The
Institute Re ort
PUBLISHED BY THE PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE OF THE VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE
VOLUME II
Gov. Darden to Receive High Award
Virginia Military Institute will observe the 135th anniversary of its founding on Monday, Nov. 11, with the presentation of the Institute's highest award, the New Market Medal, and a convocation and the presentation of two Distinguished Service Awards.
Former Virginia Governor Colgate W. Darden, Jr., will receive the New Market Medal at a 10 a.m. review parade by the Corps of Cadets.
Governor Darden will deliver the principal address to cadets, faculty, staff, and guests in Jackson Memorial Hall at an 11 a.m. Founders Day Convocation.
Following his address, the VMI Foundation's Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Lieut. Gen. Sumter deLeon Lowry, ofthe class of 1914, recently named "Man of the Year" for 1974 in the city of Tampa, Fla., and to Brig. Gen. Edwin Cox, of the class of 1920, retired vice-president of the Virginia-Carolina Chemical Corporation.
Governor Darden, a graduate of the University of Virginia who also holds M.A. and L.L.B. degrees from Columbia University, served in France during World War I where he joined the aviation branch of the Navy and was transferred to the Marine Corps as a fighter pilot.
A Democrat, he entered politics after the war by serving in the late Harry F. Byrd, Sr.'s gubernatorial campaign in 1925 and later served two' terms in Virginia's House of Delegates and was elected four times to the U. S. House of Representatives. Hewas elected Governor in 1941 and served Virginia throughout the war years, leaving office in 1946.
He was twice appointed a member of the board of visitors of the U. S. Naval Academy, was the sixteenth chancellor of the College of William and Mary, and was president of the University of Virginia from 1947 to 1959.
NOVEMBER 8, 1974
Gov. Colgate W. Darden, Jr. Virginian-Pilot Photo
Since his retirement, he has lived in Norfolk and has served on several important State commissions.
Past recipients of the New l\i::>rket Medal are Lieut. Gen. Charles EVh:ls Kilbourne, 1962; General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, 1964 (posthumously) ; United States Senator Harry Flood Byrd, 1965; and Gen. Lemuel Cornick Shepherd, Jr., 1971.
The New Market Medal was conceived as a tribute to the qualities of duty and devotion displayed by the VMI Corps of Cadets in their historic and victorious charge during the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864. It was designed by Pierre Daura, noted artist and sculptor who makes his home in Rockbridge Baths, Va. H shows on one side a bas-relief based on the heroic Clinedinst painting of the cadet charge at New Market; the reverse side carries the words Duty, Honor, Devotion, Leadership.
The Distinguished Service Award was established by the VMI Foundation, Inc., in 1968. The award, which consists of a bullion-embroidered plaque and a citation, recognizes exceptional achievement in one's career and service to the Institute through the Foundation. The award is not given to active trustees or officers of the Foundation.
NUMBER 4
Faculty Notes
Economics Study
Maj. James B. McFadyen, assistant professor of economics, will be reading a paper entitled "Post-War Southern Manufacturing: Concentrations and Factor Intensities" at the Southern Economic Association Meeting to be held in Atlanta, Ga., Nov. 14-16.
Water Resources
Researchers at VPI and VMI are joining forces under the sponsorship of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center and the U. S. Office of Water Research and Technology to develop a computer-based hydrologic model of the South River Basin. If successful, it will allow prediction of the effect of specific land use changes on the watershed's flooding problems. The VMI investigators are Col. John W. Knapp, professor of civil engineering, and Col. Donald K. Jamison, professor and head of the department 'of civil engineering.
Future of History
As co-editor of a column on "Innovation in Undergraduate History" in the American Historical Association Newsletter, Col. Henry S. Bausum, professor of history, is investigating history's changing status in academe.
Physics Textbooks
Col. D. Rae Carpenter, Jr., professor of physics, was recently appointed to a sixyear term on the evaluation committee for physics textbooks in secondary schools for the Virginia State Department of Education. He attended hearings in Richmond on Oct. 23-24 for publishers' representatives.
