Letters to the Editor

10 Trips of a Lifetime

The winter issue was really terrific! When it came I read it straight through from front to back. Makes you wish you were about 40 years younger. Glad I got to travel as much as I did—in the U.S. and abroad— when I did, starting at age five. Also, the history of the Rock—amazing! Who of us does not have a few fond memories of a certain someone saying, “I’ll meet you at the rock?”

MARY WILCOX HUGHES ‘ 41
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OHIO

Today I read the Wooster magazine, Winter 2006 about trips of a lifetime. I wish it could be a regular feature (maybe one trip in each issue?) for people like me who traveled to some of these places in the past 26 years and now stay home. I am particularly charmed when I read of a man who goes to France at 83 and a woman who runs on the Great Wall at 71. Each one of these interesting accounts of extraordinary people going to amazing destinations and writing in an articulate and colorful way is delightful. I was also fascinated to read of the travels of the Rock of 1874. A Wooster geology professor began my travels when Peg DeChant ’51 invited me to go with her on a raft ride through the Grand Canyon in 1980!

FLORENCE WILLIAMS
BATAVIA, NEW YORK

I enjoyed the article about Hayden Schilling. While his teaching excellence was the obvious focus of the article, I most remembered him for his role as Dean of Admissions. The Admissions Office initiated an early admission program in 1983 that allowed me to attend Wooster after my junior year in high school. Because my father was changing jobs and moving from Maryland to Ohio, early admission let me avoid going to a new high school for my senior year. I met my best friends at Wooster in 1983. And, during my freshman year, I worked for Dr. Schilling as a student assistant in the Admissions Office. It was a great place to work.

DANIEL ROZMIAREK ’87
BELAIR, MARYLAND

I’ve just taken a few minutes to check the winter issue, and as always it is lively and interesting. I loved the 10 trips of a lifetime, especially the one of the gal and her dog, Wishbone. I know what she means by wondering where “home” is and I am in complete agreement with her comment about choosing to be happy, wherever one finds herself. I loved the colorful, interesting layout of the 10 trips and the content and appearance of the magazine in general.

I also liked the fragment of Carroll’s prayer, which in other words but with the same desire I’ve prayed myself—that my children and their children might open their eyes, their hearts, and their minds to recognize even just a glimmer of God in the ample, overflowing gifts He gives us in this time and in the places where they find themselves.

NONA TAYLOR ’5 3
STATESBORO, GEORGI A

Thumbs down

Thank you for the outstanding Winter 2006 issue. Especially outstanding was “On the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” I was particularly moved by the author’s encomium to “liberator” Ho. Perhaps we can have hope that in future issues you will turn your talents to nuanced appreciations of other mass murderers? The author probably really admires Mao, Lenin and Hitler.

LYNN SCOTT HAMILTON ’73
NORTH CANTON , OHIO

Having grown up to the age of 14 in northwest Persia and having returned to Iran to teach at Damavand College in Tehran from 1971–79, I was eager to read your article, “Rare Water, Thunder and Figs,” in the Winter 2006 Wooster.

I’m sorry to say that I was disappointed by the unreal picture of Iran today. To mention only the beauty of its landscape, its ancient architecture, and one poet, surely misleads anyone concerned with the present status of Iran.

The reality presents a far gloomier view. Tehran is clogged with traffic and polluted with smog. How could the writer not admire Shiraz’s maidan with its great mosque’s turquoise dome? How could she neglect Iran’s other great poets both old and new? How fail any mention of the exquisite Persian garden?

More serious, however, is her egregious omission of any commentary on the anti-democratic Islamic fanaticism of the regime’s all-powerful mullahs, the jailing or worse of dissident editors, the president’s insistence on pursuing atomic capability, and the reimposition of veiling on women.

MARGARET M. ELLIS ’41
DALY CITY, CALIFORNIA