's clothiers in the city at that time. He explained about this hat, 

fashioned from the quills of three peacocks [the word is again SHDFRFNV], and asked that Saltz 

block the hat to his head size and put a black band around the outside, with a leather band around the 

inside, to make it a formal panama hat. Saltz said he had never heard of such a thing. He feared that 

blocking would ruin the hat. But Kenneth said he thought the thing was practically indestructible and 

asked that it be done. Saltz was reluctant, but Kenneth was such a faithful customer there that he 

agreed to do it. Mr. Saltz took the hat up to New York and entrusted it to a hat man to block there. 

This didn't take long. There was a hat conference going on in New York at the time, and when the 

hat came back down to Saltz in Washington, Lewis was so impressed by it that he put it on exhibit at 

the hat convention. It was beautiful. [The hat was a pale, pale yellow with a translucent quality.] 

Saltz offered a hundred dollars to anyone who could guess what the hat was made of. It looked as 

though it were made of plastic because it was shiny. Many people wrote what they thought the 

material was, but no one guessed. The hundred dollars was safe. Saltz also had a picture of himself 

holding the hat, as the person who had had the hat blocked, with Kenneth as the owner, and he had 

this picture put into a hat catalogue. Kenneth began to get mail from hat stores hither and yon asking 

him if they could become outlets for these hats. But there was only one! As far as Kenneth knows, it 

507


was the only one in the United States—the only one in the Western Hemisphere! 

And then Saltz put the hat in his store window, identifying it as what it was and Kenneth as 

the owner. It stayed on exhibit there for several months. 

Finally, one day, Kenneth called on him and said that he would like to have his hat now, so 

Lewis sent someone down to bring it up to his office. Kenneth asked how much he owed on the hat. 

"Owe me?" Saltz said. "I should owe you!" He said he had much fun with this thing, and 

furthermore, it had brought considerable interest in his hat department. He was grateful. No charge. 

Kenneth wore that hat on his next trip around the world, and for many years after that. It 

presently sits in a box up in the attic. "It's as good as ever. I could put it on and wear it out anytime I 

wanted to." 

5 

31:50 In either 1950 or 1953, Kenneth purchased a Patek Philippe watch in Bangkok. He thinks it 

probably was in 1953. While he was in Bangkok, he told his friends—he had many friends there— 

that he would like to buy a fine watch. The Thai would like to have given him a watch, "but I 

couldn't take my little graft and corruption that way. I had to buy it." They laughed and took him to 

a jewelry store, and he was shown the finest watch they had, an eighteen-carot gold Patek Philippe 

watch with an eighteen-carot gold wrist band. He could have it for $400. The price on it was a 

$1000 or more at the time, but Kenneth didn't know that. Kenneth said okay, though he had a feeling 

that something was being rigged here. He knew it was the finest watch made at the time. It was 

hand-made. So he paid his $400. "And they all were laughing and banging my back and off we 

went. Great pals!" Kenneth wore the watch for the next thirty years, until he finally gave it to Kip in 

1986. He had it appraised at this point, and the value was put at $4600. A new one today is $8000. 

In 1953, Kenneth was awarded the Order of Exalted White Elephant by the Thai government, 

here in Washington. The ambassador was Pot Sarasin. Kenneth had returned from his trip to 

Thailand by now. The Thai were friendly with him, but at the same time afraid of him, in a sense, 

because they felt he knew too much. They weren't sure he was their friend. "But they always felt 

that they came out better in my dealings with them than they would with anybody else." So Pot 

Sarasin and he became good friends. He was the son of a Chinese doctor who had become a 

Christian and had studied medicine in this country and had gotten rich because during famine times 

he would treat patients who paid him in terms of land. Pot inherited all that land, in the plains area, 

the richest rice-growing part of Thailand. Pot himself was rich. The Thai wanted to show their 

appreciation to Kenneth and to a couple of other people. One was General Walter Bedell Smith, and 

the other was Admiral Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been influential in 

Thai affairs. Smith used to live at the corner of 44th and Garfield Streets, a few blocks from the 

Landons. 

The ceremony was held at the Thai embassy. Kenneth stood next to the other two men in a 

line. Things started with the more senior in rank, naturally. Smith and Radford were made first class 

White Elephants. "Then they came to me. Well, I wasn't a general. They couldn't give me the same 

ranking of White Elephant with these two luminaries. But they wanted to give me a good one. So 

they made me a third class White Elephant. When they made me a third class White Elephant, 

Walter Bedell Smith was standing beside me, and out of the side of his mouth, he said, 'Landon, don't 

feel too bad about being a third class White Elephant. Don't forget, Landon, the bigger the elephant, 

the bigger the ass!' Well, he had been a corporal, with a voice that carried, and it went through the 

room. Well, people just shook. Me standing there, solemn-faced, and Bedell Smith looking as 

though he hadn't said a word. And then the colonels got some other decoration. Not White Elephant. 

White Elephant was the top decoration given by the Thai government to foreigners at that time." 

508


6 

39:00 Margaret remembers that, after the Thai-British negotiations in 1946, the Thai government 

had wanted to give Kenneth something in appreciation, but knew he wouldn't take anything of value. 

At that time, there was a law or practice that fine statues of the Buddha could not be taken out of the 

country. So what they did was typically Thai. They had an expert, Lung Boribon (SP?), the head of 

the museum, choose three truly fine buddhas 

Kenneth interrupts to describe the three buddhas, which have been in the house at 4711 since 

1946. One is very rare, a pitsunlok (SP?) buddha, with the flame intact on the top of the buddha's 

head. Every Thai who has ever seen it has commented on this. They have never seen one with the 

flame intact like that. The second is a gold buddha with a plaque set in front of it which explains 

what it is, gives its date, Kenneth's name, and who gave it to him. The third is a small, personal 

buddha, a travelling buddha, which had been the personal buddha of Lung Boribon himself, and 

which is the oldest of the three. It has no flame on top, but a button. 

The way it was arranged was that, while the man whose name appeared on the plaque and 

who had owned the buddha as a family heirloom from many generations back couldn't sell it to 

Kenneth, Kenneth could JLYH him a sum of money which they agreed on, and he could JLYH Kenneth 

the buddha, as two discrete, unrelated gifts. It was this sort of casuistry. The same arrangement was 

made with Lung Boribon. Then Kenneth could take the buddhas out of the country. They granted 

him that special privilege. 

In fact, Kenneth brought the three buddhas out by diplomatic pouch, so he could have done it 

anyway, he says. But they knew he was doing it. It was their expression of appreciation for his role 

in the negotiations to end the state of war between the British and the Siamese. 

Margaret tells of the time the Japanese invaded Thailand, and many Westerners were fleeing. 

The British Consul General in Chiang Mai at the time was a man named Thomas Byrd, a rude, 

arrogant man. After the war, he headed the British in the British-Thai negotiations. The Japanese had 

invaded in the south, so the Western missionaries and the British teak people were able to escape to 

the north. There was a railway that took them part of the way. Margaretta Wells and her family were 

part of it, and has told the story many times since. From the end of the railroad, they had to walk, so 

they walked the rest of the way into Burma. But Byrd, the British Consul, had a car. Beside the 

road, sitting, there was Hugh McCain, who was crippled and could not walk. Anyone who could 

walk was walking. If they had a car, they would drive as far as they could in the car, then abandon it 

and walk the rest of the way. Byrd had room in his car but drove right by and left McCain there. 

"And not a person of that whole aggregation that went out ever forgot it or ever forgave him for it." 

Margaretta and Ken had a beautiful set of sterling silver in Chiang Mai. Missionaries were 

told when they went out not to take fine silver with them; it was too much of a temptation to the 

servants. Margaretta's father, who was a justice of the Supreme Court in North Dakota, gave them a 

magnificent set of sterling silver as a wedding gift, and so they brought it with them. The Wells had 

a special buffet made to store and lock the silver in, and after dinner parties they washed the silver 

themselves. When they fled the Japanese, they couldn't carry the silver with them, so they left it 

behind. 

Ken was headmaster of the boy's school in Chiang Mai, a high school called Prince Royals 

College. When the Wells fled Chiang Mai, the teachers at the high school went out secretly at night, 

dug a deep pit, and put the Wells' buffet and silver in it. A marvellous thing to do. Margaretta told 

Margaret years later that all they lost was one teaspoon. 

509


7 

49:45 In 1954 John Foster Dulles instituted a new policy in the State Department. This had to do 

with a man named Wriston, a prominent educator and banker. He was an advisor to Dulles on the 

organization of the Department. 

When Dulles came in, he had everyone meet out in back of the Department. That was in 

1953, when the Eisenhower administration began. There were probably 800 to 1000 people all 

gathered there. The big addition to the Department hadn't been built yet, and they were all assembled 

outside where the addition now stands. Dulles came out and made a speech of welcome, spoke of 

always being available to them, "blah blah blah, the usual comments that a guy makes that he doesn't 

mean." Then he turned to walk back into the Department. Well, Doug MacArthur, the nephew of the 

famous Douglas MacArthur and a Foreign Service officer and very high up in the Department, was 

right beside Dulles. "I was about two steps behind them. And Foster Dulles said to Doug, 'My God, 

Doug, I didn't know we had all WKHVH people! What do we do with them! What do they do! I can't 

think of anything! Why, Doug, I can run our foreign affairs with a staff of twelve! That's all I need. 

I don't need all these people!' And I thought, Well, there you've got another Secretary of State that 

needs to be educated. He'll find out." 

Wriston was the president of Brown University. A wealthy man, a banker. Wriston 

concocted the idea of ending the traditional organization of the State Department, which was 

fashioned after the British pattern, namely a home staff which was holding the reins of government 

and a foreign staff who were out in the field. Two different services that were paid differently. 

Separately paid, and separately organized. There were departmental officers, and foreign service 

officers. Kenneth was a departmental officer. The departmental officers were specialists in their 

area. Kenneth had expert knowledge of Southeast Asia, spoke several of the languages, and so on. 

Wriston said that this was not efficient. People who were always in the departmental offices went 

stale. The Department needed to have those foreign service officers who came in from the field to 

take over the departmental jobs because they were fresh from the field, with the latest knowledge, the 

greatest expertise. The idea was to integrate the two divisions. Everyone would be Foreign Service. 

Those who have been departmental would be called Foreign Service Reserves or FSR's. Dulles 

bought the idea, and a directive came out to all departmental officers above the rank of GS-7. 

Kenneth was at the top of GS-15. All of them were to be integrated into the Foreign Service as 

FSR's. They might eventually, if they proved to be qualified and satisfactory, become full-fledged 

Foreign Service Officers. They had to prove themselves. "Well, I had no interest in becoming a 

Foreign Service Officer or a Foreign Service Reserve Officer, because when you're in the Foreign 

Service, it doesn't matter what your expertise is. You may be an expert on Burma, and you may be 

sent to Moscow. Or to Tegugicalpa. Or any old place. You never know where you're going to be 

sent. You just say, 'Yes, sir,' and you pick up your baggage and go, kit and kaboodle, family, kids, 

and everything. The people who were in the Foreign Service chose it because they liked that kind of 

life. Now I wasn't about to do that. I wasn't that kind." When this came out as an order, it was also 

indicated in the order that any officer of rank above GS-7 who chose not to become an FSR could 

remain in the existing position but could not hope for a rise in position in the Department. This was 

incentive to make the move. You were guaranteed career failure otherwise. "Well I wasn't interested 

in becoming a success. So I didn't make a move. And I began to look around to see how I could 

solve my situation." 

That was when Kenneth found out about the Psychological Strategy Board, which met in the 

little building on the corner of Jackson Place and Pennsylvania Avenue, opposite the White House. It 

was going to be "transmogrified" into the action arm of the National Security Council, the highest 

advisory council in the U.S. government to the President. "So I thought, Well, maybe I can get into 

510


that racket." Kenneth went over and found out who was in charge, a man named Elmer Staats. He 

had been in government and had tired of the routine economic work he had been doing, resigned, 

joined Marshall Fields at a high level, and had now been called back into government as someone 

acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats to head up the transmogrified Psychological Strategy 

Board. He got along very well up on the Hill and so was a natural for the position. Kenneth called 

on him, told him who he was, and applied for a position. Staats said he was just setting up his staff, 

and asked what Kenneth's area was. When Kenneth told him, Staats said, "Well, aren't you rather 

limited?" Kenneth answered, "No, I'm not rather limited because I can move either across southern 

Asia into the India area, because I have studied both Sanskrit and Pali, the classic languages, and I'm 

completely familiar with the Indian and South Asian scene, but also I speak Chinese, so I'm very 

useful in Chinese affairs as well." Kenneth told him of his missionary background and asserted again 

that he could be very useful in anything having to do with South and Southeast Asia. The interview 

ended; Kenneth went on his way; a short time passed; and then Staats called him in and said that he 

had decided to put Kenneth in charge of the area from Afghanistan to Vietnam to Indonesia. 

511


HOUR 80 

Session #55 continued September 9, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Elizabeth Amsler, 

Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIB150) Kenneth continues on moving to the OCB. Staats asked Kenneth if he thought he 

could cover the entire area from Afghanistan to Indonesia, and Kenneth answered, "Yes, with no 

problem at all. I even understand quite a little bit of Malay for the Indonesia-Malay area." Staats 

said that he had picked the best qualified man he could find for the job, and so it was a deal. He told 

Kenneth to have his executive officer get in touch with Staats' executive officer to arrange the 

transfer. 

Kenneth knew he would have trouble with Walter Robertson "because he and I had little setto's 

now and then." So Kenneth never called on Robertson or informed him of what he was doing. 

He went to the executive officer and told him what the arrangement was and who to get in touch with 

in the White House, and who was in charge of things, Jimmy Lay, who was the secretary for the 

National Security Council under the President and who reported directly to the President. So the 

executive officer agreed to undertake the transfer. He never questioned whether Robertson had 

approved it. He took it for granted that Robert knew and had approved; otherwise, how could 

Kenneth go about it? Kenneth never mentioned what he was doing to another soul in the 

Department. The arrangements were made, all completed, signed, and sealed within a short time, 

with no one in the Department knowing. 

Appointments of this sort generally dragged on for months while background checks were 

being made. The White House executive officer told the Department man that it would be at least 

four months before Kenneth was cleared and could be moved. That was on a Tuesday. He called 

Kenneth on Friday and said, "My God, you're already cleared!" Kenneth asked how, and the man 

said he had called to clear Kenneth with the CIA and found that they had a file about a foot thick on 

him over there. "You're one of their founding fathers, and they've said, 'Oh, he's cleared.' So you're 

cleared!" The whole thing took about three days. 

Robertson found out about it at that point, when the thing was done. Robertson called 

Kenneth up, full of fury. He didn't want Kenneth to leave. He KDG to have him there. Kenneth was 

the "linchpin" and so on and so forth. Kenneth thanked him but said that he did QRW want to become a 

Foreign Service Officer. "We shook hands on it, cordially, or uncordially, and I went back to my 

desk." 

A few days later, not yet having moved, Kenneth was up in the executive dining room, 

lunching with Max Bishop, who was going out to a foreign post. Max had once been named Max 

Schwartz, but had changed his name. Across the room, there was Walter Robertson and John Foster 

Dulles. All of a sudden Robertson called to Kenneth saying, "Hey, Ken, come on over here! Foster 

wants to talk to you." "So I got up, and I walked over, and I stood there. Here's Foster Dulles and 

Walter Robertson, and here's Ken Landon, standing there, and I said, 'Yes, Mr. Secretary.' He said, 

'Walter tells me that you're leaving the Department. We don't want you to leave the Department! 

What are you leaving the Department for? We need you here. Why are you doing it?' 'Well,' I said, 

'I'm just co-operating with your high policy.' '0\ high policy! I don't have any "high policy" to get 

rid of you!' 'Oh,' I said, 'but I'm co-operating with it because you have announced that people in my 

position must become FSR's. And as I don't wish to become an FSR, I am co-operating with your 

512


high policy and getting out, because you've also announced that if I stayed in my present position, I 

could never hope for advancement.' And I said, 'I might be perfectly willing to spend the rest of my 

life on the Thai desk, because I'm perfectly happy there, but if someone tells me I can't be anything 

EXW a Thai officer on the Thai desk, then I don't care to be an officer on the Thai desk. So I'm leaving 

the Department. Doesn't that make sense and co-operate with your policy, Mr. Secretary?'" 

Dulles responded with a loud, guttural sound, as if coughing. "That's all he said. That's literally all 

he said." Kenneth makes the coughing sound again. The two men turned away from him, and 

Kenneth went back to his lunch with Max Bishop. 

"But I knew Foster Dulles very well, and I had set up dinner parties at his house." Kenneth 

set one up for Malcolm McDonald, who was the Commissioner General for the British for all of 

South Asia. "I knew Malcolm McDonald very well from Singapore days, where he'd been 

Commissioner General there and had slept with all the girls over in Sumatra and entertained them 

with theater. I was with him in the theater when the girls were there. They were all bare-breasted. 

But when he came to town here, why, I made him my pigeon to set up a dinner party for him with 

Foster Dulles, Secretary of State." Kenneth had to be up on the protocol, and make sure all the 

placecards were right, and all the right guests were there. "As I was leaving, all dressed up in my 

tuxedo, you, my beloved boy [speaking to Kip], said to me, 'Dad, where are you going?' 'Well, I'm 

going out to dinner with the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.' 'Oh. Well why are you going 

there?' 'Well, I'm working.' 'Working?!' you said. 'Yes.' 'Do you get paid for it?' 'No.' 'Well, Dad, 

you mean to say you're going out to work at night like this, and you aren't going to get paid for it?' 

'No,' I said, 'it's just part of my regular job.' 'Well, I think that's a rotten shame! You oughta get paid 

for going out to dinner at the Secretary of State's!'" 

Kenneth was the first one there, of course. Then Dulles and his wife arrived to await their 

guests. Kenneth thought it might amuse them to hear the story of what Kip had said, so he told them 

the story. But Mrs. Dulles was not amused. She was insulted. And Foster Dulles looked at her and 

looked at Kenneth and made a wry face. 

2 

8:21 On the purpose of the OCB. The Operations Co-ordinating Board was the action or 

operational arm of the National Security Council, which was set up under Presidential directive. The 

OCB, as the adjunct of the NSC, was also under the Presidential directive. The NSC itself was a 

committee of the highest officers of the government dealing with security matters, the Secretary of 

Defense, the Secretary of State, the head of the CIA, and any other officers of that cabinet level. 

Under them there were the National Security Board assistants, who did the leg work for their bosses. 

They were very powerful people too, very influential in their agencies. They represented the interests 

of their agencies and wrote all the papers for their bosses that they had to deal with at the NSC when 

a security problem came up of national significance. 

They conceived the idea of turning the Psychological Strategy Board into an organization 

which would follow up on the policy decisions made by the President on the advice of the National 

Security Council. "We were supposed to see to it that the President's orders got carried out, so that I 

had to know what every agency and every embassy was up to in connection with Presidential orders, 

from Kabul to Saigon to Djakarta. And I had committees, and every committee was by country. I 

was not the chairman of any of these committees. I was the working horse. And the chairman of all 

these committees were the political desk officers in the State Department. And each committee 

would have the State Department chairman and then representatives from the CIA, the USIA, AID, 

Treasury, etc., etc., the Pentagon, and so on. And I was the guy that did the paperwork and saw to it 

they knew what the problems were, if any. And we had to put up operational plans. So I had lots of 

513


committees, one per country. And I also had, I always said, the finest outdoor work in the 

government because I travelled around to all of these government agencies to be sure that I was in 

touch with the responsible officers who were engaged in operations. So I moved around. I really 

knew everybody in town in my area, that dealt with South and Southeast Asia. And I had easy access 

everywhere I went because I was working under a Presidential organization. 

"We developed operational plans for every country under these policy plans, and we had 

policy papers that we worked from that were provided by the staff of the National Security Council. 

Those were the Board assistants. They had to turn their papers out. I was turning out my papers, 

other officers turning out theirs on Latin America and Africa and wherever. So there was a lot of 

paperwork. And lots of committees. Lots of action. Whether anything DFWXDOO\ happened or not was 

another matter, with bureaucracy. It depends on whether people do things or whether they don't. 

"Well, this went on until the Kennedy administration. And when Kennedy came in, the two 

operating officers were McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow, who moved right in to the quarters 

where we were established in the Executive Office Building. Now the first year, when I had gone to 

the OCB, my office was in that building where the Psychological Strategy Board had been, on 

Jackson Place. And I carried the biggest living thing in the Department of State over there, which 

was my tree, my avocado tree, which stood all the way up to the ceiling in a tub." Four Foreign 

Service officers lugged the thing over with him. "I had my pals all with me." 

Kip asks if Kenneth had started the tree from an avocado seed in his pantry—because 

Margaret and Kenneth did sprout a number of avocado seeds. "I didn't start it! An old maid started 

it! Shows you what a guy can do with an old maid. She fructified that thing!" When she retired, she 

asked Kenneth if he would take care of it, and he said sure. It was already pretty big, growing in a 

pot. Kenneth got a tub, made of teakwood, and hauled in buckets of dirt to fill it. "You should have 

seen the security guards look at me when I came in with a bucket of dirt!" The avocado tree loved 

that tub of dirt, and proceeded to grow all the way to the ceiling. "And that was the tree that Nixon 

sat under when he had his briefings, when he was Vice President under Eisenhower, that first year, 

you see, when I was still in the Department. He had his briefings in my office. That was when 

Nixon sat there and looked at that tiger's head ashtray, amongst various other barbaric things I had 

hanging around, cloths, and knickknacks from Southeast Asia, and paintings." The two paintings 

presently in Kenneth's bedroom were then hanging in his office. Nixon had briefings from everybody 

concerned with every country he was going to visit in his trip, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so 

on, including a briefing from Kenneth on Thailand. "He had all that briefing sitting in my office, in 

my leather chair, under my avocado tree!" 

3 

15:09 The tiger skull. "I had been very active in establishing the Siamese underground operation in 

World War II. And then I got, in a sense, demoted in favor of Abbot Low Moffat, who became my 

boss. I didn't care about that much anyway. He didn't know anything. And I wasn't very much 

concerned about advancement." At the end of the war, when Pridi came to this country, he had gifts 

to give to people, and one of them was this tiger skull, which he gave to Moffat. He had another one 

that he gave to Admiral Merry Miles. The tiger skull ashtray had sideburns of silver and a tongue of 

gold. The earholes held little cups for cigars. The eyes were for cigarettes, "with a cobra rampant up 

the back holding the matches! Oh, it was the most barbaric, exotic ashtray you ever laid eyes on. It 

was a gigantic Bengal tiger skull, with all the teeth showing in a snarl. A beautiful, ugly thing." 

Moffat took his home, and his wife threw it out. So he brought it to the office. Then in 1946, Moffat 

told Kenneth to get out of Southeast Asian affairs. "There's no future in it," he said. He himself left, 

and abandoned his tiger skull. No one else wanted it, so Kenneth kept it in his office. The engraving 

514


in the skull, of course, was to Moffat, honoring him for all that he did to help the Thai resistance 

movement against the Japanese. "Hell, he never had anything to do with it." But being the boss, he 

got it. 

"So here it was, and Nixon looked at it. And before he went on his trip, he said to me, 

'Landon,' he said, 'when I get to Bangkok, I'm going to get a tiger skull ashtray bigger than yours. 

You see if I don't." 

Nixon made his trip and came back to his debriefing up on the executive level where the 

Secretary was. There was a big long room with perhaps "a hundred of us monkeys standing around 

the wall, and the bigshots at the table," the Secretary and the Assistant Secretaries, and Nixon. "And 

he stood at the end of the room, at the end of the table, to give his debriefing. And it was brilliant. 

Nixon was a brilliant man. He didn't have a note. He debriefed himself. It went on, oh, I would say, 

the best part of two hours. It was just brilliant. Analytical. Comprehensive. Plain. And while doing 

it, his eye caught mine. 'LANDON!!' he said. 'I TOLD YOU I'D GET A BIGGER ONE THAN 

YOURS, AND I DID!!' And then he went right on with his debriefing. Well this place was just 

absolutely stunned with this comment.. You can imagine what happened when he was through and 

we all began to go. They just pounced on me wanting to know what it was he got one of that was 

bigger than what I had. Well, hah, I wouldn't tell them. I was just mysterious. Oh, and Nixon 

invited me to come up and see it, and I did. And it was a big one, and I saw it." 

Pridi also presented a tiger skull ashtray to Admiral Merry Miles, who had been the chief 

intelligence officer for the OSS inside China, who had worked with Dai Li and his intelligence outfit 

in China, and who had also been the supervisor for the Thai intelligence operation working out of 

China for a period of time until Dai Li began assassinating the Thai agents. Then they had moved 

their operation over to Colombo, and had used one of the islands Kenneth had explored when a 

missionary as a staging point for moving their agents into Thailand. Kenneth tells again of the 

offshore island with its cave inside which you could enter only when the tide was low. Agents could 

hide inside before being taken to shore. In any case, Pridi wanted to honor Merry Miles. He had the 

Thai military attaché, Karp Kunjara, with a big silver tray, and on it was the tiger skull ashtray, and 

over it was a Siamese embroidered cloth. It looked as though it were a bowl, sitting there. So there 

they all were, Pridi, Kunjara, Miles, Miles' wife, and an aide standing ready to whip the cloth off the 

"bowl" at the right moment. Mrs. Miles was standing next to Kenneth, a lovely woman. "Oh," she 

said, "oh, I'm just looking forward to that bowl." And then, the climax came, the cloth was whipped 

off, and there was this gaping tiger skull looking right at Mrs. Miles. Reflexively, she sucked in her 

breath and exclaimed, "Ohhh!" And then, "Ohhhhhhhh!" as if sighing a long sigh. And then, rising 

to the moment, but weakly, "Oh, how marvellous." 

Years passed, and in 1966, Kenneth was in northeastern Thailand with the "Philco Ford outfit 

as a cover for the Pentagon operation under the Advanced Research Project Agency to set up a 

research outfit to make an encyclopedic study of northeastern Thailand for the establishment of 

American airbases there, which were already established, actually, to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail and 

various other things." At the end of his period out there, the head of the operation, a man named Bill 

Smith, Wilfred Smith, actually, an Air Force Colonel, had a party, and there was a tray, and there was 

what looked like a bowl, and there was a cloth over it, and Smith got up and made a speech about 

wanting to make this presentation to Landon in special appreciation from the Philco Ford mission. 

He went on, rambling, and everyone was enjoying it because they saw Kenneth about to get a bowl 

"or something or other." Bill Smith had heard Kenneth's story about Moffat's and Miles' tiger skull 

ashtrays. "And the climax came. No bowl. He whipped it off, and there was a tiger skull. Well, 

they all howled with laughter because they had heard me give this anecdote about Mrs. Miles, and 

Admiral Merry Miles. Well. I said, 'Thank you very much.' And then Bill Smith said, 'Well, 

515


actually it isn't the tiger skull that's the gift. It's the tray.' He took it off, and handed me the tray," 

which is presently on the table next to Kenneth in the breakfast room, with its inscription to Kenneth. 

The tiger skull had been loaned to Smith by a jeweler to assist him with the joke. 

The tiger skull Kenneth inherited from Moffat "migrated into our attic into a hatbox." 

Margaret thought the thing ought to disappear, and accordingly "I thought it ought to disappear," and 

so it disappeared. "And I will not tell you where it is today. Or what happened to it." 

4 

25:30 In 1958, Marshall Sarit of Thailand came to dinner at 4711. Margaret explains that his wife 

had not come to this country with him. She set up a dinner party. Sarit wasn't Prime Minister yet, 

but he was the most powerful man in the kingdom, Kenneth says, along with a man named Prupot 

(SP?) and a man named Pao. Pao was still the chief of the police, and Sarit was the head of the army. 

Margaret had a maid at the time to help. And she ordered some things from a caterer. Margaret and 

Ethel roasted a turkey and stuffed it with wild rice. There were eight to ten people in Sarit's party, 

most of them men. The food was set out as a buffet in the dining room. "We had the porch in those 

days, so we had trays." [The porch was later converted into Kenneth's office.] Sarit didn't eat anything but 

the turkey and the wild rice stuffing. "He just loved it," Kenneth says. "He just gorged on it. 

"And then, it was still light out, and we went out to sit on the porch, and it was just toward 

dusk." It was summer, and it was light until close to nine o'clock. "And we stood on the porch, and 

the birds were still in the trees, and as we stood there, a possum came out from under the porch into 

the backyard, and sat down and scratched himself. He was a big fat possum about like this." 

Kenneth gestures. "And with a little pink tail. And he looked up at us. And Marshall Sarit said, 

'Mah ja wui! Nanalai? (SP?) (What's that thing?)' I said, 'That's an opossum. You don't have 

opossums in your country. But we have opossums. In the South, they like to hunt for opossums, and 

chase them, and chase them up a tree sometimes, and catch them, and cook them, and they're very fat. 

But if you like possums, well, you like possums.' And he said, 'Is he wild or is he tame?' And I said, 

'He's wild.' 'Well,' he said, 'is he afraid of you?' I said, 'No.' 'He lives with you here?' I said, 'Yes.' 

'And he's not afraid of you?' 'No.' 'And he's wild?' 'Yes.' 'Mah ja wui!' And the opossum finished 

scratching and trotted on up the back steps and into the bushes and disappeared. 

"Well, we stepped out into the yard, just about to step out into the yard, when a mother 

chipmunk with five kittens behind her walked from one side of the steps, the hedge, across into the 

hedge the other side of the steps, followed by the kittens, and disappeared out of sight. 'Uh! 

Nanalai? Heh! Doosi? Nanalai? (SP?) (What are those things?)' 'Oh,' I said, 'those are chipmunks. 

Ground squirrels.' 'Hoh! They live here with you?' 'Yes,' I said, 'they do.' 'Hah, are they wild, or are 

they tame?' 'They're wild.' 'Are they afraid of you?' 'No,' I said, 'you can see they are quite content. 

They know we're here. They're not afraid of us.' 'Mah ja wui!' 

"So then we walked out into the backyard. And the birds were still twittering to the left. 

They hadn't flown away. They had suet there, and things. He saw the squirrels up in the trees. So 

then he and I walked around farther and out to the back steps, and he walked ahead of me going up 

the back steps. And he got almost to the top, and his head and shoulders were above the ground 

level, and he stopped. He never moved. He just stood there. And I was behind him, about two steps 

down. And he said, "Heh, doosi? Mas, neolai? (SP?)' Well, I got up beside him, and I took a peek, 

and it was a great big fat rabbit about this big, crouched there looking right at Marshall Sarit, chewin' 

his cud." Kenneth makes chewing noises. He said, 'Eh! Neolai?' I said, 'You know what that is. 

That's a tegra (SP?), that's a rabbit. You've got rabbits. My wife was born in the year of the rabbit.' 

'Does he live here with you?' I said, 'Yes.' 'Is he wild or is he tame?' 'He's wild,' I said. 'Is he afraid 

of you?' 'Well, no,' I said, 'you can see that. He isn't even afraid of \RX.' 'Mah ja wui!' 

516


"And he turned around, and he looked at me, and he said, 'I understand you now. You have 

the heart of a monk. You have the heart of a monk, just like a Buddhist monk. Mah ja wui!' 

"And we walked back into the house. He was impressed." 

Two years later, Kenneth travelled to Bangkok. Sarit was Prime Minister by then. His aide 

met Kenneth at the airport at one o'clock in the morning and reported to Kenneth that the Prime 

Minister expected him for breakfast at seven o'clock. Kenneth stayed with Ken Wells. He didn't 

want to stay at the embassy at that time. He could have, but didn't choose to. He had to send word, 

however, to the embassy that he had been invited by the Prime Minister to breakfast. He had to get 

the word specifically to Leonard Unger, who was the DCM, the Deputy Chief of Mission. The 

ambassador, Alex Johnson, was on home leave. Unger was the chargé. Ken wrote a message and 

asked his driver to take it to the embassy and give it urgently for the urgent and immediate attention 

of the chargé d'affaires. He had to have the guard rouse Unger and alert him to this, which he did. 

Also, in the message, Unger was asked to send his official car to pick Kenneth up. "You see, I was 

doing what was appropriate, namely, I would not call on a Prime Minister where there was an 

embassy without an embassy officer there." That changed when Henry Kissinger became Secretary 

of State. He would go places sometimes without informing the ambassador. He went to Moscow and 

met with the Soviets, "and Jake Beam, who was the ambassador and a very old friend of mine, didn't 

even know. I wouldn't perform that way." 

Unger turned up with the official car, looking very sleepy, wondering what was going on. 

Kenneth, of course, didn't know. They went to Sarit's office "where he was having an official 

breakfast with Ken Landon. Well, we went into his office. He was a big, heavyset, fat man with a 

snub nose. And we greeted each other, and gave each other a big hug, and things like that.." 

Margaret interrupts to say that the incident with the animals so impressed Sarit with Kenneth's 

integrity that from that time on he trusted him completely. Kip asks if this has to do with the 

Buddhist belief that the animals always know the truth about a person. And Kenneth confirms, "The 

animals always know. Well, anyway, his office was brilliantly illuminated. Blindingly illuminated. 

Well, we went in, and we had breakfast, and we drank coffee, and we talked, and then the Prime 

Minister reminisced about his visit to Washington. And he reminisced about the fine dinner he had 

with Mem Landon. And he reminisced about standing at the back porch, and he recounted his 

encounter with the opossum, and his encounter with the birds, and his encounter with the chipmunks 

and the five kits, and the squirrels in the trees. And he recounted the fact that there was this rabbit. 

And that they were all wild. And that they were living with Landon. And that they were not afraid of 

him. And he said it was a memorable experience. And he just wanted to let me know that he still 

remembered it, and we were great friends. 

"The lights began to dim. It came back to more normal lighting. I wondered why. And I 

didn't find out until I got to the embassy, and the phones were ringing off the hook. I had been on 

television. And the Prime Minister had been saying all this on television. And I had so many 

invitations to call on high officers of state, it would just knock your eye out. And dinners and 

everything they were trying to lay on. Because why? Because I had just been baptized and made 

highly desirable by the Prime Minister himself." Kenneth laughs. "It was quite an experience. And 

he asked me to—he knew where I was going. He wanted to know where I was going, and I told him. 

I was going up to Vientiane, over to Phnom Penh, going on over to Saigon, and then back to 

Bangkok. And he asked me if I would come back and meet him again when I got back from Saigon, 

which I did, and gave him a debriefing on everything I'd seen. He wanted my views on the situations 

in those countries. And I shared with him. And he trusted me. It was a funny relationship. It really 

was." 

517


5 

39:06 While Kenneth was in Bangkok, there were "firebugs." Fires were being set for insurance 

purposes in different parts of Bangkok. People would burn down their own building and then collect 

on the insurance. Sarit called in the police and told them to catch the firebug, the next time there was 

a fire, and then call him. He would deal with it. So, there was another big fire. Lots of buildings 

burned. They caught the firebug. "There are no secrets in that country." And they called the Prime 

Minister, who jumped in his car, with a cavalcade. "He always went with a cavalcade." He drove 

over, and in public, on camera, had the firebug brought before him. He made a speech in which he 

said he would not tolerate any further fires or any further firebugs. And the punishment would be 

death. And he would administer it personally. And he would begin with this particular firebug. And 

he drew his gun out of his holster at his hip and shot the man dead right then and there in the street. It 

was on television all over the country, and there were no more fires. "And I said to him, I said, 'Well, 

you certainly solved the fire problem.' 'Ho,' he said, 'I didn't care anything about that. I was teaching 

my political opponents a lesson. They're not going to monkey with me.' No one did. 

"I have a book down in the basement in Siamese which is replete with the mistresses, the mia 

noi (SP?), the lesser wives or females that he had in his entourage, with their pictures and their 

residences. And he treated them all fairly. Every last one he set up in a house with a Mercedes Benz 

and a swimming pool and servants, and they were there at his convenience. And no one ever knew at 

night where Marshall Sarit was going to sleep, so he would be a hard man to assassinate. And he had 

mistresses all over the city. And he treated them all alike, very fairly, and this book lists about sixty 

of them, I guess. It's down in our basement, in our collection, for Wheaton College!" Kenneth 

laughs uproariously. "That's a joke, isn't it?" 

Peggy shares memories from when Margaret was writing Anna. She remembers living with 

Adelle in Wheaton in her upstairs apartment after Margaret and Kenneth decided not to return to the 

field. There was no income. Then Margaret won the Redbook letter-writing contest, when Peggy 

was in the seventh grade. She recalls the bedroom set and the coat Margaret bought for her with that 

money. 

After they moved to Richmond, Indiana in 1939, they lived in one house for a year and then 

moved across the street. Off the living room in that second house, there was a sunroom, and 

Margaret had a beautiful new mahogany desk with side drawers, "and I remember Mother sitting in 

there, writing." 

Then in the summer of 1942, they moved to Washington to join Kenneth. Margaret stayed 

behind to pack and take care of the moving itself. Carol, Bill, and Peggy rode with Kenneth in the 

black Chevrolet to Washington. They stopped at a gas station in the night and spent the night in the 

car, waiting for morning. Gas was rationed, and to save gas, Kenneth would put the clutch in at the 

top of each hill and coast down the hill. A month later, Margaret came. 

Peggy remembers the day that Margaret and Kenneth announced that they were going to have 

another baby. "And Bill and I were so excited! We were going to have a baby in the family! And 

Mother was so shocked at our pleasure she couldn't believe it. Her face was absolutely 

dumbfounded. She thought we would be upset that she was going to have another baby. And we 

were just thrilled." Margaret was working on the book, of course. Peggy was in tenth grade at that 

point. 

That summer of 1943 was extremely hot. Peggy remembers Margaret sitting at the table in a 

voluminous pajama-type dress to try to keep cool. Peggy remembers doing a lot of cooking. "I guess 

I was helpful." She was doing the family ironing, and every Saturday she cleaned house. Bill 

cranked out home-made ice cream in the basement regularly because Margaret wanted it all the time 

518


to keep cool. 

When Margaret and Kenneth were house-hunting, they had their children look over the 

houses they were considering. "And then we came to this one, and we all knew right away this was 

it. 4711. It was bright and cheerful and sunny, and it somehow was our home. It was a unanimous 

family decision." 

Peggy also remembers the time Margaret came home with boxes and bags of clothes for 

Peggy. And probably for the other children too. 

Peggy recalls that in the 1960's Wheaton put on a very simple production of The King and I, 

when Margaret travelled out to see it. Peggy's children, Dodie, John, and Bill played children of the 

King. 

This year, 1988, the College theater department in conjunction with the conservatory of music 

is putting on the play in a full-fledged production. Given Wheaton's historic opposition to the theater, 

this is a significant occasion. Peggy received a call from a professional agency that was doing the 

advertizing and promotion for the play. They hoped that Peggy would come to one of the evenings, 

at which she would be introduced, and also that she would agree to be interviewed. She wished that 

Margaret could do this, but since it is not possible, she will do it for Margaret's sake. 

Session #56 November 18, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

6 

57:53 Kenneth refers to an arrangement of roses in the corner of the room that Phil Bonsal's wife 

Margaret sent to Kenneth's Margaret. [Phil was a friend of Kenneth's from the State Department, 

and once served as ambassador to Cuba.] 

Kenneth tells the story of the painting that presently hangs in his bedroom. It began in the 

missionary years, probably 1934 or 1935. Kenneth travelled to Bangkok, and on the trip, he took the 

shuttle to Thung Song in order to catch the express, which went to Bangkok. Thung Song was a 

small town, but at that time it had the only bank south of Bangkok in all of southern Siam. 

519


HOUR 81 

Session #56 continued November 18, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIB705) Kenneth continues on the story of his two paintings. The bank in Thung Song was 

used by tin miners and rubber planters. It was a commercial bank. There was no place to go, so 

Kenneth hung around the railroad station waiting for the express. He had three or four hours to kill. 

So he decided to go out and take a little walk. Kenneth looked down the tracks in both directions, 

and to the south, he saw a woman on the railroad tracks, with an easel set up, painting. She was 

perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Kenneth walked down the tracks and came up behind her. She was 

nicely dressed, painting in strong, bold sweeps of the brush that reminded Kenneth of the way 

Matisse painted. Very bold, very strong. The woman looked up, and Kenneth introduced himself, 

speaking in Thai. She responded in English. Kenneth assumed that she had just a few sentences of 

English, and spoke again in Thai, but the woman informed him that she didn't speak Thai. She spoke 

English or Dutch or Indonesian. She was an Indonesian by birth. "A very beautiful young woman, 

my gosh. She was beautifully dressed, and beautiful in herself." Kenneth discovered that he knew 

her husband, a tin buyer and seller named Yip In Choy. He was a Cantonese, a little short man. 

Kenneth would see him from time to time in Trang, and in the years since has hosted him at 4711 

here in this country. Kenneth remarked on how bold and strong her painting was, "unusual for a 

woman." He said it reminded him of the way Matisse painted and asked her if she had ever 

considered going to Paris to study with Matisse or some other painter of that school. She said no. 

Kenneth said that she was so skilled already that it might be worth her while. He urged her to think 

about it, and she said that she would. After a pleasant conversation, Kenneth left her to her work and 

returned to the station, travelling on to Bangkok. 

The years passed. The war came. Kenneth travelled to Thailand in 1945. And among the old 

friends he looked up while there was Mr. Yip In Choy, the tin buyer. He wasn't thinking of his wife, 

but of him. He wanted to find out from him what had happened down south under the Japanese. So 

he went and called, and there were the two of them, living in a fine, big house, with lots of servants. 

To Kenneth's interest, as he looked around, there were many paintings in the strong Matisse style 

done by Mrs. Yip In Choy. Kenneth exclaimed over them. She was delighted. She told him that she 

taken his suggestion of ten years before and had spent two years studying in Paris. She had continued 

painting right up to the present. Kenneth especially liked her paintings because they were of scenes 

typical of Siam. He asked her if it would be possible to buy one of her paintings. Oh, she said, she 

had many paintings stored in another room. There wasn't room to hang them all. She invited him to 

go back and pick a couple that he liked. He could have them. So he did, picking out the two that 

now hang in his bedroom. [Later, he realizes this particular incident must have occurred in 1950.] 

One is very strong in the Matisse style, and one is more gentle in its strokes, depicting a little 

village area along a canal. Mrs. Yip In Choy would not accept money for them. They were gifts to 

an old friend. Kenneth brought the two paintings home and had them framed. For years, the 

paintings hung in his office at the State Department. 