Computer Interfacing
Col. Frank A. Settle, professor of chemistry, presented a paper Oct. 26 at the 26th Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Authored by Col. Settle and Col. Philip B. Peters, professor of physics, the paper was entitled "A Course in Computer Interfacing for Undergraduate Science and Engineering Majors."
(continued on page 2, column 3) Page 2, The~ Institute Report, November 8, 1974
Famine,' Prospect for Tomorrow?
rescue operation of mankind (The Hungry The following is one in a series of articles Planet, 1965),
on famine which will introduce the 1975 VMI Symposium. This statement, written
The reality itself, of course, is not a new by Mr. Thomas Y. Greet. assistant one. Editorially, The New York Times professor of English, investigates the (Apr. 7, 1974) emphasized that "abuncomplexity
of the world food problem. dance is a modern idea. For millennia,
Robert Heilbroner, commenting in The New York Review (Jan. 24, 1974) on "The Human Prospect," concludes that "iL.by the question: 'Is there hope for man?' we mean to ask whether it is possible to meet the challenges of the future without the payment of a fearful price, the answer must be: There is no such hope." One need not share this conviction nor the perhaps even starker pessimism of the Club of Rome to recognize that the viability of his species may in the relatively immediate future crucially depend on man's ability to solve unprecedented problems of overpopulation; depletion of resources; and, particularly, of hunger.
In the lace, however, of this apparent truism a remarkable complacency seems to lull most citizens and even policymakers, not only in the developed but the underdeveloped nations. F. Le Gros Clark observes, "the truth is that our recent mastery of global statistics has tended to go to our heads; and until we become acclimatized to living in a statistically comprehensible world, we shall continue to suffer from a kind of nervous strain. We can never again be ignorant. A mass of global statistics, slowly collected and refined over the last half-century, has suddenly transformed our outlook upon the world." He then adds, significantly, "the revolutionary nature of the change has not as yet been realized."
If this were true when he wrote in 1951, it is now barely less so. The current worldwide inflation, the shortage of energy, the spreading famines in sub-Saharan Africa, the awareness that world food reserves are now down to a thirty-days' supply may bring all of us to an imminent and painful awareness. Whatever the event, if we are to survive, "we can never be ignorant."
George A. Borgstrom, writing fifteen years later, reiterates Clark's warning that certain modes of statistical wisdom may counsel man to folly:
Man threatens to deprive himself of a future by refusing to recognize his l)redicament. Insanely we try to talk ourselves out of reality. We refuse to acknowledge the rising human tidal wave. We profess to believe that our civilization will be the first in history to attain immortality. We are convinced we know the secret or perpetuating our way of life with the aid of science and technology ... We do not seem towant to face facts or to make a courageous effort to regain control or our destiny by overcoming our demographic illiteracy. What we must do is start the
men had to live with the hard, grinding knowledge that resources of land, water, and minerals are scarce and that poverty is the lot of most." It might have been added that if abundance is a new idea, the thing itself remains as in the past an attainment of the few, an illusive aspiration of the many. Still, in the past, neither the replete nor the starving were confronted with the multiple ironies implicit in the fact that 450 million of the world's present population consume as many calories as 1,500 million at the lower end of the subsistence scale. Until this century there were not so many, nor was the discrepancy so great.
One irony has been the tacit, perhaps hubristic, assumption on the part of the developed nations that hunger, insofar as it is not merely sporadic, will submit readily to presently or imminently available solutions. The scope of the problem, however, negates such optimism. In 1967 the President's Science Advisory Board on World Food Supply found that malnutrition affected approimately 60 per cent of the populations in the underdeveloped nations, that 20 percent of those suffered from undernourishment, slow starvation. And Borgstrom notes that in 1965 of one billion children 650 million were undernourished. These data, of course, basically reflect a norm, only aggravated by such famines as those now occurring, perhaps because of a long-term shift in global weather patterns, in India and in seventeen of the thirty-nine countries south of the Sahara; of these, five Mali, Kiger, Chad, Mauritania, and Ethiopia -are suffering full-scale national disasters as a result of drought.
