The checklist is as brilliant as it is simple. In a modern hospital, countless critical and complex procedures take place every day. In some cases, a single mistake could mean the difference between life and death. So how do you make sure all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted? Create a simple checklist and make sure people use it. To read more, click here.

Are You a Safe Patient? The Saturday Evening Post

At the time of the article — 1958 — the Joachim (pronounced Joe-ACK-im) children included twelve girls and five boys ranging in age from 18 months to a 24-year-old.

The logistics of raising a family this large were impressive. The annual milk budget was $1,300 a year for milk (over $7,000 in 2010 dollars.) Getting roughly 50 meals a day out of one not-too-modern kitchen was strategically daunting. “But we have all the gadgets we need,” Rose (Mom) told the Post, pointing to her brood. Dad added, “And when they’re through, they don’t clutter up the kitchen. They go outside to play.”

That Dad was Jack Joachim, Sr., who made ends meet by holding down two jobs, one as a supervisor at the local telephone company, the other at a retail hardware business, where he was a partner. He mastered plumbing, electrical work and photography.

“When he took up something, he went all the way,” Marylyn reports. “He learned developing with the photography and built a warehouse as a darkroom studio.” Since there was a military base nearby, Jack Sr. was often developing up to 500 rolls of film a day, making his hobby a paying one.

Jack Joachim is still around at age 93. “I have to go to the gym for an hour each day just to keep up with him,” his daughter, Marylyn jokes. He joined some of the kids on a trip to Italy when he was 89. He still drives and family members take him to dinner and a movie every Friday. Jack Sr. has a home health nurse, “but sometimes the nurse has a hard time catching him,” according to his daughter (well, one of the daughters).

The Joachims at breakfast. The menu: cereal (cold in summer, hot in winter), milk, juice, toast, jam.

He still enjoys photography and is “on his fifth digital camera.” The kids call him the Gadget Man. And yes, the 93-year-old patriarch can use a computer. He can get frustrated with it (like the rest of us) but the kids help him with e-mails.

At the time of the article, the parents had “coped with about every problem that mothers and fathers can face, including the tragic death of a son who was struck by an auto.” Since the article, there were two more births, so the child count was a total of 20.

The extended dinner table pictured in the article had to be custom-made, Bill notes. A carpenter came to the house and met the Joachim’s specifications of “three feet wide and ten feet long.” Sometimes, a young classmate of a Joachim child would slip in for a meal. “Nobody noticed an extra body or two,” Bill says.

A new baby in the house was nothing out of the ordinary, according to the article. One time, Mrs. Joachim went to the hospital for a day to treat a minor ailment. Upon her return, a bored child yawned, “Well, what did we have this time, mamma?”

Son Bill, now 60 years old (“I was number 12”), reports a Joachim family appearance on the TV show I’ve Got a Secret. The host was Harry Morgan that week, since Garry Moore was on vacation (“We think he saw us coming,” quips Bill). But the trip to New York, where they were “treated like royalty,” was a memorable treat to the wide-eyed Biloxi children.

Some of the complications of a large family still follow the siblings. “Someone will talk to me, and obviously they know me, but I don’t know them,” Bill says. When he asks them to jog his memory, “they’ll say, ‘I went to school with your sister.’” (Word of advice when talking to a Joachim: be specific.)

Today, the “kids” range in age from 49 to 75. And some have as many as five children. Three have retired from the same phone company that employed their father for 46 years (“When you find a good horse, keep riding it,” says Bill). One owns a successful cookie and chip distributorship, and one is an executive with a major insurance company. Most remain in the Biloxi area. “We’re all still speaking to each other,” Marylyn jokes. They get along great and happily share in helping dad out.

Jack’s many interests also include motorcycles. “He always went all out,” said daughter Marylyn, “Of course it had to be a Harley.”Photo courtesy of the Joachim family

Do they have family reunions? we asked. “More like mild riots,” Bill says. They get a church or other public gathering place, since this much of a crowd is too much for most homes. This usually happens Christmas Day, which happens to be Dad’s birthday. Although sadly, Rose Joachim passed away in her 80s, she is fondly remembered on the family website. Through the website, the children dote on Jack Sr. A photo of “Paw Paw” in a classic car bears the caption, “A true classic…the car’s nice too.” We agree and we’re happy to be able to say to Jack Joachim, along with the rest of you Superdads out there: Happy Father’s Day!

View the original 1958 article, “How to Bring Up a Multitude” [PDF].

Father’s Day Times Seventeen The Saturday Evening Post

It is an extremely hard medal to earn; more than half of the men who earned the Medal of Honor died in their achievement.

Since 1862, when it was first given to members of our armed forces for gallantry and bravery beyond the call of duty, it has been awarded 3,445 times.

During the First World War, the President, acting on behalf of Congress, awarded the Medal to 124 servicemen. During World War II, it was awarded 464 times. All of the World War I recipients are now gone, and only 32 remain of World War II’s recipients. One of these is Wilburn Kirby Ross. “Wib”, as he is affectionately known by family and friends, is now 86 years of age and still reflects the modesty known to most heroes as only doing their duty.

He was born on May 12, 1922, in McCreary County, Kentucky, about 30 miles north of Pall Mall, Tennessee, the home of Sgt. Alvin York. Just four years before Ross was born, York won the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine-gun nest in France. Commanding seven other men, York captured 32 machine guns, killed 28 German soldiers, and forced the surrender of 132 other Germans.

Ross would have grown up hearing about Sergeant York’s accomplishments again and again; it was an area with few opportunities for distinguishing yourself. Most people made their living cutting timber, coal mining, and subsistence farming. At best, life was hard and most people were poor. Opportunities for education and good jobs were almost non-existent. Faith, family, and freedom were, and are, important to these people whose background was forged by generations of hardy pioneers.