Again, the years passed. Kenneth retired from government, and then in 1966 went back to 

Thailand again under the ARPA of the Pentagon, with the cover of the Philco Ford corporation, 

which gave him the silver tray. They also paid him $150 a day plus all expenses, "so I was really 

rolling in the dough that period of about three or four months." Kenneth was approached by the 

520


women's club of Bangkok to give a lecture at one of the meetings of their club. It was a big meeting 

at a hotel, and they needed a lecture. They wanted a talk on Margaret and Anna and the King of 

Siam On the day appointed, he went to give his talk. They had taken a huge ballroom, and 400 to 

500 women were there, filling the place. In his talk, he said he was a great admirer of Bangkok 

women and of the women of Siam. He had lived in the country for ten years, and whatnot. And he 

said that he remembered one woman in particular for her gift of painting, and he recalled his first 

meeting with Mrs. Yip In Choy, and her subsequent time in Paris, and of his later visit with her when 

she gave him two paintings. "I'm a great admirer of Mrs. Yip In Choy." He used her name at last. 

They all knew who she was before he came to her name, of course. And he said, "I'd love to look her 

up." At that, a woman leaped to her feet and shouted, "Here I am! Here I am! Here I am!" jumping 

up and down. She was so excited! 

Afterward, he and Mrs. Yip In Choy talked for a while, and she said she would like to give a 

dinner party in his honor. When the day came for the party, Kenneth was ill with dysentery. He had 

been up country and was flown back to Bangkok and taken to the hospital. "I could hardly get away 

from a bathroom!" He had to send his apologies, and this upset her terribly because she had made 

elaborate arrangements. She thought Kenneth was upstaging her, for some reason or other. He 

thinks he finally convinced her. But she was very upset. 

2 

11:16 During that period, Kenneth had a friend named Norm Hanna with two sons and a wife called 

"Eddie," a blithe spirit. Norm was in the political section at the embassy in Bangkok. Later, he 

became DCM. Then Norm's wife died. The Hannas had friends named Anderson in the 1950's, and 

Mr. Anderson, a businessman, died also. His wife was named Betty. There were three girls. Norm 

and Betty didn't see each other for years, but then coincidentally the two of them took their respective 

children for a trip to Australia, and happened to run into each other in Singapore. They hit it off so 

well they decided to get married. Betty and Norm Hanna retired to Washington, and one day in the 

1960's, when Betty was visiting at 4711, Kenneth told her the story of Mrs. Yip In Choy. Betty 

remarked that Kenneth was lucky to have a couple of Mrs. Yip In Choy's paintings. They were very 

rare and quite expensive. To get one of them was quite an achievement. 

Mrs. Yip In Choy's first name was Yukol, pronounced "Yukon." 

Kenneth looks at a copy Margaret typed of the inscriptions on the pictures and sees the dates 

1948 and 1949, which means that she could not have given them to him in 1946. He realizes that, 

while he GLG visit with Mr. Yip In Choy in 1946, the gift of the pictures must have been made during 

his trip in 1950. 

3 

17:18 The classic story of the Siamese wedding in Trang. About 1928-1929. This was a very 

important wedding because the Governor, and the Chief Judge, and the prosecuting attorney, and all 

the bigwigs of the town were there. Trang was the province center. Kenneth and Margaret were both 

invited, but only Kenneth went. The wedding couple were on the second floor. "It was the usual 

kind of house built up on stilts, but the first floor around the usual stilts had been enclosed, and it was 

used for family purposes, whatever they may be." This was unusual because the Siamese of that day 

would never go into a house under a floor where people were walking over their heads. This was 

dramatically illustrated in the royal family when the first printing press came, brought in by Dr. Dan 

Beach Bradley. He put them under the house. One of the royal princes wanted to come and inspect 

this marvellous thing called a printing press, but when he discovered that there was a floor above his 

head, he didn't dare go in to look at the thing until he was assured that no one was overhead. The 

521


house was cleared of everyone overhead. Then he went in to see. 

When Margaret and Kenneth first went to Thailand, they were taught never to touch the head 

of a person and, when they passed a person, if they were to be polite, they must not loom over the 

person but lower their head as a courtesy. Otherwise, they would be insulting the person. Kenneth 

recalls the time that he took pictures of King Phumipol at the time of his coronation. To get a shot of 

him, Kenneth had to climb on to a nearby balustrade, dressed in his top hat and tails, and someone 

took a picture of him doing this, looming above the head of the King. The press the next day 

excoriated "that rude foreigner" who knew better and insulted His Majesty by looming over his head 

while taking his picture. It was considered very bad manners. 

At the wedding, the young couple were kneeling on a dais on the second floor, with their 

hands over the edge of the dais. Below their hands were a pair of little, ornate silver buckets of 

water, each with a dipper, and the guests would bless the couple by taking some of the holy water and 

pouring it over their hands. The water would run back into the buckets. So Kenneth came up the 

stairs and came to the couple. There was a whole row of monks near the couple squatting on the 

floor and chanting. He took the holy water and blessed the couple's hands. Then he was supposed to 

go into the next room, but instead, "for some reason I don't understand myself," he turned and went 

back to the head of the stairs and sat down. "Well, up comes the Governor, took a look at me, and 

dropped to his knees and crawled past me. And his wife likewise. Then the Chief Judge came along, 

dropped to his knees, and crawled past me. And his wife dropped to her knees and crawled past me. 

And the public prosecutor, the chief prosecuting attorney, came along, dropped to his knees and 

crawled past me. I began to think, 'Ye gods, what's going on here? I've gotta get out of this 

situation.' And right behind him was the public prosecutor's very fat, merry wife. She and I were 

really good friends. Her husband and I played tennis. And here VKH dropped to her knees, and she 

looked at me and groaned. And then she winked at me and she says—" Kenneth continues speaking 

in silence, mimicking the woman, who was indicating that he should stand up and move out of the 

way. "I stood up. They all stood up and went on their way." He and they all moved into the next 

room for drinks and refreshments. 

The monks were not actually down on the floor. They were on a dais of their own so that they 

were on the same level as the bride and groom. When people walked by them, the people would just 

bob their heads politely to the monks and to the bride and groom and go by. 

The public prosecutor's wife "was very uncomfortable and very fat, and here she was down on 

her knees, trying to crawl in a panung. And you can imagine that big fat bottom high in the air as she 

tried to go by, and she stopped right dead in front of me and groaned. Just, 'Uhhh!' And I got the 

message, and I stood up, and got out of the way." 

This was early in Kenneth's first term, when he was still learning the ways of the Thai. As for 

the time in 1950, "I never would have loomed over His Majesty's head either except that I couldn't 

get a picture any other way, and I knew the National Geographic wanted it." 

4 

26:54 Kenneth tells of the lak muang. Every town of any age—not the new towns, but the old 

cities, like Nakhon Sri Thammarat or Petchaburi or Songkhla—had a post "which was a phallic 

symbol, in a sense. It looked like a phallic symbol." And it was called the lak muang, the "anchor 

for the city." 0XDQJ means "city," and ODN means "anchor." The usual procedure was to locate the 

lak muang at what was conceived to be the center of the city. "And there it stood." It was supposed 

to have a spiritual power to protect the city. The people believed that you could manufacture a 

benevolent spirit that would be benevolent toward the city if you took a person who would be the 

owner of the spirit, entertain that person lavishly, dress him up in jewels and silks, and wine him and 

522


dine him, and get him thoroughly drunk and happy. A pit was prepared into which the lak muang 

was to be set, a heavy post which was set up in a framework so that it was suspended over the pit. 

The lak muang looked like a telephone pole in thickness, though many of the posts stood only four or 

five feet high above ground. There was probably another four or five feet underground. The person 

who was to provide the benevolent spirit would, at the right moment, be dropped into the pit and 

impaled with the post, "and the spirit would be there, and then would be held there by the post, but it 

would hover around this post in the center of the city and protect it from enemies. Similar spirits like 

that were developed and manufactured over all of the major gates at the royal palace, for instance. 

Every one of those huge gates, with its two massive posts, had living victims who were impaled 

beneath them." This would have been done back in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. 

Kenneth clarifies that the post did not impale the victim in the sense of going through him. 

The post was dropped on him, crushing him. "Maybe there was a sharpening to it also which would 

impale them." After the post had been dropped, the pit was filled in with earth, of course, burying the 

victim and securing the post in place. 

At the royal palace, there was a sill that was as much as 18 inches high, and one must not step 

on it because the spirit was in the sill. You stepped over it. In the huge gates, there would be a small 

door that you would step through. The huge gates and the sills would open for elephants to walk 

through. But humans would go through the small door, stepping over the sill. 

Kenneth recalls seeing many lak muang. He wonders if they had once stood higher and been 

lopped off. Most of them were about the height of a man or a little more. "And everybody respected 

them. People would walk by and often they would salute it because there was a spirit there." 

5 

32:41 When Kenneth moved to the OCB, he went from the State Department building on 21st and 

C to the building of the Psychological Strategy Board at Pennsylvania Avenue and Jackson Place, 

right across from the Executive Office Building [now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building]. His first 

office was up a set of rather narrow stairs. Rockwood Foster was one of his assistants, and he got 

three or four Foreign Service officers to help him move Kenneth's stuff, paintings, knickknacks from 

Southeast Asia, Mrs. Yip In Choy's two paintings, and so on. Kenneth didn't want to move the stuff 

in the normal way because of the possibility that items would disappear en route. So the officers put 

the stuff in their cars and drove it over for him. One of the items, of course, was the avocado tree, 

which was in a large teakwood tub full of dirt and stood about eight feet tall. This they put in the 

back of a pickup truck. "The Board assistants were having their meeting on the first floor when I 

came in with my stuff. Well, you can imagine what it did to the Board assistants. They were the 

ones who would be my superiors. And they were the aides to the Under Secretary of State and the 

Under Secretary of the Treasury and people of that ilk." The director of the CIA was there too. "So 

here they were in solemn conclave when I come in with my gang and we haul this tree up the stairs. 

Well they all came crowding out to watch this procession of googaws going up the stairs to my 

room." 

Kenneth was in that upstairs office for only a month. He was then told to move down to a 

room that looked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, a beautiful office with a bow window. By the end 

of that year, however, the movers were told to move them all over to the EOB. Their quarters were 

now ready. Unfortunately, it was winter, and bitterly cold. The movers came in with no advance 

notice and simply took the stuff over. It was a weekend, a Sunday. The avocado tree was left outside 

too long, "and it got a chill. It got frozen. And it died. Very tragic. That was the end of my tree." 

When Kenneth arrived for work Monday, everything was gone, and a sign had been left instructing 

him to go to such and such a room in the EOB. 

523


"The beauty of that tree, and I used to brag about it: What a man can do when he co-operates 

with an old maid in producing something that is alive and kicking. The old maid—God I can see her 

in my mind's eye yet; she and I were great friends—and she had developed this avocado thing in a 

pot." When she retired, she didn't know what to do with the tree. It stood a couple of feet high. So 

Kenneth decided to take it, got his teakwood tub, and hauled the needed dirt in in buckets. "Well, the 

State Department guards were very dubious about me. I'd come in in the morning with a briefcase in 

one hand and a bucket of dirt in the other." Where was he going with that dirt? "To my office." 

What was he going to do with it? "'Well, don't you like to spread dirt around in the government?' I'd 

go sailing on by. They had no reason to stop me. Nowadays you couldn't get away with it. They'd 

think it was a bomb hidden there or something." Kenneth would dump each bucketful into his tub 

until he had enough that he could transplant the tree. 

His office in the EOB was an inside office. He didn't have a window. Kenneth says that he 

moved over to the Jackson Place building in 1953. [Earlier he had said it was 1954.] So it would have 

been 1954 when he moved over to the EOB office. At that time in the Eisenhower administration, 

the Assistant Secretary for Latin America was Nelson Rockefeller. "Well, everyone was agog at his 

office because Nelson insisted on having a chimney in his office opened up so he could have a 

fireplace. The chimneys in that building, you know, most of them hadn't been used for ages, but 

certain ones, with very important people like the Secretary of State, would have a working fireplace. 

And your symbols of importance were, How big was your mirror? There were some offices that had 

mirrors that must have been eight or ten feet high on the wall. Why they'd have mirrors, I don't 

know." There would be an outside view, of course, and a fireplace. Rockefeller insisted that KLV 

fireplace work. Everybody was fascinated by this. And particularly by the birchwood logs wrapped 

in cellophane that were carried into Nelson's office. "So me, being the kind of fellow I am—I was 

nosy—so I went in and got chummy with his secretary and wanted to be sure he was out and I went 

breezing in to see what the hell he was up to, what kind of stuff he had. Boy, he was elegant! And he 

had this pile of birchwood logs, just the right size for his fireplace, each log wrapped in cellophane so 

he wouldn't get his hands dirty, and he could throw them on the fire as he pleased." They were 

beautiful logs. Elegantly cut. Flawless in their bark. Properly aged. "And they worked." 

Kenneth's office was on the side of the EOB toward the White House. It wasn't as good an 

office as he had had when he was in the State Department in 1943, because then he had had a window 

that looked out over the White House, though he himself did not have his desk at the window. The 

State Department at that time was located in the EOB, known as the State, War, and Navy Building. 

General Blackjack Pershing still had an office on the first floor at that time. State did not move over 

to its present building at 21st and C until years later, Kenneth says. During the war that building was 

used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That was where Kenneth was sent in 1942 when the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff wanted someone to brief them on the use of elephants in the China theater. State moved to that 

building after the war. 

The fellow who sat in the window overlooking the White House when Kenneth went to State 

in 1943 was Larry Salsbury. Kenneth, as the low man on the totem pole, sat next to the door. Rhody 

Hall was in the middle of the room. Some people parked their cars between the EOB and the White 

House. That was still a parking lot at that time. 

There was a swimming pool in the White House, and also a "mess" where the officers in the 

EOB could go to eat if they went at the right time in the right company. They could use the pool also 

at certain times, and Kenneth did. But he normally went to the YMCA on G Street, which was more 

convenient. "And of course we could horse it up at the YMCA in a way we couldn't at the White 

House pool." The White House pool has since been replaced by the press corps room. 

524


6 

48:17 One of the Operations Co-ordinating Board assistants was a man named Bill Godel, a 

wheeler-dealer and an ex-Marine who had been in special operations and was a great friend of 

Colonel Ed Lansdale, who had been in special operations also. In other words, they worked for the 

CIA. Kenneth and Godel hit it off and became good friends. "He was a real tough guy, as so many 

Marines are. But he had a wonderful disposition. A wife whom he called 'Irish.' And a bevy of 

daughters; he had five daughters." 

The way the OCB was set up, the Board assistants, of whom Bill Godel was one, representing 

the Pentagon, "were the characters who did the paperwork for the Under Secretary level in 

connection with operations, carrying out the policy which was set by the National Security Council. . 

. ." Kenneth's job was to head up a committee for every country for which he was responsible for 

reporting on operations, and he was responsible for all countries from Afghanistan through Pakistan, 

India, Burma, Thailand, the Indochinese states, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. He had a 

committee for each of these countries. "And each committee had to produce an operations plan for 

that country on which we based the budget for that country for operations to carry out the policy as 

directed by the National Security Council which operated under a Presidential directive. So it was 

high-level stuff." He wasn't the chairman of these committees, who was always the State Department 

political desk officer for the given country. But Kenneth was the person who organized everything 

and did all the legwork. 

In 1956, Bill Godel had a pal in the military named Admiral Eddie Layton, who was head of 

intelligence. The intelligence passed on a lot of the information they gathered to the CIA. Layton 

had been at Pearl Harbor and had featured prominently in the beginnings of intelligence operations 

before and after Pearl Harbor. Layton was going to make a special tour in his own plane, being a 

two-star admiral, around the Pacific countries, particularly Japan. He was a Japan expert, and spoke 

Japanese. He was going to Korea, Taiwan, Saigon, and the other countries around the rim of Asia. It 

was to be a forty-three day tour, very leisurely. The admiral had three aides who were Marine 

colonels, also probably involved in intelligence. One was responsible for all arrangements on shore 

with respect to landing rights, passports, and money, so if you needed money, you went to him. 

Another was responsible for all the baggage. The third was responsible for all the food, drinks, and 

entertainment. "So there were three colonels all there, serving the admiral. This is the way to go, 

believe me!" Well, Bill Godel invited Kenneth to go along to be the political advisor. He couldn't 

imagine himself giving much advice to Admiral Eddie Layton, but Godel told him not to worry. If 

Layton had questions about any of the countries Kenneth knew about, he could provide the 

information. "You're about the broadest knowledgeable guy I know of with respect to Asia." 

About a week before the trip began, one of the colonels called him and said that the admiral 

wanted to know what Kenneth would be drinking on the trip. "Well, I didn't drink at all. I wasn't 

thinking of drinking." But the colonel was insistent, so Kenneth said, "Oh, I like coffee, tea, coca 

cola, ginger ale, Seven-up." The colonel clarified his question. "Oh, sir, GULQNLQJ sir. The admiral's 

a martini man. How are you on martinis?" Kenneth said he had never had one, and the colonel was 

concerned. They couldn't have the admiral drinking and Kenneth not drinking anything. How about 

some whiskey? Or beer? Kenneth said that he didn't have any objections to drinking alcoholic 

beverages. "I just never got started." "Oh, how did that happen!?" the colonel said. Kenneth alluded 

to his strict beginnings. The colonel decided to put on some Budweiser beer for Kenneth. "I don't 

how many cases, but he certainly had some Budweiser." 

Kenneth was instructed in advance on the protocol. He would be the number three man in 

rank. "They had to give me an assimilated rank, and I had the assimilated rank of a brigadier general. 

I was bigger than a colonel but smaller than an admiral. And Bill Godel was one up on me. So the 

525


Admiral was always to get on first, followed by Bill Godel, who got on second, followed by Landon, 

who got on third, and then the riffraff of colonels and whatnots followed along according to their own 

ranks. And getting off was the same sequence. Always, when the doors opened, the Admiral was the 

first one to go, and then Bill Godel would stand behind him, as his chief aide, and then Landon, as his 

political advisor, would follow along." This was the procedure all forty-three days of the trip, and 

Kenneth was careful to follow it and not offend. 

On the day of departure, Margaret drove Kenneth out to the airport. "And we were a very 

elite group." They had the Admiral's own plane. They had hardly got on board when the Admiral 

had his first round of martinis. Kenneth didn't feel ready for anything. Had no desire to immediately 

start drinking beer. Their first stop was Hawaii, and they went to De Russey Beach, which was 

owned and run by the military. The quarters were elegant, and "our protocol position was excellent." 

From there, they went on up to Japan. The Admiral kept talking about Japan before they got 

there. He was looking forward especially to eating fried eel in Japan. He kept talking about it. As 

soon as he got there, he was going right out to get some fried eels. So they arrived, and went through 

the protocol gate, doing everything in the right protocol order, and went to their military quarters. 

Everything was provided for free, of course. "And who should we meet but General Lyman 

Lemnitzer, the commanding general of the whole area at that time, in 1956. Well, Lyman Lemnitzer 

and I had had our first encounter when he had two stars. Now he had four. When he had two stars, 

he was in charge of military assistance programs. . . ." 

526


HOUR 82 

Session #56 November 18, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret (at the end), Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIB1090) After the war was over, there was talk about military assistance to various 

countries. An organization concerned with this was set up in the Executive Office Building initially, 

of which Lyman Lemnitzer, a two-star general, was the head. "Well I was to draw up programs of 

assistance, if any, and I drew up two programs, one for Saigon, Indochina, in other words, and one 

for Thailand." Kenneth met with Lemnitzer in a committee meeting, who was looking over the tenmillion 

dollar request for arms. The general was skeptical. What would they ever do with ten 

million dollars of arms? Why should we do it? And who's going to pay for it? "Well, General," 

Kenneth said, "the reason for giving it to them is for political reasons, which are outside of your 

concern, and who's going to pay for it? You are." Lemnitzer rocked back, let out a big guffaw, and 

said, "Like hell I am!" And Kenneth said, "Like hell you aren't! It's coming right out of the aid 

program." And so it did. This was probably in the late 1940's, perhaps in 1950, when Bao Dai was 

the figurehead president in Saigon and Ngo Dihn Diem was Prime Minister under him. The French 

wanted a show of American support, and the Thai wanted a show of American support. The ten 

million dollars to each of them was "just a token." "It was symbolic aid. It didn't amount to much." 

The General remembered Kenneth in 1956 in Japan, and the two of them got a good laugh out 

of remembering the incident of years before. They spent an evening together, Lemnitzer, Layton, 

Bill Godel, Kenneth, and some other people. 

The next evening, the Admiral then took off and went out on the town. So did Godel and the 

others. Kenneth didn't go out. "They were out after the girls. Bill would then call me 'Reverend.' 

He said, 'I suppose you have to behave yourself. You have God looking after you—looking right 

down on you! So, okay, Reverend.'" Late that night, Bill Godel and his crew returned, having dined 

on fried eels, some of which they had left over. They put these in the original containers and left 

them against the bedroom door, about two a.m. or so, of Admiral Eddie Layton. Layton got up in the 

morning. He was a drinker, of course. "I saw him drinking martinis as late as five in the morning, 

and as early as five in the morning. He never stopped drinking. He was never sober, and he was 

never drunk. He opened his door, and there were these boxes with the cold eels in them. Well, he 

was just sure that the Japanese girls who took care of him in that hostel, in that room area where we 

were staying, had done this for him. Ah, he carried them triumphantly under his arm down to the 

breakfast table. He opened them up, and he ate those cold eels, praising the Japanese girls who were 

so thoughtful to provide him with his favorite food!" Godel and his pals were winking at each other, 

never letting on but laughing inside about those eels. 

The Layton party went on down to Hong Kong. And there, the Consul General, a man named 

Drumwright, came to meet them, an old friend of Kenneth's. Drumwright took Kenneth home with 

him, "which was very special." It freed Kenneth from the Admiral, and Bill Godel, and the rest of 

them. The Admiral was pleased that he had a political advisor who had an in with the Consul 

General. Drumwright was a "professional bachelor. He had been really one of the most outrageous 

fellows sleeping around with the Chinese girls and all the rest of it for ages, but he finally decided he 

had to become respectable and get married because the State Department was beginning to look into 

the sex lives of Foreign Service officers. A lot of them got fired. . . ." So he married a charming 

woman who was very voluble and very gay. Drumwright told Kenneth that there was a big party 

527


going on there in Hong Kong. One of the big Scottish companies which had been there in Hong 

Kong for a hundred years or so was leaving the mainland and closing out its businesses in mainland 

China, because the mainland had gone communist, and was settling in at Hong Kong with the 

remnants of its business for a period of time. They had taken over the whole clubhouse of the foreign 

community for the celebration. There would be three floors of the clubhouse with orchestras and 

dancing and entertainers for a party that would run all night. And it turned out just that way. "I have 

never seen a party like this. I mean they had simply all kinds of the finest Scotch whiskeys, and bars, 

and food, buffet, on all three floors, and orchestras playing all night long in relays. . . ." "Drum" and 

his lady and Kenneth spent a good part of the night at the party. Drum had to see everybody and be 

seen by everybody, and he let everyone know that Kenneth was out from the State Department— 

though, in fact, as "Drum" put it, Kenneth was temporarily over with the "White House crew." 

2 

10:37 The Layton party moved on down to Saigon. And there was Colonel Ed Lansdale, who later 

became a general, and who in the minds of the military and the State Department was the hero of the 

Philippines. It was Lansdale who had gone out with his harmonica and sat on the curb, getting 

chummy with the Filipinos as a special operator, and worked with the man who later became the 

president of the Philippines [whose name Kenneth cannot recall at the moment]. They were working 

against the communist uprising and trying to establish law and order, which was not easy to do, 

because the warlords were out, and everybody had a gun. But Lansdale was a genius at what he did. 

And the Filipinos had a fifty-year history with us, learning our ways. There was a knowledge of the 

democratic process, and it was easy for them to pick it up. So Lansdale was very successful in his 

work with them, so much so that the powers-that-be decided he was the man to go to work with Ngo 

Dinh Diem "to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese." So in 1956, there was Lansdale in 

Saigon when Kenneth arrived with Layton's party. A General Erskine was also there with Lansdale. 

When Kenneth had first known Erskine, he was in charge of special operations in the Pentagon. He 

lived in Wesley Heights, up on 44th Street, and he used to give parties there to which Kenneth would 

go and where he would run into Ed Lansdale, because he was "one of General Erskine's lads." Ed 

picked Kenneth up in Saigon. "By this time the Admiral thought I was quite a guy. I had a great 

friend in Hong Kong, and now here with this famous Ed Lansdale, about whom two books had 

already been written." Kenneth had to stay at the ambassador's residence, but Lansdale was his escort 

officer. 

Lansdale asked Kenneth if he wanted to meet Ngo Dinh Diem, and the answer was yes. "I 

was in on the development of his appointment as the Prime Minister of the new South Vietnam 

government." Kenneth recalls meeting Diem in Washington at a time when he was "an unemployed 

nationalist, with holes in the bottoms of his shoes." He was the head of a very powerful family. He 

had refused Ho Chi Minh's invitations to work in his government. He was a very stiff-necked 

Mandarin, in the old tradition, and he was not going to bow down and take up communism with Ho, 

although he recognized Ho's power among the peasants. Diem ZDV working with former Emperor 

Bao Dai, who was now the chief of state, the so-called President, of South Vietnam, and Diem was 

his Prime Minister, with the job of administering government in South Vietnam. 

Ed and Kenneth drove in Ed's Chevrolet around to the palace. There were a few guards, but 

nothing very formal or impressive. There may have been lots of guards at night, for security. 

"Actually, you could hear the guns going off around the suburbs all the time. You could hear the 

mortars going ERRP." The two men went in and called on Diem, who remembered Kenneth. "He 

was very fond of Ed. Ed had the run of the palace. So the three of us sat around, and we drank tea, 

and we talked all afternoon. And we really had a very nice social time, and also discussed the 

528


political and military situation, the security problems, and all the rest which was of interest, all of 

which I would later recount to Admiral Eddie Layton for his information." As they were about to 

leave, Ngo Dinh Diem invited them back to dinner. "We're having a wonderful time. Come back for 

dinner!" Lansdale said okay, but urged Diem not to lay anything special on. Let it be just the three 

of them. Very informal. Diem agreed. 

Ed left Kenneth at the embassy. Kenneth had some business to take care of. He was 

reporting back to Elmer Staats in the OCB as part of his work at every stop, to keep him informed on 

what he was up to and what intelligence he had picked up that could be of use to him. So Kenneth 

took care of that. The time passed. Then Ed came by in his battered old Chevy, and they drove over 

to the palace. "Well, we turned the corner, and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree. And the 

driveway had lines of lights dazzling in and out, and it was lined with troops all the way in and out, 

and as we turned the corner, we heard the 'He-hup!' and the bugle sound"—[Kenneth makes 

elaborate bugle sounds, heralding the arrival of the two Americans]—"and the guns went 

'Bang!' and all the military froofraw that they can put on for people of importance. Ed said, 'Oh 

damn! He said he wasn't going to do this!' And there was Ngo Dinh Diem up on the balcony, 

leaning out, looking at this, and laughing his head off! He was just having fun. It was entertaining. 

He was getting relief from the burdens of his responsibilities. He was having a wonderful time. 

Laughing at Ed, and laughing at me! So Ed says, 'Ken, how slow can you walk?' Well, I said, 'I can 

walk real slow. I had a lot of practice when I was wooing my wife. We had no place to go except to 

take a walk, and we could spend two or three hours walking a hundred yards!' 'Good,' he said, 'well, 

you do that.' He said, 'I'm going to let you out. This driveway is lined with the military.' He said, 

'I'm going to have to just dump this crate someplace off in the grass, and I'll catch up with you.' So I 

got out, and I looked up, and there was Ngo Dinh Diem looking down, laughing, smiling. So I took a 

step, and I paaaused, and I took a step, and I paaaused, and I took a step, and I paaaused. 'Huwwy 

up!' he said. 'Huwwy up!' And I took a step, and I paaaused. I took a step, and I paaaused. Finally, I 

got to the top, and at that moment Ed burst in from the back. He'd run up the back stairs. All out of 

breath. Aaah. 'Damn it all,' he said. 'What'd you do that to us for?' 'Fun!' he said. 'Fun! We have 

fun!' And he grabbed Ed by the hands, and me by the hands, and we went in, and we had another 

nice long evening. We ate I don't know how many quarts of dessert. We just ate steadily till about 

midnight. And then Ed drove me back to the embassy." 

3 

22:08 The next stop was in Bangkok. And again Kenneth stayed at the embassy. Kenneth cannot 

recall the ambassador at the time. Perhaps Max Bishop. Ed Stanton had wanted to be reconfirmed as 

ambassador there when Eisenhower came in. Abbot Low Moffat wanted to become ambassador to 

Thailand, and hoped that Joseph Grew, the Undersecretary of State, would help him to get the 

appointment. But Grew never did. Stanton, for his part, sent a telegram in his impatience informing 

the Department that he wanted to be reappointed ambassador or he would retire. To his 

consternation, he received a telegram right back telling him that his retirement offer had been 

accepted. He didn't want to retire, but now he had no choice. So it was his successor who was there 

in 1956. Now Kenneth remembers that William Donovan, whom Kenneth had accompanied to 

Thailand in 1953 to introduce him to the country, succeeded Ed Stanton. But by 1956, Donovan was 

gone, succeeded by Max Bishop. 

"I had my usual pleasant time in Bangkok," visiting old friends. Kenneth renewed his 

political contacts there. 

From there, the party flew down to Singapore, and from there to Djakarta. These were very 

quick stops because Layton had little interest in either place. In Singapore, Kenneth became 

529


acquainted with General Ko Geng Hsui, who was one of the most powerful men in the government 

under Lee Kwan Yew (SP?). 

In 1960, Kenneth says, he was to return to Singapore, running into Bill Godel, who by that 

time "had gotten himself into trouble and was accused of stealing money from the funds that he had 

used in his intelligence operations, and I found Bill Godel selling guns and gun-running in 

Singapore." 

The Layton party then "backtracked." By now, the plane was absolutely full of things Layton 

and Godel had bought. Kenneth had bought very little except something for Margaret. Godel had 

bought a three-wheeled bicycle taxi to bring back to Washington. He actually used that thing here. It 

was a showpiece. He would put his daughters in it, and he would pedal it around the city. 

Kip asks what happened to all the beer the drinks colonel had laid in for him. Kenneth says 

that he drank about three bottles of it and found he didn't like it. So he asked the drinks colonel if he 

had anything else. He had tried a martini and didn't like that. The colonel said, "Well, we have Jack 

Daniel." And Kenneth said, "Oh, who's he?" The colonel said that "he" was a very fine bourbon. 

"And he served me my first glass of Jack Daniel on the rocks. And I liked it, and I found Jack Daniel 

liked PH. And I've been using Jack Daniel ever since. And there she is. Isn't that funny?" 

When the Layton party arrived home in Washington, Margaret was there, and Bill Godel's 

wife, and everybody was being met by somebody—except for Admiral Eddie Layton. He and his 

wife were estranged and later divorced. He was about to retire. "This was his last glory trip. And 

after that, he went back to Japan, and married, and settled in Japan. He really loved Japan." 

4 

29:50 A story from 1953, when Kenneth was still in the State Department. John Foster Dulles was 

going to make a speech concerning SEATO (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Dulles was 

developing, intended to be an Eastern equivalent of NATO) and CENTO (a similar organization 

Dulles was developing in the Middle East). The speech would have ramifications for many countries. 

Dulles intended to re-emphasize the bilateral arrangements we had with Taiwan and Korea. He was 

going to make a speech "summing it all up, as the great containment effort by the U.S. government to 

contain the spread of communism. This was to underwrite all of our programs," military, and every 

other kind of political program. Ambassador Pot Sarasin of Thailand knew the speech was coming, 

and he called on Kenneth because he wanted something to be inserted in Dulles' speech concerning 

Thailand. He asked Kenneth to make an appointment for him to see the Secretary of State. Kenneth 

did, and the ambassador came in at the appointed time. Kenneth escorted him up to the Secretary's 

office. "It's an enormous office. Big as a ballroom almost! Well, Secretary Dulles was a very 

angular man, and gruff, in a sense. He never really had what you would call a friendly atmosphere. 

It was that of a lawyer, who was a trial lawyer and used to asking questions and playing games with 

words, and things of that sort." 

So Pot Sarasin called on him, and he requested that the Secretary make certain remarks about 

Thailand that would be a great help to his government. Would he consider including something? 

Well, what would that be? Sarasin had something written on paper which he read off to the 

Secretary. "We were sitting in one of these big corners, with a couch and chairs and a coffee table 

kind of thing, and the Secretary was there with us. So he took this piece of paper, and he stood up. 

He didn't say a word. Turned his back on Sarasin and walked to the other end of his office with his 

back to Sarasin and to me and stood there looking out the window. And this rather nonplused Pot 

Sarasin. He wasn't used to being treated in this fashion. And he said to me, 'Ken, what shall I do? 

Shall I leave? Am I dismissed?' 'Oh no,' I said. 'Just sit still.' 'Well,' he said, 'I feel very 

uncomfortable. Here, I have made a request. He hasn't said a word. He's turned his back on me, and 

he's walked all the way across the office. And he stands there, looking out the window! What shall I 

530


do?' 'Keep your mouth shut and sit still,' I said, 'that's what you should do.' 'I don't understand.' I 

said, 'He is a hard man to understand, so don't try to. Wait.' So we sat. 

"Then Dulles, without a word, walked over to his desk and sat down and began to write. Well 

Sarasin was very upset then. He said, 'What's he doing? What's he doing? What's he working on?' I 

said, 'I don't know.' 'Well, am I dismissed?' 'No.' 'What should I do?' I said, 'Just be still. Wait.' 

'Well, I,' he said, 'I don't like this,' he said. 'This is very insulting.' I said, 'Yes, I know. But this is 

the way he is. You have to accept him the way he is.' So Dulles kept on writing, and he wrote, and 

he wrote, and then he got up and walked over to the window and stood looking out again. Then he 

came back to his desk again, sat down, crossed out some things, and then wrote some more. And 

then he came over suddenly to Pot Sarasin, and here was a—on a scratch pad, in block letters, he had 

been writing out what he—which was something different from what Pot Sarasin had given him, but 

which he had written down, which took it into account in his own fashion, and he said, 'Well, how 

about something like this?' Well, Pot Sarasin looked at it, and he didn't like it, and so he scratched 

out something-or-other, and he said, 'I would prefer it if it read WKLV way.' And so he wrote in some 

others. The Secretary picked it up. 'Uh huh,' he said, 'Uh huh. Hmm. Well.' He turned his back on 

Sarasin, walked off to the end of the room, and stood looking out the window again. 'My God!' says 

Pot Sarasin. 'What shall I do? Am I dismissed? Is he going to do that?' 'I don't know,' I said. 'Just 

wait and see.' 'I'm not used to being treated this way,' he said. 'This is very insulting.' 'That's right,' I 

said. 'He's a very insulting man. But he doesn't know it because he's such a bigshot in his own mind.' 

'Huh,' he said. 'I don't like this. I ought to leave. I ought to just get up and go.' 'No, you'd better not,' 

I said. 'You just wait.' 

"Finally, the Secretary turned around. He went back to his desk and punched a button, and a 

girl came in. He said, 'Give me a copy,' after he'd done something more to it. So she took it out. He 

paid no attention to Pot and me. Sat at his desk working on something or other. The girl came back 

in, handed it to him. He looked it all over. Then he changed it some more. Then he came over to 

Pot and said, 'Well, how's this?' Pot read it. He made another few changes himself. He still didn't 

like it that way. The Secretary took it back. Then he scratched something else on it. He pushed a 

button, spoke in a quiet voice into a microphone, and in a few moments in comes his public affairs 

officer, who was in charge of all public affairs and speeches and things of that sort, and he handed it 

to him, who read it, nodded his head a little bit, 'Mm hmm,' put it down on the desk, made some 

changes, handed it back to the Secretary, Dulles. Dulles looked at it. 'Hmm.' Pushed a button. The 

girl came back in. 'Couple of copies.' She went out. He still sat there, his public affairs officer 

standing by his desk. Dulles ignored him. Didn't even ask him to sit down. He went back to work at 

his desk on his papers. In a few minutes the girl came back in, handed him two or three copies of this 

thing. The public affairs officer looked at it. Dulles looked at it. The public affairs officer made 

another scratch or two. Dulles looked at it. Then he made a scratch or two. 

"Well then he picked it up and came over to Pot Sarasin and said, 'Well, how's this?' Pot 

Sarasin looked at it. He felt, 'Well, my God. I'd better knock this thing off. I've got something of 

what I want.' So he stood up and said, 'Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. That's very 

satisfactory.' 'Ahumph! Good!' Turned his back on him and walked off. And that was it. That was 

the way he was." 

7$3( ;,,, 6,'( 

5 

39:28 Margaret says that she has put her book Never Dies the Dream out of her mind. She does 

not remember the names of her characters. She expected to write other books after this one, "but 

531


circumstances made that impossible." Peggy says that Margaret told her once that all the stories in 

the book had actually happened. Kenneth says the book was about Miss McCord, but Margaret says 

that it was not. "There was no real woman in it in my mind. These were people, and I saw them 

clearly, but they were P\ people. Some of the incidents had actually happened, of course." For 

instance, Mrs. McFarland, who was a very arrogant woman, who married Dr. McFarland, did 

something very damaging to Miss McCord's school, and Margaret used that. "The school I took after 

the real school, but the children and teachers were people who grew in my mind." 

Mrs. McFarland had come out as a missionary and had worked at the Wang Lang School, 

which turned out many educated women. "They were so much in demand that a number of officials 

married PDLGV from the school because they'd learned to speak English. They'd learned all kinds of 

things that Thai women didn't have." The school lost quite a number of maids in this way. 

Mrs. McFarland was named Bertha Blount before her marriage. She was a very domineering 

person who "connived to get what she wanted." Dr. McFarland was a dentist. He also owned a 

typewriter store. When McFarland's wife was dying, Miss Blount would go to the house, seeming to 

be solicitous of the dying woman's welfare but actually courting the doctor. This antagonized the 

mission women in Bangkok deeply because Dr. McFarland's wife was a very lovely person. When 

she died, everyone wondered what the doctor would do. A few months later, he proposed to a young 

missionary woman, perhaps thirty years old, who turned him down. So in the end, Bertha Blount got 

him and became the second Mrs. McFarland. "She made a tremendous success of the typewriter 

store." It was considered beneath a man's dignity in Thai circles to run a business. You could own it 

secretly, but to run it was beneath the dignity of a gentleman. So Mrs. McFarland ran the store for 

Dr. McFarland, and did it well. "She was very able, and very ruthless." 

Mrs. McFarland managed to get herself on the governing committee of the mission. "She 

found it easy to interfere in many ways—after all, she ZDV Mrs. McFarland of the typewriter store, 

and she had money, and she had a big house, a lovely big house, and an arrogant manner." She did 

something that was very damaging to Miss McCord's school. [Margaret speaks of it as "India's school," 

,QGLD being the name of the principal of the fictional school in her book.] Margaret cannot recall at the 

moment what it was Mrs. McFarland did. In any case, Miss McCord took it up with her, and what 

she said was that, if she had known what Mrs. McFarland was going to do, she would have crawled 

across the city on her hands and knees to beg her not to do it. This was exactly what she said. 

Margaret put the incident into her book as it happened. She says that Miss McCord "was not my 

character, but she was in a sense a pattern." She says that, in writing, she did not get mixed up 

between the real people and the imaginary people who became so real to her in her mind. 

Margaret says that the story of Never Dies the Dream was already in her mind as she was 

writing Anna. In 1946, she came down with rheumatic fever and was in bed from September until 

well after Christmas. She felt very weak in the months following. In June of 1947, there was to be a 

garden party at an embassy, and for the first time she felt up to going. Peggy remembers going to 

Garfinckel's department store to buy her mother a black dress with gold sequins across the shoulders 

or front and a beautiful black hat, both very expensive, so that Margaret would have a new outfit to 

wear to the party. There at the party, a man came up to her and said, "Well, I know a Paris hat when I 

see one." Margaret was amused since she knew it was QRW a Paris hat. In any case, she began the 

work on Never Dies the Dream soon after that. 

One problem she had was in getting help in the home so that she could write. "I never had a 

maid who didn't steal from me. Small things, of course, until the last one, who stole the trousers to 

Kenneth's white tie suit." 

Margaret's memory is that she finished the book in 1948. 

John Day was headed by Richard Walsh. Its leading author was Pearl Buck, who wrote many 

532


books. Walsh divorced his wife and married Pearl Buck. Margaret recalls a luncheon John Day gave 

for her when Anna and the King of Siam was published. Pearl Buck came to this. Buck was not 

impressive looking, but she was an impressive writer. Lydia Na Ranong, a friend of Margaret's and a 

daughter of a lady-in-waiting to the last Empress of China, told Margaret that Pearl Buck wrote 

accurately and well about the lower classes but that when she turned to the upper classes, she was 

often inaccurate. A man named Harry Hansome (SP?) was there at the party, a well-known reviewer, 

and Richard Walsh's son was there. Margaret Ayer wanted to buy three copies of Anna, and he made 

her pay for them. She had done the illustrations, and it just seemed incredible to Margaret that he 

couldn't simply have given the copies to her. 

Kenneth points out that in John Day's contract with Margaret, there was no section giving 

John Day a first option on Margaret's next book. 

Never Dies the Dream was published in 1949 by Doubleday. It did not get the rave reviews 

that Anna got. It sold well, and Kenneth recalls that it was a Literary Guild production that sold 

several hundred thousand copies through them. But it was never like Anna. 

533


HOUR 83 

Session #56 continued November 18, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIIA100) Margaret says that no one at John Day had any interest in her next project. 

However, she received offers from other publishers, and the best offer was Doubleday's. So 

Doubleday published Never Dies the Dream. But Margaret felt dashed by John Day's lack of 

interest, after her first great success with them. Richard Walsh and Elsie Weil were fine editors, and 

she would have liked the special effort they would have put in. John Day was a small company, 

whereas Doubleday was large. There was no luncheon for Margaret when her second book came out. 