A bnard of Mexican nutritionists might well have been describing these peoples, most of the human race, when they observed of their own compatriots in 1961:
Anyone who looks superficially at these malnourished people could possibly get the idea that their laziness. indolence.
filth. and fatalism are characteristic features; but we pose the question: Could any human individual show any noticeable reaction when the body tissues are worn out. when the body is permanently tired and the stomach is empty or in the best of cases is filled with an amorphous mass of corn and beans, inadequate or deficient fo;' the performance of a normal day's work? (Borgstrom).
But, again ironically, a failure of humaneness would have left the living not very materially better off. The birth rate stands at 3.7 each second, 334,000 each day,
2.2 million each week. As Heilbroner
The final block of History 105 lectures on "Revolution as a Problem in Uistory" is now being presented.
Lectures are presented at 1 p.m. in the biology lecture room and are open to the public.
Faculty Notes
(continued from page one)
National Security
Capt. Donald L. Cummi~gs, assistant
PMS, Capt. William J. Flavin, assistant
PMS. Maj. Patrick M. Mayerchak,
assistant professor of history and political
science, and Capt. Robin P. Ritchie,
assistant PMS, recently attended a
National Security Seminar at the
University of Richmond. Topics included
"Is Military Power Obsolete?" and "The
Military Balance."
Modern Languages
Dr. Alfred G. Fralin. Jr.. assistant
professor of modern languages, Mr.
Ronald A. Grennes. assistant professor of
modern languages. and Maj. Klaus P.
Phillips, assistaut professor of modern
languages, attended the 24th Mountain
Interstate Foreign Language Conference
at Clemson University in Clemson, S. C.,
Oct. 10-12.
Dr. Fralin presented a critical study
entitled "Emma Bovary: Javotte
Vollichon du dix-neuvieme sieele" which
will be published by the University of Iowa
Press.
Mr. Grennes presented a paper entitled
"Domingo F. Sarmiento and the
Evolutionists," a paper which will be
pul)lished in a longer version in Buenos
Aires in Spanish.
Maj. Phillips read a paper entitled "Rilke's 'Weisse Furstin': Ein Vergleich beider Fassungen." He has been invited to submit the paper to the University of Kansas for publication in a special Rilke Centennial Studies volume. During the past six years, Maj. Phillips has translated and edited all of Rilke's dramatic works in collaboration with Professor John R. Locke, department of comparative literature, Universitv of Arkansas. The edition is now ready-for publication.
pOints out, even if the underdeveloped nations achieve <t zero growth by 2000, their populations will still have increased by two and one-half times, if by 2050, by four and one-half times. But this prediction, unpalatable as it is, may be nonetheless euphoric; more realistic, perhaps, is Walter A. Pawley's estimate of a total population in 2074 of 35.9 billion. This burgeoning of the race from its present seed (3.7 billion) will make demands for sustenance almost inconceivable.
(to be continued)
/
Page 3, The Institute Report, November 8, 1974
Faces in the News
PARENTS VISIT VMI. The 18th annual Parents Weekend (Oct. 25-27) attracted a record number of participants. Approximately 1,800 parents and other family members of VMI cadets visited the Institute where they attended various academic programs and witnessed a VMI football victory over William and Mary (31-20). Above, Wade C. Ridley of Tyler, Texas. chairman of the VMI Parents Council, reviews a parade with Maj. Gen. Richard L. I superintendent.
Lt. Fonest R. Whittaker. USN, assistant professor of naval science, the first Navy lieutenant (jg.) at VMI. was recently promoted to Navy lieutenant.
Capt. Steven J. Czonstka, assistant professor of aerospace studies. has successfully completed the Air Command and Staff College Correspondence Program.
MERITORIOUS SERVICE. Col. George
H. Ripley, USMC, professor of naval science, was I'ecently presented the Meritorious Service Medal for outstanding service while assigned as action officer and branch chief (Sept. 1972 to May 1974), Plans and Policy Branch of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The medal was presented by Maj. Gen. Richard L. Irby, superintendent.