On October 30, 1944, another representative from this region achieved recognition. Wilburn Ross, serving as a private with the 350th Infantry, manned a machine gun to drive back six attacks by German troops. He held his position even after the riflemen supporting him ran out of ammunition. He continued firing even as enemy soldiers were lobbing grenades at him from just 4 yards away. He refused to withdraw when he ran out of ammunition. Instead, he held his position as the German prepared for another attack. The ammunition arrived at the last minute, enabling him to repulse the German assault. All tolled, Ross held his position under intense fire for 36 hours.

The heroes from Kentucky: MSG. Ross, with World War I veteran Alvin C. York, was 23 when this 1945 picture was taken. Sgt. York was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during World War I.

Asked about his heroism, “Wib” has said, “I had been in this so long, I knew what they (the Germans) were doing. When they would charge, I would mow them down.”

While serving on the Italian front, Ross was captured at the Anzio beachhead, but miraculously escaped. Dusk was coming and, for some reason, the enemy guard did not appear to be paying much attention to him, instead fixing their attention on his buddies and talking to them. Ross moved out of sight and commenced to walk away. It was night now, and those moving about him were not able to see that he was an American.

He eluded further capture and survived on his own for three days and four nights. He says, “I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t get thirsty. I was worried about getting out of there.” Traveling at night, he hid under leaves during the day. Once the Germans got so close to him, he said, “I could have reached out my hand and touched the man on his coat.”

Later, seeing American planes in the sky, he followed the direction of their flight and was happy to reunite with American forces, where he gratefully dug into a can of meat and beans.

When Ross returned to Strunk, Kentucky, he was greeted by a crowd of 3,000 citizens, Governor Simeon Willis, and a neighbor who could best appreciate Ross’s bravery and dedication: Sergeant Alvin C. York.

Americans should be grateful that uncommon valor has commonly appeared among the men and women in our armed forces. They have served their country beyond the ability of our small tributes to repay them. We must never forget those who have stood in harm’s way to defend liberty and to pay the continually rising price of freedom.

Private Wilburn Kirby Ross: An American Hero The Saturday Evening Post

The above was an anecdote from a 2004 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, written when Linkletter was a mere kid of 91. But the famous host wasn’t new to the Post by any means. The May 17, 1952, issue featured a story on Stalin’s First Lieutenant, Part 8 of a series on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and an article about the almost forty-year-old host of radio and TV shows People Are Funny and House Party, one Arthur Gordon Linkletter, a gentle humorist we lost this week at age 97.

A graduate of San Diego State College with an A-minus average and every intention of becoming an English teacher, Linkletter “has been known to dumbfound whole boothfuls of hard-boiled Hollywood Brown Derby lunchers … by bursting into fourteenth-century verse in Chaucerian English,” the 1952 article reported. The same article reminds us that this man “has made a fortune out of slapstick.”

The most popular, and most remembered, segment of House Party were his interviews of school kids. In a three-part Post series in 1957 entitled “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” he discussed how his interrogation methods evolved.

“In the weeks before the curtain goes up, Junior is indoctrinated, coaxed, threatened and rehearsed by his family. Once we’re on the air, I attack this defensive position by asking, ‘What did your mommy tell you not to say?’” The answers, Linkletter wrote, “are wonderful.” Such as: “My mother told me not to tell any of the family secrets, like the time she dyed her hair blond and it came out purple.” Another replied “My daddy told me … no matter where it itches, don’t scratch anywhere.”

Perhaps even more intriguing was a five-part series entitled “Confessions of a Happy Man” that began in the August 27, 1960, issue. It is surprisingly revealing, since it begins by discussing the parents who gave him up when he was a few weeks old. It was a painful subject, but Linkletter forged ahead “because my experience may be of some comfort to an adopted child …”

He was equally frank about being indicted by a Federal grand jury during World War II for “falsely claiming to be a United States citizen – I was actually a Canadian,” and about his slow-to-rise but undeniable temper. When a young director blew up at children who accidentally wandered onto his set, Linkletter let him have it on the air, calling him “an arrogant young pup who is throwing his weight around.”

With friends like Clark Gable and Groucho Marx, he could, perhaps, be forgiven for lapsing into show biz “jargon and shoptalk.” He once passed his son Jack’s room and paused to listen to his bedtime prayers. “Thank you, God. Amen. Listen in again tomorrow night, same time, same station, for another in this series.”

Art Linkletter is survived by his lovely wife of seventy-five years (!), Lois, of whom he writes in “My Zany Rise to the Top.”

Read “Art Linkletter Says the Darndest Things!” by Patrick Perry, March/April 2004 [PDF]
Read “My Zany Rise to the Top,” by Art Linkletter. September 17, 1960 [PDF]

Art Linkletter Writes for the Post The Saturday Evening Post

Over 600 miles northwest of New Zealand, Norfolk was a tiny, peaceful island before the Japanese eyed it in 1942. “Norfolk Islanders, for the most part,” the article recounts, “were still dreaming about their forbears who put old Captain Bligh off the Bounty and sailed off to new lands…” The descendants of Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian and other mutineers “brought the Bounty to Pitcairn Island. By 1853, Pitcairn had become crowded and the mutineers’ descendants petitioned Queen Victoria for a new home.” They were settled on Norfolk Island (which they got for a steal, as you will read in the article).

“Fletcher Christian’s a good friend of mine,” Sergeant Lynam stated in the article. “He doesn’t look like Clark Gable, by any means, because Fletch is only twelve. But he’s a long-distance descendant of the man who led the mutiny on the bounty.”

Fast forward to World War II. A new airstrip on the island and its traffic control station were vital for supply planes heading to the Solomon Islands. Sergeant Lynam was sent to oversee things, landing “a choice job, one of the Army’s best,” according to the article. “His friends aren’t going to believe him after the war,” the author states. “One lone American with a staff of four women on a South Pacific Island.”