Originally, Margaret's title for the book was One Fainting Robin. This came from a poem 

which Margaret used in honor of her sister Evangeline, who had died several years earlier. But the 

publisher did not like the title. Margaret realized the title was weak. What the publisher came up 

with was much stronger. 

The book never sold the way Anna did, but it sold well. A famous actress, Billie Burke [who, 

I believe, played the good witch in the movie The Wizard of Oz], wanted to take Never Dies the Dream 

to Broadway. Kenneth believes it had the potential to be a successful Broadway play. Billie Burke 

was getting old, and she was no longer the girlfriend of Flo Ziegfield, who ran the Follies in New 

York, so she wanted a play of her own to put on. She believed that if she got a certain playwright to 

do it, whom she knew very well, they could bring it off, and Margaret agreed. [I remember Billie Burke 

coming to the house at 4711 to discuss the project. Great excitement.] Burke worked on her friend the 

playwright, who was tied up at the moment with numerous projects, but definitely interested in the 

project. He hoped to get to it when he could. And then "she dropped dead," Kenneth says, which 

ended that. Kenneth and Margaret remember her visit. She was so enthusiastic about the project. 

She felt that she was perfect for the part of India, and the Landons agree. So her unexpected death 

was a sad thing all around. There could truly have been a second play. 

Session #57 December 29, 1988 Kenneth, Kip, Carol Pearson. Margaret sits in. 

2 

7:46 Kenneth recalls a sermon he delivered when he was a young divinity student at Princeton 

Theological Seminary. He preached it at the small Presbyterian church in Columbus, New Jersey, of 

which he had become pastor. "I was a very enthusiastic exegetical preacher." He took up various 

subjects that were of interest to him, and one week, he became fascinated with angels, particularly 

with guardian angels. He wanted to find out what guardian angels did, and how you related to them, 

and what the other angels were all about, and so he spent most of the week working on angels. By 

the end of the week, he was quite enthusiastic about guardian angels in particular and angels in 

general and put together a sermon for Sunday, which he delivered with abandon. He had their 

"riveted attention." He knew he really had that crowd. At the end, the wealthiest member of the 

church, who was the church's patroness, Eliza Ridgeway, and who was Kenneth's personal patroness, 

"came bucketing right up to me and held me with both hands and looked earnestly in my face, and 

she said, 'That was the most important sermon that I've ever heard. I was absolutely astonished to 

think that I had a guardian angel, and what you've revealed about angels I think is fascinating, and 

everybody should know about them. And I want you to have your sermon published!" She wanted it 

534


to be put out as a pamphlet in the 1000's. He was to arrange it, and she would pay for it. Kenneth 

was a bit overwhelmed, and very impressed with her—and with himself. However, Kenneth noticed 

Mrs. Ridgeway's son and daughter conferring with each other and then going over to their mother and 

talking very earnestly with her about something. Kenneth realized that this had to do with her idea of 

publishing his sermon, and he was right. They persuaded her not to do it. And he never preached 

another sermon on angels. 

3 

13:26 When the Landons travelled out to Siam the second time, in 1932, they went by ship out of 

Seattle. On board ship, there was an orchestra whose director was named Archie. The orchestra 

played every night, and people danced, except for the Landons. Margaret didn't know how, and 

Kenneth "was rapidly forgetting. You can't remember how to dance when you're married to 

somebody who has never danced in her life, and was forbidden it. And she still thought it was 

slightly wicked because her mother and father said so, especially her father." 

Margaret was always planning ahead how to make their house in Trang attractive to live in, 

and when she reached Japan, she said that she wanted to get a nice Japanese chinaware teaset, for tea 

and coffee. They were told that the place to get it was, not Tokyo, but Nagasaki. The ship was late 

arriving at Nagasaki and was scheduled to leave later that night, so time was short. They hired a car 

and asked to be taken to a shop that sold fine china. It was already dusk, and when they reached the 

shop, they found to their despair that it was closed. Kenneth knew, however, that the family that ran 

such shops usually lived upstairs. He tried ringing the bell, with no result, and then began banging on 

the door. Finally, a window opened overhead, and a Japanese man stuck his head out and asked what 

they wanted. Kenneth explained that they were Americans en route to Siam and wanted to buy a set 

of chinaware. The man said they were closed, but Kenneth pled with him, saying he and his wife 

would probably never pass that way again, and his fine chinaware would never find its way to Trang, 

Siam. What a shame that would be! Finally, the man relented, shut his window, came down, and 

opened the shop. He had a little cap on his head, and was dressed in a kimono. Margaret picked out 

a set she favored, but the man told her that a number of pieces were missing from it. Margaret 

replied that she wanted the set anyway, would pay for the full set, and expect him to mail the missing 

pieces when he got them in. 

The Landons made it back on board ship in plenty of time. 

On that same trip, during the stopover in Tokyo, Margaret bought a pair of Japanese bonsai 

trees "to go on each side of our living-dining room separation, where you remember there was a 

shelf." These worked out perfectly, and Kenneth was impressed by Margaret's taste. The missing 

pieces of the china came, as expected, and they used that set of chinaware daily the rest of their stay 

in Trang. They would have tea out on the mook. Unfortunately, the ants discovered the bonsai trees, 

and "stung those trees to death. They just stung them to pieces." Both trees died. 

Recently, the Landons gave their Nagasaki teaset to Peggy's daughter Dodie (Margaret 

Dorothea Schoenherr Trask). 

4 

23:42 In the last year of the Eisenhower administration, 1960, Kenneth proposed to visit all the 

countries for which he was responsible on the OCB for the co-ordination of the implementation of 

NSC policy. He again describes his responsibilities with the OCB. Kenneth travelled first to 

Bangkok. The ambassador by this time was Alex Johnson, and his DCM was Leonard Unger, a 

brilliant man and a clever diplomat, who became an ambassador in his own right later. Johnson was 

on leave at the time, and Unger was the officer in charge. When Kenneth arrived at the airport, he 

535


was met by an aide to Prime Minister Sarit. This was two years after Sarit had visited Kenneth in 

Washington at his home and had encountered all the animals in the backyard. The aide informed 

Kenneth that the Prime Minister expected him for breakfast. Kenneth was staying with Ken Wells 

instead of at the embassy. So he sent word to Leonard Unger at the embassy to pick him up at the 

Wells' house for the breakfast with Prime Minister Sarit, which Unger did. 

When Kenneth arrived, he found the room where breakfast was served was brilliantly lit. 

Kenneth tells again of the PM's reminiscing about his visit at 4711 Fulton Street, when all the animals 

that appeared. Then the conversation ended, the lights dimmed, the breakfast was over, and Kenneth 

prepared to leave. However, before he left, the PM asked where he was going on his trip. He was 

going to Laos, where our ambassador was a man named Win Brown (SP?). Then down to Cambodia. 

Then over to Saigon, where Durbrough (SP?) was ambassador. The PM asked Kenneth to come back 

and talk to him when his tour was completed. [Kenneth omits the rest of the story, that he was on 

television, that Sarit was giving his public blessing, and that a flood of invitations then came in 

to the embassy for Kenneth.] 

So Kenneth travelled to Laos, where he was impressed with how well everything was going 

for the Americans. The AID program was going well. The trading programs for their military were 

going well. Kenneth toured the Plain of Jars, where there were huge jars that dated back many 

centuries. No one had been able to explain them as of that time. These huge jars were set out all 

over the plain. "Everything was just as fine as could be." Kenneth was wined and dined by the Lao 

officials, military and civilian. "And I sent off a telegram saying everything was up to date in Kansas 

City, and things were going about as well as they could go. And I wrote it at length in a letter to the 

Department and in a letter to Margaret, because that's the way I kept my diary, really, in my letters to 

Margaret, where I went and who I saw and when I did things, because I knew I wouldn't be able to 

remember later on, everything. And I sent all that off the night before I left Laos. I arrived in Phnom 

Penh the next day—no, I went down that night; I went down that night to Phnom Penh—and the 

ambassador put me up, and we went to bed. And in the morning, the ambassador came bursting in on 

me and said, 'What the hell are you up to?! What did you do up in Laos?' And I said, 'What do you 

mean, "What did I do up in Laos?"' 'Well,' he said, 'there was a coup d'état last night up in Laos! 

They've overthrown the government!' I quickly sent another telegram off to my boss in the National 

Security Council saying, 'Disregard my report from Laos. And please don't read my mail.'" They got 

a lot of amusement out of this in Washington. 

Kenneth remembers the name of the ambassador in Cambodia. Moore. 

From there, Kenneth went to Saigon, where Durbrough (SP?) was the ambassador. 

Durbrough was very suspicious of Kenneth. He was a career Foreign Service officer, and Kenneth 

wasn't. He did not approve of Kenneth. His wife was fascinated with miniature bottles of liquor, a 

number of which Kenneth had collected on his various flights. So he gave these to her, which won 

her heart over. Durbrough became more friendly after that. The two of them called on Ngo Dinh 

Diem a couple of times. After four days, Kenneth flew back to Bangkok, where he called again on 

Prime Minister Sarit and briefed him on what he had learned on his tour. They had a long session on 

Laos and Cambodia, especially on the significance of the coup d'état in Laos. 

5 

40:38 Kenneth then travelled to Burma, which was a difficult place because Ne Win was the 

General, but U Nu was the renascent Prime Minister [implying that there were tensions between them]. 

While Kenneth was there, U Nu had a press conference, in English, during which he was asked about 

his government, and its inefficiencies and inadequacies. His answer was that his government was 

like a broken-down jeep. It couldn't go sixty miles an hour. One had to be careful how he drove. 

536


Then again, U Nu said that his government was like a light switch in a dark room. When you turn the 

switch, maybe the light will come on, and maybe it won't. And maybe you'll get a shock. That's the 

way his government worked, he said. Kenneth found it amazing to hear a Prime Minister describe his 

own government this way, but U Nu was quite at ease doing so. This interview appeared in full in 

the newspaper the next day, and Kenneth cut it out. He thought to himself that if 

he reported on this, verbatim, no one in Washington would believe it. He would just send the 

clipping. 

The day after that another fascinating report appeared in the newspaper. A pedicab driver was 

arrested twice in one day. The first time was because he had obstructed the road with his pedicab in 

front of a fast-food shop where he had stopped to have a quick meal. The second time was for 

urinating and defecating in public, which he had done under considerable exigency by the side of the 

road. The same policeman caught him both times, arrested him, and fined him. The man would have 

to appear in court to answer these two citations. The next day, the man appeared in court, and pled 

that he was a hard-working man, that he had required food to keep up his strength for his hard work, 

that he had parked his pedicab in the road because there was no other place, and as for the other 

count, he argued that it was impossible to defecate without also urinating, so that this should not be a 

double fine. A single fine should be enough for that offense! The newspaper faithfully recorded the 

whole incident in detail. 

Kenneth clipped that article and sent it along with the first one. He thought both of them were 

telling and amusing commentaries on life in Burma, and he sent them by special dispatch to Gordon 

Gray, who was the National Security advisor to President Eisenhower. "And Gordon Gray pounced 

on these, and he let out a roar, and he went right in to the President's office, and that is the only 

reporting that I ever did that went hotshot straight to the President. I never did DQ\WKLQJ that went 

that rapidly to the President of the United States!" 

6 

47:45 Kenneth travelled back to Bangkok and then down to Singapore. He had had a visit from Ko 

Geng Hsui from Singapore, a very prominent, very rich businessman, who was a strong supporter of 

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew (SP?). [According to my notes, Ko Geng Hsui was the Minister 

of Defense.] Ko Geng Hsui flew up from Singapore to Bangkok to call on Kenneth and ask him to 

come down to Singapore and consult with him and a committee on establishing a research group for 

the study of Southeast Asian affairs. He had heard that Kenneth was knowledgeable about all of 

Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. Kenneth had not intended to go to Singapore, but he decided to 

go. He wrote his own travel orders, authorizing Kenneth P. Landon to make this trip, signed Kenneth 

P. Landon. 

An interesting thing happened when he arrived, that first night. Bill Godel was there. In 

1956, on Kenneth's previous trip with Admiral Eddie Layton, Bill Godel had been part of the 

Admiral's party. In the intervening years, he had gotten himself into trouble. He was handling 

millions of dollars of American money, and he had gotten to thinking of it as his to use as he pleased. 

"Some of it seemed to have stuck to his fingers." He was investigated in 1958 or so, and he was 

suspended from his job. He and others called Kenneth up to be a character witness for him, that he 

was a person of integrity and so on. Kenneth's response was that he would be glad to testify in behalf 

of Bill Godel "because I know that he deals in large figures, and the amount that he is supposed to 

have purloined from the U.S. government funds is less than $10,000. Well, Bill Godel wouldn't 

bother with anything so small as that! Now if you were telling me that he had absconded with half a 

million dollars, I would be impressed that that might be possible because Bill Godel always thought 

big. But when you tell me that he has risked his career and his character for something less than 

537


$10,000, I'd say that's nonsense." Well, they decided not to have Kenneth testify. 

Bill Godel was the first person Kenneth ran into in Singapore. He had lost his job and had 

gone in for gun-running. He was in tight with the Thai air force fellows. He would get the guns at a 

modest price and then sell them to the Thai government or some other government at very fancy 

prices, making tens of thousands of dollars. Godel had left his American family. He was staying in 

the hotel where Kenneth ran into him. He went "wheezing past me" in a big hurry, and Kenneth 

called out to him, "Bill! Bill!" Godel hadn't seen him. "We embraced. I was always very fond of 

Bill. He was a very engaging personality. And we were good friends. I had nothing against him. If 

he had gotten into trouble, it was too bad. Lots of people had gotten into trouble, very decent people, 

in other ways." The two of them spent a lot of time together, and of course, Godel was very curious 

as to why Kenneth was there. When he learned, he was excited to think that Kenneth might give him 

an "in" with Ko Geng Hsui. But Kenneth said that he wouldn't get involved in that. If Godel was 

going to run guns, he was on his own. Bill accepted it. No hard feelings. The two of them went to a 

couple of nightclubs together, dreary nightclubs at which you were lucky to get a cup of tea. Lee 

Kwan Yew was a strict disciplinarian, and in 1960, the city was almost literally in bed by nine 

o'clock. The streets were empty. 

What Ko Geng Hsui was doing was establishing a center for the study of Southeast Asia, and 

he wanted Kenneth to set it up. Kenneth was to take a leave of absence from the U.S. government 

and spend a year in Singapore setting up the center. Kenneth said that he couldn't do it himself, but 

he knew people who could and would seek one out. The man he eventually got was Harry Benda of 

Yale University. It is easy for an academician to take a year's leave for an important project like this, 

and this was very important project. It helped Benda's career. He was a historian, a Jewish refugee 

from Hitler, the only surviving member of his family. He had gone to New Zealand, then Australia, 

before coming to this country. Kenneth set the thing up with Ko Geng Hsui, who was very pleased 

with the job that Benda did for Singapore. 

Years later, when Kenneth had retired from government [in 1974] and was working at 

American University, one of his Ph.D. graduates, a Chinese from Indonesia, a fine scholar in 

Chinese, Dutch, and English, went out to Singapore and became head of the center in Singapore. 

7 

58:40 Kenneth returned to Washington. The election of 1960 took place, and John F. Kennedy was 

elected. The Sunday morning in January before Kennedy went to work (on Monday), Kenneth 

received a call to come down to the White House immediately to brief McGeorge Bundy and Walt 

Rostow on Laos, which was a trouble spot. It was in turmoil. A crucial moment for Laos. So 

Kenneth went down and met with the two men. Bundy was the spokesman; Rostow said little. 

Bundy had many questions. What documents did we have on U.S. operations? on U.S. policies with 

respect to Laos? 

538


HOUR 84 

Session #57 continued December 29, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Carol Pearson. 

1 

0:00 (XIIIA470) Bundy listened to Kenneth's answers and said, "Well, that doesn't amount to 

anything." Then, since Kenneth had just been in Southeast Asia, Bundy asked him to tell them about 

that. "So I started to tell him about it. And it was an incredible experience because I would start a 

sentence, I'd get the subject, and maybe I'd get to the verb, but he would finish the sentence for me 

and go on with two or three more sentences, and then look at me, expecting me to go on. So I would 

start a sentence again. I could hardly finish a sentence. He was that kind of a person. He couldn't 

stand it. He knew everything already. And, in fact, he practically ended up briefing me about Laos, 

and he'd never been there. And I had just come from there, and I could speak and understand the Lao 

language. Well, I could understand it, I should say. I didn't speak it, but I could hack at it. And that 

was my experience with him. And I found out that McGeorge Bundy's mind was like a waterbug on 

the surface. I mean he could skate over any subject and write a definitive memorandum for the 

President on it. And do a bang-up job. Apparently, you didn't need to know anything if you were 

McGeorge Bundy 'cause you knew everything." In a sense, that was the windup of Kenneth's 1960 

trip, when he briefed those two men on Kennedy's White House staff. The upshot of that was that 

they decided, in light of Kenneth's briefing, to bring Averell Harriman to come in to be the Assistant 

Secretary for Far Eastern affairs, to officiate over negotiations with Laos with Bill Sullivan as his 

aide. Bill was one of Kenneth's protegés from his Bangkok days and was riding the coattails of 

Harriman. "That's the way you get to the top. Get somebody's coattails. And he knew how." 

So Harriman became the negotiator on Laos with the Russian, Georgi Pushkin, negotiating for 

the USSR, "with respect to the settlement of the disturbed situation in Laos, which involved the 

interests of China and the Soviet Union, as well as the United States. And it was concluded that the 

thing to do was to neutralize Laos. And that was when Bill Sullivan coined the phrase, 'Cave with 

Ave,' because it was literally a giveaway. That's the way Harriman solved problems." Within a few 

weeks, if not a week, of the agreement arranged by Harriman with Georgi Pushkin, Pushkin dropped 

dead. 

2 

3:38 In the OCB, they had operational plans for every country, and policy papers for every country, 

and staff members responsible for producing the policy papers. Kenneth's side of it was responsible 

for the operational side of things. They had these two sides of things. "Not many of us. I suppose 

we could sit around a big table, the whole crowd of us on both policy and operations. We were the 

boys that did the work on the paperwork, and ran our committees." McGeorge Bundy had the officer 

in who was responsible for the drafting of the policy paper on France, and "just gave that guy an 

awful time. Made a fool of him." The next thing Kenneth knew was that all of these policy papers 

and operational plans that were the product of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were 

packed into sugar bags, loaded on dollies, and taken out and burned. "The whole thing was a clean 

sweep." The President wanted to abolish all committees, because he didn't believe committees were 

the way to get things done. "And if he could have abolished the National Security Council, he would 

have. But it was a statutory organization. He could not abolish it. It would require an act of 

Congress. And the Operations Co-ordinating Board, as a cousin under the same directive, a 

539


legislative directive, to carry out the policy with our operations was also under a statutory control. So 

he could not dissolve the concept of having a National Security Council. He had to have that. And 

he had to have an operational, co-ordinating board or committee, legally speaking, unless he 

abolished the function. Well, he kept the National Security Council as such, and the secretary was a 

man named Jimmy Lay, an Irishman, who was over from the CIA. It was the CIA that did all our 

administrative work. That was why the CIA had such a big file on me when I got the job." 

Kenneth retells the story of how he moved from the State Department to the OCB. 

McGeorge Bundy called together the staff of the NSC, "the working stiffs, in other words, and 

of the Operations Co-ordinating Board, and we sat around this long table." It was fifteen feet long or 

so. At the head of the table, Bundy sat with his chair tipped back and his knee up on the table, "very 

informal, very arrogant. And we were all seated there. And he said, 'Well, I might as well begin 

immediately and say this is in the way of being a funerary oration. You're all abolish. All of the 

functions of the staff are abolished.' The National Security Council, as a council, couldn't be 

abolished, but the staff, the people who did the work, could be. We couldn't be fired; only abolished. 

Bundy said, 'To be abolished means that you're in a statutory organization, that your function is 

withdrawn from you so that you no longer are on the administrative floor. You are levitating above 

the floor, and no one can ask you to do anything, and you cannot volunteer to do anything because 

you aren't here to do anything. The function has been ended. You're abolished. Now, we'll give you 

ample time to relocate in the various agencies from which you've come, or any other agency that is 

willing to accept you. So you don't need to be panicked. Your salaries will go on. But you'll have 

no secretaries any more. Your secretaries are all withdrawn from you and are in other parts of the 

White House. And here you are. And it's up to you to make your own arrangements.' 

"So there I was, sitting in my office with nothing to do. But I had to turn up every day, and 

get on the phone, and try to get myself located. And I made the usual curriculum vitae out, and filled 

it all out, and passed it over to the various agencies, and my own old agency, to the international 

bank, and various places like this. Of course, I really didn't think anything was going to come of it, 

and I thought, Well, I guess I'd better head back to academia and get me a job in some college or 

university. And I thought the chances would probably be pretty good." Kenneth didn't hurry. 

About that time, Kenneth heard a tremendous clatter from a typewriter in an office down the 

hall that had been empty. He looked in and found a fellow named Comer there, and Kenneth asked 

what he was doing. The answer was that he was working on a memo. Don't bother him! He had 

been brought over from the CIA. He later became quite a bigshot, an Undersecretary of Defense. 

"He was the white-haired boy working with computers to prove that we were winning the war in 

Vietnam even when we were losing it." He had a squeaky voice, and he was very determined. 

Wouldn't let the military types push him around. He was a very aggressive type. "So I slunk away, 

back to my cave, and thought, Well, I might as well wander around, see how people are doing." 

Which he did, winding up in the office of Walt Rostow. 

Rostow's secretary was a middle-aged woman, a genial type, and he went over and sat on the 

side of Walt's desk to chat with her. His in box was next to Kenneth. While they were talking, 

Kenneth picked the in box up and began to go down through it. "Hey, what are you up to?!" she said, 

and Kenneth replied that he was just finding out what Rostow was up to. She scolded him, but then 

Kenneth found a paper that struck a chord. Here was one Kenneth could help Rostow on. The 

secretary said this was impossible. They couldn't ask Kenneth to do anything on that memo. "Well, 

who's asking me?" Kenneth replied. Well, he couldn't even volunteer to do it. "I'm not volunteering 

anything," Kenneth said, and walked off with the memo under his arm. The secretary "let out a 

scream." Where was he going? Kenneth said he wanted to read the memo over more carefully. He 

would bring it back. "Go on, sit GRZQ, behave yourself!" he said. He was on good terms with her, 

540


and would take her out for coffee, as he did with all the secretaries, knowing how important their role 

was. 

Kenneth read the memo over, sat down at his typewriter, and wrote a memo that was not 

addressed to anyone or signed by anyone, clipped it to the memo he had taken from Rostow's office, 

and took the two memos back and put them in the in box. 

Rostow was saying at that time that he and Bundy were interchangeable. Both could do the 

other's work. Perhaps, Bundy would not have agreed. They were very different people, but both of 

them were very self-important. "And they ZHUH important. And very able. Very fast in the mind." 

A day or so later, Kenneth went through the same operation, found something he knew he 

could help Rostow out on, and took the memo. He asked the secretary if Rostow had read the first 

memo he'd written, and she said that he had indeed. "I saw him stick it in his pocket," she said. 

Kenneth wrote a second memo, clipped it to the purloined memo, and dropped the two of them back 

in Rostow's in box. 

This went on for four months. "And Walt became very conscious of my existence. He knew 

that I was the guy that was doing it, of course. He asked me who was doing this sort of stuff. But 

there was nothing to identify me with the memo at all. So finally, he called me in. He said, 'Ken,' he 

said, 'you're very helpful to me.' He said, 'The stuff that you've been providing me has really been 

excellent.' He said, 'Would you like to stay here and work with me if I can arrange it with the 

President.' And I said, 'Oh yes, of course.' 'Well,' he said, 'I'll ask him.' So he did, and then he called 

me in again. 'Well,' he said, 'I talked to the President about you, and he said, "I can't do it any way. 

Doesn't matter how much you want him. I have a deal with Scoop Jackson [a Senator], and the deal 

with Scoop Jackson [was] that not a single body of the working force for the National Security 

Council of the Operations Co-ordinating Board will be retained. They're abolished, and that includes 

Ken Landon. I'm sorry. But maybe you can get him in touch with somebody over in the State 

Department where his talents could be useful to us."'" 

So Walt called the fellow who was in charge of research and analysis, "who later became the 

Assistant Secretary in charge of assassinating Ngo Dinh Diem." Rostow made an appointment for 

Kenneth to call on the man and possibly join his staff. When Kenneth walked in, the man took one 

look at Kenneth and didn't like what he saw. "And I took one look at he, and I didn't like what I saw 

either. We hadn't even exchanged words." The interview was polite, the man making clear that 

Kenneth wasn't right for his staff. 

Early in the Kennedy administration, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, asked, "Where's Ken 

Landon?" He wanted to see Kenneth, and this word reached Kenneth. But Kenneth did not call on 

him because he knew what Rusk wanted. He wanted Kenneth to be an ambassador in some 

Southeast Asian country, in Saigon, Bangkok, perhaps Laos, and Kenneth wasn't interested in that. 

But Rusk had Kenneth on his mind "because I'd worked with Dean Rusk quite extensively before." 

Rusk then sent word over to the director of the Foreign Service Institute to call Ken Landon over and 

put him on the staff. Kenneth was at that time receiving more income in his job than the director of 

FSI, to whom he was to be a special assistant. The executive officer who arranged this was upset by 

it, but he had no recourse because Rusk had asked that it be done and that Landon be kept at his 

present level. The director was a man about to retire, and Kenneth thinks Rusk envisioned Kenneth's 

becoming director. [FSI was part of the State Department but located across the river in Rosslyn, Virginia.] 

"At any rate, the job I had was the easiest job I ever had in the government. It was to conduct 

a two-week course on Southeast Asia once every six weeks." He would do his two weeks and then 

have four weeks off when he could go off and wander around the town, visit friends, do whatever he 

wanted. He thought that he would just coast along to retirement there. 

541


3 

22:06 Then in January, 1962, Kenneth received a phone call from Walt Rostow. Rostow said, 

"Ken, I may have a job for you that might interest you. You want to come over?" Of course he did. 

So Kenneth went over to the White House. Rostow had a Presidential directive, called a National 

Security Council directive, NSC directive #-something or other, which Rostow himself was drafting. 

"And he said, 'How would you like to take this job on?' and he tossed this piece of paper at me." It 

was a directive to establish a seminar at the highest executive level, for ambassadors, generals, and 

equivalent officers in embassy teams for training them in how to counter insurgency [that is, how to 

counter communist insurgency, which was a major threat in many third-world countries at 

that time]. There had never been such a seminar, and there had never been such a concept for a 

seminar in the U.S. government before. The idea was to set up country teams, which would be 

identified as country teams, not just people in an embassy under an ambassador, which was the 

tradition, but as teams, with the ambassador being the chairman of the team. "And I was to set up the 

training program to train them on how to counter insurgency. This had grown out of a mission of 

Walt Rostow with General Maxwell Taylor to Indochina, and particular to Saigon, to study the 

problem of insurgency and how to cope with it. They recognized that it was a novel kind of warfare 

and that we must learn ourselves how to counter insurgency and teach it to the people in a country 

where there ZDV insurgency, to teach WKHP how to counter insurgency. And I read it, and I thought to 

myself, Well, this is quite a job. I don't now how to counter insurgency. I was generally on the other 

side myself, as a kid. I knew more about how to be insurgent than I did to be a counter-insurgent. 

But I'm willing to take on anything. And it was certainly fascinating. So I reread the directive very 

carefully, and I made only one slight change which gave me a blank check. As I explained to Walt 

Rostow, 'Unless I've got the money, I can't do anything. You can't do anything in government 

without cash, and I've got to have a blank check whereby the Undersecretary of State will have to 

honor any authorization I make for the purchase of anything, or the rental of anything, in setting this 

seminar up. And if it's a Presidential directive, he will have to carry it out.' And Walt made the 

change. And it was so done. So I took on the job. 

"And then I met with the committee. The chairman was Maxwell Taylor himself. His deputy 

was a two-star Marine general, 'Brute' Krulak. Alex Johnson, former ambassador to China and now 

Undersecretary of State for political-military affairs. And an equivalent officer from the CIA, and so 

on. These were the people that I met with who were to be the committee to approve or disapprove of 

what I was contemplating doing in setting up a seminar on how to counter insurgency under this 

Presidential directive." That meeting was held in early February of 1962. Krulak told Kenneth that 

his first class of sixty officers would arrive on June 4. "Are you going to be ready?" Kenneth said, 

"Of course, General. Whatever date is set, we'll be ready." It was the answer they wanted, so he 

gave them the answer they wanted. But Kenneth didn't know how in the world he was going to do it. 

"I didn't even have quarters yet. I didn't have a place yet. I didn't have a book. I didn't have a 

professor. I didn't have a concept. I didn't have anything. I had the whole thing to do from scratch." 

Kenneth found a secretary. And a librarian, a woman who applied for the job but who told 

him that she had had cancer in one of her eyes. Perhaps he wouldn't want to employ her. Kenneth 

replied that it was VKH he was interested in, not her cancer. She turned out to be wonderful. Kenneth 

started buying books in lots of fifty copies. At the beginning, he had a section in the Institute which 

was inadequate. He later to moved to more generous quarters, in the Arlington Towers, facing the 

Iwo Jima monument. [This was before FSI moved to its own building, also in Rosslyn.] 

Kenneth set things up so that each country team would have its own room. "I was working 

around eighteen hours a day. I about killed myself." He developed a bibliography. Rostow put him 

touch with Max Milliken, Lucian Pye, Everett Hayden (SP?), Sullivan [Sodoman? garbled] Poole, 

542


all of MIT, and a couple of professors over at Harvard whom Kenneth quickly "dumped" because 

they weren't up to the standards of the MIT people. "These were probably the finest scholars in the 

country at that time on such subjects as social change, economic development, political development, 

and things of that sort which were basic in my concept for how to deal with a society that had to 

improve the situation for the general population in social change and in economic development and in 

political development to counter the insurgency, to give them real substance. So I developed my 

bibliography, and after I had it together, and before I ordered all my books, I sent a copy up to the 

MIT professors to ask for any suggestions for any books other than these." He received back within 

ten days or so a consensus from them that Kenneth had covered their fields so thoroughly in 

bibliographical materials that they only made a few additions, "which I thought was the biggest 

compliment I ever had from outstanding scholars of that sort." 

4 

32:52 The first class was to be sixty officers, presumably all going to Southeast Asia, to judge from 

what Rostow had told Kenneth. But the more Kenneth thought about it, the more improbable this 

seemed. Then about three weeks before the class was to meet, Rostow called him up and said, "Ken, 

I've got some very heavy news for you, and I don't know how you're going to handle it. It's been 

decided by the council that oversees this counter-insurgency work that of the sixty officers, thirty will 

be going to Latin America." Could he handle that? Kenneth said that he didn't see why not. How 

would he go about it? Rostow asked. "Well, I'm going to get some experts. I've got lots of money, 

don't forget." And Kenneth hired three or four outstanding scholars on Latin America to come 

immediately to his office from their universities, one of them from American University who was 

very good, and asked them to put together a bibliography from their materials and also to vet 

Kenneth's operating of his [Southeast Asia] syllabi that he was developing and do them over along 

the same lines for Latin America. "Well, we had a terrible scramble buying all the books necessary 

to extend these concepts to Latin America, but we did it." 

When the class met, thirty were in country teams to go to Southeast Asia, and thirty in country 

teams to go to Latin America, and they were actually on assignment to go to these countries. "I 

mean, this wasn't just an academic operation. This was for real. And they were there under a 

Presidential directive." The first session "was opened by the Secretary of State, he himself 

personally. Dean Rusk impressed upon them the importance of this. And Walt Rostow was there. 

Not McGeorge Bundy. Walt Rostow, because Walt was the person who was doing this kind of work. 

And Alex Johnson was there, representing the Department of State, so I had a lot of high-powered 

stuff standing with me on the platform while we were setting this thing going the first day." 

About the third day, General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, Jr., the son of the great general of World 

War II fame objected to the amount of work being asked of the class. All these high officers were 

indignant to think that they were required to go to class, and come and study, especially under 

somebody who wasn't even an ambassador. Every morning, Kenneth had them all meet together with 

him, and then they would break off into their country team work. They were being fed the actual 

intelligence reports from the countries to which they were to be assigned. They were dealing with 

real problems in the light of the studies that were going on in Kenneth's course. "This was a very 

unique thing. It attracted attention all over the United States. I had people coming in from many 

universities to find out what was going on. Of course, they didn't have access to these classified 

documents. But they were fascinated to think how this would work out. Here were people who were 

going to countries to deal with real problems, and now first for four weeks they were doing intensive 

academic work dealing with the concepts of social change and economic development and political 

development and so on of this sort. And also how to counter insurgency on the military side, in 

543


irregular warfare. Special operations was part of this. That was the military side of it which I didn't 

tackle with. That was provided by the military in the classroom. 

"So about the third day, General Stilwell stood up. He said, 'Professor, I've been studying this 

syllabus and the required readings, and I've looked all the way through from beginning to end. And 

Professor, that's an awful lot of readings. Do you expect us, really, to read all these assigned 

readings?' And he sat down. Well, the whole class of sixty had put him up to this because they felt 

the same way. I could see that. Quite natural. And I said, 'General, I arranged these readings 

according to my understanding of the browsing habits of chickens.' They were stunned. Astonished. 

And I paused. I said, 'It's a well-known fact that if you have a group of chickens out in the yard, and 

you throw grain out to them, that they will peck and they will peck and they will peck until they have 

had enough, and they will be satisfied, and they will wander around, and socialize a little on the side, 

the roosters with the hens.' And I said, 'It's also a well-known fact that if you take a chicken and tie 

him by his leg to a stake and pour a little grain beside him, that he will eat it all up, if he can. He'll 

just keep pecking because he has nothing else to do. And if you put a pound of grain beside him, he 

will peck and peck and peck and peck until he's so full he has to lie down beside it, and lying beside 

it, every once in a while, he'll reach over and peck some more. And, General, that's what I expect 

you to do with those readings.'" Kenneth's father was the source of this story. 

Once, while Brad Landon was chief chemist of the Erie Railroad, it happened that a whole 

trainload of chickens died in transit to Jersey City, and the chicken people sued the railroad for 

compensation. Brad was summoned to Jersey City as someone who supposedly would know 

something about chickens, along with paint and varnish and anything else. As he was riding East, he 

went into the smoker and passed the time with other men in the car, among whom were a couple of 

farmers, one of them a chicken farmer. So Brad engaged them on the subject of chickens. The 

chicken farmer told Brad this story about chickens and their eating habits. If you wanted to fatten a 

chicken, you confined it so that it had nothing to do but eat. When Brad heard this, he concluded that 

a chicken confined with grain and constantly eating could well die from the grain swelling up inside 

its crop if it drank a good deal of water. "That's right," the farmer said, "you have to be careful. If 

you overfeed 'em and then give 'em a lot to drink, they could suffocate." The next day, this was what 

Brad explained to a sober meeting of railroad executives, who were highly impressed by Brad's 

expertise on chickens. What he told them was that the chicken people had done themselves in by 

overfeeding their chickens in transit and giving them lots of water to increase their weight. 

So the railroad won the suit. 

In developing his syllabus, Kenneth had run it by the authorizing committee, including 

Rostow, "Brute" Krulak, and others, who approved it. When he began, he wasn't sure whether the 

course would run six weeks, five weeks, or what, but in the end, he settled on four weeks. So that 

first class ran its four weeks and completed the course. 

5 

43:40 The next class began immediately. And during this one, Kenneth was informed that he must 

cover the whole world, not only Southeast Asia and Latin America, but also Africa, the Middle East, 

and South Asia. "We were countering insurgency, in theory, everywhere in the world." By the time 

Kenneth ran the third class, then, it covered the whole world. 

Also, at that time, Kenneth had to brief all State Department officers with a series of six 

lectures on how to counter insurgency. This was done in the main auditorium with four hundred 

State Department officials at a crack, which was what the auditorium would hold. This included all 

employees of the Department GS-7 and up. "Well that was quite a job." Kenneth had to set up the 

lectures. He was one of the lecturers. Walt Rostow was the lecturer once. And he had other faculty 

544


members that he brought down from MIT to give lectures, and also lecturers from various 

government departments. They had to run through the entire series of six lectures a number of times 

in order to cover the Department of State employees. "We did it a good many times, the same 

lectures on how to counter insurgency." Kenneth was even going out to the National Institutes of 

Health to lecture the doctors on how to counter insurgency. "It came to be an absurdity, as far as I 

was concerned. Overdoing it. But the government always overdoes everything." 

Then the military began to get irritated with Kenneth. "Brute" Krulak complained that 

Professor Landon was having them study stuff on "repairing the house." There was no point 

"repairing the house" when it was on fire. You had to put out the fire first [that is, destroy the 

communist revolutionaries militarily before concerning yourself with improving the conditions of the people]. He 

insisted that the curriculum be changed, but Kenneth refused. "I had what I thought was a wellbalanced 

course. Well, Brute Krulak was a very effective warrior in the corridors of Washington. I 

had to introduce him one time. I said he was the most aggressive, able Marine general in combat in 

the halls of Washington, and I trembled to think for any enemy that he might meet outside of the halls 

of Washington when he was really carrying his weaponry with him. He wasn't sure he liked it, but he 

wasn't sure he didn't." The military went to work to try to blast Kenneth out of there. They went to 

Alex Johnson and got Alex to depose him. "Well, he couldn't just arbitrarily fire me because I'd done 

one hell of a job. He can't say it wasn't a good job. And so he connived with Jeff Kitchen to hire a 

fellow, a Jewish fellow, named Abe Moses, Abraham Moses—I didn't know this at the time, of 

course—to tour around in the government to investigate me, to get something on me, so that I could 

be fired. 

"And one day Moses gave me a ring. He said, 'You don't know me. But I'd like to come and 

call on you, Mr. Landon.' So I said, 'Come ahead.' So he came in. And he said, 'I'm going to tell you 

something that will shock you.' He said, 'I was commissioned to winnow your career, to find out 

something-or-other that we could get on you to get you fired, because they want to fire you out of this 

job.' And he said, 'It's my conclusion they ought to give you a medal.' He said, 'Everybody I've 

talked to of any significance sings your praises. And that goes all the way back through your career.' 

He said, 'I've really gone back to the foundation.' And he said, 'I haven't found anything that anyone 

could take exception to. You've done some great work.' But he said, 'Nevertheless, you're going to 

be fired. You'll be removed from your job.' He said, 'I just want to tell you that this will happen.' 

And he said, 'And I have had to make my report. And my report is that you are impeccable. And 

they'll have to do something of a decent nature. Otherwise, the administration would look bad.' This 

is what he told me. 'Okay,' I said, 'Thank you very much.' I wanted to get out of the job anyway 

because I didn't know how to counter insurgency. I didn't think anybody else knew how to counter 

insurgency. But we were going through the motions, and it was about as good a course as you could 

imagine. There wasn't anything that anyone could dream up that would have been an improvement. 

At least, I thought so, and a good many other people thought so too." 

Kenneth had been in that job for about a year. In 1963, Alex Johnson showed up at the 

beginning of one of the courses, without any consultation with Kenneth. The Director of the Foreign 

Service Institute, George Something-or-other, wanted badly to become an ambassador. Apparently, 

George had worked with Alex Johnson to set this thing up at the beginning of the class. Alex was up 

on the stage to welcome the new class, and he called Kenneth up. Among the fifty to sixty officers 

was Ruth Bacon, who had been one of Kenneth's colleagues in FE when he first joined it in 1943. 

She was a senior officer now, going to the field, sitting in the front row of the class. Alex Johnson 

put his arm around Kenneth's shoulder and said, "I want to commend Dr. Landon for the wonderful 

work that he has done with this course"—which was now called the National Interdepartmental 

Seminar; Kenneth had only called it the Country Team Seminar, but they wanted something more 

545


elegant, so they rechristened it with the new name. Alex Johnson "gave quite a eulogy of the 

wonderful job that I had done, and he said, 'But we feel that now it's in a position where an 

administrator can carry this program on, and Dr. Landon can go on to other things. And I have just 

nominated him to become the Dean of Area Studies for the Foreign Service Institute. And if he 

accepts this position, he will be in charge of all the area studies program throughout the world." It 

sounded very elegant. "First I knew of it," Kenneth says. "And I stood there beaming, and Ruth 

Bacon was just shocked. She knew I was being fired, of course, and all the others of them knew I 

was being kicked out. But she was really shocked. I can still remember her face. And I was smiling 

and beaming all the time. I was thinking, Thank God, I get out of this mess! I didn't know what 

Dean of Area Studies would amount to, but I would soon find out. So I accepted very graciously and 

with thanks, and I agreed that an administrator could carry on this great program which had been 

developed 'under the direction of the Undersecretary of State Alexander Johnson.' Wow! All the 

decencies were preserved, and I left the platform to applause and disappeared into the Foreign 

Service Institute to become the Dean of Area Studies. But nobody knew what I was going to do as 

Dean of Area Studies. I didn't. No one else had a clue. Up to that time, they had area study 

programs, but it was more or less hit or miss." They were not up to date with what was going on in 

academia. 

6 

54:41 Kenneth had a budget of sorts that enabled him to do some travelling, and he visited the 

centers for area studies at MIT, Boston University, Cornell, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern, 

and studied how they did it and what was going on in area studies of Latin America, the Middle East, 

China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and so on. Kenneth didn't go out to the West coast. He was already in 

touch with Berkeley anyway. "I was well-informed, probably as well-informed as anybody in the 

United States in academia on all these different kinds of area study programs. And each one had 

grown up like topsy in its own way." Kenneth also studied the FSI area studies, of course, and 

proceeded to reorganize the whole outfit so that they would have a more solid, integrated approach to 

area study programs throughout the world for Foreign Service officers. 

Kenneth worked there from 1963 through 1965. 

Ernest Griffith, meanwhile, had kept up communication with Kenneth through all the years. 

He had been involved with William Donovan in bringing Kenneth to Washington in the first place. 

He was now at Legislative Reference in the Library of Congress and was moving over to American 

University to establish the School of International Studies. He called Kenneth up one night after he 

and Margaret had gone to bed to ask Kenneth if he would be chairman of the curriculum committee 

to set up the curriculum for the school for the ABMA Ph.D. It was one of a number of committees, 

not the only one. Griffith had many committees doing this, six to eight. Kenneth didn't want to do it, 

but he did. So he was involved with that school from its foundation. Griffith did a wonderful job 

setting up SIS, Kenneth says. 

