CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS Daisy Farrand in the mid-1930s and, left, the rock garden she designed. The West Highland Terrier was her The Hon. Tim my Chichester. Below, the same area below the White House, today, rebuilt as the Ruth Uris Garden.
plains that "many are just not offered in the trade any<strong>more</strong>, while others are weaker and less disease-resistant than current cultivars." Also, no funds have been allocated to send to England for Daisy's delphinium <strong>see</strong>ds, so a native variety will have to suffice. Irene Lekstutis '81, another graduate student in horticulture, is supplying a good number of the plants. Having completed her research on the taxonomy of herbaceous perennials, Irene is donating appropriate plants from her test gardens to the restoration project. She will also help Susan design a new planting scheme for the far back borders, because the colors in Daisy's original plan would clash with the Big Red Barn today. Susan and Irene will be substituting warmer colors for the pastel shades of sixty years ago, as well as introducing some currently popular plants that Daisy would not have used. "The far back borders will be a compromise," Irene explains. "We will update them for the current trends in plant materials." However, Susan points out that "we will still try to use some of the same criteria Daisy used in designing the beds." Once the gardens are planted this spring, Irene predicts "it will be three years before we'll really <strong>see</strong> the whole effect, and the plants become established." She also believes that only continued maintenance will prevent the restored beds from meeting the same fate as their predecessors. "A perennial border is an artist's garden, and takes keeping after, as opposed to one initial planting and then that's it.' " Susan agrees, and is developing a proposal for the future maintenance of the gardens. Possible solutions include turning the beds over to the horticulture department as a classroom project, and hiring a student as summer curator. However, Professor Mower says that to be most effective, "Maintenance will have to be within the framework of the regular help," which includes the Building and Grounds crew. Though lost for many years, Daisy Farrand's gardens will once again grace the lawns behind the President's Mansion. But the flowers are <strong>more</strong> than an addition to the landscape; they represent a small artifact of <strong>Cornell</strong> history. Much as the statue of Ezra <strong>Cornell</strong> on the main quadrangle immortalizes the founder of the university, so the A.D. White House gardens will preserve the memory of Daisy Farrand. History, Si! Walter LaFeber produces a book on Central America that affirms why we study the past By Jeremy Schlosberg A visitor leaving the office of Professor Walter LaFeber will notice on the wall to the right of the door a quotation that has been framed, hung, and placed there, no doubt, so it will be <strong>see</strong>n on the way out. It reads: "Those who do not know history are bound to repeat its mistakes. Those who do know history are bound to repeat its mistakes anyway." Risking the sort of generalization that all good historians scramble to avoid, one might find epitomized in this aphorism the sense and sensibility of the man whose walls it decorates. On the one hand an imposing figure—LaFeber is an acclaimed foreign policy scholar, lecturer, and author; he is also quite tall— this unassuming professor of history is, on the other hand, a man who repeatedly undervalues his own importance. This has been even harder to do of late, since LaFeber's conspicuous entry into the increasingly heated debate over United States policy in Central America with the publication last year of his book Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. In the book, LaFeber denounces the dominant, militaristic role of the US in Central America—not only the one the country is currently taking, but the role it has taken throughout the 20th century. Yet even as he has become a pursued speaker and commentator, Walter La- Feber himself demurs at the role many are ready to assign him. "People think I know the historical background, so they think they can get that out of me fast Jeremy Schlosberg © 1984 and cheap," says LaFeber, with a small grin that often accompanies his quiet humor. When it is suggested that he is somewhat of an expert on the subject, he responds quickly, "I'm not." After a pause, he elaborates. "Dale Corson [the former president] defined an expert as anyone with a briefcase sixty or <strong>more</strong> miles from home." LaFeber stops to laugh. "If that's the definition, I qualify. But there are people around <strong>Cornell</strong> who know a hell of a lot <strong>more</strong> about Central America than I do. The only reason I think people call me up is because I just happened to publish a book." The person who lured this mild-mannered historian into the center of such a volatile debate was C. Michael Curtis '56, a senior editor at The Atlantic. Long an admirer of LaFeber's work, Curtis enjoyed a 1978 treatise of La- Feber's on the Panama Canal enough to review it positively in The Atlantic. When Central America began making the headlines in 1980, Curtis called and asked if he would do an article on the region for the magazine. "I said sure," recalls LaFeber. "I said I'd get it to him in a couple of months." He pauses. "It took me about eighteen months, I think, to figure out what was going on, and when I finally was ready to write the article for Mike, I'd written something like 500 or 600 manuscript pages." It was, he says, the only way he found to organize everything he was learning. "I really didn't know the area very well at all, even though I had done the book on Panama." Most of the other nine books he has written (or, in one case, cowritten) have dealt with American expansionism, Russian-American relations, or both. Central America presented him with "an incredibly complicated story," he says. "There was an awful lot to look at. You're dealing with five different countries, not one, and they're all different, as I discovered." What he finally wrote for The Atlantic turned out to be the key part of his argument in the book, which itself took shape after 150 pages were cut from his original work. Now that he does know a thing or two
- Page 1 and 2: iPBηJi ΛJ Cornell alumni news May
- Page 3 and 4: CORNELL GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEME
- Page 5 and 6: administrative parts—an institute
- Page 7 and 8: OH* Is Democracy Safe? The View fro
- Page 9 and 10: it from increased fees charged to f
- Page 11 and 12: the last six years, is the new dire
- Page 13 and 14: trand Heinhold). An explanation of
- Page 15 and 16: the Strunk-White book, always showi
- Page 17 and 18: with a number of alumni surprised t
- Page 19 and 20: MAY 1984
- Page 21: \ 'x \ ^1 The gardens of Daisy Farr
- Page 25 and 26: Walter LaFeber, the Marie Underbill
- Page 27 and 28: The University- Industrial Complex
- Page 29 and 30: plied research, we're clearly talki
- Page 31 and 32: dertaking that improvement. The Nat
- Page 33: 1984 Vacation Study lor Cornellians
- Page 36 and 37: Paul H Harbach, (BArch), 90, died F
- Page 38 and 39: A note from Hortense Black Pratt (M
- Page 40 and 41: teaches nursery school, in Rocheste
- Page 42 and 43: etired from shuffling papers (civil
- Page 44 and 45: of evolution. Joan lives at 50 E 10
- Page 46 and 47: taken up with politics and the Diab
- Page 48 and 49: ther than 8th graders. The Murrays
- Page 50 and 51: project in Nepal. This assignment w
- Page 52 and 53: 60 Where Are They? With the 25th a
- Page 54 and 55: office buildings, nationally. Send
- Page 56 and 57: Dues, no news: Janice Ostroff Berns
- Page 58 and 59: irthday. Bruce works for Internatio
- Page 60 and 61: spouses, a good mixture of singles
- Page 62 and 63: '39—Richard H Read of W Falmouth,
- Page 64 and 65: state Medical School's Clinical Cam
- Page 66 and 67: Also Kiplinger to lead trustees; pr
- Page 68: CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS 626 Thurston Av
Change language