It was unusual that a one-man army commanded a location. So much so, that a general stopping off at Norfolk “asked to see the commanding general of American troops, and was so surprised when he was confronted by the entire garrison in the person of Sergeant Lynam that he forgot what he wanted to say.”

The American “troops” on Norfolk “can’t complain because of the lack of sports facilities,” says the article. “Sergeant Lynam shoots a neat 50 on the islands nine-hole golf course. The swimming along the sand beach is tops. There are three or four tennis courts and unlimited horses to ride.” Pretty top-notch for a former penal colony. Sergeant Lynam was also well versed in the lore and legends of the island’s times of housing convicts.

From his origins in Indiana, he settled in South Haven, Michigan. The former “one-man army” is still married to “the love of my life” after 63 years. Life hasn’t always been “cushy” – he suffered from malaria three times after serving on Guadalcanal. In South Haven “I have had 2 heart attacks and a few bad falls, but all with full recovery and am healthy and happy and will be 89 years of age on May 26.” Happy birthday from your friends at the Post, Wib!

Norfolk “was a truly fascinating experience that I will always cherish,” wrote Mr. Lynam. “At the ripe old age of 89, I am still alive and well and still live with my memories of beautiful Norfolk Island and my pride at having been featured in the article in The Saturday Evening Post.” We share this article with pride in veterans like Sergeant Lynam and our current homesick troops who will understand that, scenic Island Paradise or not, the young Sergeant was quoted as saying, “I’d trade it all for an Indiana snowstorm.”

Read “The War’s Cushiest Billet” by Capt. Carlton Zucker [PDF].

The One-Man Army The Saturday Evening Post

Like most Americans born early in the century, he was born on a farm.

Like thousands of farm boys, he was fascinated with technology. He longed to leave the farm and pursue his interest in motorcycles, automobiles, and airplanes.

In the 1920s, he was a young pilot and entrepreneur, barnstorming and flying airmail to scrape up the money to buy his own airplane.

On May 20, 1927, he was the unknown, inexperienced flyer, a brash American challenger who proposed to fly the Atlantic — a feat that had already killed six experienced aviators.

In the 1930s, he was the brightest star in a celebrity culture. He was also the victim of this decades exceptional lawlessness.

When war arrived in the 1940s, he served in combat. And when peace returned, he continued his work in building up America’s air industry.

In 1953, he won the Pulitzer Price for his book, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” which was serialized in the Post as “33 Hours to Paris.” In this excerpt, he uses his characteristic, stream-of-consciousness style to describe the moment of his triumph.

“It begins as a scarcely perceptible glow… Paris is rising over the edge of the earth. It’s almost thirty-three hours from my take-off on Long Island. As minutes pass, myriad pin-points of light emerge, a patch of starlit earth under a starlit sky —the lamps of Paris — straight lines of lights, curving lines of lights, squares of lights. Avenues, parks and buildings take outline form; and there, far below, is a column of lights pointing upward —the Eiffel Tower. I circle once above it and turn northeastward toward Le Bourget.

“I’ll overshoot if I keep on — stick back — trim the stabilizer —close the throttle. I can hardly hear the engine idling. Is it too slow? It mustn’t stop now — the silence is like a vacuum —

“It’s better to come in fast, even if I roll into that black area. And it’s better to come in high — there may be poles or chimneys at the field’s edge — never depend on obstruction lights — especially when you don’t see any. It’s only a hundred yards to the hangars now. I’m too high —too fast.  Left rudder —side slip— careful — sod coming up to meet me — still too fast — tail too high —hold off —

“The wheels touch gently—off again —ease the stick forward —back on the ground —not a bad landing, but I can’t see anything ahead —jolting into blackness —slower now — The Spirit of St. Louis swings around and stops rolling, resting on the solidness of earth in the center of Le Bourget. I start to taxi back toward the floodlights and hangars—but the entire field ahead is covered with running figures!”

He was completely unprepared for the welcome awaiting him. He was also unprepared for the juggernaut of publicity. Post writer Donald E. Keyhoe interviewed him four years after his triumph and observed that newspapers and the celebrity addicts were still pursuing Lindbergh, besieging him with—

“One hundred letters a day—more than thirty-five thousand a year…  from all over the country, from foreign countries—sometimes the most out-of-the-way places in the world. Many are begging letters—requests couched in every style from an illiterate scrawl to phrases of educated men and women. They ask for anything from a million dollars to a five-dollar bill; though most of them do not get that low.  Then there are freak letters; though there has always been an almost complete absence of threats in the colonel’s mail.”

Reporters and gawkers had become particularly intrusive since Lindbergh’s son had been born.

“After the colonel’s son was born there was an insistent demand for photographs of the child. After some time the colonel took the desired pictures himself, had a number of prints made, and at an appointed hour met representatives of the conservative papers and press services, giving each one a set of the prints. The other journals were all but insane, for this was one of the great picture scoops of the year.

“A man called an editor with an offer. If the editor would just send a reporter out into the street with one of the precious photos in his pocket, the caller would pay him five thousand dollars.

“‘You mean you’ll hijack him?’ demanded the editor.

“Call it what you want. You’ll get your five thousand dollars.”

“‘Nothing doing,’ rapped the editor, and banged down the receiver of his phone.

“But these [excluded] papers did not stop at that. They trailed press-service messengers to trains, and worked clever schemes that gained for some of them the coveted pictures. But their disappointment at not being included with the other papers created enmity for Lindbergh that is still exceedingly active.”

Lindbergh had hoped to escape the rabid fans and photographers by moving far out in the New Jersey countryside. There, Keyhoe reports, for the first time since he had achieved international fame, Lindbergh could say, “We have been happier in the last few months than you can realize, perhaps. It has been so quiet and peaceful down here—even better than we dared hope.”