Each year, Ernest would give Kenneth a ring and say, "Ken, when are you going to join my 

faculty?" In 1964, near the end of the year, Ernest invited Kenneth to lunch at the Cosmos Club, and 

they had lunch. Ernest said he had a problem. Heimsat (SP?), their South Asian professor, was 

going on sabbatical to India. Milledge Walker, on Southeast Asia, was leaving the country on 

sabbatical also, to do studies in Indonesia. Which left a terrible gap at SIS. And he said, "I just KDYH 

to have you. Can't you come?" Kenneth said he would think about it, and after a bit of thought, there 

at the table, he said, yes, maybe that would be a possibility. They went outside, and talked a few 

minutes on the sidewalk, then parted. Griffith "started to walk toward Florida Avenue, and I started 

to walk in the other direction. I was going on downtown. And I had gotten to the corner, and he had 

546


gotten to the corner in the other direction, and suddenly he turned around and he shouted. . . ." 

547


HOUR 85 

Session #57 continued December 29, 1988 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Carol Pearson 

1 

0:00 (XIIIA910) Kenneth continues on his move to American University. After his luncheon with 

Ernest Griffith at the Cosmos Club, they parted outside and walked away from each other. As 

Griffith got to the corner, "suddenly he turned around and he shouted, 'Ken, did you say yes!!' And I 

turned around, and I said, 'Yes!' 'Oh waaasaw! [falsetto and unintelligible]. It didn't sink in!' And he 

came rushing back and embraced me." Kenneth explained that he had to work things out with the 

State Department, and Griffith said that he had to have Kenneth in January. When Kenneth talked to 

his executive officer at the Department, he discovered that he had years of annual leave that he had 

accumulated during the war years and never lost. After that, if you didn't use it, you lost it. But the 

leave he had accumulated during the war was still good. Kenneth worked out an arrangement with 

Ernest Griffith according to which he would work half-time during the day and do some work in the 

evenings. With the State Department, Kenneth worked out an arrangement according to which he 

would take off three mornings a week from January on, using his accumulated annual leave so that he 

continued to receive his full salary. 

Thus, starting January, 1965, Kenneth began work as a full professor at American University 

while continuing as a fulltime employee of the State Department. At the end of the year, when he 

retired from the Department of State, he had one whole year's second income which he plowed 

entirely into paying off the mortgage on 4711 Fulton St. In that year of 1965, he paid off the 

mortgage after twenty-one years. 

At the end of 1965, Kenneth retired from government service. There was a reception for him 

and several other retirees, which Dean Rusk hosted. Rusk awarded Kenneth a medal in honor of his 

years of service. 

2 

4:20 Even before Kenneth hit the campus of the university, Ernest Griffith asked him to set up the 

Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. In going to the university, Kenneth insisted on a 

contract for three years. Griffith said this was not necessary. He was on a year-to-year contract 

himself. One could stay at the university as long as he pleased. But Kenneth insisted, and so it was 

done. And ironically, Ernest Griffith was suddenly fired just before Kenneth arrived on campus! He 

was replaced by an ambitious professor, Charlie Something. Then within the year Charlie died. 

That first year, Kenneth set up the new Center. He got money from the government, from the 

Department of Education, to help. He had an interdisciplinary area study program involving 

language, religion, economics, political science, government, the whole works. "We had a very well 

rounded area program. I was up on area programs. I was hot as a pistol on area programs. I knew 

how to do it because I had just been working in it for all parts of the world in the Foreign Service 

Institute." And he had kept in touch with programs around the country. The president of the 

university was very pleased with the Center. Heimsat was teaching on India, Indian society and 

politics. There was a Sanskrit scholar. "Oh, we had everything going." They taught Thai, and 

Burmese, and Vietnamese, Hindi, and Indonesian. "It was really a very active program." 

At the end of Kenneth's three-year contract, no one said anything, so Kenneth just carried on. 

He never had a new contract. It was all routine until he reached age seventy-one. They had been 

548


thinking of him as a professor, which he was, but then it dawned on the university that Kenneth really 

was an administrator, since along with his teaching he ran the Center. And administrators were 

required to retire at age sixty-five. So they required that he retire that year, 1974, at the end of the 

school year. 

[In June, 1974, then, Kenneth's professional career came to its end. He says little about 

the program he ran at American U, but I believe there were courses for undergraduates 

along with the Ph.D. program. It was a tumultuous time because of the Vietnam War and the 

many student protests. I recall stories of Kenneth's stepping over the bodies of students 

staging protests that involved obstructing access to the building. I also recall Kenneth and 

Margaret's entertaining groups of students in their home. Dad loved it all. With his 

tremendous vitality and brilliant mind, he could have continued indefinitely at full power.] 

3 

9:26 At the end of the first class Kenneth conducted in the National Interdepartmental Seminar in 

1962, he took the entire class of sixty to meet with John Fitzgerald Kennedy at the White House. 

Kenneth had written a memorandum to the President telling him about the class and its nature, 

describing succinctly what the class had done, a one-page memo with a couple of attachments. He 

transported the class to the White House on buses, where they were met by Walt Rostow and General 

Maxwell Taylor. "And we stood in the driveway, and we lined this whole sixty up, three abreast, 

standing in the driveway in the front of the White House. And I just walked around the side of the 

White House to the President's office quite casually. There were no security guards. And I came up 

to the window, ah, to the door—it was a french kind of a, very long door that sort of swung this 

way—" Kip interjects, "This was facing on the famous Rose Garden?" "Yeah," says Kenneth. "And 

there was Jack Kennedy sitting at his desk. He looked up and said, 'Well who are you?!' I said, 'I'm 

Kenneth Landon. You have a memorandum from me in your in box. I've brought the graduates of 

the first course which you have authorized on how to counter insurgency. And they are standing in 

the driveway in front of the White House, and they would like to pay their respects.' 'Oh!' he said. 

'Oh! oh.' And he grabbed his in box. 'Oh yes, here it is! Give me a minute.' So I backed off. I don't 

think he took more than three minutes, four at the most. And he came bounding out, no paper in his 

hands, walked over with me, met the whole group, and he gave an absolutely EULOOLDQW exegesis of 

what that course was all about. He was a quick study. Very fast mind. And they were thrilled; they 

were quite thrilled." 

That was the only time Kenneth took the class over, a unique experience. 

In the area studies programs Kenneth ran from 1963 through 1965, the students were regular 

Foreign Service officers preparing to go to their foreign assignments. They studied language, and 

they studied the areas of the world to which they were going. Kenneth felt the existing courses were 

superficial, inadequate, not interdisciplinary, so he reorganized the whole thing along the lines of 

serious area studies program in American universities. The courses were intense; the officers only 

had a month. The area studies covered all parts of the world. Kenneth brought in professors from 

around the country to lecture, and he had resident professors. He also drew on the various agencies 

of the government, USIA, AID, the Pentagon, and so on. One man in particular that Kenneth brought 

in to lecture was Joseph Campbell, who was famous for his knowledge of mythology. [Margaret 

and Kenneth put him up in their home on at least one occasion, perhaps more than once.] 

Another man was a Professor O'Brien from Ohio State University. When he came the first 

time, there stood a full-blooded Arab. Kenneth asked if his father had been Irish. No, he was an 

Arab. O'Brien just laughed. When his grandfather came to this country, O'Brien explained, he spoke 

549


no English. At the port of New York, they asked his name, and the answer was Ibrahim. The Irish 

immigration officer asked him to say the name again. "Ibrahim." "O'Brien it is!" the Irish officer 

declared, and the family has been O'Brien ever since. 

Kenneth brought in Professor Benda from Yale, and people from Cornell, and Michigan. Pete 

Gosling (SP?) came in from Michigan to lecture on geography. 

We return to the National Interdepartmental Seminar for a moment. At the end of the first 

class, Kenneth discovered that many books had been stolen. Fifty or sixty volumes had vanished, 

perhaps more. The librarian had warned people that they would be fined if they didn't return the 

books. One man, who was going out to be an ambassador, took twenty to twenty-five books with 

him. Kenneth dealt with this by deducting the value of the books from the pay of the various officers 

who had taken them. "I want to tell you there was an outcry, a terrible outcry of anguish!" Kenneth 

informed the next class of what had happened, and said he would be delighted to have the members 

of the class take books with them but with the understanding that the cost of the books would be 

deducted from their pay. And the second class walked off with many books too. The books had to 

be continually replaced. The way it was finally worked out was that the officers would deduct the 

price of the books from the incidental fund at the embassy to which they were going. 

4 

20:24 "So that more or less completes my life, and then since then, I've been a cook." 

Returning again to the Seminar: On about the second or third day of the first course, General 

Stilwell informed Kenneth that he would be departing on Thursday at a certain time and would report 

back in on Tuesday. "And I said, 'Negative, General.' '1HJDWLYH!!?' he said. I said, 'Negative, 

General. You're not going anywhere. You're here under a Presidential directive, and you're going to 

be here.' 'Yes, sir!' he said. He hadn't expected that." 

General Krulak had hoped to become head of the Marine Corps. When Kenneth left for the 

Foreign Service Institute, the General took over the National Interdepartmental Seminar, reorganizing 

the syllabus and changing the program. About two years afterward, when Kenneth had moved over 

to American University, he went to the Cosmos Club one day for lunch, walking up into the large 

reception room on the second floor, and there ran into Max Milliken and Lucian Pye sitting on a 

couch. They told him that the Seminar "was back where you headed it." The revisions required by 

the military had turned out to be inadequate, and so the program had been re-reorganized. 

"While we're talking about Krulak, he did get his third star out of me, on this. And he went to 

Vietnam. And he went along with those military, General Westmoreland and the rest of the dummies 

that made a mess of the war out there. He went along with them until toward the end he was too 

smart to be completely fooled, and at last he woke up. And he came to Washington and tried his best 

to swing McNamara into his line of thinking about insurgency, feeling that the way the war was 

being fought was simply slaughtering Marines needlessly, pointlessly, that the war was being lost, 

that they must change the nature of the war." He hurt himself by this, antagonizing the top military, 

so that when the vacancy appeared at the head of the Marine Corps, he who was the natural for it was 

passed over. He was bitterly disappointed. "He ZDV smart at the end. But it was too late for him to 

wake up. Westmoreland never was awake. He never did know what the war was about. Never 

found out." 

Margaret asks about the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. Kenneth says that he wasn't 

involved with that. It involved Ambassador Nolting. 

Kip asks about Kenneth's title at FSI. Kenneth's resumé says "Associate Dean, School of 

Language and Area Studies." Kenneth was in charge of the area studies, so that he was Dean of Area 

550


Studies, he says, but in the total structure of the school, he was the Associate Dean. Having said that, 

Kenneth goes over in his mind the structure of the Foreign Service Institute. There was a director, 

and under him there were associate deans, an associate dean for language studies, an associate dean 

for area studies, and an associate dean for something else. There were two or three deans. 

When the National Security Council met for the first time under John F. Kennedy in 1961, 

Jimmy Lay was still the secretary. He had been secretary under Truman and Eisenhower. He was 

accustomed to making minutes of the procedures of the NSC, which set policies under the President's 

and his advisors' direction. After that first meeting, Jimmy Lay carefully prepared the minute and 

went in to the President and offered him the minute for his approval. Kennedy asked what it was, and 

when Lay told him, Kennedy said that he didn't want the minute. It should be torn up. Lay couldn't 

believe it. But Kennedy repeated that he wanted no minutes kept. Lay was to destroy and dispose of 

what he had written. "Jimmy just couldn't believe his ears." So at the next meeting of the NSC, he 

again made a careful record and wrote a precise minute of the meeting and took it in to the President. 

When Kennedy realized what it was, he flew into a rage, reasserting his decision that no minutes 

should be kept. He ripped up the paper and fired Jimmy Lay on the spot. "I won't have a man around 

here who disobeys me! You get out!" So Jimmy Lay went back to the CIA until his final retirement. 

"That actually happened." 

They found by the end of the first year of the Kennedy administration that the U.S. 

government was in chaos, "because all committees had been abolished. There were no committees. 

There was no co-ordination among agencies of any substantial sort, of any orderly sort. And so, in 

desperation, they had to set up what they called 'action teams.' They were action teams set up for 

action on Vietnam, for instance, and things like this, which were again committees. They found they 

couldn't do without something like that. And it was a time of very great informality so that people 

attached to the White House didn't bother with any of the niceties or formalities of 

intercommunication. If they wanted to talk to somebody on the staff of somebody of any agency, 

they'd call that man. They wouldn't call his boss. They would call him; tell him to come on over. 

And they wouldn't clear it with anybody, so that it was really chaotic. I mean, government isn't 

connected that way. 

"Well, I got a call to come over on the Buddhist issue. And I was called over by the son of 

the former Secretary of State who committed suicide, James whateverhisnamewas. Forrestal! 

Michael Forrestal. Called me over to talk with him and a couple of other fellows in the White House 

on the Buddhists, who were setting up blockades along the roads to frustrate movement of our 

military trucks and machinery and whatnot, tanks. They were really desperate to know what to do 

about monks. What do you do with them when they immolate themselves and burn themselves to 

death? What do you do with them when they set up Buddhist orders on the highway to prevent the 

movement of traffic? So I was sent over as an expert on Buddhism. Well, they hadn't called 

anybody else. They just called me directly. So I called the Vietnam desk, and I told them about this 

action group. And I told them I was going over and would report back what happened if anything. 

So they were very grateful to be informed. So I went over, and we had two or three hours. And they 

wanted to know, Was it religious or what? I said, 'No, it isn't religious. It's political.' 'What would 

you do?' I said, 'I'd drive right through them.' 'You'd drive right through them?!' 'Yes, I would,' I 

said. 'It's political.' And then I explained to them that from the earliest time of Buddhism in Vietnam 

society, when they were still in North Vietnam, before they even came south, that with the 

organization of the priesthood, the only people of learning were the monks and that they were the 

political advisors, the political guides, for the emperor, and had been and continued to be for the rest 

of the thousand years that they were a kingdom in the north, before they began to come south. Well, 

then they had gotten into trouble with some of the emperors, and they had been abolished and 

551


diminished, and they had become unimportant, but now the Buddhists were again in spate and were 

well-organized and were feeling their oats and wanted to regain and renew their position as political 

advisors and guides to the nation of Vietnam and to the head men. And their problem was also the 

Americans. And so what their action was was designed to make themselves the political guides for 

the development, in this terrible situation with communism and whatnot in the politics of the day. 

And it was political. So it should be treated as political and not religious. 

"They said, 'Thank you very much,' but they didn't have guts enough to do it." Kenneth went 

back and briefed the Vietnam task force people on the discussion at the White House, "which they 

thought was hilarious. They knew that nothing would happen. I knew nothing would happen." 

Kenneth adds, "When they were immolating themselves, these Buddhist monks, they were 

really creating violent spirits, because the real religion is not Buddhism but spiritism." Kenneth 

explained this to Michael Forrestal also, that they weren't really dealing with just Buddhists. They 

were dealing with spirit-worshippers who were using Buddhism as a vehicle for their spiritism. They 

were creating violent spirits to oppose the enemy. The people understood it that way. 

Session #58 January 17, 1989 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

5 

37:11 Queen Ramphai Barni was queen to King Prajadhipok. It was she who visited at 4711 after 

World War II, and whom Kenneth visited in turn on his trip to Thailand in 1950. She is long dead 

now, and Kenneth has the cremation book in the living room here, a very elaborate creation. Kenneth 

thinks that the Thai government did it up to compensate for the fact that no such honors were paid t o 

King Prajadhipok, who abdicated and retired to England. The Queen in 1950 lived, not in Bangkok, 

but on her farm. She was a serious farmer. She felt that as a person of high rank, if she used the 

latest methods, she could set precedents for Thai farmers everywhere, who were used to following the 

royal example. Kenneth asked for an appointment, which was granted, and he was driven down 

around the gulf to her farm on the eastern side, toward Cambodia. The farm was extensive. She 

received him graciously. She was nicely dressed, but not elaborately. "She was a farm woman, and 

she wanted everyone to know it." She served Kenneth tea, which was ordinary politeness among all 

Thai. Then she asked him why he was calling on her. She had no official position of any sort. 

Kenneth answered that he admired her and that also she had been a guest in his home in Washington. 

"Oh yes," she said. "Well, I remember now." That broke the ice, and they had a nice, informal hour's 

chat. She wanted to know what he was doing in Bangkok, and he told her. She wanted to know what 

wedding gift he had brought out to the young King, and he shared that too. It was a pleasant time. 

Kip asks Kenneth to describe the Executive Office Building, next to the White House. When 

he first worked there in October, 1943, and on, the first thing he encountered of interest was on the 

first floor, the offices of General "Black Jack" Pershing. The building reminded Kenneth of the bars 

he had seen as a child because of the saloon doors to the offices that did not go down to the floor or 

up to the top of the door. The ceilings were very high, twenty-four feet, enough for two floors in a 

normal building. All of the lintels were cast iron. When they electrified the building, which had been 

built in the nineteenth century, the winners of the contract thought they had a good thing going until 

they discovered that the lintels were cast iron. There was no way to pry them loose or cut through 

them. They had a terrible time electrifying that building and lost money on the job. The reason for 

the saloon doors was ventilation. Without them, in the days before air conditioning, the air simply 

didn't move. "Everything in that building was permanent." Solidly built. At one time, there was talk 

about tearing down the EOB and building a new structure in its place. But then, as they looked into 

552


it, they realized that the stones of the walls were all laid one on another and pegged into each other. 

These would have to be removed one by one from top to bottom. The walls were very thick, 

designed originally to fend off cannonfire. "You could not use any machinery to push them over. 

You could blast 'em, but what would happen? A few stones would probably get splintered, and that 

would be about it." So they just cleaned the building up, and repaired the roof, and went on using it. 

There were many chimneys—"a congeries of chimneys"—because every office of any 

importance had a fireplace. Most of the fireplaces hadn't been used in decades. Every important 

office also had a mirror. "And these mirrors were magnificent. I mean, they soared from floor up 

possibly eighteen to twenty feet. And the windows were accordingly. I mean, they were big 

windows. And I got to see quite a few of those offices, like Sumner Welles' office, and Nelson 

Rockefeller's office." Rockefeller had his fireplace opened up. Kenneth sneaked in to see what the 

setup was. And observed the birchwood logs Rockefeller had had brought in, each one wrapped in 

cellophane so that he wouldn't get his hands dirty. 

The floors were wood, with large planks. Everything was large, large rooms, large doors, 

large windows. They would take one of these rooms and often run a partition down the middle of it, 

producing a long, narrow room, perhaps ten feet wide, with a twenty-four foot ceiling! That was the 

kind of room Kenneth first worked in, with Larry Salsbury at the window, Rhody Hall, who never 

stopped eating because of his "hyperactive pituitary" in the middle, and Kenneth next to the swing 

doors. Their office was adjacent to that of Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long. Kenneth has told 

the story of how he got the Assistant Secretary's executive office chair. 

7$3( ;,,, 6LGH 

6 

53:59 The Far Eastern offices looked out over the White House grounds. Kenneth was on the third 

floor. 

When Kenneth was on the OCB, he did not attend NSC meetings unless specifically invited. 

"For instance, I was the guy who prepared the first paper ever prepared in the whole history of the 

United States on the role of religion, of Buddhism, in Southeast Asia." That was in the 1950's. 

Kenneth went over to the OCB in 1954, and it took him two or three years to get this idea accepted. 

So he probably delivered the paper to the NSC in 1957 or so. "And they treated it as though it was 

diseased, or leprous, or something. . . ." The paper "had to do with the problems of religion in 

Buddhism for national policy." Kenneth proposed that he be authorized to produce papers on every 

religion throughout the world. After all, he had a scholarly standing in comparative religion. 

However, the paper was simply filed, and the NSC would not authorize another paper on any 

religion. They were worried about what would happen if the Methodists got on to it, or the 

missionaries, etc., seeing the government as tampering with religion. The press would jump all over 

the administration. We have separation of church and state, after all. Kenneth understood the point. 

But at the same time, Kenneth felt that religion was one of the facts of life and played an important 

role in international politics everywhere. It was something to consider and understand. "It's a basis 

of disorder and disagreement between the Jews and the Arabs. And between the Hindhus and the 

Pakistanis. . . ." 

"It was because of me that they brought in a religious advisor to the State Department. They 

did. And he was a fellow named McCartney," who had been the pastor of the Presbyterian church 

down on M Street. He was the first political advisor on religion they'd ever had. "And he was 

succeeded by my successor at Earlham College." 

553


HOUR 86 

Session #58 continued January 17, 1989 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIIB40) McCartney was succeeded by Kenneth's successor at Earlham College. He knew 

he had gotten the job because of Kenneth. And he was the last one. They had two religious advisors. 

And no one would listen to them. Neither of them really knew anything on the political significance 

of religion, Kenneth says. They were probably fine at a religious meeting, but that had "nothing to do 

with the real world." Kip comments, "The SROLWLFDO world." "Yes, I'm talking about the UHDO world. 

That's the UHDO world, the political world. Without politics, you haven't got a nation." 

We return to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. "It's a big story, and I was never involved 

in that. I was one of the many observers who saw what was going on and was horrified by it because 

I had known Ngo Dinh Diem and had been in, you might say, on the creation of Ngo Dinh Diem 

when he was an unemployed national with holes in his shoes. He was brought in by General 

Sullivan, who was a Foreign Service officer and was a Roman Catholic and who was very closely 

allied with this Catholic bishop, or archbishop, up in Boston, who took on Ngo Dinh Diem as his 

protegé because Ngo Dinh Diem's brother was a Catholic bishop, you see." Sullivan brought Ngo 

Dinh Diem down to John Foster Dulles, after which Diem became the Prime Minister of South 

Vietnam and then, after a lot of finagling and a big conference in Europe in 1954, the President. 

In the Kennedy administration, it was decided that South Vietnam wasn't winning the war 

with North Vietnam with Diem as President and that someone more popular was needed who could 

win the hearts and minds of the southern people. The trouble was that there was no one else. "When 

they killed him, they killed the whole thing." What the "ignoramuses" in this country didn't know 

was that the military under the mandarin system in Vietnam were somewhat similar to the military 

under the mandarins in China. "You do not use good iron to make nails, and you do not use good 

men to make soldiers." In the mandarin system, as developed in Vietnam, there were nine ranks, and 

the military type could never rise above the top of rank six or the bottom of rank seven at the best. 

The top ranks were reserved for civilians. The general, no matter how successful in war, was still 

subservient in the Vietnamese pecking order. If a general wanted to become truly famous in 

Vietnam, he didn't do it by his prowess in war. He did by his skill with the stylus, in drawing 

characters, in writing essays, in being literary, a scholar. The people in the Kennedy administration 

had no understanding of this, and especially John [actually Henry] Cabot Lodge, "a mandarin from 

Boston." When they killed Diem off, they were killing all hope for anything. There was no 

alternative to him. 

"One of my Foreign Service colleagues who had been the ambassador, Nolting, Frederick 

Nolting, when it was proposed to him, that he officiate at the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, he 

refused. He balked. He wouldn't do it. So that's why they pulled him. They sent him on vacation. 

Then they sent out John Cabot Lodge." Kip asks if Kenneth actually means Henry Cabot Lodge. 

"Oh, Henry Cabot Lodge!" Kenneth realizes he has been confusing him with John Cabot, another 

Foreign Service man, who brought to America the Chinese paintings Margaret had ordered in 1949 

and 1950. Lodge had been successful at the United Nations representing the U.S. Kip says that he 

had heard a version of the story according to which the Kennedy administration gave its blessing to a 

coup, but never imagined that Diem would be killed. Kenneth replies, "Oh, that's not so. They knew 

he was going to be killed. In fact, they knew very well that the only way you could really get rid of 

554


him was to kill him. It was an assassination procedure. And this was very commonly talked about. 

This kind of thing was very commonly talked about in the CIA. In fact, they had an assassination 

outline planned to assassinate Sihanouk at one time, to have him poisoned. Unfortunately, somebody 

else ate the poison. So he was quite astonished, but he realized that it was an attempt on his life. 

They also cooked up a plan to assassinate that Indonesian, Sukarno, and overthrow his government 

and set up a new kind of government." "The funniest exchange occurred over that when they ordered 

one of our flattops to go down into Indonesian waters, and Dulles ordered that they send him a 

message to be alert. And he sent a message back saying, 'I DP alert. Who's the enemy?' Which 

caused an awful laugh all over political Washington here when that news got out. 'I DP alert. Who's 

the enemy?' Well, Sukarno wasn't taken in by all this. He survived. And then, what he did, I 

thought, was to thumb his nose at the assassination attempts of the American government because he 

loaded a big plane full of his so-called political enemies, including the head of the communist party— 

this was in the Eisenhower administration—and brought them to New York to the United Nations. 

And he asked for an appointment to call on the President in the White House, and he was given such 

an appointment. He came in with his entourage. And he just about knocked the ears off Eisenhower 

when he introduced his entourage, and he said, 'And Mr. President, may I introduce our leading 

communist?' Ike really dropped his uppers on that one. I mean, it was insulting, but it was also 

informing him that he and his government wasn't going to succeed in assassinating Sukarno. So, I 

mean, it was a commonplace thing in the thinking of the CIA, and people of that sort, that they could 

assassinate somebody who was a chief of state, and get rid of him, and put in a government more to 

their liking. But it reached its, you might say, its real tryout, its field effort, when they knocked off 

Ngo Dinh Diem. And this nonsense about how they didn't expect to kill him, they were just going to 

have a coup d'état, that's baloney. They knew were going to kill him, if they could." 

From that time, every president in South Vietnam was a general. Big Minh. Nguyen Cao Ky, 

an Air Force general. Ellsworth Bunker, President Johnson's new ambassador, disliked Ky, and so 

got Ky ousted and replaced by a general named Thieu. The problem was that all the members of the 

cabinet were loyal to Ky. 

Kenneth describes Bunker, a humorless man highly regarded in the Foreign Service. "I 

remember riding on a plane with Ellsworth Bunker from Singapore up to Bangkok shortly after he'd 

gotten Indonesia to get out of part of the islands there—a big issue over the islands. . . ." He was 

recognized as a very successful diplomat in negotiations of that sort. "But as I pointed out to him, 

what he succeeded in doing was turning Sukarno from a rather innocuous expansion of influence in a 

remote island to a confrontation with Malaysia. He didn't like that, but it was so. So often these 

diplomatic victories have a backlash to them that the people who were bringing them about had not 

anticipated." 

2 

13:06 Kip asks how many Presidents of the United States Kenneth actually met. Roosevelt, of 

course, in late 1941, though Kenneth just sat behind William Donovan as Donovan presented 

Kenneth's report to the President. Kenneth also met Truman, "a number of times. And Nixon, of 

course, had his briefings in my office while he was Vice President. And I set up a golf game with 

Prime Minister Luang Priboon Sunkraun (SP?) of Thailand with President Eisenhower, with myself 

included, and the President then got starry-eyed over the whole thing and changed it from—no, I had 

set up a luncheon, with me included, not a golf game, and I changed it to a golf game with this guy 

and [the President] gave him a set of clubs that didn't fit him so he could beat him. He gave him a 

set of clubs that were absolutely too long for him. He couldn't manage them." Luang Priboon 

showed Kenneth the clubs afterwards, which the President had given him as a memento of their game 

555


together. [Kenneth, in other words, who would have shared in the luncheon, did not play golf 

with the two men. So I don't think he met Eisenhower, though he worked on his NSC-OCB 

staff right next to the White House.] 

"I never met Johnson." But he did meet Kennedy, "in the White House, and in the Oval 

Office." 

Kenneth says that the real geopolitician among these Presidents, until Nixon came, was 

Roosevelt. "He was a real politician. Truman started off with nothin'. But he was spunky, and also 

he was smart, and he grew smarter as he went, so that he has quite a reputation as a quick learner and 

as a very fine President. I would say he was one of the best. Nixon, I think, was the best one for 

international politics. He really had the feel of the world as no other President has had in my 

estimation. That was his long suit. He really had a feel for world politics, international politics. And 

it was he, of course, who ended the isolation of China. And it was he who had the ideas, not 

Kissinger, to send Kissinger out to begin to open up relations with China. Many people think that 

Kissinger had the ideas. Kissinger was acceptable to Nixon because he was willing to do it and 

agreed with Nixon that it should be done, and he did it very ably, and was the messenger boy. But it 

was Nixon who had the brilliant ideas there." 

Kenneth had a low opinion of John F. Kennedy. Kip asks if he feels Kennedy was learning 

with time and experience. "No, I think it would have been tragic if he hadn't been killed. I mean, he 

never grew up. He just couldn't take his mind off the girls, literally." Kenneth says that Kennedy 

was assassinated just at the time when he realized he was losing his popularity and might not be reelected. 

That was why he went to Dallas. Though Kennedy did do some significant things, "I never 

saw the government in more disarray than it was under John Kennedy. It was in complete disarray." 

He didn't believe in co-ordinated effort. 

Kenneth speaks of a Harvard professor who wrote The Power of the Presidency and 

pointed out that the President who exercized the most power in the Presidency was Roosevelt because 

when he wanted something done, he would have five or six different people all thinking that they 

were the ones doing it. But in fact, none of them were. Roosevelt worked things out to please 

himself. He kept everybody off balance. He alone made the decisions. People in government were 

always being surprised when they discovered that somebody else had a mandate to do the same thing 

they were doing. In other words, Roosevelt was especially powerful because he did not invest power 

in others. That was the thesis. Truman, on the other hand, had less power because he established the 

National Security Council, which brought the bureaucrats together at cabinet and sub-cabinet level, 

with their aides, and they were supposed to be drawing up our national security policy. In short, 

Truman had turned over part of his power to a committee. Then came Eisenhower, who believed in 

staff work. This is true, Kenneth says. Eisenhower believed that if you gave a staff group of officers 

the responsibility to design a policy or operations or whatever, what would come out of their 

combined minds would be superior to what any one of them could do. You would get the best 

distillation for yourself. Eisenhower would give them a problem to work with, and then he would 

have them present their choices to him, and when they had done so, he would tell them to decide 

which was the best choice of policy or action and would walk out. He exercized the least power of 

the Presidency, therefore, or so the book argued. 

The author of that book applied for membership in the Cosmos Club at a time when the book 

was fresh in Kenneth's mind. Kenneth had just reviewed it for some publisher. "And I had his 

application in my portfolio for membership in the Cosmos Club, and I pointed this out to the 

membership committee, and they turned him down. And he's quite a famous professor at Harvard, 

and they turned him down! I was astonished they turned him down, but I didn't care one way or the 

other." 

556


In his review, what Kenneth said was that the book was based on faulty logic. The author 

might just as well have argued that Roosevelt exercized the maximum power of the Presidency 

because he always sat in a wheelchair, whereas Truman exercized less power of the Presidency 

because he took walks. But Eisenhower exercized even less power than Truman because he not only 

took walks, he played golf while taking walks. That was the logic of the book. 

As for Johnson, "he was a blunderer." Of course, it was Kennedy who got us into Vietnam, 

sending out thousands of "advisors" to advise the Vietnamese on countering insurgency. And of 

course, we had to have troops to protect them. Then Johnson came in. And he took advantage of the 

Gulf of Tonkin incident to get the Congress to back him up and send the troops, so that we got in 

deep. Kenneth's opinion is that we should have stayed out of Vietnam. Should have gotten out. Kip 

asks if there were any way we could have won. "No way," Kenneth answers. We dared not go into 

North Vietnam for fear of confrontation with China, who might send their troops down into Vietnam. 

We didn't want that. As for General Westmoreland, he was out of his depth. "His chief function was 

that of running a storehouse. He was very good at storehouse work. And sending people out to die. 

But he didn't know what he was doing. And the people he was sacrificing, chiefly, were the 

Marines." This was what got to General Krulak, Kenneth's former nemesis, who came to 

Washington and tried to get our approach to the war in Vietnam changed. 

3 

27:55 Kip asks Kenneth for his assessment of Thailand today, after a lifetime of experience with 

the Thai. "They're survivors. They'll always survive. The Thai are expert at surviving. And they're 

getting rich." They're catching up with Hong Kong and Singapore. They are working with the 

Japanese. A lot of products produced by Japan are actually made in Thailand, Kenneth says. The 

Thai are very different from the Burmese and the Indochinese. They're much more in charge of their 

own affairs than Malaya. "But their business community, you have to remember, is Chinese. And 

the top politicians are Sino-Thai, so that in a sense, they have many of the racial characteristics that 

you find for success in business in Singapore and Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Korea. Oh, they're 

survivors. They're survivors. They'll always be independent. They really know how to get along." 

Kenneth knew the present Prime Minister as a young man, when he was in his twenties. 

4 

30:10 Kenneth says that he could have joined the Cosmos Club many years earlier than he did. In 

1942, he had a letter from President Dennis of Earlham College saying that he was a member of the 

Club and would like to propose Kenneth for membership. Kenneth was very busy, and was not clubminded, 

and did not realize the role clubs played in this city, and so wrote back saying thank you but 

no. The Club at that time was on Jackson Place, right across from the White House, in the Dolly 

Madison mansion. This was still the location in 1953 when Kenneth did join. 

At that time, a friend named Bill Johnson, a geologist who had gone to Thailand to do a 

geological survey after the war and accordingly had spent a good deal of time with Kenneth in 

connection with his work, suggested that he put up Kenneth's name for membership. By then, 

Kenneth knew it was a good idea. Johnson said Kenneth would be a shoo-in because he had three 

scholarly books out. Kenneth presented the Club with these three books in connection with Johnson's 

sponsoring his membership. The principle of membership in the Cosmos Club was that you had done 

original, meritorious work in a discipline that was recognized nationally and preferably 

internationally. 

When Kenneth first came to Washington, the heart of government was right there in the 

vicinity of the White House, with the State Department and the Treasury right there, and Commerce a 

557


couple of blocks away. The Cosmos Club, situated directly across from the White House, "was the 

meetingplace for like minds to get together in the U.S. government on almost any subject. And 

people would come down from the Library of Congress, who were keeping the records, you might 

say, the library collection and legislative reference for the Congress, so that it was commonplace for 

the chief librarian of Congress to be there for lunch almost every day." You would go in, and there 

would be several long tables, and you would just drift in and take a seat and talk to whomever you 

wanted to talk to. "And I made the mistake one day of going in and sitting down in the chair that was 

sacred to the librarian of Congress. There was stony silence, and I realized that I was being viewed 

with disapproval. And I asked what the problem was," and they explained. "Goodness me," Kenneth 

said, and moved over. That was where the librarian held court. "It was very informal and very nice." 

In those days, so many people could walk there from the various nearby agencies. Interior was 

nearby too. 

In World War II, Kenneth says, the government pre-empted the Cosmos Club's building and 

paid them a million dollars for it. They did this on the assumption that they would need the building 

for some newly-created agency in the war effort. In fact, however, they did not, and so the Club 

stayed there during the war. Then after the war, the government told them to find new quarters 

elsewhere, and so in the 1950's, they found a mansion for sale at the corner of Massachusetts and 

Florida. The original asking price was close to a million dollars. The mansion had stood vacant for 

some ten years and was in poor repair. The asking price had gone down and down. "I think we got it 

for a little over $300,000." They used the rest of the million they had gotten for the old building 

rehabilitating the mansion and building an addition with over fifty rooms for members visiting from 

other parts of the world. 

The new building had been the private home of a family named the Townsends, who were 

quite wealthy. Mr. Townsend had been a railroad magnate, "and he had put up that mansion for 

entertainment purposes and also for lobbying in Washington, he being a railroad executive." Sumner 

Welles married into the Townsend family and assumed ownership of the house. He was the 

Undersecretary of State under Hull, and acted like the Secretary of State much of the time because 

Hull was ill. So the Cosmos Club purchased the mansion from him. 

5 

40:06 Kenneth served on the admissions committee for five years. Members were only supposed to 

serve three years, but someone who was serving on the committee resigned from the Club, and 

Kenneth was asked to fill in his remaining two years. Then the committee voted that he serve another 

three years. "I thought I had served the Club nobly in all that time. And I was supposed to have all 

portfolios involving political science, I never having had a course in political science that I can 

recall." But he was involved in diplomacy, and had written two books that Club members saw in 

terms of political science. Most of the work was routine. Each application had to be presented by a 

member and a seconder, and then they had the responsibility of collecting letters from members in 

support. The committee liked to have a flurry of letters in support so that they could get a sense of 

how the applicant rated in his particular discipline. [The club was for men only until the 1980's.] 

There was another category for membership, and that was "Distinguished," that is, 

distinguished in public service. These were people who were not scholars and did not write books 

but were distinguished as governors, or in the ministry, or in law, or in architecture, like the Landons' 

friend Waldron Faulkner. People of that sort. 

There was also a third category, for a person who was knowledgeable in the arts and sciences 

in general. Not a scholar, not a scientist, not distinguished, but a person like Noel Coward, say. 

Kenneth ran into this once when they turned down a person who didn't seem to amount to much but 

558


who unfortunately was very well liked by a prominent couple associated with the Woodrow Wilson 

family, and a flood of protesting letters came in. The committee reconsidered and voted the man into 

membership. In response, Kenneth said that he thought they ought to clarify this third category. "I 

said, 'A person who is talented in the arts and sciences enough to be joining the Cosmos Club should 

be a person who has the talent of having made friends of five former presidents of the Cosmos Club 

and fifty distinguished members.' Well, they acknowledged the humor, but they wouldn't accept that 

as a definition." 

Margaret recalls an evening when Kenneth came home late and she heard him laughing 

uproariously downstairs. He had found in his mail a notice from the Cosmos Club that he had been 

assigned John Fitzgerald Kennedy's portfolio of application for membership. This was just after 

Kenneth and everyone else in the OCB had been "abolished" by the President. It seemed funny 

beyond belief that Kenneth would be the one responsible for handling his abolisher's application. 

Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard was sponsoring Kennedy for membership, along with someone else. 

Kenneth knew that many members of the committee did not want a President—any President—as a 

member because of all the inconvenience it would cause. Any time the President came, the security 

precautions would thoroughly disrupt all activities at the Club. But everyone knew that there was no 

way they could turn down the President's application. So they were in for it. 

Then fate intervened, for at the same time, another man, Carl Rowan, a well-known African- 

American journalist, was proposed for membership. He had just been designated the head of the 

USIA by the President. Kenneth did not have Rowan's portfolio. That came up for vote first, and 

there were two blackballs. This happened at a time when Kenneth was briefing the cousin of Adlai 

Stevenson on his duties and activities concerning the Philippines. Kenneth was now working over at 

FSI. Stevenson was charmed to know that Kenneth had attended Princeton Theological Seminary 

when his namesake predecessor was the head of it. He was a great friend of that Stevenson's son. 

Inasmuch as Kenneth was briefing Stevenson and meeting him daily, he was invited by Adlai 

Stevenson to a reception in honor of the younger Stevenson before he departed for the Philippines. 

So here Kenneth was at the reception "when suddenly a big hand came down on my shoulder and 

[the younger Stevenson] said, 'Ken Landon, turn around here. Carl Rowan, turn around here. You 

two ought to get to know each other. Carl, Ken Landon is on that admissions committee that just 

blackballed you for membership in the Cosmos Club. I think you ought to get acquainted!' And Carl 

Rowan was kind of stunned. And he looked at me with utter hatred, and I looked at him, and I 

smiled, and I said, 'Why, Mr. Rowan. Mr. Stevenson is not aware of the fact that we in the 

admissions committee try to make a point of not having our judgments biased by knowing the 

applicants for membership personally. We work entirely from documents presented before the 

committee. So it is indeed a pleasure to meet you. But,' I said, 'I hope you realize what a wonderful 

thing the committee has done for you. Because,' I said, 'by blackballing you, that committee has 

made you famous in the United States and has turned a man who has up to now a more or less 

parochial reputation as a reporter into a world figure.' And Stevenson just howled with laughter. He 

went off shaking. Carl Rowan just stood there and looked at me with utter hatred. I only met him 

one more time when I had some business over at USIA and I ran into him. But I told him, I said, 'I 

have no way of knowing who blackballed you, but I assure you that I did not.'" 

The denial of membership to Rowan was very controversial, because it was assumed to be 

racial. The Cosmos Club consisted of white men. As a result of the controversy Kenneth Galbraith 

and many other Kennedyites resigned from the Club. Galbraith's resignation automatically retired 

Kennedy's application for membership, and so the committee filed it. Then the Kennedy crowd 

started a new club of their own. A Landon friend, Carlton Savage, had them for dinner one night at 

this new club. Kenneth cannot recall the name of it. 

559


Margaret recalls a humorous epilogue to the incident. She refers to a vote taken by the Club 

allowing black men to become members. After that vote, a black man came into the Club one day, 

she says, went over to the desk, and said he had heard about all this and was puzzled by all the 

controversy. He said he had become a member of the Club fifteen years earlier. Kenneth says that he 

doesn't know if the story is true or apocryphal, but that was the story that went all over town. 

Shortly after that, Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court became a member, and 

several other African Americans as well. "Of course, we've always had diplomats in, Chinese, 

Japanese, Indians, and whatnot." 

Kenneth is still a member in 1989, a retired member. For several years, he was not required 

to pay any dues. But last year, the Club suggested that members in his category pay modest dues, 

and so he does. [Kenneth remained a member to the end. In the fall of 1992, when he became 

too frail to go to the Club, he had me write to resign his membership. But the Club wrote 

back to say that Kenneth's long membership would be extended indefinitely in his honor, and 

that he would not have to pay dues. He was pleased. 

[I recall many, many occasions when the family would dine at the Club, sometimes 

after church on a Sunday, sometimes on birthdays or other special times. Near the end, I 

would take Dad for lunch with his old State Department friend Phil Bonsal, who had been 

ambassador to Cuba at one time. And once, Dad and I duked it out in a game of pool 

upstairs. I had won my high school championship. Dad hadn't played in fifty years at least. 

He won easily.] 

6 

56:23 When Margaret's first book Anna became a bestseller, she was invited to join a Washington 

organization called The Literary Society. The Society had a limited number of people. Kenneth 

recalls the number as forty. Each member read an essay or something of the sort once every five 

years, and each member was responsible for entertaining the other members once every five years. 