VIETNAM AWARD. Major John D. Sullivan, Jr., USAF, assistant professor of aeI'Ospace studies, was recently awarded the Staff Medal (second class), Vietnamese National Armed Forces, for meritorious service as American secretary of the Vietnamese-CambodianAmerican Tripartite Deputies OrganiZation during the period April 1973 to May 1974. The medal was presented by Col. Joseph N. Laccetti, professor of military science.
FOREIGN VISITORS. Lt. Hossein Alzal (left) and Lt. Taghi Abghari (center). officers in the Imperial Iranian Navy, visited VMI recently to discuss the possibility of placing approximately 25 Iranian naval cadets in next year's Rat Class. Greeting the visitors is Col. Arthur M. Lipscomb, Jr., director of admissions.
I Page 4, The Institute Report, November 8. 1974
VMI Calendar ofEvents NOVEMBER II -23,1974
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11,1974: 10 a.m. Founders Day awards review and presentation of the New Market Medal to The Honorable Colgate W. Darden, Jr., parade ground. II a.m. Founders Day convocation, Jackson Memorial Hall. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1974: 8 p.m. German film series, "The Beaver Fur," 1962 film based on Gerhart Hauptmann.s naturalistic comedy, sponsored by Modern Languages Department, Lejeune. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14,1974: I p.m. History 105 lecture, "Crisis of the Old Order: European Upheaval in the Late Eighteenth Century," Maj. Thomas W. Davis, biology lecture room. American Chemical Society dinner, Crozet Hall. 6:30 p.m. 8 p.m. American Chemical Society "Pyzek-Spun Bonded Olefin," by Garland (Fritz) Heller of the DuPont Company, Richmond, chemistry lecture room. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15,1914: I p.m. Naval ROTC commissioning ceremony, regimental review with formal presentation of Naval ROTC colors, parade ground. 8 p.m. English Society film, "The Cat People," Lejeune Hall. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1974: 8:30 a.m. Meeting, board of directors, VMI Research Laboratories, Smith Hall. II :30 a.m. Buffet luncheon for alumni, tickets available at the door, Moody HaiL I :30 p.m. Varsity football, HOME, VMI vs. Colgate, with halftime introductions of new members of VMI Sports Hall of Fame, Alumni Memorial Field. 6 p.m. 9 p.m. Third annual VMI Sports Hall of Fame dinner and induction of new members, Cocke HaiL Alumni dance, informal, Moody Hall. Athletic teams away: rugby, VMI at Roanoke College; soccer at Conference meet. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1974: 8 p.m. Lecture, "Eugene O'Neill and the Modern European Drama," by Dr. Horst Frenz, Mary Moody Northen Visiting Professor of Modern Languages, chemistry lecture room. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21,1974: I p.m. History 105 lecture, "Marx's Theory of Revolution," Maj. Donald E. Thomas, Jr., biology lecture room. 8 p.m. Marshall Library lecture series, "Oral History Workshop: Methods and Procedures," by Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall biographer, Marshall Library. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22,1974: I p.m. Presentation of rings to Class of 1976, Jackson Memorial Hall. 9: 15 p.m. Ring Figure, formal, music by the "Royal Kings," Cocke Hall. Doors to Cocke Hall will be closed at 9: 15 p.m. and remain closed until completion of the figure. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23,1974: I :30 p.m. Varsity football, HOME, VMI vs. East Carolina University, Alumni Memorial Field. Class of 1976 dinner dance at Hotel Roanoke, Roanoke.
The Institute Report is published by the Public Information Office of the V~rginia Military Institute. Issues appear bi-weekly September through April, except during Thanksgiving. Christmas, and Spring Furlough. Official departmental distribution is made by messenger mail. Inquiries, suggestion,s and news items should be directed to The Institute Report, Public Information Office, VMI, Lexington, Virginia, 24450. telephone 463-6207. EDITOR-Maj. Edwin L. Dooley, Jr.
The Institute Report is a bi-weekly newsletter designed primarily to keep faculty and staff up-ta-date on the achievements of their colleagues, changes and progress at the Institute, and other such news (largely interneD about the Institute's people, plans, and policies.