“In spite of the furor of publicity that has surrounded him, Lindbergh leads a normal and quiet life—so quiet that a visitor might forget for a while that there was a child in the house. When I first saw him he was in his play yard, an attractive, healthy child just then engaged in watching the antics of the Scotch-terrier puppy which frisked around the room.”

Keyhoe’s article is filled with observations that take on a sinister nature in the light of later events.

“‘Have you taken up your boy yet?’ I asked Lindbergh.

“‘No,’ he replied, ‘there wouldn’t be any point to it, except to say that he had flown. It would be safe enough, but he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it so soon.’

“‘I suppose you will be the one to teach him to fly,’ I remarked.

“‘Maybe he will want someone who’s more up-to-date at that time,’ said Lindbergh, laughing.

“But I thought there was a little light in his face that meant otherwise. And when Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., reaches for the throttle to take off on his first solo flight, I am sure it will be his renowned father who will give him that last bit of advice and that last encouraging pat on the shoulder before he spreads his wings.”

On May 12, 1932, the remains of his son, killed in a kidnapping plot, would be found in a muddy field close to the house.

Lindbergh’s challenges weren’t over. As the Second World War grew closer to the American shores, Lindbergh spoke out often, and perhaps injudiciously, about the need to avoid war and the possibility of negotiating with the Nazis. He had been a pacifist all his life, but he was still a patriot. However his comments were gleefully used by reactionaries, Roosevelt-haters, Nazi-supporters, and the Nazis themselves.

He put aside his pacifism when Japan and Germany declared war on the United States, but many Americans never forgot, or forgave, his pre-war stance.

On May 21, 1942, he flew the first of over 50 combat missions in the Pacific theater. The Post, in 1954, published an excerpt from a book Lindbergh hoped to write about his combat experiences. In this passage, he is still using the stream-of-consciousness style of before, but he’s a long way from peacetime flight across empty skies.

“Guns charged and ring sights glowing, our four Corsairs float like hawks over enemy held land… We are cruising at 8000 feet, on a marine patrol, to cover the morning’s strike, and make sure that Japanese Zeros don’t interfere with American bombing crew. Our planes are from VMF 223, based on a rolled-coral strip in the Green Island—200 miles east of New Guinea —four degrees south of the equator.

“Sixteen hundred rounds I carry, of .50-caliber ammunition, and I can spew them out at the rate of 5000 rounds a minute. Suddenly the grace of flight in gone. I see with war-conditioned eyes — these are wicked-looking planes we fly, manned by ruthless pilots, built to kill, trained to kill, hoping to kill, as we approach the heavily defended fortress of Rabaul.

“Seven thousand feet . . . 5000 feet . . . 4000 feet . . . I wonder how many guns are shooting at us . . . 3000 feet . . . 2000 feet . . . buildings and palms rush up at me . . . 1600 feet… I squeeze the trigger. Six guns clatter in my plane as tracers streak from wings to roof, and walk the building’s length. I level out twenty feet above the treetops at 400 miles an hour.

“[Flying over Duke of York island] I climb to locate my position . . . dive to evade enemy machine guns . . . center a building m my sight . . . squeeze the trigger . . . no . . . a steeple! . . . a church! . . . hold fire . . . ease back on the stick . . . pick out another target… dive . . . fire . . . ammunition almost gone . . . only one machine gun answers . . . Corsairs are rendezvousing out at sea. I join them.”

Lindbergh couldn’t shirk his duty any more than he could discard his life-long pacifism. He still embodied the American ideals of courage, strength, and the willingness to face death in the line of duty. But he also displayed the American spirit that never places complete trust in war, and never delights in killing.

” ‘I almost shot up a church today,’ I told a young marine captain after we landed. ‘I just recognized what it was in time.’

“‘Oh, you mean that little church on the Duke of York?’ He laughed. ‘We strafe it on every mission. The Nips used to use it for their troops.’

“I suppose our enemies say the same about churches they destroy.

“An engine coughs and roars through night. Some crew chief is readying his fighter for tomorrow’s strike. I get up from the grenade box and begin walking toward my tent. Where, in life and space and matter, is the place for war? How can one justify a church in a gun sight? How can one merge concepts of religion and of slaughter? Is strife an essential part of the universal plan or will man, evolving, find a path which leads to world-wide peace?”

Read “Lindbergh, Four Years Later,” by Donald E. Keyhoe. 1927 [PDF]

Read “Thoughts of a Combat Pilot,” by Charles Lindburgh. 1954 [PDF]

The Troubles of an American Ideal The Saturday Evening Post

The former American actress and late Princess of Monaco has been dead for almost 28 years — a long time for a celebrity to hold the media’s interest.

What has brought her back to America’s magazine covers is an exhibit of her royal wardrobe at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The couture will be interesting, but the real attraction is the style of Grace Kelly, which becomes increasingly rare in a Madonna and Lady Gaga world.

Kelly didn’t just dress well and expensively. She was also an innovator and a successful proponent of high style. Her tastes were exceptional but, more important, she had the face, figure, and carriage that made good clothing look extraordinary.

Behind her style and her looks, though, was Kelly’s iconic power: her ability to exude elegance, charm, and poise, like those other classic archetypes: Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn.

Grace Kelly (left and right). "She's a lady and she expects to be treated like a lady," says Jimmy Stewart.Photograph by Gene Lester

It was also her fantastically successful life. In less than ten years, she became a well-paid model, an Oscar-winning actress, and a princess. For girls of a romantic nature, this is the Trifecta of daydreams. Grace had accomplished it all, and took her amazed fans along for the ride.

In 1954, the Post editors were intrigued by the meteoric rise of this young (well, 25-year-old) model and actress who, two years after playing a minor role in a minor movie, was starring in romantic roles with Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, William Holden, and Jimmy Stewart.

The Post’s celebrity interviewer, Peter Martin, was aware of Kelly’s reputation before they met. She was, according to Hollywood sources, extremely cool, reserved, even haughty — a woman with “stainless steel guts.”