Margaret found it very enjoyable. Kenneth remembers one of the first meetings they went to. It was 

a wintry day, and the Landons were unsure whether to go because the streets were so dangerous. The 

meeting was held over on the Cathedral grounds in the College of Preachers. "We were absolutely 

astounded to find all these old people slipping and sliding to come. They weren't going to miss it. 

They were hardy types who were not intimidated by bad weather." The Landons felt very young by 

comparison. Kenneth thinks they were the youngest people there. He remarks on how modestly the 

members called themselves "The Literary." Not "The Literary Society," but "The Literary." It was a 

small, private, social organization that did not seek to draw attention to itself. 

560


HOUR 87 

Session #58 continued January 17, 1989 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIIB370) Margaret continues on The Literary Society. "Well," she says, "they were a very 

fine group of people, and brilliant, and interesting, and so on, so I've always enjoyed it." 

Unfortunately, the organization began to run down when Mrs. Huntingdon died. She strongly 

influenced the Society, and held it to a high intellectual standard of membership. Kenneth says that, 

when the head of the Smithsonian joined, things changed. The papers delivered tended to be less 

interesting. 

It was in the Society that the Landons came to know Waldron and Bussie Faulkner. Waldron 

was an architect well-known in this country and abroad. Bussie's maiden name was Elizabeth 

Coonley. She was of the wealthy Coonley family in Chicago and had grown up in a house designed 

by Frank Lloyd Wright. She and her husband owned virtually an entire block in Cleveland Park, at 

the edge of which they built their house. Most of it was left in its natural state. They gave the bulk of 

their property to the National Cathedral a few blocks away, which set up a College of Musicians there 

for a time and later sold the property to an international youth organization. Bussie was almost deaf. 

Her family was Christian Science, and she did not receive medical attention in a childhood illness 

that took her hearing. "There was nothing of assertion, of importance, in her. She twinkled. She 

saw the amusing in other people and in herself. She was delightful." [Bussie was Margaret's best 

friend in Washington.] 

Another friend in the Society was John Lord O'Brian, the lawyer. And Robert Lincoln 

O'Brien, a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. John Lord O'Brian was a short man, considered by many 

the top lawyer in Washington. He didn't seem impressive in person, just a nice person. Then one 

night, when O'Brian read a paper he had written, another member rose to make a deleterious remark, 

and O'Brian turned, smiling, "and in about three sentences he lopped that man's head off 

intellectually. And smiling happily all the time. And the brilliance of the performance was like 

something I had never seen because it wasn't vicious, but it was deadly. So then I knew why John 

Lord O'Brian was considered the top lawyer in Washington." 

Another friend was Armistead Peter, the scion of the Peter family which had owned an entire 

block high in Georgetown since before the District of Columbia was established in 1790. The house 

is called Tudor Place, and Mr. Peter told Margaret that, when it was built, the family still owned a 

strip of land running all the way from the house down to the Potomac River, three-quarters of a mile 

away. Mr. Peter is now dead, and Tudor Place and the property around it has become a private 

museum. 

Another member was Paul Hume, the famous music critic who had a run-in with President 

Truman when Hume criticized the singing of Truman's daughter. 

Paul Calloway, the organist and choir director at the National Cathedral, was also a member. 

Another good friend in the Society was Louis Wright, the head of the Folger Library, who put 

out a complete, annotated series of the Shakespeare plays. [Kip went to school with his son, Chris.] 

And Felix Morley, an editor and writer. 

Stanley Hornbeck was also a member, a political advisor to Secretary Hull in the State 

Department. 

Margaret was a member of the Society from the mid 1940's until the 1980's. 

561


2 

11:40 The Landons did a great deal of entertaining during Kenneth's career that was diplomatic in 

nature. If a Prime Minister from Thailand came to this country, the Landons would entertain him at 

4711, and they would have some generals and colonels and foreign secretaries. For this entertaining, 

the Landons used a caterer. Margaret tells of the time Queen Ramphai Barni sent word through the 

Thai embassy that she would like to be entertained at the Landons' house. She tells of King 

Prajadhipok, the Queen's husband, who abdicated and lived out the last of his life in England. One of 

the the Queen's brothers came with her, Prince Supsowat (SP?), and several people in waiting. 

"Royalty doesn't go alone." The caterer assigned their best cook, best butler, and best waiters to cater 

the occasion. Kenneth had records of Thai music, and he had daughter Carol playing them from 

another room. "The Queen was really charming and very gracious," says Margaret. "As you know, 

the Thai, by and large, upper class resented my book, Anna and the King of Siam. I was told, 

frankly, 'Don't go out. They'll kill you.' But I remember that night. Of course, the butler opened the 

door, and the Queen came in first, and behind her came her brother. And I can see him now. 'I'm the 

member of the royal family that OLNHV your book! I'm an artist, and I know that there's no sunshine 

without shadow.' And he was so pleased with his remark. And they were delightful guests. The 

Queen, for instance, explained for me why on official occasions she had worn a panung, a skirt, that 

was different from other occasions. It was a distinctly royal garment, and she said that the Thai, 

when they conquered Cambodia—was that 1350?" Kenneth says, "1450." "Well, all right, we're not 

arguing about dates. But anyway, the Thai defeated the Cambodians, and Angkor Wat, and that 

whole bit, and then they picked up and brought over to Ayuthia, WKHLU capital. . . ." Kenneth 

completes her sentence, "The Brahmins. The Brahmins, who were the political advisor." And, 

Margaret adds, also the people who know what is done and what is not. The type of panung the 

Queen wore had actually originated among the Cambodians. 

The high emotional moment for the Queen came when Carol played the first record from the 

other room. They were having the soup, Kenneth says. "And I can remember her dropping the soup 

spoon into the soup, and it splashed, and she burst into tears momentarily. And then she apologized, 

and she said, 'That was the music played by the royal orchestra for the King and myself at dinner, and 

that was our favorite tune. And it was so sudden,' she said. 'I have not heard it since the last time I 

heard it in the Royal Palace.'" Kenneth had bought the records when he was out there in 1945-6. 

It was a lovely occasion. 

The Landons went to many embassy parties. "It was the usual embassy crawl," Kenneth says. 

"They all had their national day celebrations and various other celebrations. The Thai always 

included me in everything because I was the Thai political officer. And so, I was often accused of 

running the Thai embassy, and of course in a sense I did during the war, because I was in control of 

their money. We had their account frozen, and we had to release it to them according to their current 

expenses." Kenneth tells again of Seni Pramoj who brought a complaint against Kenneth to the State 

Department, which assigned it to Kenneth for reply. Pramoj and Karp Kunjara, the military attaché 

didn't like each other, and Pramoj was harassing Karp Kunjara by withholding necessities of life from 

him. Kenneth called Pramoj and told him this nonsense had to stop, and Pramoj hated Kenneth for 

that. That was the reason for his complaint. And of course, Kenneth had the pleasure of drafting the 

State Department's reply. After the war, Pramoj became Prime Minister of Thailand. Margaret says, 

"How he and his brother hated and do hate us!" Kip thinks he recalls a movie set in Thailand in 

which Seni Pramoj portrayed a high Thai official, but he is not sure, and the Landons do not recall it. 

Marlon Brando starred in the movie. [In fact, it was Kukrit Pramoj who played the prime minister 

of a fictional Southeast Asian nation in "The Ugly American," 1962, starring Marlon Brando.] 

562


3 

24:05 When he was fifty, Kenneth began making lists of all the things he wanted to do before he 

died. He wanted to be sure he got them all in. His lists always included two to four things that rose 

to top. One was that he wanted to play the piano. Another was that he wanted to write short stories. 

And the third was that he wanted to play golf. He did not do any of these three. He decided three 

was a good beginning. 

So Kenneth took a correspondence course with a Miss Johnson of the University of 

Minnesota, which he had learned of through the Library of Congress. He began writing short stories 

for her. And after writing them for her, and getting her comments, he sent them on to the Saturday 

Evening Post, which at that time was the premier magazine publishing short stories in America. 

They paid the most, so Kenneth naturally went for them. "And I sold every story I wrote for her 

except the last one, which was the best. . . ." He sold them three stories in succession. The fourth one 

was turned down repeatedly by Ben Hiss when he became the editor. He was the new editor. "So 

that ended that career, but I had the satisfaction of writing short stories for the Saturday Evening 

Post ." [The stories were "Trial Surgery," published in the October 26, 1957, issue; "Brothers' Quarrel," in the 

March 29, 1958, issue; and "For the Sake of Love," in the June 14, 1958 issue.] 

As for the piano, Kenneth asked a friend of his who was a musician who recommended as 

piano teacher a woman named Mabes Imhoff, who was teaching his daughter. So Kenneth called her 

up and asked to take lessons. Mabes assumed that he wanted to play popular music, which she did 

not teach, but he replied that he wanted to play classical. Then she told him that she only worked 

with children. Kenneth replied that he didn't qualify for that, "but are you implying that you aren't 

DEOH to teach an adult?" The Irish in her rose up at that. "Of course I could," she said. "Well, good!" 

Kenneth said. "When do I begin?" So they began, with Kenneth going out in the evening for his 

lessons. He wasn't interested in playing scales and things like that. He wanted to start right out with 

a piece of music. "Actually, all I want to do is play the piano. And here's the piano, and where's the 

music?" Mabes co-operated with her only adult pupil. Kenneth got along well with her, playing the 

slow movements of Beethoven sonatas, and pieces by Debussy and Chopin and so on. Kip was nine 

years old at the time and, according to Kenneth, got the idea from listening to Kenneth that he wanted 

to play the piano too. Kip protests that this was not his idea. That was decided for him by someone 

else, and Kenneth suggests that perhaps it was Margaret. At any rate, Kip began taking lessons with 

Mabes also, and soon was playing serious pieces of his own, practicing in the evenings when 

Kenneth came home. He had taken the piano over. "People in the summertime would even sit out on 

the wall and listen to you practice, you were so good. So that ended my piano." [This process actually 

took a number of years.] 

Kip asks how the Landons happened to have a fine piano to play on. Peggy says that the 

piano was in the home of her friend Louise McCallum (SP?) on Brandywine Street. It had belonged 

to her uncle, who was musical. The Landons were living on Brandywine at the time. The piano was 

a baby grand Steinway. Margaret learned that it was for sale and bought it. The price was very 

reasonable. Margaret comments that it is an exceptionally fine Steinway. When Anna Fyshe, who 

was a concert pianist, visited at 4711, she was thrilled by the piano. Anna was the daughter of Anna 

Leonowens, Margaret says [but I believe she was a great granddaughter]. Education was poor in the part 

of Canada where the family lived. The head of the family was a banker. Several of the children were 

taken to Germany for their education, and Anna studied music, reaching the concert pianist level. 

She once played for the Kaiser. But her father would not allow her to have a public career, with all 

the travelling and independence involved. Anna married a German doctor who was Jewish and so 

had to flee the country when the Nazis took over. She had a party one evening during which she 

made a critical remark about Hitler. After her guests were gone, she received a telephone call from 

563


one of her guests, a friend, who told her to get out that night. She grabbed what she could and 

escaped that very night on the train. She went to the Bahamas and then came through Washington on 

the way to Canada. Kenneth comments that the descendants of the Leonowens family regarded 

Margaret as collateral family. 

One day Anna went to the piano and began to play, and she was so thrilled that she said, "This 

is an incredibly fine piano! This is a wonderful piano!" [And I can confirm it, having played on that 

piano for so many years. It was truly fine, in touch and in tone, far superior to almost every other Steinway or 

grand piano I ever played.] 

4 

34:36 For years, Kenneth had been trying to get into the Congressional golf club, but they kept 

putting him off. But when he began taking lessons from Mabes, he learned that her husband Larry, 

who worked in the Interior Department, was an avid golfer who played at the Kenwood Golf and 

Country Club in Bethesda. Larry said he could get Kenneth into the club, and within a month, 

Kenneth was a member. It only cost $400 to join at the time. Now it would be $4000 or more. 

Kenneth played golf religiously from the early 1950's on up to 1986, when he resigned his 

membership. [He shot in the 80's. His practice in retirement would be to rise very early, his lifelong habit, and 

go out to Kenwood for nine or eighteen holes with a couple of friends. He would arrive to play before anyone 

else.] 

Kip remembers how serious Kenneth was about playing the piano. He remembers all the 

records Kenneth bought of Casadesus playing Beethoven, and Horowitz, and Gieseking playing 

Debussy. Kenneth went to concerts, too, and often took the family. [Though he didn't know it, he 

strongly influenced Kip's taste in classical music by the records he bought.] 

Margaret remembers Kip's playing, and particularly the recitals and the yearly auditions when 

students played for a judge who rated their skills. After one of these auditions, she says, the examiner 

came out with tears in her eyes and said, "+H can be a professional. He has the talent." Though Kip 

didn't go on to do that, Margaret treasured the fact that he had the capacity. 

Kenneth says again that Kip crowded him out of playing. He would come home and find Kip 

whacking away at the piano, and Kip was so good that Kenneth felt he had to leave the piano to him. 

Kip says that he had no idea he was crowding Kenneth out. Nothing was ever said. In any case, 

Kenneth stopped playing. 

The last session, #59 March 31, 1989 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

5 

38:17 Kenneth's final GS rank in government, he says, was at the very top of GS-16. It was almost 

the same pay as GS-18. The regular grades ran up to GS-15. 16 and up were the "supergrades." 18 

was the top grade. When he went over to the White House, they pondered what grade to make him. 

He said he didn't care about that, only the pay. So they kept him at 16 but put him at the top level of 

the sliding scale within the 16 category. "I got about as high pay as I could get, I guess, and probably 

more than I deserved." 

Kenneth comments on the fortuitous timing of his and Margaret's careers. The interest in 

Southeast Asia was almost nil when he was trying to sell Margaret's book before the war. One 

publisher even suggested setting the book in China instead of Siam. No one cared about Siam, he 

said. "When I was sponsored by the Council of Learned Societies to promote Southeast Asian 

studies at the universities of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Chicago, I could 

find no interest whatsoever in these major universities." He had as bait the finest collection on 

564


Southeast Asia of that time, the personal collection of Prince Damrong, who had founded the 

Ministry of Education and the National Library in Bangkok. "He and I were very fine friends." 

Damrong was in exile as a result of the 1932 coup d'état, and when Kenneth was leaving the country, 

he called on him to say good-by and asked if he might locate his library in some university, and the 

Prince said yes, if there were a proper curator, like Kenneth, who could utilize the collection 

intelligently. Much of it was in Thai, but there were also many volumes in European languages. The 

basis of it was the magnificent collection of Frankfurter, a German scholar whose library had been 

taken over during the war. "Well, I couldn't JLYH it away." None of the universities had any interest 

in Southeast Asia. Then came the war, and suddenly there was this burgeoning interest in Southeast 

Asia. 

The State Department was caught flatfooted. They had no Foreign Service officer who had 

lived in the area or spoke a Southeast Asian language. Not one. "I was the first one they ever had." 

G-2, our military intelligence, had absolutely nothing on the area except for four articles by Kenneth 

himself. 

In 1975, at the time of the fall of Saigon, Kenneth was still lecturing at the CIA. "That was 

the end of, really, major U.S. security interest and national interest in Southeast Asia. Up to that 

time, I had been one of the regular lecturers in the War Colleges, and various universities, and at 

CIA. And I got a call from my contact over in the CIA, and they said, 'Well, Doc, we won't be 

calling you anymore for lectures. That isn't one of our priorities any more.' So that Southeast Asia, 

really, almost coincided with my working life." 

As for Margaret's book and the movies and the play that followed, they were something 

wholly new at the time. It was almost, in effect, what The Mikado was in relation to Japan. A 

breakthrough. 

"So our lives coincided with—it was just serendipity. And you know, when I first came to 

Washington, I hadn't been here very long—when some Senator or Congressman— I don't know who 

he was, now; I knew then—put on the record, in The Congressional Record, the Congressional 

publication of theirs, a statement expressing gratification in Congress that the U.S. government had 

an outstanding Quaker—they called me a Quaker, which I wasn't, but I was from a Quaker college— 

Quaker scholar from Earlham College who was now in the U.S. government and who was really the 

first well-informed American official on Southeast Asia, and particularly on Siam, or Thailand. And 

that's in The Congressional Record And there ZDV no Southeast Asia before me, as such, because 

there was a colony, a British colony in Malaya, and in Burma, a Dutch colony in Indonesia, a French 

colony in Indochina, and the American interest in the Philippines. But there was nothing that you 

could call Southeast Asia. And when I entered the State Department in 1943, I was their first 

political officer dealing with that whole area. It was quite a shock to the European office because 

they'd never had, really, to clear much of anything they did with anybody in the Far Eastern bureau. 

It was WKHLU major interest. And that's what Major Pettigrew in G-2 said. 'Well, if we wanted to 

know anything about Southeast Asia, we could ask our allies, the Dutch, the French, and the British.'" 

"And with the fall of Saigon in 1975, I was still talking. But I've been voiceless ever since 

because my career was ended, and our major interest in Southeast Asia as a primary target of policy 

interest was ended for the time being. I'm sure it will rise again, but it's not of major interest. The 

Middle East is, and elsewhere, and Latin America, and Africa, but not Southeast Asia." 

6 

48:40 Kip asks about the golf game Kenneth arranged for the Prime Minister of Thailand. Did 

Kenneth play in the game? He explains that whenever a Prime Minister or high official of Thailand 

came to Washington, he had to arrange with the protocol people for the person's entertainment, 

565


dinners and other activities. So here was the Prime Minister, Luang Priboon Sunkraun (SP?), "whom 

I knew YHU\ well," a guest of our government who was to stay at Blair House, across from the White 

House, for three days, the usual period, and President Eisenhower was going to entertain him. At 

first, the proposal was that Kenneth help arrange a luncheon. "I don't know how extensively 

Eisenhower wanted to deal with Luang Priboon because Thailand wasn't the greatest country in the 

world for his attention." But then Kenneth mentioned that Priboon was an inveterate golfer, that he 

played every day. And Eisenhower did too, if he could. If it had been a luncheon, Kenneth would 

have been at the luncheon. But then he had the bright idea of a golf game, thinking that he could be 

part of a foursome. "No way, boy, I was washed out. I wasn't important enough. So my own 

brilliance outdid me." They didn't need Kenneth to interpret because the PM spoke excellent English. 

And he had his own aides with him, of course, and Eisenhower had his. Kenneth doesn't know what 

the foursome consisted of, other than the two men. 

Before the game, the President presented a set of golf clubs to the Prime Minister as a gift, 

and so naturally the PM had use the clubs to play with! But the clubs were too big for him. He 

couldn't play his own game at all. The PM kept them in his office as a memento of his visit with the 

President. He was very proud of those clubs. Kenneth called him a year later or so when he was in 

Bangkok [1956], and the PM showed him the clubs. And the PM said that President Eisenhower was 

"a first-class golfer" in the sense that, while he honored his guest, he knew how to put him at such a 

disadvantage that he'd be sure to win. Pibuhn thought it was funny. 

7 

52:09 Kenneth's 1966 trip to Southeast Asia. The Advanced Research Project Agency, or ARPA, 

in the Pentagon, was trying to have the necessary intelligence gathered with respect to air bases that 

we were setting up in northeastern Thailand to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail, and to be ready to bomb 

in North Vietnam or South Vietnam or Cambodia or wherever needed. They were setting up air 

bases near Nakhon Phanom and near Khon Khan (SP?) and one or two other locations. These were 

all in the northeastern plateau. What they wanted, then, was to have an encyclopedic study made of 

the northeastern plateau, especially around Nakhon Phnom and Mukdahan, along the Mekong River. 

They were already in the process of setting up the air bases. But they needed more intelligence 

concerning the weather, the agriculture, the culture of the people, minority groups, the geology of the 

area, and so on. ARPA asked Philco to be the front and send out a research team to make this study. 

They selected a retired air colonel named Smith, who lives in Alexandria, Wilfred Smith. Then there 

were two or three Philco people who were the managerial types to run the thing. But what they then 

had to have were scholars, and somebody who spoke Thai and who knew the Thai politicians and 

could help them with the Ministry of Interior and the Foreign Office and with the governor and the 

police, who could speak easly with them and be on good terms with them. "So my name immediately 

came up." Kenneth was invited to go out that summer of 1966 for about three months. Smith would 

be in charge of the research group and would establish flow charts and all that sort of thing for the 

gathering of intelligence. 

Kenneth was paid all his expenses plus $150 a day, as he recalls it, which was nice pay. He 

flew out with Smith. When they reached The Hague, Smith received a telegram from the American 

ambassador, who later became ambassador in Saigon at the time everything unravelled in 1975, but at 

the time was in Bangkok. Name forgotten. He was afraid that Kenneth was persona non grata in 

Thailand because of The King and I. He held Kenneth and Smith up in The Hague until he had 

called on various high officials in Bangkok to learn whether or not Kenneth was acceptable to them, 

or persona non grata. His DCM was Norm Hanna, Kenneth's great friend, who kept reassuring him 

that Kenneth was welcome there and was on excellent terms with all the high officials there. But the 

566


ambassador had to find out for himself. Meanwhile, Smith and Landon just hung around in The 

Hague. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. Finally, word came telling them to come on. 

When they arrived, Kenneth's first call was on the ambassador. He was an aggressive, 

secretive person that many people disliked. The ambassador launched into a lecture right off the bat. 

He said there were two things he wanted Kenneth to understand. The first was that he did not have a 

country team. "I am the ambassador in charge." He knew Kenneth had set up the Country Team 

Seminar, and he assumed that Kenneth would feel strongly about the country team. But in fact, 

Kenneth couldn't care less. 

567


HOUR 88 

Session #59 continued March 31, 1989 Kenneth, Kip, Margaret, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIIB800) Kenneth continues the story of his 1966 Southeast Asia trip. Kenneth told the 

ambassador that he didn't care how he ran his embassy. "That's your problem." This mollified the 

ambassador. The second point was that he knew from his intelligence sources that, whenever 

Kenneth came to Bangkok, he called on the various ministers of interior and foreign affairs and 

agriculture and also the minister of foreign affairs and the Prime Minister. "And I was not to do 

that!" If Kenneth wanted to take up anything with them, he was to do so through the ambassador. 

Was that clear? Yes, of course. Kenneth had no objection to that. But what should he do if the 

minister for development, Pot Sarasin, should have his aides telephone and invite Kenneth to lunch or 

dinner? Oh, the ambassador said, that wouldn't happen. But what if they did? "Should I tell them 

I'm not old enough to go?" The ambassador said that, if he were invited, he would have to go. Well, 

Kenneth said, what about the minister of interior, General Prupot (SP?), or the Prime Minister, 

Thanom (SP?). "I know both of them, very well." The ambassador repeated that this would never 

happen. In other words, if these people came after Kenneth, the ambassador wouldn't object? No, 

that would just be a social relationship. No problem. 

"Well, that's what happened, of course. I had calls from all of them, as usual, because they've 

always been fascinated in either pro or anti Kenneth Landon. In any case, they always felt that it was 

necessary, somehow, to find out what I was up to." So Kenneth had his contacts. And he did his 

work. And he was invited to the women's club, "and I had, I think, about a thousand screaming 

females in the ballroom of the hotel there to hear me talk and entertain them. I always enjoyed 

talking to the ladies." 

Then he went on up to Pakhisan (SP?), as it was called, the northeastern plateau area, with the 

research team, and everyone went to work. The Philco people set up flow charts according to which 

so much would be written every day. Research work isn't quite that way. You could turn out Philco 

television sets that way, but not research. "My job was to act, really, as the editor of the materials, 

and also to talk with the local officials in the northeastern area, and I was able to do that, and satisfy 

them. Then after I came back here, I continued to be the editor. They would send me the volumes of 

their stuff for me to read, and some of them are in my collection. And then finally, they realized that 

they had done quite enough of this. It ended up five volumes, in both Thai and English. A complete 

set for Thai officials, and a complete set for American officials, in both Thai and English. And when 

I was leaving Bangkok, saying farewell, Colonel Smith presented me with this tray, with this Philco 

Ford tray, engraved suitably to me, on which my Jack Daniel and whatnot cocktail stuff sits right 

behind me here in this room." 

When Kenneth returned to the U.S. in the fall, he resumed his work at American University. 

The northeastern plateau was very arid. Kenneth had told Donovan about it in 1953 when he 

was asking what big thing he could do for Thailand and Southeast Asia. Kenneth's idea was to take 

the Mekong River and redirect it across this plateau, which was known as the Pakhisan. This would 

provide power and irrigate the arid plateau. It would raise the level of agriculture and change the 

whole culture pattern of the area. Donovan went ahead and started the project, to Kenneth's 

amazement. 

"I have many of the documents from that operation," [referring, I think, to the Philco operation.] A 

568


man named Jasper Ingersoll, a professor at Catholic University, and an anthropologist, made many 

trips to Southeast Asia to study the area in connection with the project. It was necessary 

to have scholars of various kinds, weather experts, geologists, geographers, and so on, to provide the 

kind of information the military wanted. Also, Kenneth visited the various air bases in being, "and I 

was quite shocked at their poor security. Anybody could have walked in at night and just cleaned the 

place out. It was just really incredible, the loose security, and I talked to the commander of each one 

of these airbases about their security. I still don't understand why they weren't molested." There was 

a communist movement in the area, and also, they were just across the river from the Ho Chi Minh 

trail. It would have been so easy for the Vietnamese to come in and throw grenades into the barracks 

and sabotage the planes. The war was at its height at the time, in 1966, 1967, 1968. The 

commanders agreed that they were "a little lax." "A little lax?!" I said. "As a civilian, I'm shocked. 

And I reported that back to the Pentagon as well, as a separate report. So maybe something was done 

to tighten it up, but really it was ridiculous." 

2 

10:25 Kip asks about the time Kenneth, Norm, and Eddie Hanna went "swimming" in the kiddie 

pool. Kenneth says that was during his 1960 trip, before Kennedy came in. His area of responsibility 

for the OCB extended from Afghanistan across Southeast Asia to Indonesia. One of his stops on his 

1960 trip, after he had visited with Ayub Khan of Pakistan, with whom he played golf up in the hills, 

was to get in a car and drive up through the Khyber Pass into Kabul, where Norm Hanna was 

stationed. His wife Eddie was with him, "a wonderful woman, just a blithe spirit who was a delight 

to be with." Kenneth arrived in Kabul at a time when they were having some big reception, and all 

the ambassadors from the various countries were there, and to his astonishment, they all buttonholed 

Kenneth, who was just fresh from Washington, to find out what was going on in Afghanistan. "No 

kidding! They didn't know. You see, they couldn't get out and travel and see things freely, and they 

wanted to know what the latest intelligence was from Washington." Kenneth was amazed. But 

Norm had warned him this would happen. "Well, I didn't tell them what Washington thinks, because 

I don't think I knew. I only knew what my own particular area of responsibility was, what programs 

were supposedly being done in Afghanistan under U.S. policy. And there were quite a few programs 

that I did want to look into and be able to answer questions on when I got back to Washington." 

Kenneth was there for about a week. One night, one of the clerks in the American embassy 

was leaving after being there for two years. There were parties all the time, on every occasion. So 

there was a party for this, to which everyone was invited at seven o'clock. They all turned up at 

seven and then waited around for dinner until eleven. They were waiting for the clerk to show up, the 

guest of honor. He was still packing. When they finally served the dinner, it was ridiculous "because 

they served meat you literally couldn't have cut with a meataxe. I mean, it was just leather! And it 

was so funny that finally Eddie and I got to laughing, trying to stir this food around, and we were 

hungry. And there wasn't much that you could eat, except niblits and things on the side. And so 

finally, along about two o'clock, we took off and went back to their house. Well, we were feeling 

kind of ridiculous, and we all had drunk too much, and that really made us silly, and I said to Eddie, I 

said, 'Gee, I wish we could go swimming.' 'We can!' she said, 'We've got a kiddie pool out back!' 

'Oh,' I said, 'I've got a swimming suit!' 'Well, so have I!' she said. Norm said, 'Oh, come off it!' 'Oh,' 

I said, 'No, come on, let's go swimming.' So all three of us got into our bathing suits, and we went 

out, and this kiddie pool, as you know, is only about eight or ten inches deep. And the three of us got 

in this thing and lay around in it at around three in the morning, singing wild songs. And we sang 

and joked and sang. I guess we were still drinking brandy or something or other, which made us all 

more hilarious. We finally decided we'd had a big night. I don't know what the neighbors thought. 

569


Wild Americans! So we went in and got out of our bathing suits and lay down for a little while." 

The next night was his last night there, and in the evening they went down to the shops. And 

the people were not friendly at all. "As I walked along, the Arabs would spit behind me as I passed 

to show their contempt. They were ferocious people. I was never more intimidated in any country 

than I was right there in Afghanistan. These people were ferocious. And I think I've told you that 

when I was driving in my car, which was the ambassador's car—he'd sent it over to pick me up at 

Peshawar—we got stuck in the road beside a road gang that were repairing the road, which was next 

to this Kabul river, whatever it's called, that flows along like a mill race. And if you fall into it you're 

gone. Any car that fell into it was finished. It was just a regular mill race. And deep. It looked 

placid, but it wasn't. And we got stuck in the mud, and the next thing we knew, they were shoveling 

their mud out of the road and throwing it over the windshield and on top of the car. And then the 

driver got out and cursed them in Arabic and told them this was the ambassador's car, and here I was, 

a man of importance, and blah blah blah, and they had to clean the car off. So, they didn't have any 

running water there, except there was this mud. And they had to take the—he made them take their 

bathing cloths, or whatever they had on them which they wore, which seems to be a universal 

practice, the cloths that were draped around them, to rub down the car so that he could see through 

the windshield so we could—and then had to push us out of the mud so we could get on to Kabul. 

That was when I was going. They're fierce people. Nomad people, you see. They're nomads. They 

spend their lives, many of these people, in tents, the nomadic peoples. They're really something." 

In the marketplace, Kenneth saw all these hats made from the skins of unborn baby lambs, 

and he wanted to have one. So he stopped in a hat store and looked over perhaps a hundred skins on 

the walls and picked out one that matched his hair. Gray. So the man measured Kenneth's head and 

told him to come back in the morning to pick it up. "And I did. And I've got it yet. And I wore it 

this winter. A regular Afghan hat made from the skin of an unborn baby lamb." Some of the hats are 

brown. Kenneth also bought one for Peggy, who says she still has it. And he got himself a black one 

to go with his gray one. 

3 

19:54 Concerning Kenneth's short story career. The Post was the highest paying magazine in the 

United States. He was paid $500 for his first story, he thinks, and was up to $1500 or more by the 

third. They had a graduated payment system up to the third story. After that, the payment did not go 

higher. Kenneth was doing all right, turning out a short story every four or five weeks or so. One of 

his stories, the one on the elephant, was translated into many languages and published around the 

world, which meant royalties coming in from Australia and France and The Netherlands and so on. 

Kenneth had no agent. He simply sent his stories in cold, and they purchased the very first story he 

ever wrote, the elephant story. He knew that he had to start his stories with a sentence that would 

catch attention. So he worked hard to do that. 

Kenneth was doing nicely until Ben Hibbs was brought in as editor to improve the magazine. 

When Kenneth sent in his fourth story, it went to Ben Hibbs, instead of the usual editors, "and he kept 

rejecting every single revision. I tried to revise it to suit him, and I finally just gave up. It was 

hopeless. But it was one of the best stories that I wrote. And that was on General War Elephant. 

And Margaret thought it was the best of the bunch that I'd written." But the Post was starting to die, 

then, and Ben Hibbs hastened the process, Kenneth says. 

He retells the way he got started, taking the correspondence course and then sending the 

stories he wrote for that to the Post. One of his stories was based on Kenneth's uncle Ed Landon in 

Frenchtown, who in his early life had been a vagabond, a tramp. He was always arguing with 

Kenneth's father. Ed didn't believe in work and didn't see why he should spend his life working. 

570


During his tramping years, he ran across Vachel Lindsay. He described Lindsay as "this wild-eyed 

man" who came out of the dimness of a boxcar the two were riding in and offered him poems in 

exchange for bread. Ed had some sandwiches. Ed was afraid of him, so he took the poem, which 

became a famous poem later on, and shared his food with him. Kenneth described this scene in his 

short story. "Well, descendants of Vachel Lindsay were outraged. They said he was QRW wild-eyed, 

and this was a cruel caricature of a very famous American poet. It couldn't be so. But it was exactly 

what my uncle described." This story also struck the eye of Kenneth's cousin Henry, down in North 

Wilkesboro, North Carolina, so that years later, when Kenneth visited there with Carol and Lennart 

Pearson, and went to the Landon garage and called, "Is anybody here?" a man appeared out of the 

darkness in the garage and said, "Why, yes, cousin Kenneth. I'm your cousin Henry." He had seen 

Kenneth in "Keeping Posted" at the back of the Post. Then he spoke of that short story which he 

thought might be based on Uncle Ed. He had heard the story of Vachel Lindsay also. 

4 

27:22 The name of the center Kenneth established at American University was the Center for South 

and Southeast Asian Studies. It covered India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand, Indochina, 

and Indonesia. Also the Philippines. Kenneth started from scratch to build the Center. He worked 

with the Department of Anthropology to get courses in anthropology going, and with the Department 

of Religion to get courses in religion in the area going, and with the School of Languages. Kenneth 

brought in a woman to teach Sanskrit, the classic language of India. And the Center taught Hindi, 

Urdu, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Indonesian. There were courses in political science, on the 

politics and sociology and so on. It was an interdisciplinary area program, so that anybody could get 

a degree in area studies for his or her Ph.D. There was an M.A. program as well. And there were 

courses for undergraduates. "That was the period when Southeast Asia ranked high in American 

interest, and it looked very optimistic because—and many of my students did go on into the CIA, for 

instance, in intelligence work, in other security organizations. One student got into the security outfit 

guarding the White House, yeah, because they wanted somebody who knew something about 

Southeast Asians. And he was one of my very good students. And one graduate who got his 

advanced degree, and he couldn't get a job, he ended up working down here at the Safeway. He was 

disgusted. He couldn't get a job because interest began to flag. Some became teachers and went on 

to teach at other universities on Southeast Asia or South Asia." 

Kenneth taught full time and administered the Center. He raised the money to establish it 

from the Office of Education. He had a grant from them, which of course the university appreciated. 

That grant continued throughout Kenneth's period at the University, he says. 

There was a rule that required that administrators stop administering after the age of sixtyfive, 

Kenneth says, but they kept him on as a teacher. And then in his seventieth year, they retired 

him [actually, in his seventy-first, in 1974. This is somewhat different from his other recorded account, on #85 

at index 2, according to which he continued to administer the program until 1974, as well as teach, and I don't 

know which is correct. But I think probably the earlier version is correct.] 

Kenneth's successor was a man named Hunsberger, who also taught courses in the Center on 

economics. But his interest was not South and Southeast Asia SHU VH, so he broadened the program to 

include Japan, his particular interest. Accordingly, he redesigned the Center the Center for Asian 

Studies. It didn't last very long after that. Hunsberger didn't know how to raise the money. And by 

1975, interest in South and Southeast Asia fell off. So the Center died. 

571


5 

33:08 Kenneth tells of the student who thought Kenneth was phoney. He was a Ph.D. candidate, 

and a good student, "but he was really put off me. He thought I was a phoney, that I made my stories 

up. . . ." He got his Ph.D. He was "not very pleasant with me," but Kenneth was always pleasant 

with him. Then about two years later, Kenneth received a letter from him saying, "I kick myself for 

not appreciating that I was sitting at the feet of a really great man and a great teacher. I've learned 

from experience that your career and your stories were all genuine." Kenneth didn't know where he 

was working, but probably the CIA, where they had a fat file on Kenneth. It was a very gracious 

letter. 

The period during which Kenneth worked at the University was a time of student unrest. "Oh, 

I had many demonstrations against me. And I remember one night I was the speaker at a meeting on 

Vietnam. It was probably in 1967 or 1968. I was the speaker, and that room was absolutely 

jammed." "Anyway, they were all there. And they were all tensed and ready for the attack. So I got 

up. It was a time when everybody was talking about, 'Are you a hawk or are you a dove.' So I got 

up, and I looked at this—the front row was just almost right at my feet, the room was so jammed— 

and I said, 'Well, to begin with, I am QRW a hawk. Nor am I a dove. I'm a Presbyterian.' They 

laughed their heads off. But it eased the tension, which was my purpose." Then Kenneth went ahead 

with his little speech on Vietnam, dealing with the policies, on which he was well-informed. Then 

came the question period. 

An Indian got up and delivered a long series of questions in such rapid succession and with 

such dramatics that Kenneth was unable to speak. "So finally, after all this peroration and 

questioning and exclamations and tirades and waving of arms, he ended. 'Now, what do you say? 

What's the answer.' 'The answer is, "


One famous individual Kenneth brought in to lecture was Joseph Campbell, who stayed at 

4711. Kenneth set up lecture programs in schools around the Washington area, in addition to 

American University, and on that particular occasion, it was at St. Josephs, a Catholic college. It was 

a series of lectures, one a week, to run through the winter period. Kenneth had a long roster of highly 

qualified men to draw on, from his years working at FSI. "Campbell was one of the few who stayed 

here in our house because we were such good friends, Joe Campbell. And he had a fabulous lecture 

on mythology. Just fabulous. Mythology and religion and things of that sort. So, then, we'd drive 

out to St. Joe's, Joseph's, and have the lectureship out there." Another man he brought in was John 

Fairbanks from Harvard. He also brought in some ambassadors. Paid them well. 

Kenneth recalls the American University period as a very happy one. Under Ernest Griffith, 

the standard of scholarship went up so well that they were attracting at SIS more candidates for the 

Foreign Service than the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. "We were in real competition. And 

our graduates were very succesful at entering the Foreign Service. That was the hope for many of our 

students who wanted to be specialists in the Foreign Service. . . ." 

6 

45:43 The "Pentagon Papers." [We touched on this in #72 index 3. These were seven thousand pages of 

government documents in forty-seven volumes that had been assembled in the Nixon administration concerning 

the history of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam. Their formal title was "History of U.S. Decision-Making 

Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945-1967.] In 1971, they were made public by the New York Times, and 

there was tremendous controversy over it. Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, a psychiatrist, had a copy [I cannot 

remember how; but vaguely recall that he may have been in the Defense Department at the time the "Papers" 

were assembled.] and made it available to his personal friend, Neil Sheehan, the Times' famous 

reporter. Sheehan has recently published a book, A Bright and Shining Lie, which Kenneth has read. 

[Ellsberg's leaking of these secret papers led to the forming of "the plumbers" by the Nixon administration, 

intended to plug such leaks, which was the first in a series of steps that led to Watergate.] 

Among the first documents in the Pentagon Papers was a series of telegrams sent by Kenneth 

Landon from Hanoi concerning his meetings with Ho Chi Minh in early 1946. [A selection of the 

papers was published in one volume later in 1971, and Kenneth's telegrams were the very first documents in 

that book.] 

Kip recalls that a broadcast journalist for CBS came to 4711 to interview Kenneth. Kenneth 

says that it was one of the Kalb brothers, not Bernard, but Marvin. What triggered the interview was 

a column in a magazine—Kenneth thinks it was U.S. News and World Report. The column, 

"Where are they now?" which ran weekly, asked that week where two men were today, a Frenchman 

who was famous in Hanoi in the 1940's [General Saintenay] and Kenneth Landon, who had written 

the telegrams that appeared at the beginning of the Pentagon Papers. CBS picked this up, and here 

was Landon, conveniently in Washington, so they came out and spent the day interviewing Kenneth 

and Margaret for the Cronkite show that night. So Kenneth appeared on the CBS news, for about a 

minute and a half. 

After that interview ran on the news, Kenneth received a letter from the head of the 

department of comparative religion at the University of Chicago, A. Eustace Haydon. He was retired 

and living in California. It read, "Saw you on the Cronkite show. Memories of happy days!" He was 

a very gracious man. "I've always appreciated him because I admired him. He was one of the few 

people with whom you could differ and argue, in good temper, and end up friends. At first, I thought 

he'd flunk me. Certainly wouldn't give me a Ph.D. But he gave me a glowing Ph.D. report, with 

honors and all the rest of it, and then wanted me to be his successor when he retired. "Memories of 

happy days!" 

573


7 

50:05 That same year, 1971, Columbus, Georgia, celebrated "Kenneth P. Landon Day." January 

28, 1971. This was the doing of an entrepreneurial young man named Jimmy Lovell, [who had 

befriended Margaret and Kenneth through letters and telephone calls. He was a great admirer.] Lovell 

wanted to establish a lecture series at Columbus, which was south of Atlanta, when Jimmy Carter 

was still the governor. At first, Lovell wanted to get Margaret to come down, but she didn't want to 

do it. So Kenneth agreed that he would go. The idea was that he would come and give a lecture. 

Then Lovell would have Dean Rusk lecture, and Averell Harriman. To make it popular, three 

women's clubs in the Columbus area ran beauty contests to pick women who would meet Kenneth 

Landon in Atlanta and escort him in as Georgia peaches, Georgia lovelies, to meet Governor 

Carter as a gesture of interest. And the Governor agreed to do this. So Kenneth flew down to 

Atlanta, and when he got off the plane, there was Jimmy Lovell with a big stretch Cadillac limousine, 

three gorgeous females all decked out in their most beautiful clothes, and several photographers with 

their flashbulbs going. The party highballed over to the governors' mansion to meet the Governor. 

"Well, I was only supposed to be in there for about five or ten minutes. But Carter at that 

time was already thinking of trying to become the President of the United States, and he was active in 

an organization in New York that considered parts of the world for discussion. And he thought that 

this was a golden opportunity to get the latest poop on Southeast Asia, from Kenneth Landon. So, he 

kept me there for a couple of hours, quizzing me. Well, his aides were frantic. His schedule was shot 

to pieces. And my lovelies out there were having to go off to the restrooms and relieve themselves. 

And everything went on like this. And I was ready to leave. And Jimmy Lovell was in there with 

me, and he kept trying to pry me loose, but Carter held me, and what can you do?" Kenneth also had 

to go down the hall to call on the lieutenant governor, a controversial figure known for his racism. 

He was famous for keeping a bunch of axe handles ready to attack any blacks who might try to get 

into his fast-food chicken restaurant. 

Finally, the party took off for Columbus. A dinner had been laid on there in Kenneth's honor, 

but the party was so late that finally everyone had given up and gone home. 

