Please send letters intended for publication to Letters to the Editor, Macalester Today, College Relations, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-1899. Or by e-mail: mactoday@macalester.edu. We reserve the right to edit letters for conciseness and clarity.

O.T. Walter

I read with great interest the article in the Spring issue about the new portrait of Dr. O.T. Walter in the college's Smail Gallery.

As for many other Macalester students, Dr. Walter was a major figure in both my father's and my career decisions. My father (Dr. George H. Olds '26) was among the first students at Macalester to be taught by Dr. Walter. Dad had planned to major in chemistry, but because of Dr. Walter's influence, he became a biology teacher and later a family physician.

When I entered Macalester as a biology major, Dad urged me to take a course from Dr. Walter. Thus I was among the last of those fortunate enough to take Dr. Walter's course in genetics. Dr. Walter taught not only "classical" genetics, including family histories and inheritance of physical characteristics, but also the beginnings of molecular genetics, with a clear presentation of the DNA code. It was because of this course (and Dr. James Smail's later mentoring) that I concentrated on genetics and developmental biology as a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis. After post-doctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School, I continued the research I had chosen as a graduate student, on the expression of t haplotypes in the mouse. This linked group of genes, inherited in an apparently non-Mendelian mode, affects both early reproduction and development. I was fortunate to be funded by the National Institutes of Health for 26 years for this study, primarily because of its relevance to infertility in men.

Now retired, I enjoy working as a naturalist in a nearby state park, observing and interpreting to the campers the many facets of gene action in the wild. Dr. Walter's influence first sparked my life-long interest in genetics.

Trish Olds-Clarke '65
North East, Md.

Ancient Greeks and Mac

I am wondering if the Macalester faculty includes any moderate or conservative professors. When I was at Mac the professors in business or economics were moderate or to the conservative side and provided a balance to left-wing professors such as Dr. Mitau. If Mac is truly without any form of a conservative perspective, I suggest it can no longer claim that it provides a liberal education and thereby has become a left-wing incubation laboratory for close-minded people.

For the past three years I have been researching the ancient Greeks. If my interpretation is correct, I suggest that the great classical philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates and Xenophon could not teach at Macalester College under these current conditions. Indeed, Plato developed his philosophy in hopes of finding an education based on virtue that could save Greeks from themselves and the polarization that had taken place within Greek society. Polarization seems to be an indication that a society is in decline. In Athens democracy had turned into mobocracy, which meant that society had lost its ability to examine all sides of an issue and was being led by demagogues. Does this sound like Macalester?

The situation grew so desperate that Isocrates called on the Greeks to accept Philip II as their savior, as they no longer could overcome their class differences and hatreds. The Greeks had become helpless in the face of outside danger and were destroyed, which meant the end of their independent city-states. While the attainments of Greek society continued under the monarchs that succeeded Alexander, polarization marked the end of creative political thinking. It seems to me that, in general, higher education is experiencing the beginning of such a polarization as it no longer tolerates varied intellectual perspectives. I hope that I am wrong.

Tom Dynneson '61, Ph.D.
Odessa, Texas

Editors' note: President Rosenberg writes about understanding the "liberal" in the liberal arts in his column in this issue. more>>

Jack Bachman, 1928-2005

I enrolled at Macalester in 1972 and wanted to play tennis. I was already an accomplished player and the administration said I could play with the men's team so that my competition would be at a more challenging level.

Jack Bachman, the men's coach, didn't know anything about it until I walked on the court and said, "I'm here to play on your team, Coach Bachman." Title IX had just been enacted and my situation was odd for a coach to deal with. But he was so kind and such a gentleman, he never questioned it or made me feel out of place. He just said, "Okay!"

Coach Bachman experienced a lot of inconveniences because of me, but he never acted put out or complained. He was always positive. He taught me practical lessons, too. Driving back from one of our trips, all the players were hungry, so Coach Bachman pulled into a restaurant. He looked at the parking lot and said, "There aren't many cars here. You can always tell a good restaurant by the number of cars." But we were hungry and we made him take us there anyway. He was right, it was a terrible place. I still apply that restaurant lesson today.

Now I'm coaching tennis at an inner-city school in Savannah, Ga., and I think about Coach Bachman a lot. He always told us the point of playing tennis was to have fun. He said that we should have a good time learning the game and enjoy life and what we're doing. He was really a kind man and a true gentleman.

Molly Hannas '75
Savannah, Ga.

The following was delivered at a campus tribute to Professor Don Celender, who died March 2.

Don Celender, 1931-2005

Professor Celender was one of the most distinctive professors I ever came across. As his student and his preceptor, I had the opportunity to learn a lot from him in both those roles. When I first met him, I was immediately impressed with his accomplishments and enjoyed his stories, especially the ones about the letters he wrote to famous people and companies asking them to do silly things. Yet he pointed out that when he wrote a number of Nobel Prize winners, they all responded within a week. He often wondered if they were just sitting around waiting to respond to letters like the ones he sent and had a lot of free time on their hands.

But the way I saw it, it was the way he made them feel--important! Regardless of who you were, Professor Celender would treat you as if you were very important, and he did so very sincerely. He always got the best out of his students and he knew just how to do it. He never failed to compliment students on their great or even small achievements.

When students wrote a paper for his class, he would always find the positive things in the paper and communicate those to them. As a student, this made me feel much more confident while writing future papers and I was obliged to live up to the expectations that he commanded in such a polite way. To Professor Celender, judging students according to their ability was not as important as helping them perform to their best potential. And as a student I was much more comfortable in his classroom knowing that it's not about how well I am doing, but it's about how well I can do.

Vivek Sablani '06