“When we sat down to talk, her face was expressionless. I saw only the surface of her eyes, not into them. She was poised, cool, collected, and wary. She said nothing — unless I asked her a question first. Once or twice, even when I put a direct query to her, she smiled and didn’t answer. However, little by little, she began to come out from behind her private Iron Curtain.”

She eventually relaxed just enough to joke about a story that had circulated in the tabloids.

“It had to do with her knitting a pair of sock for Clark Gable and hanging them on his tent, on Christmas morning, while they were on location for Mogambo. The way it had actually happened was different from the printed version — as such things have a way of being. She had tried to knit a pair of socks for Gable, but, like many another knitter with good intentions, she hadn’t finished them in time. ‘When I realized that I wasn’t going to make it, we were out in Tanganyika, in the middle of nowhere,” she told me, “and I couldn’t buy anything for him. So I stole a pair of his own socks. Each day I stole something else from him. On Christmas Eve I filled one of his sock with his own things and hung it up. It was a silly gesture, but he liked it. I am very fond of Clark.”

Gable received a telegraph asking him if there was any romance between himself and Kelly. Pete Martin followed up on the story that Gable told her, “This is the greatest complement I’ve ever had. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m not too good at the sly remark and the personal probe, but I tried anyhow. ‘I should think he would have been able to overcome that feeling,’ I said.

“Once more she smiled and didn’t say anything.”

Five years later, they met again, only this time Martin was interviewing Princess Grace of Monaco, wife of Prince Rainier III. It was a role for which she seemed ideally suited. Few actresses were better at portraying reserve and gracious nobility. She graciously answered his questions, at one point making an off-handed estimate about the size of her housekeeping staff.

“How many servants do you have in the palace?” I asked.

“‘I don’t know exactly,’ she replied. ‘There are so many different categories. We have servants attached directly to our household, and there are other servants in the place who take care of other people. But to answer your question, approximately two hundred fifty people work here in the palace. That includes carpenters, electricians and the like.’

“‘Does that include the [palace guards]?’

“‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There are sixty to sixty-five of them.’”

“‘I’m curious why anyone would expect you to drop all you have here, which is so lovely and so idyllic,”‘ I said, ‘and go back to the rigors of movie making. It must be wishful thinking.’

"I do miss acting in a way," says Princess Grace, " but it is no real loss, because being married and having children is far important to me." Here she is with Princess Caroline, aged three, and Prince Albert, twenty-two months.Photograph by Philippe Halsman

“She did it again. She looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said nothing. I found myself hurrying along to my next questions.”

No one could ever accuse Grace Kelly of changing after she became a member of the nobility.

She was a woman of large ambition, willing to work hard to get ahead. She believed she had earned her success in Hollywood. But even she must have thought that becoming a princess was almost laughably implausible. But then, as Mark Twain once noted, “Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

Post script:

The story of European nobles marrying rich American women is an old one. An item in the Post of 1874 noted:

“How the foreigners seem to admire our American girls, or is it their fortunes that prove so attractive?  They come here and make their selections and are only too gladly accepted as a general thing.

“Mrs. Gen. Griffin has become the Countess Esterhazy; little blue-eyed Camille Webb is now the Baroness Von Havre; Miss Williams, of Georgetown, became the bride of Count Bodisco, and another Georgetown girl has given her affection to an Italian count, who has left her here, expecting his tardy return, which looks too prolonged to promise any realization… I wonder if the Turkish and new French ministers will secure American wives and fortunes?”

Marriages into nobility often raise the question of whether Americans can hold foreign titles. Federal laws permit dual citizenship, and even allow American citizens to retain titles from foreign countries. However, such titles have no legal significance; royal privileges in a foreign land only get a nod of diplomatic recognition in this country.

The stern republicans that founded the United States were always suspicious of nobility. They warned of the aristocratic habit of grabbing up privileges and precedent, and they wanted no such inequalities in the new country.

Yet Americans yearn for its own aristocracy: people who are distinguished by their learning, virtue, and public spirit — equal but superior. These would be “natural aristocrats,” as Jefferson described them in a letter to John Adams.

“I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society… May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

When Grace Kelly returned to the United States, Americans were happy to call her “Princess” and “Your Grace” — partly for the novelty of speaking these words, but also because she had, in their eyes, earned the deference by her “virtue and talents.”

Read “The Luckiest Girl in Hollywood” [PDF].

Read “I Call on Princess Grace” [PDF].

[The Post sends out a special thanks for background information from fashion-and-culture writer P.J. Holmes.]

The Royal Role of Grace Kelly The Saturday Evening Post

In 1935, The Saturday Evening Post was offering a Shirley Temple doll to anyone who would send in a certain number of new subscriptions for the magazine. “I really wanted that doll,” Maxine writes. “I lived in Seattle and I can remember trudging around in the rain knocking on neighbors’ doors, trying to get new subscriptions. Finally, I succeeded and sent in the required new subscriptions. To my delight, I received the ‘authentic Shirley Temple doll’ as promised.”

Lester Bishop(rear, right) poses with his fellow Post Boys in 1910.
Courtesy of George Crotts.

We’re happy to share the photo of Maxine today, prettier than ever, with that same beloved Shirley Temple doll. Thank you for sharing your story, Maxine. We’ll put a bug in the Editor’s ear about this method of increasing circulation.

But we have an even older photo to share, sent in by George Crotts, Jr. of North Bend, Washington. This is a remarkably good photo for 1910 and shows Lester Bishop, a cousin to George’s mother, standing in the rear to your right. Young Lester, born in 1899, had an early and sad ending, we’re sorry to say. A mere eight years after this newsboy photo, Lester died from wounds received at the battle of Chateau-Thierry, France in World War I.

George included some photos of Les with family and friends before shipping out to France. Included was this one of Les and his parents in a fancy automobile. “Lester was honored,” George writes, “along with another young man as being the first two killed in action from Sutter-Yuba Counties in California” when VFW Post 948 in Marysville was named for them.