The next morning Kenneth appeared on an early-morning radio program, and after that a 

television program. "Then I was escorted by the mayor to some museum. And the day went on with 

one meeting after another with the women's clubs and interviews. I was getting kind of limp toward 

the end of the day. And eating too much, of course. And the lecture was an evening lecture. And 

finally the time of the lecture came, and I was relieved because at least on the lecture platform I 

wouldn't be crowded by people, and I would be able to say my piece. But by that time I had been 

presented with 'the key of the city' business that's hanging out in my office there, and the day had 

been declared 'Kenneth Perry Landon Day' for Columbus, Georgia. And my room, the lecture hall, 

was jammed with military who came over by buses from the military base nearby to hear this lecture 

on Southeast Asia. From Fort Benning. And at the same time, the same evening, Dean Rusk was 

having a meeting where he was to lecture, and he had an audience of about fifteen. And this was 

literally the case. He had about fifteen people. I had these busloads of the military to come over to 

hear me on Southeast Asia and on Vietnam. '71. Vietnam. That was a big topic at that time. So it 

was a big night, and the flashbulbs going." 

The next day, Kenneth flew up to the Asian Society meeting for the whole southeastern 

seaboard. They met annually in January, and still do. 

That was also the period when he was invited to get a program started in Southeast Asian 

studies at the University of North Carolina at Raleigh. "I was given the royal treatment there. . . . 

They'd been trying to get somebody else, but failed, and they settled on me. That really introduced 

me to that whole southeast United States Asian studies conference, which meets every January." 

574


That was when Kenneth got his recipe for rye bread, made with Michelob beer and blackstrap 

molasses. The woman who gave it to him was named Betty. [Betty Bond.] 

575


HOUR 89 

Session #59 continued March 31, 1989 Kenneth, Margaret, Kip, Peggy Schoenherr 

1 

0:00 (XIIIB1420) Every year in January Kenneth receives a card from Betty in memory of 

Kenneth Perry Landon Day. 

How Kenneth got started making bread. Margaret had a friend who was a reporter for a 

weekly publication on economics, Barron's Weekly. She invited the Landons to a reception at her 

house for the editor of the publication. They had also invited the head of the Federal Reserve, who 

later became the ambassador to Germany. Name forgotten. The Landons didn't know anyone at the 

party except her friend. "So we stood around, and in my usual fashion, I wandered off. And I 

thought, Well, I'll see what's out in the kitchen. So I headed toward the kitchen." "So I go into the 

kitchen, and here is the editor of Barron's Weekly with the head of the Reserve Board, with their 

heads close together, sitting at a little tiny table in the kitchen. Obviously, this had all been arranged 

for them to get together. And here is this dummy Landon who walks in on 'em. Well now I have had 

in the State Department a lot of experience of extracting myself from such embarrassing situations 

because I frequently would find myself walking into a committee meeting and sitting down, 

unfortunately, before I discovered that I was in the wrong committee! And I was supposed to be in 

some meeting of another committee. And rather than just getting up all of a sudden in the midst and 

stalking out, I developed the technique of listening for a moment or so, very politely, then lifting my 

hand and saying, 'I'm sorry, but I have another meeting in just a few moments. Do you mind if I 

make an observation or two before I leave?' This would stop it dead. So I would make my 

observation, whatever it was, and then get the hell out. Get out of the place. Well, so here were these 

two, and both of them experts in economics and Wall Street and all the rest of it, and me absolutely 

flunked arithmetic, didn't understand anything. I thought wildly to myself, What can I say to these 

fellows to get out of here? So I strolled over to them, I said, 'Well, it's nice to see you two gentlemen 

together.' I said, 'You know, I think there is a problem that you two might very well discuss 

profitably. I think it's outrageous that the Treasury discriminates against the small investor. The 

small American investor cannot buy a Treasury bill unless he has $10,000. If he's got $1000, he can't 

buy a Treasury bill. I think that's unfair. It's unAmerican to discriminate against the American who 

has only $1000. He's got to have $10,000 before he can buy a bill.' Well, it was like setting off a 

bomb. They turned to each oher, and they went to it, and I walked out, and they paid no more 

attention to me. I got out of the situation." 

Kip points out that the man in the kitchen was the head of the Federal Reserve during the 

Nixon administration. Kenneth thinks it was in 1971. [I think it was Burns, perhaps Arthur Burns, a stuffy, 

white-haired man who looked like a refugee from the nineteenth century.] 

Kenneth returned to the party and engaged a tall, friendly looking man in conversation. "I 

said, 'Well, now, sir, everybody in Washington is important. What are you important for?' He drew 

himself up stiffly and said, 'I am important because I bake the finest stone-ground whole wheat bread 

in the city of Washington.'" Kenneth declared himself impressed, saying that he was fed up with 

store-brought bread. Did the gentleman share his recipé? The man replied that he would do so only 

with someone who would PDNH the bread. Kenneth guaranteed that he would make the bread. The 

gentleman mailed the recipé later that week. 

Then Kenneth asked Margaret how to make bread. She looked alarmed, got out a cookbook, 

576


handed it to him, and walked out of the kitchen. "So I bought the ingredients, and I made the bread, 

and of course the kitchen was a shambles when I got through 'cause I didn't know what I was doing 

when I got into it. But my first batch was a success. And I've never stopped making stone-ground 

whole wheat bread since." 

That was the start of Kenneth's career as a cook. Betty Bond's recipé was for her "four-star 

rye bread," which Kenneth also makes. Her husband is an agronomist. She is a student on India, a 

charming person. 

Then Kenneth found a recipé in a newspaper for rolls, a real gourmet recipé, and for years he 

made those for hamburgers. 

7$3( ;,9 

2 

8:45 Kenneth would make thirty-six rolls in a batch and store them in the freezer. 

After his retirement in 1974, Kenneth's cooking developed into something elaborate. "Well 

then I had to have a new career, so I became what is known as a 'house spouse.' So now my career is 

house spouse. And I do the shopping and the cooking, and I have a very variegated diet of fish and 

foul. . . ." Red meat once week. Hamburgers once a week. A farmer brings in fresh eggs and 

chicken once a week. Peggy declares that he has become the best cook in the family. 

Kenneth tells of Winnie Cobey, a childhood friend of Kip's, who became an attorney, a 

radical attorney in California, who came to call on him one day bringing as a gift a book of bread 

recipé's from a monastery, the Tatiana (SP?) monastery in California. Kenneth found a very superior 

bread recipé in the book which he has used since. Winnie was a small woman in big lumberjack 

boots and jeans and a lumberjack jacket and shaggy hair. She was representing the "wild liberals and 

the communists out in California." 

[In the years after Kenneth's retirement, Margaret's strength steadily waned, and he 

took over the running of the house. Eventually, he did everything, the shopping, the cooking, 

the cleaning and dusting and washing and laundry, everything you can think of. Outside, he 

did all the gardening and watering and planting and weeding. In addition, he always had 

some project going. It might be moving a shrub, having a new tree planted, a new wall built, 

or singlehandedly panelling the unfinished attic. His cooking became increasingly creative 

as Margaret's interest in food declined. The challenge was to prepare food interesting 

enough that she would eat it. He once told me, "I'm running a retirement home here for one 

old lady." 

[There were, of course, many family visits. Until the 1980's, Kenneth and Margaret 

continued to travel. Then family would come to them. "I love family," Kenneth would say. 

"There's just nothing like family."] 

3 

13:24 Margaret's statue. One day two women called on Margaret in the early days of Anna's 

success. 1954. One of them was a sculptress, Berthe de Hellebranth, who was widely known in 

Europe and who concentrated on religious sculpture. She was Hungarian. She said that she and her 

sister had both read Anna in another language, perhaps French, and they wanted to tell her what a 

pleasure the book had been to them. They were very gracious. Some time later Margaret received 

from her a beautiful, small plaster sculpture of a Madonna and child. Margaret has pictures of some 

of her other works. She has now given that sculpture to Kip. 

577


As the years passed, Margaret would say how much she would like to have the sculpture 

rendered in marble. As this request surfaced year after year, a time came when Kenneth decide to 

have this done for one of their anniversaries. So he called Catherine Davis down the street, who was 

active at the Cathedral, and asked who among the stonecarvers at the Cathedral could do the job. She 

told him to go and talk to Roger Morigi, the chief sculptor. So Kenneth went up. He carefully 

wrapped up the little plaster sculpture, put it in a shoe box, and tied a string around it. He was 

wearing a trenchcoat because it was cold and windy. At the Cathedral, he went to a building where 

the men had a stove going in the cold and asked for Morigi, and they told him where to find Morigi. 

"So I went over there, and I saw this ladder going up and up and up and up and up to a trapdoor. And 

I asked around, and people said, Well, there were workman up there, so I just assumed, Well, I guess 

that's where Morigi is. So, clutching this box under my arm, I went up this ladder." Kip points out 

that Kenneth was in his seventies at the time. [Scaffolding was built from the floor up to the point where 

work was being done, in this case, apparently, the ceiling, which in the spot Kenneth describes was over 

seventy feet up. The ladder would have been part of the scaffolding.] "Well, I didn't think anything about 

it. I just went up the ladder. And so I got up to the trapdoor, and of course it was shut, and I was 

hanging on to this ladder, and it was a ORQJ way down. So I didn't look down. I just looked up. And 

I got my head up against the trapdoor, then I gave it a shove, and it gave a little bit, and then I heaved 

again, and threw it back. So then I was in a position where I had to act decisively, and so I took the 

box from under my arm and slid it in, and then I threw myself up over the thing on my belly and 

crawled onto the level area above the trapdoor, and then I closed the trapdoor to look around. I didn't 

want to fall back down the hole. And I saw a short ladder going on up to one of the objects that was 

being worked on by a man who was the sculptor. [The object was probably one of the boss stones in the 

ceiling.] And he said, 'Who are you? What do you want up here?!' 'Well,' I said, 'are you Morigi?' 

'I'm Morigi. I'm Morigi.' 'Well,' I said, 'I want to show you something. I have a question.' 'Okay. 

Come on up.' He didn't come down. So I had to go up. Well, he had a little platform on which he 

was working. So I sat on the edge of the platform, and I untied the string, and opened the box, and 

gently took out the Madonna and child, which was quite fragile, I thought, made of clay." 

Kenneth explained that this was a Madonna and child by a famous sculptress which he wanted 

to have made into marble. Could he interest Morigi in doing the job. "No!" came the abrupt answer. 

"You go and see Constantine. Constantine might do it." Constantine Seferlis was a Greek. Morigi 

was Italian. Kenneth asked where to find him, but Morigi didn't know. Kenneth would just have to 

go looking. 

Kenneth rewrapped the Madonna and child in its box, retied the strong, opened the trapdoor 

and looked down. "I said, 'Morigi, I can't close this trapdoor.' 'Oh damn,' he said, 'Okay, I close it.' 

So he had to come down after all. So then I got down. I leaned my belly down on this thing and 

began to grope around for some steps and I found the steps, and I eased back, and finally I got my 

hand on the ladder, and then I inched back down the ladder. So I got to the bottom, and looked up. I 

heard the trapdoor slam shut behind me as I was halfway down." 

Kenneth went back to the original shed. Where was Constantine? Oh, he was up the ladder 

on the other side of the Cathedral. So Kenneth went there. This time, it was a short ladder, "only 

thirty or forty feet up." And he made his way up the ladder as he had the first time, and there was 

Constantine. Kenneth went through his presentation again, and Constantine looked at the Madonna 

and child, and suggested that Kenneth go see Vincent Palumbo, another stonecarver. Maybe he 

would do it. Was he any good? Kenneth asked. Yes, he did good work. Constantine said he himelf 

wouldn't do the job. 

So down Kenneth went again. Back to the shed. Asked for Vincent, and Vincent was there. 

For a third time, Kenneth opened up his box and displayed the little sculpture. Would Vincent be 

578


interested in making the copy? Yes, the answer was. "Very expensive!" Vincent seemed willing, 

almost enthusiastic. But the more they talked, the more Kenneth felt that he didn't want Vincent to 

do it. "I didn't take to him." So Kenneth said good-by and suggested that they both think about this. 

Kenneth wrapped up his Madonna and child carefully in its shoebox, and tied the string, 

stepped out of the shed, and there was Constantine. He had been standing by the door, listening to 

their conversation. Constantine asked Kenneth why he hadn't engaged Vincent to "make the baby." 

Kenneth said, "Constantine, I don't think he's any good." Constantine acted shocked. But Kenneth 

said that he had the feeling that Vincent wasn't a first class sculptor, "and I want a first class job." 

Kenneth said it wasn't the expense he was worried about. It was the quality of work. 

Kenneth began walking away, but Constantine fell into step with him. He said, "Well, now 

look. Maybe I think about it. Maybe I think about it." So Kenneth gave the man his telephone 

number and address. 

A week or two passed, and then Constantine called. "I think I do that Madonna and child for 

you." "Good," Kenneth said. "I come over," Constantine said. "I come over tonight." So 

Constantine came. Kenneth showed him the sculpture, and the living room, and the spot where the 

marble copy would go. They talked about the size of the copy. Then Constantine looked around, 

looked at Margaret, and said, "Now we talk business," and walked into Kenneth's office. He wouldn't 

talk "business" with Margaret present. He named a price, $800, which Kenneth accepted. 

Constantine said he would go and pick out some marble, then come to talk again. In a week 

or two, he came with two or three samples of marble, and the Landons picked the piece they liked the 

best. "Ha," he said, "you picked the wrong marble. That marble no good. That rotten marble. That 

marble wouldn't last. Look," he said, and he snapped it in half. Then he showed how superior 

another piece was. 

Then Constantine went into detail about how he would proceed with the carving. Several 

weeks later, he returned with his work in progress. It was just roughed out. But he wanted to see it in 

the window where it would sit. Kenneth said that the sculpture needed a base to lift it up over the 

window ledge. And Constantine agreed to make that too. 

When the job was done, Constantine suggested that he make a bust of Margaret. He thought 

"she beautiful woman." But this was not done, to Constantine's sorrow. He had thought he was on to 

a good thing. 

[The plaster Madonna and child had a grace and beauty to it that could not be copied. 

It was displayed over the fireplace in the living room, beneath the painting of the Madonna 

and child that had been done by the Chinese court artists before the revolution of 1949. The 

marble copy was displayed before a large picture window in the living room for many years. 

In the end, the copy was also given to Kip.] 

4 

34:00 Kip recalls how, when Andrew Pearson, Carol Landon Pearson's younger son, came visiting 

with his family as a small boy, he would bite people. "Yes, well, he was a child, and he would bite 

people," Kenneth says. "And he bit me. So I bit him right back. It didn't taste good either." 

Kenneth told Carol that, any time Andrew bit someone, that person should bite him. That would cure 

him. "He didn't bite PH again." Kip recalls that Kenneth not only bit him back, but got down on the 

ground with him, fighting with fists, kicks, and bites "to a point of mutual respect." "I got right down 

on his level, and I bit him right back. And he pummeled me, and I pummeled him. And he gave up. 

I was bigger than he was. I had more teeth!" Margaret points out that Andrew is presently worked 

toward his masters degree in medieval history. 

579


The suit. 1972. Twentieth Century Fox and CBS did a television series of The King and I, 

with Yul Brynner, without asking permission or paying anything to Margaret. They violated her 

copyright. The Landons first heard about it from someone who had read about it in the newspaper. 

Then there was a note about it in Variety. So the Landons got in touch with their attorney, Herb 

Fierst, who said that he would warn them off. So he wrote a legal letter to the people at Fox and CBS 

who were doing the series, pointing out that they were infringing her copyright. He was prepared to 

sue them for breach of copyright, pointing out that now he had warned them, the penalties would be 

doubled. He also said he would bring similar suits against every television station across the U.S. 

that ran the series. But they were not discouraged by this, and proceeded to put The King and I on 

the tube. 

Herb counseled the Landons to view the programs as they appeared and comment on them in 

connection with the infringement of Margaret's rights. Kenneth prepared his tape recorder and a still 

camera for the first program, intending to take pictures of the credits as evidence, and record the 

sound. [This was long before the days of VCR's.] But then he discovered that the program was not going 

to show in Washington. It was being shown in Richmond, Virginia, so the Landons drove down and 

rented a room with a television, where they viewed the program and made their record. Then 

Kenneth had the idea of getting a special antenna set up that would pick up the Baltimore station that 

was showing The King and I, and from then on, the Landons taped and photographed the episodes at 

home. Margaret transcribed the tapes. A big job. But this gave them the evidence they needed for 

legal action. 

[The television series was unsuccessful and only ran for half a year, I believe, that is, thirteen episodes.] 

So the lawsuit began. [Margaret did quite a bit of research at Herb's direction to bolster her case.] 

CBS hired the lawfirm of former Secretary of State Rogers. The attorney sent to Washington "on an 

exploratory mission with Margaret" was named Tony Essaie, "a low life British type, that is, he was 

not of the upper class. He was the lower class type that didn't speak elegant English but tried his best 

to give you the impression that he did." Meetings were set up with Essaie, Margaret, Herb Fierst, and 

two attorneys Herb had brought in, James Dobkin of Arnold and Porter, and Mitchell Rogovin, who 

would actually argue the case in court. The purpose was to take Margaret's deposition in answer to 

various questions. "Tony Essaie thought that by being very formal with Margaret, he would confuse 

her and have her at a disadvantage. What he didn't know was that Margaret is a very formal person. 

And the more formal he was, the more at ease she felt. And this really disconcerted him, and she did 

a magnificent job, and absolutely stunned her own attorneys with her careful use of the English 

language. . . ." 

There was a good deal of toing and froing, and the months passed. The suit finally came to 

trial in D.C. court, and the Fox and CBS attorneys asked that the case be moved to New York for 

their convenience—though it was Margaret who had brought the suit, and Washington was her 

home—and their request was granted. "Well," says Kenneth, "they owned a judge up there, and they 

thought that they would have a breeze of it. And they did. And so in the lower court they won. Then 

it went to the appeals court, and Dobkin wrote an absolutely scintillating, brilliant brief." With that, 

Fox suddenly realized they were on the losing end of this thing, says Kenneth, and that it could cost 

them millions, not only with Margaret, but also with other cases. An amicus position was taken by 

the Dramatists' Guild for Margaret at the court because they'd been doing the same thing with other 

authors. If she won, Fox would be vulnerable to suit by a whole series of authors. So it was in their 

interest to pinch this suit off. Up till then, they had treated it as nothing but a nuisance suit. "But 

they suddenly realized that they could own one judge, but they couldn't very well buy three." 

Three of their highest-powered lawyers turned up in Washington to meet with Herb Fierst, 

James Dobkin, and Mitchell Rogovin to work out an agreement. Margaret had said all along that she 

580


was more concerned with her rights than with the money. So it was finally agreed that they would 

pay her $25,000 in settlement and that all of Margaret's rights would be formally acknowledged in 

writing as hers by Fox and CBS. [I believe there was a third issue, concerning the movie version of The 

King and I. Margaret had never received any royalties from that, but I believe she was now to receive a small 

amount from showings on television and in rerun theaters.] So she got what she wanted. For Arnold and 

Porter, this case was on a pro bono basis. But Kenneth suggested to Margaret that they offer the 

$25,000 to be divided among attorneys, and this was done. Naturally, the attorneys were pleased. 

[The suit was settled June 27, 1975. So there was a three-year process. The Rodgers 

and Hammerstein organization was involved in the process also, but I do not recall just how. 

Needless to say, it was they who had granted the rights to Fox and CBS to use their property. 

The television series could not have been made without that.] 

Margaret and Kenneth had a party at 4711 for the attorneys and their wives. All three lawyers 

were Jewish, and when Herb Fierst arrived, both Margaret and Kenneth noticed that the informality 

of the other two lawyers immediately evaporated. They became quiet and respectful in his presence. 

Herb obviously had some standing in their eyes. [Kenneth had come to know him because he worked for a 

time in the State Department.] Mitch Rogovin had been an attorney for the CIA, and an Assistant 

Attorney General under Bobby Kennedy. He was a truly high-powered lawyer. 

The Landons had warned Herb never to trust the movie people. "They will do you in if they 

can." Herb and the Arnold and Porter men were used to dealing with people whose word was good. 

If they came to an agreement with another attorney, they could shake hands, and that was it. But they 

found that the Landons were right. After Herb and the others thought they had an agreement, the 

attorneys for Fox and CBS crossed them up. But it was worked out eventually. With movie and 

television people, things had to be put in writing as soon as they were agreed on. Kenneth says it was 

the same in international diplomacy. You don't trust people's word. 

5 

52:53 The suit and the restoration of Margaret's rights were very significant because a couple of 

years later, there was a major renewal of The King and I in this country and around the world. This 

was in 1977 and on, with Yul Brynner once again starring. Herb Fierst played a critical role once 

again because the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization tried to treat the new production as a 

"stock and amateur" production insofar as Margaret was concerned, which would greatly have 

reduced the royalties she was paid. Representing her, he communicated with R&H and asserted that 

the production be treated as what it was, a first run production, and the full royalties paid, which were 

1% of gross receipts. [R&H knew from Margaret's suit against CBS and Fox that she was not to be taken 

lightly, and did as Herb asked, in writing. Virtually everything Margaret and Kenneth accumulated in their estate 

from then on and left to their heirs was from the resulting royalties earned during this period. In 1978, Margaret, 

Kenneth, Kip, and Nona Beth drove up to New York to see The King and I together.] The play ran until 

1985, when Yul Brynner became too ill with cancer to continue. For a time, it was earning over 

$600,000 a week in New York. It played in London for a season. It went to Chicago, Los Angeles, 

Washington, St. Louis, back to Broadway. There was a great deal of publicity on television, in 

magazines, and so on. 

Kenneth says that the Queen of Thailand, Queen Sirikit, was in New York with her entourage, 

and Yul Brynner invited her to come to the play as his guest, with thirty-four of her ladies-in-waiting. 

And she agreed, "which was quite some triumph after so much has been said in Thailand by Thai 

critical of The King and I. And here was the Queen herself who was the guest of Yul Brynner!" 

Brynner had them all come backstage after the play. 

581


Kip mentions the great family event in June, 1976 when Margaret and Kenneth celebrated 

their fiftieth anniversary. Some sixty-five family and friends were there, all on Mother's side. No 

Robinsons or Fletchers on Kenneth's side. He says he has not seen the Landons of North Carolina 

since the visit with Carol and Lennart many years ago. The family and friends gathered in Dousman, 

Wisconsin, where Margaret's sister's husband, the Reverend Wayne Amsler, pastored a Presbyterian 

church. [It was a marvellous week. Kenneth and Margaret drove out in their Buick with Kip 

and Nona Beth, and the four of them stayed together in a cabin on a lake near Dousman 

owned by one of Wayne and Betty's children. Peggy, Will, and Carol and many of their 

children came, each renting cabins of their own. We all gathered at a different cabin each 

night for dinner and sharing. And then, on Saturday, June 19th, I think it was, we had a great 

celebration at the church, with pictures of Margaret and Kenneth from childhood on mounted 

for display, and family movies, and performances by grandchildren on various instruments, 

and dinner, of course. Betty's children and grandchildren were there, and Evangeline's 

children. Nona Beth sang the hymn that was used at the wedding fifty years earlier, "Savior, 

like a shepherd lead us," and Margaret looked down at her plate and fought to hold back the 

tears. Kip sang an original song-narrative that he had written in celebration of "the jaunty 

Englishman from Meadville, Pennsylvania and the royal Norwegian from Evanston, Illinois." 

There was much more than I can recall. All in all, one of the great weeks in Margaret and 

Kenneth's lives.] 

The taping is done, after all these years. Any final words? "Yes," says Kenneth, and in Thai 

thanks Kip for doing all of this recording through the years for the family. Margaret adds her 

appreciation, saying that she would like to have kept a diary all these years but was unable to. 

So. The end. 

[As much as we recorded through the years, much never made it to tape. The record is thorough up to 

the early 1930's. After that, it becomes more scattered. Because it became increasingly difficult for Margaret to 

speak, and because she had difficulty remembering many things, a great deal of the last forty years of her life 

was lost to the record. For instance, after writing Never Dies the Dream, she spent ten years working on a 

history of Southeast Asia. This never came to a fruition, and effectively brought an end to her writing career, 

since by 1960 or so she no longer had the strength to write. There was one not-so-small project, though, in 

which she took the letters to parents that Canon Charles Martin of St. Albans School in Washington had written 

through the years and edited them into a book that was published entitled Letters from a Headmaster's 

Study. There were occasional papers for the Literary Society. And all through the years, she wrote a steady 

stream of letters to family and friends, all of them elegantly and beautifully written. 

[In the 1950's, when her son Kip was a student at St. Albans, Margaret served as one of the school's 

board of governors. 

[As for Kenneth, when his career came to an end in 1974, he continued to lecture for a number of years, 

and to write articles and reviews in his area of expertise. But mainly, as he put it, he became a "house spouse." 

He worked about the house; read voraciously; played golf; enjoyed life. He had many small adventures, which 

he loved to regale us with; he could turn almost anything into an adventure. 

[I believe I am correct in saying that some of Margaret's papers in connection with Anna went to the 

Library of Congress. In 1989, the bulk of both Kenneth's and Margaret's personal libraries and papers went to 

Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, to become the Landon Collection in the college library. 

[Kenneth and Margaret moved out of their home of forty-seven years in the spring of 1991 to spend their 

last years in the Hermitage retirement home in Alexandria, Virginia. Kenneth died August 26, 1993. Margaret 

died December 4, a little more than three months later. They are buried side by side in the Wheaton, Illinois, 

cemetery.] 

582

ADDENDUM TO THE LANDON CHRONICLES—Hour #1 583 

ADDENDUM 1 

In 1962, under a directive from President John F. Kennedy, Dad set up the Country 

Team Seminar, later renamed the National Interdepartmental Seminar, to prepare teams of 

high-level officers from various federal agencies who were being sent out to countries in 

parts of the world under threat from communist insurgency. The purpose was to improve our 

ability to promote political, societal, and economic development and also to counter 

insurgency in these parts of the world. The Seminar program was conducted at the Foreign 

Service Institute, a branch of the State Department, which was located in Rosslyn, Virginia, 

just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. On June 13, 1962, using a monaural Norelco 

tape recorder from the early 1950's, Dad began recording a tape of his ongoing experience 

running the program. (On my stereo tape recorder, the sound comes through on the left 

channel only.) 

1 

June 13, 1962 Today was the third day of the Country Team Seminar, "with the immediate title 

'Problems of Development and Internal Defense.'" Everything was going normally. Kenneth arrived 

at 7:20 a.m. and found two course members waiting to enter. He went around to the eight country 

team seminar rooms, where the course members would be working, snapping on lights. Within 

fifteen minutes, over twenty members of the Seminar were milling around in the library, picking up 

books, pamphlets, reading materials, taking out classified documents and going off to their home 

seminar room where they would read and talk with fellow team members until the 9:00 a.m. lecture. 

Kenneth describes the kind of government officials who were students in the program, 

brigadier generals, high officials of their various departments and agencies, State, Defense, AID, 

USIA, CIA, who would be going out on assignment to various countries around the world. 

Kenneth met with the entire class at 9:00 to introduce the morning speaker, and at the same 

time announced a meeting with his advisory staff of men detailed from various agencies to take place 

after the morning session. 

After the session, he met with the eight advisors and discussed with them how to set up a 

course for instructors which would run two weeks in late July. There has been a lot of talk in 

government about the need for a course for instructors, and Kenneth is taking the lead in creating it. 

The instructors would be drawn from training schools in Defense, CIA, USIA, AID, and other 

departments and agencies. [This seems to be a course intended to bring instructors in the 

various U.S. government training schools and programs concerned with foreign affairs 

abreast of what is happening in the Country Team Seminar. It will provide them with the 

Seminar syllabus and various materials from the program so that they can take these and 

what they learn about what is happening in the Seminar back to their own institutions and use 

it in their instruction. The purpose is to have co-ordinated instruction throughout 

government.] 

After this, George Morgan, the director of FSI, called Kenneth in to say that a reporter named 

Murry Marder (SP?) from The Washington Post wanted to come in to do a story on the Seminar. 

The problem was how to handle this with regard to the CIA people in the program, who needed their 

anonymity protected. 

At 2:30, Kenneth had the staff advisors meet with Mr. Morgan to discuss how to deal with 

Mr. Marder. 

583


At 3:30, Marder arrived, and Kenneth was with him until 6:30, seeing that he had as much 

information as he could have without putting any of the students at risk. Kenneth describes the initial 

interview. At 4:00 Marder met with the staff advisors, all of them high-level officers in their various 

departments, and Marder was visibly impressed. From there, Marder went down to meet with one of 

the country teams. There were eight men who among them had 100 years of governmental service 

behind them. This team was going to Vietnam. One of them was General Joe Stilwell, a Major 

General, "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell's son. Marder was curious to learn why these high-level types were 

taking the course. Stilwell described his long day and how hard he was working to keep up with the 

program, including on weekends. The other men said the same. They told how creative they had to 

be in the course. It was much more demanding than courses they'd taken in the past, at war colleges 

and the like. 

The discussion went on until close to 6:00, and then Marder went up with Kenneth to 

Morgan's office for some followup. Marder said that he had come prepared to write a disparaging 

article, but he was so impressed that he wanted to do a serious article instead. He realized the course 

was novel in the field of education. 

It is not an ordinary training course. It does not go at an ordinary academic pace. The 

problem is how to make high-level officers, who are no longer young, engage in intense education. 

The key is to make them participants, not merely listeners. They cannot do the course without 

actively involving in the process. The lecture system would not work for this. So what Kenneth is 

doing is having them start early, meeting together to discuss and work on a particular problem in the 

country to which they are going. Then at 9:00 they have a one-hour lecture. This is followed by 

another period of team meeting and discussion, followed by lunch, followed by another one -hour 

lecture, followed by another period of team meeting and discussion. 

The staff advisors rotate among the eight country teams, one to a team. 

All of this was made clear to Mr. Marder, who found it fascinating. He was also given a copy 

of the syllabus. 

The climax of the course comes when all of the country teams have to stand up in front of the 

others and represent and defend the views they have come to in the course process. 

2 

24:19 June 14, 1962 Fourth day of the Seminar. 

Margaret drove Kenneth to FSI early in the morning, arriving at 7:20 a.m. 

At 9:00, Kenneth went down to introduce the day's speaker to the class. He called for a staff 

advisors' meeting at 11:30. Then he went down to the personnel department to see about hiring more 

staff. 

At 11:30 the staff meeting began. The discussion concerned the instructors' training course. 

At 12:00, Kenneth had another meeting with two officers from State concerning his 

requirements for a course on the Near East. The discussion was sharp, and continued until 2:30. 

They returned to the Department, and Kenneth returned to his office to deal with housekeeping 

problems. 

One of these had to do with security. The Seminar was getting in so many security-sensitive 

documents that it was a problem. Kenneth decided to get some Marine guards in to keep the area 

secure. 

Kenneth also designed a certificate that would be awarded to the Seminar graduates at the 

completion of the course. His hope was that the graduates would feel a sense of pride at having taken 

and completed the course. Indeed, high-level people from all over government were fighting to get 

into it. "'The best is none too good' is my motto." The Director of the FSI was with him on this. 

584


They were sparing no effort to make the course the very best it could be. 

One of the country teams was becoming discouraged with its particular country problem and 

was talking about dissolving the team. Kenneth met with the members of the team at 4:00 to discuss 

it with them and convinced them to continue. He also committed to meeting with them for an hour 

every morning, which made them dubious. He set a time of 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. He also arranged 

for those who wished to to come in on Saturday and Sunday to continue their work. 

Near the end of the course, all the secretaries in FSI would be typing up the various reports 

written by the country teams. These had to be done well, because they would be read by the top brass 

in government. 

June 15, 1962 Fifth day 

Kenneth had a new librarian, a Miss Idol, and this was her second day. 

Dr. Sanders (SP) from the Industrial War College was taking the course, hoping to utilize 

some ideas from it, and Kenneth spent some time discussing the course with him. 

At the 9:00 lecture, Kenneth announced another staff meeting. He also announced new 

security regulations. There would be either a Marine guard or a GSA guard to protect the sensitive 

papers. Everyone would be given a security pass with his or her picture on it. Documents were 

coming in in a steady stream as Kenneth and the course members requested them. They were getting 

almost everything they were requesting. In a short time, the Seminar would be in possession of one 

of the finest collections of documents on their areas of interest in the government. 

There were complaints that the course was requiring more of the course members than they 

could handle. Too much to read. Kenneth said that this was intentional, that they would never be 

able "to eat all of the food on the table." He went on to tell them the story of the chicken who, under 

normal conditions, eats what it needs, but if several pounds of corn are piled by a chicken, the 

chicken will eat and eat and eat until it cannot eat any more. The course members found this terribly 

funny and referred to it repeatedly the rest of the day, pointing at their throats and saying, "Too much 

corn in there!" 

One proposal was to cut down the lecture and question times by half. Or perhaps to move the 

lecture to an earlier time and cut down on the question period afterward. 

The afternoon lecture was given by Dr. Lucien Pye (SP?). 

Word came that the President would receive the class at the White House on July 3, and that 

Kenneth should make the arrangements. He called Kenneth O'Donnell (SP), the appointments 

secretary, who referred him to a woman on his staff who made the actual arrangements as to what 

gate to come to, and when. They were to come in two busloads. There were sixty-two members of 

the class, and then Kenneth and the staff advisors, making seventy-five people in all. 

Kenneth joined the Thailand group, which wanted to discuss northeastern Thailand with him. 

Their problem was how to secure the area against the communists there. 

He left the office at 6:30 p.m. 

3 

50:14 June 20, 1962 Wednesday 

On Monday the 18th a first draft of the instructors' course, which had been drafted over in the 

Defense Department, came in, and Kenneth studied it, realizing immediately that it would not do the 

job. It was concerned with procedure, which would be dull. It did not show an understanding of the 

way government works and policy is determined. So Kenneth began working on ways to improve the 

course. 

585


Kenneth went over to State and met with four officers on African affairs from the African 

bureau. They discussed the content of a projected syllabus for an African seminar to gear in with the 

current seminars on Southeast Asia and Latin America. Kenneth spent several hours with them. 

They would prepare materials for a syllabus and send it over to him. The projected seminar would 

run two weeks. Unfortunately, there is not much quality published material on the area. Fortunately, 

in the government, there is a good deal of classified material which the Seminar can make use of. 

Back at FSI, there were numerous administrative problems to deal with. 

Tuesday, more of the same. Kenneth spent a lot of time on the telephone with Near and 

Middle East experts on developing the syllabus for these areas. An exhausting day. 

The course members are taking their work very seriously. Attendance is 100% from 9:00 to 

5:30. Some arrive earlier, and some stay until 7:00, when they must leave. They often go off with 

armloads of material to study at home. 

Boxes of books are arriving daily by special delivery from publishers around the country. 

Kenneth is calling them to get the books shipped in. When the boxes arrive, the course members dive 

in enthusiastically to be sure to get the books they need. 

Wednesday, today, the new security arrangements were in full swing. Everyone has a 

security pass now. 

586


ADDENDUM 2 

1 

(June 20, 1962, continued) The high point of this day in Kenneth's eyes was being informed that a 

Presidential order had just been issued instructing that all senior officers going to Latin America, 

Africa, the Near East, and Southeast Asia should take the course before going to the field. Kenneth 

was asked if he could prepare on Africa and the Near East for the next course, which would be in 

September, and of course he had already begun. He had teams drawing up bibliographies which 

would cover every lecture. The Seminar was getting substantial backing from "the higher 

authorities." "It's really quite a wonderful interdepartmental effort." 

Kenneth was insisting that the various agencies keep one or two of their people associated 

with the course on detail, that is, on their payroll rather than his. Thus, they continue to have a vested 

interest. The course is WKHLU course, all of them. 

The big problem now facing the course is space. Where to get rooms? Where to put a library 

that will have both security and adequate space for reading? Where to get enough seminar rooms to 

hold four major seminar groups, and where to find an auditorium large enough to hold them all 

together when there are general lectures? The facilities at FSI are already under strain. In the next 

thirty to sixty days, new facilities must be found to accommodate the larger program. 

Toward the end of the day the director issued a blizzard of commands and directives to 

Kenneth concerning the impending visit of the Attorney General and Walt Rostow on Friday. They 

are coming over to inspect the course operation. They will both want to say something, visit a couple 

of the country teams, and view the facilities. 

Kenneth has drafted the memos to the White House on the visit of the course members to the 

President on July 3 at noon. They are to enter at the southwest entrance and presumably meet the 

President in the Rose Garden. The hope is that President Kennedy will be able to keep the 

engagement. 

2 

8:23 June 21, 1962 Thursday 

This was payday. Kenneth arrived at about 8:00 a.m. and found some eighteen class members 

there at work on their materials. The library is growing every day, with new boxes of books arriving, 

and the class members don't want to miss them. 

The lecturer today was Lucian Pye of MIT. Before the lecture, Kenneth announced that 

Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Walt Rostow would be coming Friday. He also asked that one 

of the country teams, the one focusing on Haiti, make itself available to the two men during a coffee 

break. 

Kenneth then prepared some materials for Director Morgan to present to Kennedy and 

Rostow when they came, facts and figures on the course. 

[The pianist in the background is Kip Landon—Kenneth Landon, Jr.—playing in the 

living room.] 

Murry Marder of the Post came in at 11:00 with the article he had written, which would 

appear the following Sunday. Morgan read the article, then passed it to Kenneth. It was well written, 

and highly complimentary. 

At noon, Kenneth lunched with one of the staff advisors. Afterward, he attended the 

afternoon lecture and during the lecture made notes on a minute for the sponsoring special group for 

587


counter-insurgency as an instruction to all the concerned agencies and sponsors. The substance of the 

minute was to regularize the present staff advisor system, which Kenneth thought up himself and 

obtained agreement to on an ad hoc basis by the participating agencies. Kenneth feels the time has 

come that this relationship should be made more firm and the roles and responsibilities of the 

advisors to Kenneth, the course co-ordinator, be spelled out more fully. Kenneth went on to ask that 

each agency or department identify some officer who would be authorized to provide him with the 

classified documents necessary for the Seminar's classified library. 

After the lecture, Kenneth had the minute typed, and at the afternoon meeting gave copies to 

all the members of the staff to get their reaction. Without exception they favored the idea. 

Kenneth urged that every one of the staff advisors should retain a desk in his home office, so 

that he would be carrying on a dual service. He would only be full time with the Seminar during the 

actual course. 

Kenneth spent the rest of the afternoon in one of the country team seminars. They were 

preparing a team paper on Bolivia. 

3 

15:43 June 22, 1962 Friday The end of the second week. The Seminar actually began the work 

originally planned to start on the third week. 

At 8:45, Walt W. Rostow, the Counsellor of the Department of State, who selected Kenneth 

for this job, drove up in his black limousine, together with his aide, Henry C. Ramsey, Jr. (SP?). The 

director of FSI, Mr. Morgan, together with members of his administrative staff, waited outside for the 

arrival of the Attorney General. At 9:00, Kenneth told the director that he felt they should start on 

time. No telling when Kennedy would arrive. So at 9:00, Kenneth made a few announcements and 

then asked Professor Pye to start his lecture. 

The Attorney General arrived about five minutes later. Everyone stood up as a token of 

respect, the usual practice in government. Kennedy sat to the right of Director Morgan, with Rostow 

on his left. Dr. Pye welcomed him and then proceeded with his lecture, ending at about 9:50. 

Kenneth took over and introduced Professor Max Milliken of MIT, who had spoken on the first day 

of the course when the Attorney General was there. Milliken was about to sum up the MIT 

contribution to the course. 

Milliken took over and gave a brilliant summing up of their contribution in terms of U.S. 

policy objectives and strategy and showed complete familiarity with government operations. A very 

impressive job. 

Kenneth took over again, saying that the two visitors were the men who had made the course 

possible. He asked if either wished to say anything, and they said no. So the session broke up for a 

coffee break. 

During Milliken's talk, he had spoken of sitting with the Haiti country team and of how 

impressed he had been by their discussion. The team was led by their pro tem ambassador John C. 

Hill, who had flown in from Caracas for the course. Kenneth had arranged for this team to have 

coffee with the Attorney General in Mr. Morgan's conference room on the second floor, so they all 

went up there. Professors Pye and Milliken came along. Hill introduced the members of his team. 

There followed a lively discussion on the problem the team members had been discussing concerning 

Haiti. One of the team members was the actual DCM going out to Haiti. Another was the actual 

military MAG chief, and another the actual chief of the economics side. So they had three of the real 

life members of the country team in our embassy in Haiti. The discussion had more than an academic 

interest for them. They were acquiring information they were going to use in their work. 

At the end of the coffee break, the Attorney General said that he had to leave before the 

588


question period [which was to follow the lecture]. "And he went out of there like a squirrel. He's 

very fast on his feet. And Rostow after him." 

The morning session then continued in the usual fashion. At the end of the session, Kenneth 

was informed that the speaker for the afternoon session, a man named Hilsman (SP?), had been 

commandeered by his department for a conference concerning a possible crisis in China regarding the 

Quemoy and Matsu islands. The Chinese were massing forces opposite the islands. So at 1:30 

Kenneth met with the seminar team, told them in a jocular way of the possible crisis in China, and 

told them to meet again at 3:00. They took Kenneth seriously and believed that Chiang Kai Shek was 

about to invade the islands. 

Hilsman arrived before 3:00 and delivered the afternoon lecture. 

Kenneth spent some time talking to Pye, Milliken, and a man named Blackmer (SP?) for a 

while, all three from MIT, and then they went off to catch a plane back to Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

The next time Milliken would appear here would be July 18. Blackmer would be in and out 

regularly. They were going to observe the course as it proceeded to have an overall view of it and be 

in a position to offer a critique on what might be done to improve the quality, the presentation, and 

the co-ordination of the course. 

Kenneth has a member of his staff, Walter Cronan, whom he has nicknamed "Joe" after the 

baseball player, who is working with Kenneth to build another couple of teams to prepare for the 

Africa and Near East courses. The hope is that these teams will prepare materials of the same high 

quality as the MIT people have done for the first two course areas. 

4 

29:12 June 23, 1962 Saturday 

The subject this morning was youth. Martin MacClachlan (SP?), one of the most 

knowledgeable men in government, was the speaker. He has just been named special assistant to the 

director of the bureau for culture and various activities of a cultural nature, known in the Department 

of State as CU. The new director of that bureau is Luke Battle, whom Kenneth has known for many 

years. This is a new function in government established at the request of the Attorney General so that 

the U.S. might do something about the various youth movements throughout the world. Name a 

country, and MacClachlan knows about the youth movement in that country. He spent a half hour on 

the subject of how to run a conference to the advantage of the U.S. government and the disadvantage 

of the communists. After his lecture, he joined one of the seminar groups working on their problem 

for another hour or two. 

At that point, Kenneth took off for home. About half the class had settled in for the afternoon 

to continue their studies. 

5 

32:22 June 26, 1962 Tuesday 

Monday started off with a lecture by a man named John Morrison on world communism and 

the Sino-Soviet conflict over tactics. The Chinese wish to use the tactics Mao devised in the Chinese 

revolution. The Soviets wish to use political means, which at the present time they are using 

successfully concerning Laos, negotiating at Geneva for a technically neutralist government agreed 

upon between them and us which will actually accomplish the Soviets' objectives. 

Kenneth was too busy with housekeeping details in the afternoon to attend the afternoon 

lecture, so he doesn't know what happened. He was getting ready for today, which began with the 

counsellor for the State Department, Walt Whitman Rostow, who was the 9:00 a.m. lecturer. 

Kenneth opened the session by announcing the Seminar party, which would be held on July 

589


10 on the eighth floor of New State [the large addition to the original State Department building 

on 21st and C Streets]. The Secretary does much of his entertaining there. Over a hundred 

Seminar members promptly signed up. 

Kenneth then turned the meeting over to Henry Ramsey, one of the two co-chairmen, who 

introduced Walt Rostow. Rostow's manner was casual, not formal, not flashy, but his ideas were 

brilliant. He held the audience spellbound for over an hour. He has a truly creative mind. He spoke 

concerning identifying targets and organizing U.S. resources in order to cope with our problems 

which involve these particular targets. Afterward, Rostow withdrew with Kenneth and Dr. Morgan to 

Morgan's office for a cup of coffee, and then went back for a round table discussion. 

Kenneth went to lunch with an old friend, Roy Melbourne (SP?). 

The afternoon lecturer was a two-star Army general named Rosson (SP?), who had brought 

his aides along. They worked as a team. A colonel, a major, and a captain all operated the visual aid 

machine as the general spoke, each performing one aspect of this task. "Once again, I made up my 

mind that when I grow up, I want to be a two-star general." The lecture was excellent. The subject 

was the application of power in countering insurgency, the new weapons, the new inventions, the 

new military techniques. 

Kenneth worked on the instructors' course after the lecture, and also on the next Seminar, to 

run in the fall, which would have seventy-five to eighty persons. The various agencies were being 

helpful. 

6 

41:54 June 28 Thursday 

Most of Wednesday Kenneth spent on housekeeping chores. He decided today to designate 

Walter Cronan as his executive officer so that Cronan could take charge of these housekeeping 

chores, freeing Kenneth to concern himself with more substantive and imaginative things. Cronan 

seemed pleased since this is a step up for him. 

The big flap has been to get ready for the visit of General Maxwell Taylor, special assistant to 

the President, who is coming Friday afternoon at 1:30 for a round table discussion which he will 

observe but in which he will not participate. The main speaker for State will be the Deputy 

Undersecretary, Alexis Johnson. There will be a Major General Brown from Defense. And 

Desmond Fitzgerald, plus a few other men from other agencies. Taylor will meet with a country 

team, and will also have an opportunity to quiz Director Morgan and Kenneth on the course. 

Today the head of the CIA called in to express his unhappiness over the Murry Marder article 

in the Post, which mentioned the total number of members in the course and gave the total number of 

participants from the CIA, seven. Kenneth was "called on the carpet" to explain how these statistics 

got into the paper, but Kenneth had been forehanded and had cleared the giving out of the number 

with representatives of the CIA. So the Seminar is in the clear on that. 

The morning lecture was given by Major General Victor Krulak of the Marines, a small man 

with a bright, alert mind. His lecture, however, was unimaginative. During the question period, he 

got into trouble with a couple of his questioners who knew more about his subject than he did. He 

acknowledged this. 

The afternoon session was a lecture by the USIA representative John Arnspocker (SP?). 

Kenneth missed it, but was told the lecture was too general and diffuse. 

These two speakers will not be used again, accordingly. 

Kenneth has begun discussions with an editor to take over the manuscripts of the course in the 

hope that Kenneth can come up with a textbook that would have some utility in our embassies around 

the world. The material would still be in lecture form. 

590


7 

48:20 June 29 Friday 

Kenneth retells a story he heard General Krulak tell during his session the day before. The 

general told it as a way of acknowleding his repetitiousness while addressing the course members. 

When Kenneth arrived at 8:00, he received a call from Morgan concerning General Taylor's 

coming. Was everything ready? Morgan had talked to Deputy Undersecretary Johnson about it the 

night before and with Jeff Kitchen, Johnson's aide, who would be the chairman of the round table, 

and had arranged to have them come over at noon for a small lunch, to be on hand when the General 

arrived. 

Kenneth had to handle all sorts of details in relation to Taylor's coming. He received a steady 

stream of phone calls through the morning from one of Taylor's aides informing him on where the 

general was in his schedule for the day. When the general arrived, there were four or five men 

outside waiting for him. He was fifteen minutes late, but the round table was late starting too. When 

Taylor asked who was speaking, Kenneth replied "in the precise, factual manner in which the whole 

thing had been happening, 'The Deputy Undersecretary, sir, has just finished his eighteenth sentence 

in his introductory speech.'" General Taylor cast Kenneth an amused glance, and sure enough, when 

they went inside, Johnson ZDV in about his nineteenth sentence! The General was dressed in a natty, 

youthful, gray suit with a string necktie. "A very handsome man, very bright, very alert, very keen." 

When Johnson concluded his opening remarks, Mr. Morgan acknowledged the General's 

presence, said a few words about the honor of it, acknowledged that the Seminar course was under 

the General's supervision and interest, and asked the General to say a few words. "He made a 

brilliant speech, without any notes." He made it clear that this was a course that was being very 

closely followed by the President, who thought it was of prime importance, a new departure for the 

Foreign Service and for all agencies and departments working overseas. It was setting a precedent 

for a new kind of training in country team work. 

When the General was ready to go, Kenneth and Morgan led the way, followed by the 

General. Behind him, in solemn procession, came the Thailand country team, led by their 

"ambassador." Kenneth had arranged it this way, having the team sit strategically behind him so that 

they would be ready when the moment came. The whole group went to Morgan's office conference 

room, where there were two large tables put together in the form of a T. Kenneth explained that he 

had arranged for this particular country team to meet with the General. Al Puwen (SP?), the 

"ambassador" on the team—who was actually going out as the DCM—was about to begin speaking 

when Taylor turned to the country team and began firing questions. Who was the ambassador figure 

on the team? who was the chief of MAG? who was the chief of USOM? That is, who was playing 

which role on the team? They all had their roles clearly laid out and Puwen introduced them. They 

went on to state the problem the team was working on, and each member of the team offered his 

particular contribution. The General asked questions and was obviously interested. None of the team 

members had ever been in Thailand, but they knew a great deal about the country, particularly 

concerning the problem of countering insurgency in the northeastern part of the country. 

The General had only intended to stay for fifteen minutes, but he actually stayed twenty-five, 

after which he, Morgan, Kenneth, and Tom Davis went into Morgan's office to discuss matters 

concerning the course. Kenneth gave him a list of the country teams and the particular problems they 

were working on and promised that, when the team papers were completed, he would send a copies 

of these to him for his evaluation. 

Finally, the General made his departure. He had arrived at about 1:45 and stayed until almost 

3:30, far longer than he had intended. 

591


ADDENDUM 3 

1 

(Continuing June 29, 1962) 

At the afternoon session, Kenneth welcomed Ambassador William Roundtree (SP?), whose 

guest Kenneth had been in Pakistan in 1960, and also Eric Kocher (SP?), who was one of Kenneth's 

best friends in the Foreign Service. Both men might well take the next round of the course. 

Kenneth also sent off a memo to the White House, from Director Morgan of the FSI to 

Kenneth O'Donnell, the appointments secretary, making the arrangements for the July 3 visit of the 

course members to the White House. 

After Kenneth got home in the evening, having left early, Morgan called from work to say 

that the Deputy Undersecretary had called to say that he wanted to make some changes in the memo 

and had recalled it from the White House. Morgan wanted Kenneth to do the work tomorrow, 

Saturday. 

At noon today, Kenneth went to lunch with Don Blackmer (SP?) of MIT and had a long talk 

about the course and how to elicit evaluations from the course members. There had been an earlier 

discussion of the matter that morning when Colonel English, the Defense member, had taken 

exception to Kenneth's sketching of the kind of question he wanted to elicit response to from the 

members of the Seminar and to which he wanted them to sign their names. English said the 

evaluations should all be anonymous. Kenneth replied that he had little respect for anonymous 

opinions and would not pay any attention to them. English was indignant. He said that no one would 

dare criticize the course for fear of endangering his career. But Kenneth derided this and insisted that 

the evaluations be signed. No one other than English disagreed. 

During General Taylor's visit, he had asked about the instructors' course. At this point, 

Kenneth had no ideas for a syllabus and asked the General if he had any suggestions. Taylor ducked 

the question. Kenneth also mentioned to the general the curious phenomenon that the Defense course 

members of the Seminar never participated in the question periods after lectures. They simply 

listened, never asking questions of their own. The General had no comment. 

When Kenneth came home, there was daughter Carol Landon Pearson with her family, having 

arrived for a visit. Kenneth socialized for a while, then went off to a farewell reception for Bill 

Spengler (SP?), who had gotten Kenneth his FSI job the previous year, at the home of Grant 

Hillecker (SP?). Spengler was going off to Peshawar. 

2 

8:23 July 2, 1962 First day of the fourth week of the Country Team Seminar 

In today's sessions, the Southeast Asian group and the Latin American group divided, each 

beginning to concentrate on its own area. John Topping (SP?) gave the introduction to Latin 

America, associating it with the development process in counter-insurgency. Kenneth did likewise 

for Southeast Asia. Then each of them gave a history of the development of communist successes 

and failures in the two areas. 

This afternoon the main speaker was Professor Russell Fifield (SP?) from the University of 

Michigan. He spoke on the development of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia since 1945, concentrating 

on the period from 1945 to 1954. 

During the day Kenneth had a long talk with Mr. Morgan about the future administrative 

setup for the course and how FSI would fit in the picture. Kenneth said that the co-ordinator, himself, 

592


should be the chairman of the co-ordinating group drawn from the participating agencies and 

departments. Also he said that Morgan should gear in with the special group that is sponsoring the 

Seminar, so that he could report directly to General Maxwell Taylor. 

In this afternoon's meeting with the staff advisors the matter was raised by the Defense 

member, Colonel English, as to the necessity of building an interdepartmental faculty, and he made 

quite a point that it should be centered in the Foreign Service Institute with Kenneth in charge. 

Kenneth was surprised because he had not expected Defense Department support for KLP. But 

curiously enough Colonel English, who Kenneth had thought was set against him, seemed to have 

been won over. 

There was a long afternoon session on the materials that ought to go into an instructors' 

course. There would be another meeting on Thursday, the 5th, after the holiday. Kenneth would 

have a lot of work to do to prepare the materials for the next meeting. During the discussion they 

also turned to the next round of the course scheduled for September, and Kenneth told them that he 

already had draft syllabi on both Africa and the Near and Middle East for their consideration. 

Kenneth expects 70 to 75 members for the September session. 

Tomorrow is the big day when the members of the Seminar go to the White House to meet the 

President. 

3 

14:18 July 3, 1962 

Kenneth woke earlier than usual, wondering why, and then remembered. This was White 

House day! It was also white suit day, because Margaret had had his white suit cleaned and pressed 

for him so that he would "stand out in the crowd." "So on White House Day I got into my whitest 

white suit, and a nice blue tie to match my blue eyes, and shined my blackest shoes as black as 

possible. And arrived at my office about 8:00 a.m." Many administrative details had piled up, and 

there were a number of things that still had to be done with respect to the White House visit. Kenneth 

had to be sure they had buses, and also to be sure the license tags had been called over to the White 

House guards. Then Kenneth remembered that he had forgotten to include the name of Professor 

Don Blackmer of MIT, who was expecting to go. So he telephoned Kenneth O'Donnell in the White 

House with Blackmer's name. Then he spent some time typing the syllabus for the instructors' 

course. He also gave instructions to the two chairmen in the course, the Southeast Asia group 

chairman Chris Chapman (SP?), and the Latin America group chairman John Topping, that they 

should announce that the instructors were all to assemble about Kenneth when they got off the buses 

and follow him into the White House, while the country teams would all assemble as teams, with 

their chairmen in the lead, so that when they stood in rank before the President, Kenneth could 

introduce the faculty advisors, then the chairmen of each country team, who in turn would introduce 

the team members. 

The phone began to ring, Director Morgan calling. He had thought of something he wanted to 

say to the President about the Foreign Service Institute and about the Seminar. About every fifteen 

minutes all morning, the phone would ring, informing Kenneth that Mr. Morgan wanted to speak to 

Kenneth urgently and calling him down. He kept thinking of one thing after another. 

At 11:10 or so, Kenneth went down to the lobby, finding all of the class assembled with Mr. 

Morgan and the two buses outside. So they all got on, and the driver took off at about 11:20. It was 

raining lightly. Kenneth was wearing his raincoat, of course, and his peacock feather hat. 

In ten minutes they were driving up 17th Street in Washington toward the White House. But 

then they ran into a traffic jam because of an enormous truck that was blocking the way. The truck 

was unable to maneuver in the street. Time passed, and people began to fret. Finally, the truck got 

593


out of the way, and the bus drove on up to the gate at the southwest entrance. There were five or six 

White House guards at the gate. The buses drove on in through the gate that seemed to Kenneth too 

narrow for the bus to get through. But there was no problem. They drove straight in, then looped 

around through the grounds behind the White House, "in a long arc around the putting green, and 

nosed in toward the Rose Garden." There everyone debarked and assembled behind Kenneth. 

"Then Mr. Morgan and I faced forward to go into the White House, and we were conducted 

by a member of the guard. We moved in under the portico because it was raining very lightly. It's a 

sort of ground-level terrace, you might say, under the cover of the back portico. It's about fifteen to 

eighteen, probably eighteen, feet wide, and of course runs along the rear of the White House. Well, 

we advanced along this channel like a young army with all our military people in all their buttons and 

brass and ribbons looking very official, me in my white suit, Mr. Morgan in a sort of plaid gray, and 

the rest of the fellows neatly dressed, with their hair all combed back, looking like a collection of 

schoolboys going to meet Teacher. And we were brought up to a line which had been drawn by tape, 

and we were asked not to go beyond that simply because the President would be standing at the top of 

the ramp and would be able to look down on us from a distance of about fifteen feet. The recording 

machine was at my immediate left, operated by a professional recording operator. 

"And then the young lady from Kenneth O'Donnell's office with whom I had been talking on 

the phone making the final arrangements came down, and we talked for a few moments. Mr. Morgan 

then asked her what we might expect from the President, and if we were to come up to greet him, or 

if he would come down, and she smiled rather winsomely and giggled and said, 'You never know 

what's going to happen when the President appears. He does as he pleases. And so, although we may 

arrange things, he will rearrange them to suit himself.' And with that, she withdrew. 

"In about another minute and a half she appeared, and she said, 'Mr. Landon, Mr. Morgan, 

will you come to the President's office.' So we left the crowd behind us and went up and did a sharp 

turn to the left, around the curve of the White House offices, and came up beside a couple of pairs of 

very tall french doors. And hanging across the french doors were cloth curtains, very lacy, which 

didn't interfere with the breeze. So the President's office, evidently—although it had air 

conditioning—was not using the air conditioning. The doors were wide open. And as we came up 

there, the President stepped out. And I was quite astonished to see how tall he was. 

"He looked about six feet one or two, heavily built across the shoulders. His suit looked to 

me as though it didn't fit him. Too tight. Too tightly tailored. It looked as though it were made for 

him when he was a year younger and he had outgrown it. But this is the kind of British tailoring that 

he has used for a great many years. The sleeves of his jacket were a little too short also, or so it 

seemed to me. But that is the Savile Row kind of tailoring that the Kennedys have used in their 

family for a good many years, the same tailor. His hair was dry, not combed down tightly or slicked 

at all. And his eyes, to my astonishment, were green! Not a bright green, but a sort of a dirty green, 

a kind of a hazel green. But very markedly green. And he was unsmiling. He was very sober. 

Obviously had just been working on a problem. 

"And he came up and said, 'Mr. Landon, Mr. Morgan?' I said, 'I'm Mr. Landon. This is Mr. 

Morgan, the director.' And he said, 'What group is this? Why am I meeting them?' So Morgan and I 

took turns. Finally, I settled down to the explanation. 'This is the Country Team Seminar,' and as I 

said to him, 'They're your creature, Mr. President. You invented them. You created them and called 

them together, and we're here because this is the first session. And it began June 11, and it will run 

for about another week and a half.' And I said, 'We're especially supervised by your military 

assistant, uh, military advisor, General Maxwell Taylor.' 'Oh yes,' he said, and snapped his fingers. 

'Just a moment.' He turned around and walked back into his office. He was gone about sixty 

seconds, maybe forty-five seconds. Then he stepped out from between the curtains again, carrying 

594


the memorandum which I had drafted and sent over to the White House, looking at it. And he looked 

up at me, and he said, 'I've got it now.' He said, 'Yes, indeed, it's in focus. Let's go along.' 

"So we moved along. And he said, 'Where's Max?' And I said, 'Well, he's due here, but I 

haven't seen him,' meaning General Maxwell Taylor. We stepped over to the microphones, and as we 

got there, I explained to him that the group in front were the faculty advisors from the various 

departments and agencies, that we were not a State Department crowd; we were completely 

interdepartmental, and well-balanced in numbers among the agencies; and that all of the student body 

were assembled by country or embassy team, with each one having its own chairman or ambassador, 

working on a country team problem. So he looked the crowd over and then began to speak as though 

he had a carefully prepared speech which he had fully in mind. And he gave, I thought, a rather 

remarkable performance of extemporary speaking, without any notes whatsoever, showing he was 

completely familiar with the background of the course, how it had come into being, what its 

objectives and purposes were, why they were there, what they were supposed to be doing. And he 

really made a magnificent exposition of the course, as though he had just studied the syllabus, which 

was quite a remarkable thing for a man as busy as he. At one point in his speech, he made a remark, 

and he stopped suddenly, and he said, 'No, I don't mean that. I'll rewrite that section.' And this 

brought quite a laugh from the whole crowd. But he had done it on purpose because a transcript of 

his remarks ZHUH [sic] made, and they were issued later, and I am hoping on Thursday morning to 

pick up copies of the transcript of his speech, which I think will be available to us. At any rate, he 

went on to finish his speech. 

"And then he stepped forward, and I introduced him to all of the faculty advisors. 

Fortunately, for me, I was able to remember their names. I'm always having trouble with names, 

looking right at a man I've known for years and can't remember his name. But these I all 

remembered, and I was so relieved when I had uttered the last one because it would have been very 

distressing to have forgotten. And then I introduced Mr. Studtsman (SP?, pronounced Stewtsman), 

the first country team chairman. And then Studtsman introduced his group. Well then the President 

walked all the way through the crowd, going from country team group to country team group, all the 

way to the end of the line, and a number of the men he remembered by name. In fact, one man spoke 

to him and said, 'We were classmates together at Harvard.' And the President looked at him, 

remembered him. And then he said, 'I ran in the second district.' And I couldn't hear what office he'd 

run for. The President said to him, 'How'd you do?' And he said, 'I won.' Then the President said, 

'Good for you! But evidently it didn't stick because now you're in the government service.' And the 

fellow said, 'Yes.' He said, 'I wasn't born to be a politician.' And the President got a laugh out of 

that. 

"He remembered one of the military generals. He remembered John Hill, whom he had 

encountered in Venezuela, who is doing a very fine job down there. And he remembered one or two 

of the other people. I mean, this is quite an exhibition for a man to pick out faces from a crowd and 

remember people he wasn't looking for, and he hadn't been reminded that they would be there. 

"So then he turned around, went back to the microphones, and turned around and thanked us 

for coming and started to leave. The Secret Service and the police said to us, 'This way, gentlemen,' 

and just at that moment the President called us back and said, 'Oh, here's General Taylor. I'd like him 

to say a few words to you.' So General Taylor came forward, and he was in civvies, very dapper, 

very handsomely dressed, and he said, 'Well, it's rather an anticlimax for me to speak to you after 

you've heard the President of the United States. But I'm glad to have the opportunity.' So he spoke to 

us for another five minutes or so. 

"And all during this period, the recording of all the remarks had been going on, and the 

recording instrument was able to pick up the comments all through the crowd. But also there were 

595


about twelve to fifteen photographers who were standing about twenty, twenty-five feet from the 

crowd, and they were busy taking pictures, either movies or still pictures, all the time, so that we 

were thoroughly pictured. 

"I might say that during the President' speech, he made quite a point of complimenting the 

Foreign Service Institute, with particular reference to Morgan and myself, because we were involved 

in this in our initiative in taking the lead and setting up the course and putting it over, putting it 

across, and making a success of it. He spoke of this twice so that both Morgan and myself were 

walking about three inches off the ground by the time we left because it was nice to hear. 'Flattery 

will get you everywhere when it's that kind of flattery!' is my sentiment. 

"Well at any rate we then went into reverse, and we were led out through several of the White 

House rooms at the ground level—two or three of them were quite interesting; one or two of them I'd 

been in before, during the Eisenhower administration—and then got back into our buses. And 

Morgan and myself rode back as far as the State Department, from the White House, and then we 

dropped off because we had a luncheon engagement at the Industrial College for the Armed Services 

at Fort McNair with the commandant and with the State Department representative, named Gardner 

Plumber (SP? Pummer?). And we caught a car at the State Department, an official car, drove out to 

the Industrial College, had lunch in there in the officers' club, and had a chance to talk to them about 

our course and the kind of activities we're involved in. Then came back to a new college that is being 

set up in the fort's precincts also, at Fort McNair. It's a new Inter-American training college set up 

under the OAS [Organization of American States]." This will deal with counter-insurgency in the 

Cuban type of situation. 

From there the two men went back to FSI, arriving at about 3:00. Kenneth went right into a 

committee meeting on a syllabus with respect to the Near East and South Asia for about an hour. 

Administrative duties took up the rest of the afternoon. 

Just before the end of the day, Mr. Morgan called to say that he had been talking to the 

Undersecretary, who, he thought, was favorable toward making the Institute, and Kenneth in 

particular, responsible for all future co-ordination of the Country Team Seminar in the government. 

Kenneth raised the matter that, if so, they would have to push ahead with the various agencies and 

departments to make permanent the officers now merely on detail on a patchwork basis, "because 

most of my little empire is going to fade away at the end of the fifth week." Kenneth would then be 

faced with the job of setting up the next course in the same frantic fashion and patchwork style as he 

did in the first round. Ridiculous! Morgan asked Kenneth to pursue this, and he set about it. 

One of the next things Kenneth has to do in planning for the coming courses is some sort of 

pattern of supervision or control or inspection which the Special Group wants established at some 

point in government for the supervision of all the courses in all the U.S. government training schools. 

That means all the Defense Department schools, the Armed Forces College, Industrial College, the 

National War College, the training schools of AID, USIA, and CIA. At present, the government is 

somewhat at a loss as to how to go about co-ordinating the instruction at all of these schools. Morgan 

asked Kenneth if he had any ideas, and Kenneth told him that he did. "I've got a lovely scheme for 

co-ordinating them. , OO do it! Just give me staff, and the right kind of interdepartmental faculty 

advisors assigned to me. So this is what I'm going to draw up in a memorandum, probably, on the 

Fourth of July, which is a good bang-up subject, you might say!" If it were approved, Kenneth would 

be "in a kind of a big job" in connection with all the training programs in all the schools and colleges 

in the United States government! A good note on which to close. 

596


4 

38:14 July 7, 1962 Saturday 

Thursday, the 5th, Kenneth's first job was to get transcriptions of the President's remarks on 

the 3rd. He passed out copies to members of the course and also brought copies home to send out to 

members of the family "by way of interest." 

On the 4th of July, there was a nice article on the front page of The Washington Post by a 

man named Folliard (SP?). A Miss Barbara Garmarikian (SP?) of the press section in the White 

House has promised to send Kenneth four or five pictures of the Seminar group with the President 

which Kenneth hopes to have copies of for all the members of the class. 

Kenneth notes that a number of the country teams are becoming very "chummy" with each 

other, having spent so much time working together. They have begun setting up cocktail parties with 

each other and inviting him to come. 

On Friday the 6th, there was a session on the new draft of the instructors' course. This is the 

"Ramsey committee." The members wear two hats, as representatives of their various agencies and 

departments, and as faculty advisors to Kenneth. Ramsey made the point that in the Country Team 

Seminar we don't have enough material on what he called doctrine. Kenneth says this is the latest 

cliché in government. Ramsey kept talking about "doctrine." The instructors' course must bear down 

heavily on doctrine. He and the others kept talking about doctrines and roles and mission, and finally 

Kenneth said that he doubted that Ramsey or any of the rest of them knew what they were talking 

about. 'RFWULQH sounded so definite and rigid. So Kenneth challenged Ramsey to define what he 

meant by "doctrine." So Ramsey bulled ahead, and as he did so, others members around the table 

began challenging him with differing opinions. It became clear that there were no two minds present 

that agreed on any U.S. doctrine, and here they were, supposed to be the advisors on the course that 

sets the standard for U.S. doctrine for all the schools in the government. Kenneth commented that 

they didn't seem to have any doctrine. Obviously, no one present knew what it was. "I don't think it 

ever occurred to them they would ever actually have to say in so many words what they meant by this 

which they were all using because somebody else had used it." 

They all agreed that Kenneth should deliver a lecture in the course, and in fact wanted him to 

talk about how the U.S. got into the mess in Southeast Asia, and also on the development process, 

which he begged off on. 

The meeting went on for several hours. Over the weekend, Ramsey was to draft something 

"that would come up and sound like U.S. doctrine, whatever that is. I don't know what it is, and I'm 

sure he doesn't either." 

Thursday and Friday were very busy days. They had to agree on a questionnaire to go out to 

all the students, and then they got that out. Kenneth didn't get to any of the lectures either day. 

Today there was a good session on Laos chaired by Christian Chapman. There was a two-star 

general there who had been chief of the military training mission, in civvies. His outfit was called the 

PEO. This was a front name for a military training mission, and all the military were going around in 

civvies, pretending they weren't military. Hank Miller was there, who was well-known for his work 

with the USIA in Laos. He was fascinating, and very informative regarding the mess in Laos. 

In any case, four weeks are done. One week to go. At the end, there will be a big party. And 

then Margaret will take off for a week of vacation with Peggy and her family up in Wisconsin. 

5 

47:20 July 11, 1962 Wednesday 

Today closed "the presentation side on the professional staff with respect to lectures and 

round tables, the input of the course." Thursday and Friday are the payoff, the days when the country 

597


teams divide up for two days, two teams for each half day, each with an hour and twenty minutes to 

present its position or its plan and to defend it. 

Tuesday and Wednesday have been very busy, winding up the course, laying the ground for 

evaluation, and so on. Kenneth still hasn't been able to establish a solid, continuing basis for the 

faculty advisors. He thought this was on course with a memorandum from Mr. Morgan to General 

Taylor saying what Kenneth wanted said. But this was "interrupted" by the Deputy Undersecretary 

for Political Affairs, Alex Johnson, who sent another memo of his own choosing, "very badly 

drafted," which did not define anything. Kenneth went to Morgan about it and urged that they work 

together on this. Morgan commented on his learning how difficult it was for the White House to get 

what it wanted done in the State Department. He had always been on the inside of the Department, 

but now that he was with FSI, across the river, he was seeing the Department from the "outside." It 

was a revelation to him. 

Kenneth had a long talk with Max Milliken of MIT by long distance, and they discussed the 

progress of the course. Kenneth noted that the eight country team groups have coalesced as true 

teams. They eat together, socialize together, and see themselves as being in competition with the 

other groups. They have a sense of team pride. A number of their papers are ready now, and 

Kenneth finds them to be completely professional in quality, as they should be, written by senior 

officers. 

Kenneth felt that in this conversation he had moved forward on getting a contract with 

Milliken's principal editor for the editing of the team manuscripts with a view to producing a book— 

or rather two books. The one would be for official use only, as a textbook, and the other a classified 

annex of the secret and top secret material. 

Today, Wednesday, was "Edward R. Murrow Day." [Edward R. Murrow was a famous 

radio and television journalist of the day. If memory serves me, he also headed the USIA for a 

time.] Today was also was the day of the first evaluation. Murrow was scheduled for 1:30 in the 

afternoon. This was a key roundup table, with a round table on Southeast Asia chaired by the Acting 

Assistant Secretary, Edward R. Rice, an old friend of Kenneth's. On the Latin American side, the 

chairman was named May. Murrow didn't make it at 1:30, but did come at 2:30. "I met him at the 

door." Kenneth had stationed a summer employee named Jones, a college student who went to St. 

Albans a year ahead of Kip, at another door, in case Murrow came to that door by mistake. Jones 

asked how he would recognize the great man, and Kenneth said, "Well, when you see a cigarette 

floating ahead of a man, that will be Mr. Murrow." At any rate, Murrow appeared in a big, black 

limousine, and Kenneth met him with the Director, Mr. Morgan. "Murrow is about six feet two in 

height, to look at him. Certainly is much taller than I. Very dark, very swarthy. Deep-set eyes. And 

a very sharp mind. So we took him in, and we sat down quietly. Well he had said that he didn't want 

to speak unless some member of the class or someone asked him a question. He'd just be an 

observer. He was interested in how the course was operating. Sure enough, he'd hardly gotten 

himself seated when the chairman said, 'We're glad to welcome Mr. Murrow here because one of the 

members of this seminar has asked a question that no one here can answer, and it's a USIA question. 

Mr. Murrow, will you consider answering this question?' And he asked the member of the seminar to 

state his question. Murrow got in the act, wandered up on the platform, sat down with the round table 

up there with Acting Assistant Secretary Rice, who was chairman, and stayed for about twenty 

minutes, answering questions, very amiable, participating fully, enjoying the discussion. And he was 

especially amused when one member of the seminar took issue with him over one of his statements, 

and they entered into a few moments of very interesting debate. Then I took Murrow to the Latin 

American section. He sat there quietly. Didn't participate. Wasn't asked a question. And I asked 

him if he'd like to meet one of the country teams. Well, by this time, he was really getting interested 

598


and kept asking questions in low whispers. He said he ZRXOG like to meet a team. So I rounded up 

the Vietnam team headed by Phil Manhart (SP?) and took them up to Mr. Morgan's office, where 

Morgan and Murrow and I sat with this team for another, oh, twenty-five minutes. Well this brought 

us up to about four o'clock." 

At that point, Kenneth raced downstairs to send off the Latin American group on a special bus 

to the State Department, where they were to meet with Acting Assistant Secretary Goodwin, the 

Assistant Secretary Ed Martin being in Latin America on official business at the time. Kenneth has 

never met Goodwin, though he has talked to him on the phone. A very bright man. 

The evaluations from the course members have begun to come in, and Kenneth has read about 

a third of them. To judge from these, the course is a terrific success. "Without exception they praise 

the organization. Wouldn't change a thing in overall organization. Praise the country team seminar 

concept as being most novel, most effective. And almost without exception the students have 

commented that for the first time they were fully able to appreciate the problems of fellows working 

in other agencies and what they were up against. This was most interesting." 

A man named Cutcomb (SP?), who said he was from the White House, called on behalf of a 

Captain Shepherd (SP?), who wanted to take the next Seminar course. Shepherd wanted to attend 

some of the sessions, not all, and would Kenneth send him a syllabus. Kenneth was skeptical and 

said that this was not possible. Shepherd would have to take all the sessions or none. Cutcomb 

became very upset about this, and said Captain Shepherd would be very displeased. Kenneth said he 

didn't care. Either you take the course or you don't. Then Cutcomb had Captain Shepherd come on 

the phone to say that he was very apologetic about his request, but he had heard that the course was 

exceptional and wanted to attend some of the classes. Kenneth told him his point of view, and 

Shepherd commented that he had heard the course was hard to get into. [continued] 

599


ADDENDUM 4 

1 

(Continuing July 11, 1962) Captain Shepherd continued, "After all," he said, "you know, sir, I DP 

the naval aide to the President, and when he orders me to do things, I have to do them. And there 

might be occasions when I wouldn't be able to attend all the sessions in your course." "Well," 

Kenneth says to the tape recorder, "I got the message." So he told the man that he could indeed 

participate in the next course and sent him the course syllabus. 

At 11:00, there was a one-hour meeting of the faculty advisors, Kenneth, and the chairmen of 

the eight country teams to get their views on the effectiveness of the country team part of the 

operations. "You see, each team meets within itself, with or without faculty advisor. They do as they 

please, read and study as they please, and bring in all kinds of experts and special briefers from the 

various agencies in preparation for their final report. So no one outside of the country team could 

really evaluate the system effectively." Professor Blackmer was at the meeting too, and he was very 

pleased. The country team system seemed to be working. There were some fine suggestions made 

during the meeting on procedures and paperwork and so on. One man complained about the amount 

of paperwork. But Kenneth had warned them not to make this a paperwork experience, to keep their 

papers to twenty pages or less. And this man had come in with forty pages! "What we were 

interested in was the country team operation, experience with it, approach to a problem, and their 

views on how to orchestrate U.S. resources against that problem, and a statement of their conclusions 

could certainly be put in twenty double-spaced pages." 

One of the interesting comments by the country team members was that the general faculty 

advisors were of very little use, that the only faculty advisors of real value were those who had 

regional expertise, such as the Latin American expert John Topping, or the Southeast Asian expert 

Christian Chapman. The generalists, like Colonel English for Defense or John Anspacker (SP?) for 

USIA or Leonard Maynard (SP?) for AID, had only marginal utility "and in fact cluttered up the 

atmosphere." George Morgan asked Kenneth later if perhaps he had overestimated the value of 

faculty advisors and might not want to reconsider. Kenneth said that the country team members were 

only aware of one part of the operation. The faculty advisors were the ones who made the entire 

course possible by providing the speakers, the round table participants, and by riding herd on the 

course in order to keep it moving smoothly. They were essential. 

Tomorrow night, the 12th, is the big party. The Secretary of State has said he will come with 

his wife, and Alex Johnson, the Deputy Undersecretary, will come with his. Also, George McGhee 

(SP?) and his wife, and possibly some more brass. 

2 

5:20 July 13, 1962 

The course is completed. The final two days were the best days of the course, as far as 

Kenneth is concerned. 

First the 12th, "a day that I will long remember because of the very many things that 

happened," many of them unexpected. This was the day of evaluations, starting at 11:00 in the 

morning with the country team chairmen to get their reaction to the whole country team process. 

Wait—Kenneth realizes that this occurred the day before, Wednesday, and realizes too that he must 

have recorded that. 

So, the 12th, Thursday. All day the first four country teams made their presentations on 

600


Southeast Asia. Congressman McGregor of Minnesota was expected to visit that day, but he did not. 

Therefore, the CIA contingent all remained. They had anticipated having to withdraw because of 

their feeling that they must protect their "cover," "pretending they are what they ain't, creeps." The 

country team presentations were on Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. The most cohesive 

group was Thailand, led by Mr. Puwen (SP?), who is going to be the Deputy Chief of Misson in 

Bangkok. He acted as the ambassador, and he really carried on his team in top form. 

The team that led off was the weakest, led by Robert Miller, who was going to be chief of the 

administrative section in Bangkok. But he was assigned to the Lao team because they did not have a 

political officer who knew how to conduct things. This team included two generals, a Brigadier 

General Pinkston going to Taiwan, and a Major General Eckhart (SP?) going to Iran. They were both 

senior officers not particularly interested in the area—no, wait, Kenneth realizes that he has this 

confused. These men were on the country team going to Indonesia. The Lao team, headed by Miller, 

was originally headed by an administrative officer named Dibell (SP?), and he was the only person 

on the team going to Laos. The others were going to adjacent areas. In any case, they produced an 

excellent paper. 

This was followed by the Vietnam paper. The ambassador of that team was Philip Manhart 

(SP?). The team did a very businesslike job, having been up all night in a big squabble as to what 

their country plan would entail and as to what they would recommend. There were members of the 

team who would not submit to the ambassador's guidance. But in the end they worked that out. 

The Indonesia team, with the two generals, was the best orchestrated and oriented and was led 

by James B. Martin, Jr., who is a real scholar. In his quiet way he gave the right kind of leadership to 

a very difficult country team problem. 

Finally, the Thailand group was outstanding. 

The most significant event of the day came at 4:30 when all of the State Department people 

met with the State Department advisor, the Defense people with the Defense advisor, CIA people 

with the CIA advisor, and so forth. Kenneth attended the State group. It was interesting to hear these 

senior, hard-boiled, critical officers talk about the course. "And without exception, they said it was 

about four times better than they had expected it to be. They had gotten a great deal out of it." They 

didn't spare anyone either. One of the MIT professors was there, and they really tore into several of 

the MIT presentations as being callow and uninformed and unhelpful. They went through the 

speakers list and tore them all to pieces. Kenneth came off very well. He was sitting in the 

background. He was there to hear, not to be heard, and he wanted to get honest reaction. 

Hank Ramsey, the chairman of the group backstopping the course, took a more liberal line, 

which was along the line of Kenneth's own thinking, speaking "in particular of the dullness of the 

usual roles and missions kind of treatment that was so heavily larded through the third week which he 

himself had inserted." He commented that it had been a bum idea. Secondly, he accepted the setup 

of the day in which Kenneth was having all the country teams take an hour and a half for their 

presentations so that everybody else could listen to each team's presentation. 

The course members stressed the value of the country team aspect of the course. 

[At 13:05, there is a brief break when Kenneth reached the end of his reel of tape and 

turned it over.] 

The thing that pleased Kenneth the most was the fact that the seventeen State Department 

people who took the course, including the country team chairmen, kept waiting for him to say 

something. They wanted to know what he thought about the course and about their comments. So 

finally, he spoke, saying that when he gave the course the next time, he wanted to restructure it so 

that all the lectures would be in the morning and all the afternoons would be devoted to country team 

studies. They would begin with their marching orders the first day, with the President's directive, and 

601


then the national security policy exposition as to what our policy was with respect to underdeveloped 

countries, contrasting that with the kind of comments and observations made by Khrushchev to the 

President at Vienna concerning what the Soviets intended to do and believed they could do with 

respect to aid programs in fostering communism in underdeveloped countries and in developing 

"wars of liberation." Then they would get on with the course, pretty much in the same pattern as in 

the first go-through. This evoked a good deal of favorable comment. 

One thing that pleased Kenneth concerned a military man, a colonel, who went to the Defense 

member—he had to leave that day, and he knew that the Defense faculty advisor, Colonel English, 

was very critical of the course for destructive, not constructive, reasons; for what reasons Kenneth 

cannot imagine—and told English that he wanted to go on the record that he thought the course was 

outstanding. He told him that as a colonel, he had been through the academies of the military 

profession, the war colleges, "and I want to tell you this is the best god-damned course that I have 

ever had in my career, and it means more to me for the job that I am now about to take than anything 

that I have learned in our own training schools, and more officers like me need it." This is the way it 

was reported to Kenneth, who of course was not present. 

At any rate, Kenneth finally pulled out of the meeting, came home, ate with Margaret, then 

the two of them put on their glad rags and went off to the party on the eighth floor of the State 

Department for the course members and invited guests. They arrived at the same time as George 

Morgan and his wife Peggy. They had decided not to have a receiving line. They had had 

acceptances from a number of VIP's, but did not really expect them to turn up. So Kenneth was 

particularly grateful that Secretary of State Dean Rusk came and spent over an hour at the party, 

talking to course members, and to Kenneth and Margaret. Rusk remembered a story concerning her 

and The King and I and asked her about it. While he was talking to Kenneth, aides came in from 

time to time with papers, telegrams, and whatnot, to deal with. His office followed him wherever he 

went. But he was most genial. He said he had received full reports on the course and believed it was 

a great success and was here to stay. 

Across the room, Kenneth ran into the Undersecretary for Administration, Robert Orrick 

(SP?), who had been in Justice with Robert Kennedy. He was very congratulatory of Kenneth's work 

with the course. He expected to see more of Kenneth concerning the course and related subjects. 

There was a big job to do. Kenneth spent about twenty minutes with the Undersecretary, introducing 

him to people and talking with him. 

Then Kenneth spent some time talking to Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs Alex 

Johnson and his wife Pat, who were old friends of the Landons. Johnson is Kenneth's substantive 

boss, being a member of the Special Group, Counter-Insurgency, who meets with General Maxwell 

Taylor and gives Kenneth and his people their marching orders for the whole operation. He also told 

Kenneth that all reports were AOK, on the button, and congratulations. 

Then Kenneth met the Assistant Secretary for Administration, Mr. Crockett (SP?), who is 

another of Kenneth's bosses, on the administrative side, to whom Kenneth also reports, especially on 

administrative matters, budget, personnel, and so on. He has to get Crockett's approval. Crockett 

took him aside and told him that the course was a solid success. Very gratifying. The White House 

had been informed. He said he wanted Kenneth to start thinking very big now as to how we could 

put this across in all our missions overseas, perhaps with a travelling team of faculty under Kenneth's 

guidance. He turned to John Moore, the budget man and executive officer in FSI, and said to him 

that when Kenneth "started to think," he shouldn't let money stand in the way! Pretty strong 

language. It meant to Kenneth that the powers that be were completely satisfied and were ready to 

back up what Kenneth proposed next. 

Which means that Kenneth has some real creative thinking to do. 

602


Acting Assistant Secretary for the Far East, Ed Rice, was there and stayed much of the 

evening. 

The party was supposed to end at 9:30, but at 11:00, it was still going strong. At that point, 

Dan Quaid (SP?), who had arranged the details of the party, had to go in and replenish supplies with 

two fifths of the best Scotch from the Secretary's private stock, which was much better than what they 

had been serving, plus a whole case of soda water. The party went on almost to midnight. 