Les Bishop with his parents just before his deployment in World War I.
Courtesy of George Crotts.

Too many wars, too many young lives taken too soon. We’re proud to publish these fine photos in Lester Bishop’s memory.

If you have a Post Newsboy (or girl) story, the Post would love to hear from you. Send stories and photos to Diana at d.denny@satevepost.org.

Post Boys and Girls – 74 Years Later The Saturday Evening Post

As a boy, Houston fled his fatherless family to live among the Cherokee in Tennessee. By 1812, he returned to the white community to join Andrew Jackson’s struggles against the British and their American Indian allies. Building on the reputation he had earned in battle, Houston studied law after the war. He ran for office and was elected to congress in 1823, and the governorship of Tennessee in 1827.

But his rising fortunes suddenly plummeted in 1829 when his young wife left him. He abandoned his campaign for re-election and lit out for the territories. Taking up residence among the Cherokee in Arkansas, he opened a trading post and earned a reputation for hard drinking and a hot temper.

Yet he emerged once more, this time in Texas, where he was appointed a general in the Texan army. After his victory at Santa Jacinto, which led to Texan independence, Houston was elected president of the infant republic. He was instrumental in getting Texas admitted to the Union, and he was the young state’s senator from 1846 to 1859.

The Post ran several items on Sam Houston in his time. It followed the progress of his Texas army’s rebellion against Mexico and reported his role in the victory at San Jacinto.

The Post also published several items that tracked the progress of Houston’s private life.

On May 15, 1830, this item appeared:

“Gen. Sam Houston, late Governor of Tennessee, has arrived in Nashville, from the East, on his way to his new residence among the Cherokee Indians in Arkansas.”

And, on July 24, 1830:

“Governor Houston, late of Tennessee, and more recently a resident among the Cherokees of the Arkansas, is, it seems, about to try his fortune in the Indian trade. We understand that during his late visit to New York, he, in connection with a gentleman from Nashville, purchased goods to the Amount of $20,000, for this express purpose. He has been adopted as the son of Jolly, a Cherokee Chief.”

The  man who had become Congressman at only 30 was now setting up a trading post in the wilderness, turning his back on a promising legal and political career.

Historians agree that Houston was motivated by his failed marriage to Eliza Allen, a woman half his age. There is less agreement on what caused the marriage to collapse so catastrophically.

A Post story in 1871 attempted to explain “Why Sam Houston Exiled Himself.”

“The reason of the strange disappearance of Samuel Houston, in the early part of his life, when he left a lovely bride and the governorship of Tennessee, and exiled himself among the Indians for many years, has lately been revealed. He discovered, within a few hours after his marriage, that his wife did not love him, but had been urged into the match by an ambitious family, while loving another man. He at once retired from the house, and by his subsequent exile gave the lady a right to the divorce which she obtained.”

This explanation was, and remains, speculation. Neither Houston nor Eliza left any record of the true reason.

Following his wife’s departure, Houston returned to the Cherokee. He married a native-American woman named Tiana Rogers, the niece of his new father, Chief Oolooteka (John Jolly).

Houston tried to rebuild his life among the Cherokee, running his store, planting orchards, and occasionally traveling to Washington to expose government agents who were defrauding the tribe and breaking its treaties. Yet he was never fully at peace. Houston’s Cherokee name was “Raven,” but he was earning a new name among the tribe “Big Drunk.”

While in Washington, Houston was involved in a savage fight with a corrupt Congressman. Arrested for assault, he was defended in court by lawyer and “Star Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key. Houston was acquitted, but was heavily fined by a civil court for his actions. Once again, Houston departed for the frontier. This time, though, he went beyond Arkansas to Texas. His wife, Tiana, remained in the Cherokee nation and never saw Houston again.

Houston didn’t marry again until Texas had gained independence and he was its president. Now 47, he married 21-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea. Together they had eight children.

Margaret had a steadying influence on her flamboyant husband. With their marriage, Houston became more deliberate, less rash, and a more capable administrator. He was able to exert influence in Washington in favor of his state and the union.

Margaret Lea Houston was one of those invaluable Americans who refine the character of their politician-spouses. Throughout American history, the wives of legislators, judges, and chief executives—women of intelligence, wit, and compassion, who were barred from office themselves—have helped promote their husband’s careers. More importantly, many have ensured that their husbands remained true to their ideals and the public’s interest.

On April 7, 1849, the Post printed the following anecdote with a recommendation that it should be read by the wives of America.

“Gen. Houston and Wife. We take the following from one of our exchanges (we have forgotten which), confessing that we thought Gen. Houston separated from his wife or rather his wife from him—many years ago. Perhaps, though, this is a second one. But for the anecdote:

“Gen. Samuel Houston, of the United States Senate, formerly Governor of Tennessee, and after President of Texas (before the annexation), owes as much to his wife’s influence as to any other cause for his present high character and position before the nation. At a large party lately given in Washington, by Mr. Speaker Winthrop, he took occasion to give his reason for declining to attend any and all of the balls, card-parties, etc., to which he is invited. His wife, like Mrs. Polk, is a religious woman. (By the way, there was no dancing, gambling or drinking at the White House whilst Mrs. Polk presided there.) Let the wives of America read the following remarks made at Speaker Winthrop’s party by Senator Houston:

“‘I make it a point,” said the honorable Senator, “never to visit a place where my lady, if she were with me, would be unwilling to go. I know it would giver her pain, as a Christian, to attend such places, and I will not go myself where I could not take my wife.”

“A Member of Congress present alluded to his own wife, and added that there was a mutual understanding between him and her that they should each follow the bent of their own inclination in such matters.