Everyone enjoyed the decor of the beautiful Jefferson Room, with the magnificent portraits 

and tapestries, and the balcony overlooking the city of Washington, "which probably has, as I 

remarked to the class when announcing that the party would be there, the most wistful vista in what is 

known as 'our town.' And it was a magnificent night, absolutely clear, and the Washington 

Monument and the Capitol standing as though they were punctuation marks on the horizon. They 

seemed close at hand." 

Just before going to the party, Kenneth had received his efficiency report from Dr. Keening 

(SP?), the dean of the School of Foreign Affairs, who had been Kenneth's boss until March 1, when 

he took on the Seminar job. Keening had seemed to say that the report would not be favorable to 

Kenneth, so Kenneth expected the worst. But when he opened it, he found that Keening had "really 

gone all out to say the most lovely things about me and my work, most of which I didn't feel was 

justified." Keening wanted to go on the record as a real friend. 

"All in all, it was really quite a day. I could hardly get to sleep." 

Today, the 13th, was the windup day. The four Latin America teams made their 

presentations. In the morning, Kenneth met an old friend, Ambassador Donald Heath (SP?), who is 

now retired, and talked with him awhile. Then Kenneth went down and met the Deputy 

Undersecretary of the Army for International Relations, a man named Howard Howgerud (SP?), with 

his aide, Colonel Ed Markey (SP?), and took them in to the morning meetings, where two country 

team reports were presented. The report on Bolivia was most amusing, given by John Studtsman 

(SP?), and another on Guatemala, given by a man named Corrigan. Both reports was excellent. The 

Bolivia report was delivered as if it were a theater play, though the team's facts were all substantive, 

out of secret and top secret documents. It was sidesplittingly funny, though the substance was deadly 

serious. Kenneth wondered how the Deputy Undersecretary of the Army would take the frivolity. 

But he liked it and spoke highly of it. 

At noon, Kenneth had a number of administrative details to deal with concerning the 

graduation exercises scheduled for 4:15. He had to get all the certificates signed by Mr. Morgan and 

himself. Kenneth was pleased at the way they looked. 

In the afternoon, they had one of the most sensitive of all the reports, on Haiti, which is in the 

newspapers at the moment, and then another report on Brazil, what to do about the northeast plateau 

area. 

Promptly at 4:30, Kenneth got up and said that, in exchange for their certificates, he would 

"like to receive from you those books which you have tried to smuggle away from here, which belong 

to us," and also their identification cards. Much chuckling. Mr. Morgan appeared, and the 

graduation exercise began immediately. Morgan made some comments, and then they handed out the 

certificates, team by team. It only took about eleven minutes. 

The last thing Mr. Morgan said was a word of appreciation to Kenneth and his staff for all the 

hard work they had done, which meant a lot to the staff. Kenneth was then ready to go, but a number 

of the students came up to him and told him how much they had appreciated the whole experience. 

Monday morning, Kenneth goes to work full bore on the instructors' course, a two-week 

course scheduled to begin August 6. 

603


6(&21' 2) 7+( 7:2 7$3(6 

3 

30:00 February 16, 1963 

[The buzzing on the tape is in the original, reel-to-reel tape.] 

Kenneth says that it seems a good time to take a fresh look at the career or at least 

"bureaucratic experiences of Kenneth P. Landon" in connection with the Country Team Seminar, 

which in the last eight weeks or so has acquired a more formal designation as the Interdepartmental 

Seminar. The emphasis in the name now is more on the Washington end of things rather than on the 

field end of things, a shift of emphasis that has a good deal of significance for Kenneth, and for the 

U.S. government. 

On February 15, Kenneth completed the fourth session of the Country Team Seminar. There 

have been four five-week sessions, plus one instructors' course of two weeks. In the first session, 

there were sixty-two officers, in the second, seventy-two, in the third, eighty-four, and in the fourth 

sixty-four to start with, but then, due to attrition of one kind or another, a slippage to fifty-nine. 

Nineteen of these were State Department officers. Defense had about ten. USIA and AID had eleven 

or twelve each. And the CIA the remainder. 

"In my small microcosmic world, I think, is reflected the kind of interdepartmental and ZLWKLQ 

the departments the kind of infighting, of bureaucratic jockeying for power. The power play began 

almost with the first session, at the end of the first session, I should say—no, perhaps GXULQJ the first 

session." The reason was that this course was a focus for presidential power or for influence XSRQ 

presidential power in carrying out our foreign policy objectives, and indeed, in formulating our 

foreign policy. It's the only course that attracts ambassadors and the chiefs of military assistance 

groups, the economic aid groups, information groups, and CIA intelligence chiefs. "These are the 

key officers who run the embassies, formulate policy ideas, and are responsible for carrying out our 

operations. Naturally, therefore, there began to be . . . a play to see who was going to dominate the 

curriculum and who was going to have the main and final word in conducting the course." 

The interdepartmental aspects were very clear as a challenge between Defense and State. 

Kenneth represented State. Colonel English represented Defense, along with his superior officer 

George Carroll (SP?), working in the international security office under Paul Nitze, William Bundy, 

and Henry Rowan in that hierarchical sequence for the Defense Department. 

At the very beginning, there was a challenge between the two departments with respect to the 

basic philosophy underlying the course. This turned up when General Maxwell Taylor outlined what 

he believed to be the need for country team action and instruction in counter-insurgency, emphasizing 

that word. This was the word that attracted the President. He too used it. They called the Counsellor 

of the State Department in, Walt Rostow, and asked him to head a committee to set up such a course. 

He examined the concept put forward by the military and said that he did not believe the problem was 

essentially a military one. Although a great deal of blood was being shed by guerrilla warfare of 

various types, the fundamental problem had to do with human motivation, problems of political, 

economic, and societal development, and the relations between the people and their central 

government. Consequently, he insisted that a course be set up that would examine the problems of 

development as well as problems of counter-insurgency, still using that word although he felt it too 

narrow and preferred the term "internal defense" because of its wider implications involving a total 

defense concept, not just fighting guerrillas. This was approved as a beginning concept. Rostow then 

called Kenneth in and told him to take the lead in putting up a curriculum or syllabus along the lines 

Rostow had defined "in terms of a presidential directive, NASAM—National Security Council 

604


Action Memorandum—#131." This directive had not yet been drafted, but when it was, it supported 

the Rostow proposal. 

The contest immediately began between the military, who insisted that the emphasis be placed 

on counter-insurgency, and Kenneth. Looking back on it, Kenneth sees that he was given a heavy 

responsibility without a clearly defined authority. He was being asked to do something without the 

necessary power to do it, other than by his powers of persuasion. 

A sub-committee or working group was set up under Rostow, chaired by Rostow's assistant, 

Henry C. Ramsey, known as Hank Ramsey. That was the first and fundamental error. Kenneth feels 

that KH should have been made the chairman of that working group. A great many of the difficulties 

that ensued could have been avoided if he had been chairman. He was not only not made the 

chairman; he was not given any official voice in the committee, but was asked to report his 

developments to the committee for further report to the Rostow committee, who would in turn report 

to the Special Group. In short, bureaucracy was already taking hold, and layers of authority ZLWKRXW 

UHVSRQVLELOLW\ were put on top of Kenneth, who had the actual responsibility for the course. 

Kenneth was also given no budget and no staff. He began with a notebook and a pencil. No 

secretary. 

The next significant development occurred at the beginning of the second session of the 

course, the first one having run from June 11 through July 13, five weeks. Then there was a sevenweek 

interval, during which the the instructors' course was conducted. Also, during that period, 

Kenneth and his staff did a very detailed critique of the first session and came up with a new syllabus 

for the second session, which ran from September 4 to October 5. During that critique period, there 

was some acrimonious infighting between Ramsey, representing Rostow on one side, and Colonel 

Lowell English, representing Defense on the other. English, of course, was Kenneth's Defense 

Department faculty advisor. English said to Kenneth a number of times that if he were really to be in 

charge of the course, he should have the Ramsey position. But it was already too late for that. The 

dispute was as to the nature of the syllabus. Defense, desiring the deletion of the academic analyses 

provided by the professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the heavy emphasis 

during the first two weeks on problems of development of a political, societal, and economic nature, 

argued that the emphasis should be on the military aspects of things, countering communist 

insurgency militarily. Fighting the war! The resulting draft for the second session did cut the 

number of academic analyses [that is, lectures] from nineteen to fourteen, but without any loss of 

substance. The course was improved with keener analysis and better understanding. 

The third week dealt largely with the roles and missions and kinds of operations that the 

participating departments and agencies could provide in helping to achieve U.S. policy objectives, 

solving the problems we were facing in the underdeveloped world. 

At this point, on September 4, Rostow went out of business so far as the Country Team 

Seminar was concerned. He said that he was the planner, the counsellor, and his function was to get 

things going, and now it was up to those who were the operators to carry on. He made a report to the 

Special Group and divested himself of his responsibilities. His committee was then re-formed under 

the leadership of Alex Johnson, the Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, who was the State 

Department representative on the Special Group, and also, more particularly, worked under Alex 

Johnson's Deputy Assistant Secretary, Jeffrey Kitchen (SP?), who actively took over the 

responsibilities of Walt Rostow regarding the Seminar. The other members of the committee were 

somewhat changed, but generally were the same, with General Victor Krulak representing the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, and George Carroll representing the international security part of Defense, under Mr. 

Nitze, he [Carroll] being the boss of Colonel English, who was Kenneth's Defense Department 

liaison officer. 

605


4 

45:10 At this point, a curious thing happened in the State Department to complicate the situation. 

There was a good deal of hard feeling between Henry Ramsey in Rostow's office and 

Charles Meckling (SP?) and Abraham Moses in Kitchen's office of political and military affairs. The 

dispute arose as to who was to do most of the drafting on the overseas internal defense policy 

document, which was to contain the so-called "doctrine" of counter-insurgency and of promoting 

internal defense in the countries being plagued by the communists. There was a great deal of blood 

shed over that document. Some of the disputes were acrimonious and profane, and they were carrie d 

right up to the Special Group, where they were resolved. The document is an unremarkable one in 

the final analysis, "as such documents generally are, because all of the disputed elements are watered 

down until they're finally acceptable to everybody and contain language which is not overly 

meaningful, representing compromise." Unfortunately, Jeff Kitchen and his two assistants felt that 

Kenneth was identified with Rostow and Ramsey, knowing that he was carrying out a Rostow 

directive in setting up the Country Team Seminar. Kenneth was never invited to attend a meeting of 

the Kitchen committee, which was now designated as the Subcommittee on Training, responsible to 

the Special Group for the training programs being set up—not only Kenneth's Country Team 

Seminar, but all the other training programs throughout the government—under NASAM-131. 

(Under this directive, Kenneth, for instance, also set up a program of six lectures in the Department 

of State which ran six times and was attended by about 3400 State and AID officers. During 1962 

Defense, under the same directive, trained about 50,000 officers. But these programs were 

elementary compared to the Country Team Seminar, five weeks of intensive, all-day study by key 

embassy officials going to Africa, Latin America, the Near and Middle East, and Southeast Asia.) 

The first session of the Country Team Seminar, June 11 to July 13, dealt only with Southeast 

Asia and Latin America. The September 4 to October 5 session addressed itself to Africa and the 

Near and Middle East as well. In that session, Kenneth developed new techniques for holding a class 

with such diverse interests together while studying the general principles of problems of development 

and internal defense and while still concentrating on their particular countries of interest—studying 

problems which Kenneth insisted be, not academic problems, but the real problems faced by our 

government, on which there was a constant flow of information in telegrams and in intelligence. 

Kenneth reviewed this second session and revised the format substantially for the third 

session, which ran from November 19 to December 21. This was the largest session, in which there 

were eighty-four officers, about thirty of which were from AID, many of them very senior officers 

brought in for the occason. 

During this period, between the end of the second session and the beginning of the third, the 

contest between Defense and State over the content of the syllabus and also over which Department 

was going to have the dominant voice in the course was very sharp. Kenneth was not included on the 

working group that was set up under the Kitchen committee and was never consulted or informed as 

to the deliberations carried on in these two committees. However, on both of them, some members of 

Kenneth's faculty advisors were included. Kenneth adds that between the second and third sessions, 

he asked for and was granted an interdepartmental faculty that consisted of four members from State, 

each one an expert on one of the four areas under study, three members from Defense, and one each 

from the other agencies participating. All of them were on board and at work for the third session, all 

of them senior officers. A number of them were senior to Kenneth in terms of salary rank. Kenneth 

is an FSR-2, and two of his State Department officers were FSO-1's, Foreign Service officers of the 

highest grade. But they worked well under Kenneth's direction. There was no difficulty as far as the 

faculty people were concerned, except for the Defense members. 

At this point, Colonel English was phased out, and the three Defense faculty members came 

606


on as regular faculty, Colonel Charles Hostler (SP?) of the Air Force and Captain Lee Blocher of the 

Navy for the third session, and Colonel Allen L. Leonard of the Army near the end of the third 

session. 

During this third session, Kenneth discovered that the Kitchen committee had changed the 

rules of the game without his knowledge, even though they had gone through two sessions. It had 

happened some seven weeks before Kenneth found out about it, which was during November. The 

change was that they had formulated their "frame of reference" for their operations and had them 

approved by the Special Group without ever consulting or even informing the Director of the Foreign 

Service Institute, George Morgan, who was responsible over Kenneth for the course, or consulting or 

informing Kenneth, who was running it. "This was the dirtiest, most inconsiderate, but typical kind 

of bureaucratic infighting when one office is seeking to build its own little empire and take control of 

a very influential operation." 

A personal aside on this is that the sub-committee was under the control of Alex Johnson, the 

Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, whom Kenneth had regarded as an old friend, who had 

often been in the Landon home as Kenneth and Margaret's guests. He and Kenneth had known each 

other and worked on an amicable basis for many years. Kenneth had often seen officers take 

advantage of other officers for their personal advancement or enlargement, but "I had never had it 

done to myself by someone whom I had thought was a friend and was a longtime associate. So this 

added a certain piquancy to the experience." 

At this point, Kenneth tried to get a copy of the frame of reference by calling Charles 

Meckling and asking what lengths he had to go to to find out under what ground rules the course was 

now operating. Meckling grudgingly agreed to burn off a copy, unofficially, to let Kenneth see, 

which he did. Kenneth took this to Mr. Morgan, the Director, who saw at once that he and Kenneth 

were "in a very queer position. In a sense, we'd had the ground cut out from under us. . . ." And they 

were about to make a crash landing. So they hurriedly began to prepare an approach to Mr. Kitchen, 

to Mr. Johnson, to the Undersecretary for Administration, Mr. Orrick (SP?), to whom George Morgan 

reported on the administrative side, and to Mr. Crockett (SP?). 

It was at just this time that the U.S. crisis with Mr. Khrushchev over Cuba came to a head! 

Because of it, Mr. Orrick never had an opportunity to take a look or even to think about the Country 

Team Seminar problem because he was pulled off by the President to co-ordinate our operations with 

respect to the blockade of Cuba. Mr. Kitchen and Mr. Johnson were likewise involved in the 

operation. So the world events of the time intruded on "my small affairs of this training course and 

made certain that our case would not be heard." As time passed, the frame of reference of the 

Kitchen committee, simply by sufferance and continuance, became absolutely firm. 

Then, in the end, Mr. Kitchen did convey an official copy of the frame of reference to Mr. 

Morgan, and the sub-committee on training began to issue directives on how to run the course, what 

kind of cover sheet to put on the syllabus, indicating that they intended to draft a syllabus themselves, 

that Kenneth and his people should no longer call their production a "syllabus" but should regard it as 

a "schedule" which would follow the sub-committee's directive. They even redrafted the graduation 

certificate. They downplayed the country team aspect of the course and instead gave major play to 

the interdepartmental aspect. It was shown right on the cover, with a listing of the departments of 

State, Defense, and the agencies, AID, and USIA. CIA was not mentioned, although it was a tacit 

participant. The graduation certificate also showed the names of the participating departments and 

agencies. On both the cover sheet and the graduation certificate, also, it was stated that this was a 

course given DW the Foreign Service Institute, not E\ the Foreign Service Institute. 

This marked the transition from FSI and Kenneth's being the executive agents to carry out the 

presidential directive to becoming more or less the hotel keepers for the course, which was now to be 

607


operated and administered by a committee. It could just as well have said "at Arena State, or at the 

gymnasium," and been just as meaningful. 

608


ADDENDUM 5 

1 

(Continuing second tape, February 16, 1963) 

The role of FSI had been completely changed without its knowledge in this play to upgrade 

the role of Alex Johnson and Jeffrey Kitchen and his office, and to downplay the role of FSI. In a 

sense, this represented a shift in attitude toward the whole training program and a shift of emphasis 

IURP problems of development WR countering insurgency, although the title of the course was not 

changed as yet. Things having now come to this pass, the Defense Department proposed two subcommittees, 

the next logical step, which was that now that the course was set up, and the subcommittee 

had taken charge, and it was completely interdepartmental, and was not run by FSI, the 

directorship of the course, presently held by Kenneth, should be changed so that it would be on a 

rotating basis among the participating departments and agencies. The natural proposal by Defense 

was that, Kenneth being State's man, State had had its turn, and he should be replaced by a general 

who was DX FRXUDQW and up to date with the latest methods in countering communist guerrilla 

insurgency. Added to this was the personal dislike of Kenneth by Colonel Lowell English and his 

boss George Carroll because Kenneth had not been submissive to their desires and had opposed their 

attempts to control the course. Indeed, lacking the authority to do so, Kenneth had done it necessarily 

"by stubbornness, force of personality, and a bit of verbal rubber hosing at the right time, showing no 

willingness to be intimidated by their efforts to control me." It was at this period that the issues were 

being sharply met. 

One thing that discomfited the military was that the course was consistently regarded by the 

participating students from the agencies, including the military students in general, as a great success. 

Although Colonel English constantly worked on the students when he attended the classes and 

associated with them and urged the military in particular to criticize the course severely, in general 

their comments were highly favorable. The course was hailed as a great success throughout the 

government by all kinds of officers, high and low. And this came to the White House. "The course 

VKRXOG not have been a success, but it was." Never before had such senior officers been made to 

work so hard, intensively, all day, every day, in the classroom area. And then, on top of that, they 

had many books to work with in the evenings and on the weekends. 

Another thing that discomfited the military was that the Seminar had been able, by November 

19, to move into its new quarters. The Seminar had taken over a nightclub and a cocktail lounge, 

known as the Terrace Room and the Oak Room, in the Washington Building of Arlington Towers. 

The rooms were completely remodeled for the purpose. 

Colonel Leonard joined the staff at just about that time, Kenneth recalls, and so he ZDV on 

board for the beginning of that fourth session after all. 

Kenneth had an opening reception, and the military came over, and they were astounded at the 

efficiency of the setup, with the auditorium in the center, the classrooms and the offices circling 

around it, with a splendid library, and every convenience. This embarrassed them in their attacks on 

Kenneth. But they had "put the bite" on Colonel Hostler and Colonel Leonard to be aggressive and 

critical and to write them memos criticizing all aspects of the operation in order to give them material 

for attacking Kenneth. Leonard would have "three or four tantrums a week" on such petty things as 

to whether or not a room was too hot or too cold, whether a door would close, whether it was 

squeaky, and naturally there were always small details like that, dangling wires here and there, 

because the facilities were so new. They had a long list of housekeeping criticisms that they were 

609


able to make. Colonel Hostler also put in a memo criticizing the fact that Kenneth had established 

visual aid equipment for projecting into seven rooms simultaneously, that is, into the auditorium and 

six of the study rooms. His criticism was that one facility was enough, that it was a waste of money. 

During this period, Mr. Morgan and his executive officer had put forward the argument that, since the 

Foreign Service Institute was not the executive agent but merely the hotel keeper for the Seminar, all 

the participating departments and agencies should contribute of WKHLU money to the support of the 

Seminar. Morgan and his exec approached the budget offices of the departments and agencies to 

budget funds on a pro rata basis. This naturally gave the Defense Department a perfect opportunity 

to question every item in the budget, on the grounds that they were helping to pay for them. 

The attacks on Kenneth were not kept at a low level. George Carroll and General Krulak 

went to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Mr. Gilpatrick (SP?), and to General Maxwell Taylor, and 

attacked Kenneth on the grounds that he was a poor administrator, citing the many household details 

of doors and wires and such, over most of which Kenneth had no control. These were items that had 

to be corrected by the contractor, Arlington Towers, which only did what it had to do under pressure 

from FSI. Unfortunately, the Arlington Towers people were preoccupied with putting up a new 

building and didn't want to pull people off that project to correct minor things. So their response to 

FSI requests was sluggish. 

The attack on Kenneth was successful, not only because of the high level of the attack on the 

Defense side to get him out—because the military knew that as long as he was in, the course would 

have a strong emphasis on the problems of development—but also because it coincided with the 

desires of Alex Johnson and Jeffrey Kitchen to increase their control over the course and to put their 

own appointee in. They were inclined, Kitchen in particular, to accept the Defense Department's 

military emphasis on countering insurgency. So they felt, Kenneth believes, that it was a good time 

to make a change. 

The question was what to do with Kenneth Landon, and how to avoid the appearance that the 

Defense Department had won a victory over State. It was very important for Alex Johnson to be on 

good terms with the military because his role was that of military-political affairs for State in its 

operations in connection with Defense. Furthermore, he had replaced General Maxwell Taylor as the 

chairman of the Special Group, so that now Alex Johnson was the most important individual in 

countering insurgency throughout the world. Naturally, he would want the training program to 

reflect his own views. It puzzles Kenneth as to why he never consulted Kenneth or informed him of 

the desire for a change of emphasis. Perhaps it was because he didn't know how to state it. In any 

case, he saw an opportunity to put his own man in, in Kenneth's place. 

At this point in the history, Grant Hillecker (SP?) departed the scene. He had very kindly 

brought Kenneth into FSI to work with him on area training, with him and William Spengler. 

Spengler had departed and gone to Peshawar, and now Hillecker was about to leave for a new job in 

SS, the Secretary's secretariat, leaving a vacancy in area training—in the School of Language and 

Area Training. Hillecker was rated as an assistant dean, and so George Morgan, after consultation 

with Alex Johnson, asked Kenneth if he would be willing to become the Associate Dean, upgrading 

the position, in the School of Language and Area Training, and to revitalize and restructure area 

training and make it a really important component in the school. He said that he had already gone to 

the Undersecretary for Administration, Mr. Orreck (SP?), and had his commitment to provide 

Kenneth with the necessary additional professional staff in order to have the necessary academic 

quality in order to build the program up. Kenneth would then be in charge of all the area training in 

the School of Language and Area Training, and he would have, as far as Morgan was concerned, the 

same free hand in restructuring the program and setting up as he had had in setting up the Country 

Team Seminar. This seemed to Kenneth to be a very good idea. He saw that there was no future in 

610


the continuing conflict between State and Defense "over my body," and he also sensed that Alex 

Johnson was anxious to put his own appointee in his place. 

"Bemusedly, it's interesting to think how one can get himself fired in a bureaucracy for having 

done an outstanding job. You generally think of being moved out of a position when you don't do 

well in it. But this course is now an unquestioned success throughout the government." 

2 

16:35 

The fourth session completed the shakedown period of the Seminar and brought Kenneth 

through a full cycle of approximately one year in charge of the course. He had taken the job on at 

about March 1, 1962, and officially let down the load on the afternoon of February 15, 1963. "I go to 

my new office on March 4 as Associate Dean of the School of Language and Area Training." 

By the fourth session, almost all dispute within the faculty had been ended over the content of 

the syllabus. Kenneth had eliminated all MIT professors from the course, but had brought in other 

academicians from other universities and colleges under the aegis of either State, or AID, or USIA. 

What they provided in their analyses of problems of political, societal, and economic development 

was actually the nuts and bolts of understanding for agencies dealing with economic, societal, and 

political problems. This baffled the Defense people who were arguing that the syllabus should get 

down to the nuts and bolts of our operations. Kenneth had pointed out to the military that what they 

called "theory" was nuts and bolts to other agencies. How could they deny the other agencies to have 

their own particular kind of nuts and bolts. This "dietary" discussion baffled the military, "and they 

finally relaxed with the passing of the last of the MIT professors." During the January 14 to February 

15 session, practically all of the administrative problems, the disputes over the syllabus, and other 

similar problems were completely solved or dissolved. Kenneth developed the syllabus for the 

March 11 session to come while the fourth session was still going on. 

The fact of Kenneth's withdrawing from the course "was very closely held." His successor, 

Niles Bond, who has been DCM in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was proposed to the sub-committee on 

February 14. On that day, then, some of the interdepartmental faculty knew that Kenneth's successor 

had been named, but they still knew nothing as to Kenneth's own disposition. He had said nothing to 

anyone on the staff. On February 15, the last day of the course, the news was still not known outside 

of the sub-committee itself and some of the faculty members who were in touch with sub-committee 

members. 

On the 15th, after the class sessions, the moment of the graduation exercise arrived. Henry 

Rowan had been invited to give the graduation address. He was George Carroll's boss in Defense. 

Rowan came over with Carroll, and with Colonel Lowell English, who came for the first time in this 

session. One of the arguments, incidentally, for ousting Kenneth was that the military couldn't do 

business with him, "which of course they couldn't RQ WKHLU WHUPV." They all closeted themselves in 

the office of Colonel Hostler, the senior military faculty member. Kenneth knew where they were. 

About twenty minutes before the graduation exercise, Kenneth walked down to the door, which they 

had carefully closed. "So I thought, 'Well, I'll have some fun.' So I kicked the door open and walked 

in breezily and said, 'Well, it's looks like a plot!' And I did an imitation, 'Ee ee ee ee ee,' with my 

finger around the room," [imitating a machinegun,] "and said, 'Well, hallo, George Carroll, glad to 

have you here. Welcome, Mr. Rowan, glad you're coming over to make the graduation exercises 

complete. I hope your lecture will be worthy of this class, which is a highly intelligent class who will 

not settle for the usual pedestrian comments, and I know that you, being one of the whiz kids of the 

Defense Department, can really give them some high-level thinking.' And then I turned to Colonel 

English, and I said, 'Well, hello, English. Haven't seen you for a long time. You're in civvies. You 

611


look better in your buttons. I suggest you wear your buttons. You're more impressive!' He turned 

absolutely SLQN and as usual couldn't think of what to say. He's one of those people who hates well 

but thinks poorly. He is to me the epitome of the most dangerous kind of bureaucrat, who is a 

dedicated, devoted, industrious, ambitious, hard-working man who is stupid. And there is nothing 

more dangerous than an industrious, dedicated man who is stupid. And this is what he is. But I must 

say he's dedicated and industrious. And I suppose there's a place in our representative government 

for the stupid, industrious people to be represented. Certainly, he represents them well," Kenneth 

says dryly. 

At any rate, the military were considerably embarrassed by Kenneth's walking in and not 

looking crestfallen. They, of course, had the word that this was Kenneth's last day, that he was being 

ousted. However, they didn't know exactly how it was being done or where he was going. 

Kenneth conducted the gentlemen down to the graduation exercises. Mr. Rowan made his 

graduation address. And then George Morgan said that he had an important announcement to make, 

and announced that Kenneth was leaving. He told the assembly that Kenneth had been invited to 

become the Associate Dean of the School of Language and Area Training, that the job had been 

enlarged for him, that he would have new staff and a free hand "to do the same kind of remarkable 

job—and he used some very nice language—with area training that I had demonstrated that I was 

able to do and had done with the Country Team Seminar." This evoked a rousing cheer, and at about 

this point. Alex Johnson walked in, by arrangement with George Morgan, and was welcomed to the 

platform. He had just come from a meeting, and as chairman of the Special Group and speaking for 

it, he had come over to bear testimony to the outstanding job Kenneth had done in setting up the 

Country Team Seminar, that the whole government was or should be grateful to Kenneth, that he was 

personally, that he and Kenneth had been associated for many years in government, and he personally 

hoped that he and Kenneth would be associated in many ventures in the future. He then asked 

Kenneth to come up to the platform, and he shook Kenneth's hand, gave him a pat on the back. There 

was more applause, while the military sat rather glumly in the front row. They had not anticipated 

this kind of State Department show. "Well, of course, it ZDV show because, I think, Alex Johnson for 

State felt it was very important not to let Defense feel that they just been able to have a victory over 

State." Then Johnson departed. 

Kenneth had not heard the last class paper presentation, a group that had been chaired by Sam 

Gilstrap (SP?), our Consul General in Singapore, and consequently Kenneth had missed an accolade 

that KH had given Kenneth on behalf of the class. He had been requested to make these remarks about 

the course and Kenneth, the co-ordinator. This was taped, so perhaps Kenneth will be able to hear a 

recording of it at some other time. 

On the other hand, being experienced bureaucrats, and hearing what Morgan and then 

Johnson had said, some of Kenneth's friends in State, including Sam Gilstrap and Ruth Bacon, who is 

an old friend and in the class and DCM in New Zealand, came to Kenneth and said, "Hey, what is 

this? You just had your throat cut?" Kenneth said that, yes, some bureaucratic infighting had been 

going on, "but fortunately, from my point of view, no blood is spilled because actually, this 

interdepartmental seminar, as important as it is, is going to lose its independent identity, I expect, and 

be absorbed in a larger context in the new national academy which has been proposed just this past 

week by the President for legislation on the Hill. And if and when that academy becomes a fact, the 

five-week course, presumably, will form perhaps four weeks of a nine months course for a limited 

number of senior officers." 

612


3 

30:06 

Area training is interesting and exciting for Kenneth because it deals with the more junior and 

mid-career officers, many of whom are going to new areas for the first time in their careers, and it 

gives him an opportunity on a world-wide basis to control the area training programs. He will be in 

charge, not only of the brief program, which runs for three weeks, but of all university advanced 

training for mid-career and senior officers. Any Foreign Service Officer going to a university will be 

under his supervision and will be in consultation with him. This is for officers throughout the world, 

including officers going to Europe, Western as well as Eastern Europe. "So, as has so often happened 

in my life, every time I get fired, I seem to get a better job, and one of more significance and more 

importance. And apparently it's happened once again." 

[Kenneth was never fired from any other position he held, nor in the strict sense of the 

word, was he fired from this one. What he means to say is that, each time he has left one job 

or form of work behind, he has moved on to something better. He went from missionary 

work to academic work to a series of ascending jobs in government and in the end to what 

many would regard as the summit of his career, the creation of the Center for South and 

Southeast Asian Studies at American University. But in his retirement, Kenneth himself looked 

back on this year of 1962-3, setting up and running the Country Team Seminar, as the most 

exciting period of his professional life. Academic life was tame by comparison.] 

Kenneth has maintained with his interdepartmental faculty that no assignment should extend 

beyond a year, feeling that a senior officer shouldn't be held in this particular kind of training 

program for more than a year. "And now I curiously realize that I am carrying out my own principle 

because I too am leaving this particular course after a year." 

A footnote on the final steps taken by Alex Johnson before he made the decision to replace 

Kenneth. Johnson sent Abe Moses, of Jeff Kitchen's staff, and of his staff too, of course, to make a 

tour of nine countries in Latin America, his prime purpose being to interview the graduates of the 

first three sessions of the Country Team Seminar, of whom there were quite a number, perhaps thirty 

or more. He went down to examine the country team process and find what the views of these 

officers were about the process and what they had learned, if anything, from Kenneth's course. This 

was with the express purpose of finding material to use against Kenneth. Abe Moses came back and 

was unable to give the kind of criticism that Alex Johnson had anticipated. He reported that the 

officers who knew the most about how to run a country team were graduates of the Seminar. They 

were the only ones who really knew what it was all about. And without exception the graduates of 

the Seminar had been enthusiastic in praising it for giving them new insights into the problems of a 

political, societal, and economic, as well as the insurgency aspect. So his report to Johnson was in 

glowing praise of the course and of how it was being run. [ Mr. Moses came to tell Kenneth about 

this and to warn him that he would soon be replaced regardless.] He told Kenneth directly, 

"You know, I had not expected to find these results." He said, "You've done a wonderful job, and 

you ought to get a great deal of credit for it. But," he said, "I don't think you ever will." 

"Isn't that a nice footnote," Kenneth says. 

Another footnote. Kenneth had a conversation with Colonel Charles Hostler, after he had told 

Kenneth that his enemies were sharpening their knives. Kenneth said he wasn't surprised. Later on, 

when it became public that Kenneth was leaving, Hostler came in to see Kenneth, saying that he had 

warned him. "You brought it on yourself," he said. It was Kenneth's own fault [for not doing as the 

613


military wanted]. Kenneth's comment was, "Well, naturally, don't we all bring our troubles on 

ourselves? Who doesn't? The only question is whether the kind of trouble you get into is something 

to be proud of or sorry about, and this particular kind of trouble is perhaps a testimonial to an 

achievement that is worthy of jealousy. If the job hadn't amounted to very much, there wouldn't have 

been any trouble." Furthermore, Kenneth observed, "I'm proud of every enemy I've ever made, and I 

would question my own intellectual integrity if people like George Carroll liked me." This was 

baffling to Hostler, whose instinct would be to sacrifice the operation to save himself, "whereas my 

inclination is not to worry about what happens to me but to try to make the job the very best 

possible." 

Hostler himself is a bright man but timid for a military type. His inclinations are for personal 

salvation rather than getting on with his job. This is reflected in his observations on Gordon 

Madison's attempts to get a divorce. Hostler said that Gordon and he were in the same spot. Hostler 

was trying to get rid of KLV wife too. A few days later, at a Seminar party, Hostler brought in the 

"evidence" of why he was trying to get rid of the old. He had a very flashy, platinum girl friend with 

him, "very well fashioned," youthful in impression and probably much younger than his wife, whom 

he was hoping to marry if he could get rid of his wife. Rather than make a success of what he began 

with, he was trying to trade it off for perhaps an easier solution for his own personal advantage. 

Another footnote. After the final ceremony was over and everyone was back in the library 

having a farewell round of drinks, Bob Bazell (SP? Azell? Izell?), Kenneth's right hand man in 

administration, and Eleanor Idol (SP?), the librarian, came over to Kenneth individually in a corner 

and asked him if he would take them with him. They wanted to continue working with him. This 

was touching to Kenneth. Here were two very loyal people who had worked closely with him in the 

whole Seminar operation. 

John Henderson, at the same occasion, said that he regretted Kenneth's departure because he 

had looked forward to working with a man whose work he had been encountering for fifteen years in 

his own work in Southeast Asia. He remarked that he had the feeling that Kenneth was some kind of 

a legend because he had been running into his name so much. 

In another context, Margaret asked Kenneth to relate a conversation he had with a Mrs. True, 

the very wealthy Mrs. True, in whose home Kenneth officiated at the wedding of Holly and Carlton 

Savage about a year ago. This last week, Margaret and Kenneth were at a reception given by the 

Savages in honor of their friend Sam Prye (SP?), "the man who has the most famous of all Siamese 

ivory dolls, and whose doll collection is one of the most famous in the world, a collection which 

Margaret and I are looking forward to seeing next week with the Kenneth Wells when we go to New 

York." At the reception, Mr. and Mrs. True were talking to Kenneth, and Mr. True asked about Kip 

[Kenneth Landon, Jr.]. The Landons had just received a puzzling unsigned postcard from the office 

of the president of Wheaton College [where Kip was at school] in which he referred to "Sergeant 

Ritchie," who had just won the cadet drill, and congratulating the Landons on their "son." Kenneth 

wrote Kip and asked him if KH were "Sergeant Ritchie"? And in fact, Kip wrote back to say that he 

had indeed won the drill contest. So Kenneth told the Trues about this accomplishment at his college, 

and Mrs. True asked how Kip was doing in other things. Kenneth said he was doing very well, as he 

always had. Kip was in the A++ class, Kenneth said. Well, this offended Mrs. True, who 

commented that, of course, an A at a small college would only be a B or C at a fine college like 

Harvard. Kenneth replied that a person who earns an A at one place does whatever it takes to earn an 

A at any other place as well. Mrs. True said this was not true at all, and spoke again of the high 

standards at Harvard. Kenneth replied that he felt Harvard was greatly overrated, and besides, in the 

614


first two years, instruction was done entirely by teaching assistants. Which annoyed her even more. 

Again, she insisted that Harvard was greatly superior to small colleges like Wheaton. Everybody 

knew that! Kenneth commented then that Kip had received a letter inviting him to go to Harvard, and 

had turned it down in favor of Wheaton. And he had found Wheaton a great relief after his years at 

St. Albans. His feeling was that if he had gone to Harvard, it would just have been more of the same. 

At this point, Mr. True spoke up and announced that he was glad to hear it, and agreed with Kenneth. 

Apparently, the subject was a bone of contention between the Trues. 

4 

46:09 Two weeks later, March 6, 1963 

Kenneth has returned from two weeks of vacation with Margaret ended by a wonderful 

weekend in New York, with a visit to the estate of Sam Prye (SP?), whom they had met at the party 

where they encountered the Trues. The Landons spent several days of their vacation with their 

friends from missionary days, Kenneth and Margaretta Wells, who accompanied them on the visit to 

Sam Prye's estate. 

The Landons returned on a Monday, so Kenneth's first day in the office was Tuesday, March 

5. Kenneth was astonished when he received a very sweet letter from Eleanor Idol, his librarian, 

saying that it had meant a great deal to her to have Kenneth select her for librarian. Now she was 

near the end of her working career, and these days with Kenneth had been the happiest days of her 

whole life. She appreciated his confidence in her and hoped that they would be able to work together 

again. 

In the same mail, there was a letter from the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, which was a 

"Dear Ken . . . Sincerely, Dean" letter. He signed it "Dean." It was very personal, informal, 

congratulating Kenneth on the job he had done in creating the Country Team Seminar and wishing 

him well in his next job. Kenneth doesn't know who the drafting officer was, but suspects it was 

probably George Morgan. Nevertheless, the Secretary himself leant himself to the occasion and 

signed a "Dear Ken . . . Sincerely, Dean" letter, which Kenneth suspects he would not have done 

unless he felt it was deserved and also unless he felt that somehow the Department had let Kenneth 

down in not backing him in the contest he had been having with the Defense Department. 

In support of that, Kenneth ran into Bob Johnson in Rostow's office who said how upset he 

was about the whole thing, that he had learned that Kenneth had been fighting a rearguard action in 

defense of his operation and had lost out. Johnson said that, when he had learned of this, he had 

belatedly done the best he could to salvage the situation. He had gone to Rostow, and Rostow had 

told him to stay clear of it. 

The place where Kenneth had run into Johnson was the Executive Dining Room, which is a 

long dining room that could seat from 800 and 1000 top-level officers at one time, most of whom do 

eat there between one and two o'clock. Kenneth was seated at the far end with Dean Sollenberger 

(SP?) of the School of Language and Area Training, and the two men started to walk out through the 

dining room at its most crowded period, about 1:45. "And as I went, it seemed to me that people 

whom I knew only slightly went out of their way to call to me or stand up and shake hands and give 

me a word of good luck on the new job. Apparently word has gone around in the Department as to 

what has happened. And this was the working level's way of expressing their views the only way 

they can, really, on a personal basis, showing their understanding and personal support. I was a little 

overwhelmed by it because it was so unexpected to have so many people in that long dining room go 

out of their way to express their friendliness." It reminded Kenneth of the astonishing accolade that 

was given Assistant Secretary Robert Woodward just after he'd been fired by the White House and 

was appointed to go to the field. He'd been brought in to be Assistant Secretary for Latin American 

615


Affairs and had had a young New Frontiersman fastened on him and had quite a struggle getting 

control of his shop and failed in the endeavor, so that in the end he was fired and sent to the field. 

The news spread through the Department. When the Foreign Service Association had its monthly 

dinner, Woodward was invited to sit on the platform, being a man of some importance and someone 

going to a new appointment. And he sat there in a line of about ten men, including Attorney General 

Robert Kennedy. The master of ceremonies introduced the guests of honor, which was normal 

procedure, coming down the line, one after another, and Bobby Kennedy got a perfunctory clapping 

of hands, as did most of the other guests of honor, and then with no particular fanfare, the MC 

introduced Robert Woodward. Woodward stood up and started to take a quick little bow and sit 

down when the most thunderous applause broke loose in that audience of close to 2000 Foreign 

Service officers. They began to shout and call to him, and the applause continued and rose in volume 

and went on and on and on, and Woodward waved his hands in thanks, and sat down, and stood up 

and waved his hands in thanks, and sat down again. And they just kept on applauding, to the point 

that it became very embarrassing. They were saying they were back of him regardless what had 

happened. It is one way that the small bureaucrat has of expressing himself. 

Today Bob Bazell (Azell?) dropped by and said that he had gotten an appointment to Hong 

Kong. He had immediately pressed for an appointment. He too had been off on leave. When he 

came back, he said nothing was happening at the Seminar. Nothing much was being done to prepare 

for the next session, and the next session begins next Monday! He said he was glad to be out of it. 

He said he had until June before he went and offered his services to Kenneth if he could use him and 

arrange to bring him over. He added that Jules Bernard (SP?), who had originally intended to stay on 

with Kenneth, had also resigned as soon as his twenty years is up, which is the next three or four 

months, and was going off to teach at Yale. He had had enough. Bazell explained that the whole 

staff in the Country Team Seminar was so stunned by what had happened, by the realization that 

having a successful operation didn't count, that their morale as a group and as individuals was 

shattered. Bazell was at the very beginning of his career, and he was already very cynical about the 

whole operation, he said. 

Around the Foreign Service Institute, people were very supportive. Ed Wright and Andy 

Coray (SP?) and others had all welcomed Kenneth back and assured him he was very lucky to get out 

of the Seminar with his skin intact. "And I guess I was." 

Kenneth had a curious thought today, which was that the Attorney General and Maxwell 

Taylor have invited themselves in to speak to the fifth session of the Interdepartmental Seminar on 

the afternoon of the opening day, at 3:00. The more Kenneth thinks about it and talks to others, the 

more he is convinced that it was the military who engineered Kenneth's ouster through the Attorney 

General, and now they're getting the Attorney General in to give a vote of confidence to the course 

and to buck up the operation and try to give it a new zest. At any rate, who speaks the second day? 

Kenneth Landon He is scheduled to speak the second day. "Although I don't have their protocol, I 

bet I'll be more fun and more interesting, and I can hardly wait to sense what kind of atmosphere 

there'll be in that auditorium when I stand up to speak the day after the Attorney General and General 

Maxwell Taylor. The very fact that people of that stature are being brought in is, I think, a 

testimonial to what is at stake here." 

616

THE LANDON CHRONICLES SYNOPSIS - Wheaton College

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