“That may do for you,” responded Mr. Houston, “but with me it is different from what it is with many men. My wife has been the making of me. She took me when I was the victim of slavish appetites—she has redeemed and regenerated me—and I will not do that in her absence which I know would give her pain if she were present.”

“What a mighty, though secret, power has a virtuous and sensible woman over the greatest and strongest of men, if that man is her husband!”

The Wild Heart of Sam Houston The Saturday Evening Post

Although the qualities that make a great innovator can’t be measured by standardized tests, they’re exemplified in the life stories of the foremost innovators in this country—inventors, composers, policymakers, and others who have beaten the odds to break new ground. The innovators we profile here hail from a wide variety of fields, but they have a few key attributes in common: a burning curiosity about the world; an unusual willingness to implement new concepts and ideas; and an unrelenting work ethic that enables them to turn mistakes into successes.

David Baker

David Baker knows a little something about thinking outside the box. As a high school student, he fell so deeply in love with music that he resolved to learn how to play the sousaphone, even though his school music department didn’t own one. “I took a cigar box, made holes in the top, put some springs and pieces of wood inside, and used that to learn the fingering for the tuba,” says Baker, now chair of the jazz department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. “When the sousaphone finally became available, my band teacher, Russell Brown, was enamored that I was so serious about it.” Still, Baker remembers butting heads with Brown from time to time. “We were playing ‘Begin the Beguine,’ and I tried to play a boogie-woogie line. Mr. Brown said, ‘That’s not the way the line goes.’ I played the line again, and he was really getting angry. He said, ‘Boy, I don’t understand you. You run into a wall, and your solution is to run faster and hit harder.’ ”

Those early philosophies—pursue improvement at all costs and refuse to concede to an obstacle—would come to define Baker’s career as a musical innovator. An up-and-coming trombonist as a young man, he dreamed of achieving fame as a performer until a jaw injury sustained in an auto accident left him unable to play the instrument. “I thought it was the calamity of all calamities,” Baker says. But he now views this tragedy as a triumph: It forced him to find other ways to be creative, to give birth to the images in his mind. Following the injury, he learned to play a variety of other instruments and began experimenting with writing his own music. “If that [injury] hadn’t happened,” he says, “I wouldn’t have become a composer. No way.”

Baker’s professional reorientation jump-started a wild ride through the world of music, one that hasn’t yet come to a halt. In addition to writing scores for the New York Philharmonic and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Baker directs the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks

Orchestra and has won an Emmy Award. Part of his success comes from his willingness to entertain ideas that others may think are a little nutty. In his “Concertino for Cell Phones and Orchestra,” for instance, he incorporated ringtones into the score to harmonize with the orchestra, transforming orchestra-goers’ ultimate annoyance—a ringing cell phone—into an integral part of the music.

Although Baker’s original premieres have made a splash on many stages worldwide, he considers himself a teacher first and foremost. Interacting with students feeds his musical innovation, he says, because they encourage him to keep seeking out new ideas and new approaches. “To find something original, you take what you are and expand it to include all the new things that you know,” he says. “When I teach, I’m forever having to solve new problems. I’m so thrilled to be around young ideas.”

Peter Pronovost, M.D.

Dr. Peter Pronovost. Photo © Chris Hartlove.

Dr. Peter Pronovost has long been haunted by the story of a little girl named Josie King, who died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2001 from dehydration and an overdose of pain medicine. After Josie’s death, Pronovost, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, worked with her mother, Sorrel, to implement better safety programs at the hospital. “At one point,” recalls Pronovost, “she said, ‘Peter, can you tell me that Josie would be less likely to die today than she was four years ago? I want to know if care is safer.’ ”

Josie’s mother’s words have stayed with Pronovost, he says, because he believes all the well-meaning safety programs in the world mean nothing if they don’t make a measurable impact.

“The tragedy that befell Josie King had a devastating effect on our institution and was, and still is, a reminder of how
important patient safety and quality work is for Johns Hopkins and for every hospital in the world,” says Dr. Pronovost.

This keen focus on practicality, on quantifying and achieving results, has been the hallmark of Pronovost’s career. Determined to save patient lives that were being needlessly lost because of negligence and human error, he devised a concrete series of safety checklists for doctors and nurses to follow. To prevent a common cause of illness—bloodstream infections related to catheters inserted into a blood vessel with a direct line to the heart—doctors had to:

Wash hands using soap or alcohol prior to placing the catheter.

The system was simple enough, but to implement it, Pronovost had to upend some of the prevailing tenets of health care culture. “I said, ‘Nurses, I want you to supervise the doctors to make sure they’re using the checklist.’ You would have thought it was World War III. The doctors said, ‘There’s no way you can have a nurse second-guess me in public.’ ” In hopes of forging a consensus, Pronovost brainstormed a way to appeal to the doctors’ and nurses’ shared interests. “I pulled everyone together and I said, ‘Is it tenable that we can harm patients in health care?’ They said, ‘No.’ I said to the doctors, ‘Unless it’s an emergency, the nurse is going to correct you.’ When it was framed that way, as a common goal, the conflict just melted away.” Pronovost’s unifying efforts paid off. When Michigan hospitals put his checklists in place, central line infection rates plummeted nearly 66 percent, saving about $175 million in health care costs. Other doctors and hospitals began following Pronovost’s example, and in 2008, he was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

As impressive as his accolades are, Pronovost has never lost sight of the importance of getting other people on board to create a lasting transformation—a policy he’s put into practice in his own family as well. “I went to my kids and said, ‘How am I doing as a dad? What could I do better?’ ” he says. “Their insights were spot-on. My son said, ‘Dad, get on my level. Just put your BlackBerry away and play with me.’ ”

Dean Kamen

Dean Kamen. Photo © 2007 Nathaniel Wlech/Redux.

Dean Kamen may be best known as the inventor of the Segway—the two-wheeled human transporter—but he’s far from a one-hit wonder in the world of innovation. The New Hampshire entrepreneur has amassed a formidable oeuvre of technological advances, from an all-terrain electric wheelchair to a water purification system for Third World villages that runs on a Stirling engine. But Kamen doesn’t invent just for the sake of creating new things. All of his ventures spring from his desire to make people’s lives better in a concrete way. “In order for an invention to become an innovation,” he says, “you have to have such a compelling story that people are willing to say, ‘Yesterday, this is what I did and how I did it, but this represents such a big improvement that I am willing to change.’ ”

Kamen’s obsession with change and innovation came gradually. He wasn’t a tinkerer as a child, but he did have one standout trait: an insatiable curiosity about the natural world. “I asked myself things like, ‘Why does hot chocolate cool off if you don’t drink it quickly?’ There were so many things that seemed so predictable and yet so inexplicable, and I wondered how all of this happened.”

Once Kamen realized that inventing new products involved understanding these laws of nature and applying them through engineering, he was off and running. He derived special pleasure in finding unexpected uses for existing technology. When his older brother was in medical school and designing drugs to help babies with leukemia, Kamen realized available drug delivery systems were too large and began devising a solution. “I went down to the basement and built him the equipment he needed: tiny pumps that would deliver a very small amount of drug,” he remembers. “Then one of the professors my brother was dealing with said, ‘That little pump is so small you could put it on your belt or put it in your pocket.’ ” Inspired, Kamen used the mini-pump technology he’d developed to create the first portable insulin pump—now used by diabetics around the world.

Aspiring innovators, Kamen believes, would do well to adopt this kind of flexible mind-set. It’s important for ambitious creators to get comfortable with end-arounds, unexpected eurekas, and periodic failures, he says, because the ride is bound to be a bumpy one. To that end, Kamen founded FIRST, a high school robotics competition designed to give students a firsthand taste of what the innovation process is like. “I think the public has this perception that inventors run around with great ideas, get the parts, and make the product. But the process of inventing couldn’t be further from that—it’s not a linear, straightforward process. You have to be willing to adapt your ideas quickly, no matter how passionate you are about them, and just keep chipping away.”

Esther Takeuchi

Esther TakeuchiPhoto © Doug Levere/University of Buffalo

From an early age, Esther Takeuchi liked to get into just about everything—whether that meant peeling apart golf balls or exploring inside the walls. “My father was an electrical engineer, and I would follow him around the house,” she remembers. “Whatever he did, I would do.”

Takeuchi, now an engineer at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has parlayed her penchant for figuring out how things work into a wildly successful career. She holds over 120 patents—more than any other woman alive—and has received multiple regional Inventor of the Year awards. While working at the technology company Greatbatch, she developed the Lilliputian battery that powers implantable cardiac defibrillators, a scientific leap forward that has improved the lives of thousands of patients.

Perfecting her most famous invention, Takeuchi says, proved a long, slow slog. “The battery didn’t leap forward fully formed—a lot of steps led to the development and improvement of the technology.” She doesn’t discount the importance of split-second inspiration, but emphasizes that innovators need to lay an extensive groundwork of knowledge to pave the way for that eureka moment. “What was important was spending time thinking about the problem and reading about it. Sometimes I would set the problem aside, and at the strangest moment it would occur to me, ‘Hey, we could do it this way.’ But being diligent in exploring the problem—that part is a disciplined process.”

After a successful career in the industry, Takeuchi returned to academia in 2007 for two reasons: to pursue more freewheeling research on ways to improve battery performance and to help equip the next generation of innovators in a time of increasing global competitiveness. “The United States is just an unbelievable country—there’s such a tradition of innovation and great thought. But I do have concerns about how the United States is going to remain competitive, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can contribute to that.’ ”

Although Takeuchi believes inspiring teachers can help spur youthful creativity, she also thinks the government needs to pitch in by delivering sustained funding for science to help the country shift its focus toward innovation. “We have bright, diligent, motivated young people, but what fields are they
attracted to? We need to value, as a society, the contributions that scientists, engineers, and technical educators make.”

Van Jones

Van Jones. Photo courtesy Richard Hume/Experience Life Magazine.

Several years ago, Oakland, California, lawyer Van Jones found himself at a career crossroads. “As an attorney, I was focused on trying to keep kids out of trouble, and I just burned out,” he says. Discouraged and not knowing exactly what he was going to do next, Jones set out to learn more about cutting-edge environmental business. “I discovered a lot of really cool technology—solar companies, organic food companies. I said, ‘This is great stuff, but none of it’s happening in the neighborhoods where I’m doing my work.’ ”

That initial epiphany—that residents of cash-strapped urban areas could form the foundation of a future green-collar economy—launched Jones on a quest to make his vision come true. “It’s a tremendous asset, the pent-up desire for positive change in urban communities,” he says. “You have all these people that need work and all this work that needs to be done.” To that end, Jones founded Green for All, a non-profit organization designed to combat poverty and build a green economy at the same time. Word about Jones’ grassroots venture spread among national movers and shakers, and thanks in part to Green for All’s inspiring example, President Obama budgeted more than $4 billion for green job creation and training as part of his 2009 economic stimulus plan. In March, Obama also named Jones the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s special advisor on green jobs. In addition to providing urban residents with a much-needed livelihood, Jones says, Obama’s new program will help enable the United States to compete with the rest of the world in the green-jobs sector. “This is one of those moments where the United States gets to choose: Do we want to have these jobs in our country, or only see them in other countries?”

The experience of turning his career crisis into a national-scale coup has steeled Jones’ determination not to let negativity block his future path, a philosophy he’ll adhere closely to as the Obama administration attempts to turn its green-jobs plans into reality. “My biggest asset is my innocence, and I treasure it. I went down that whole cynical pathway—too cool for school—and it didn’t make a difference for anybody I cared about,” he says. “So I had to reclaim that innocence. When I started working in politics, it was because I thought we could make a better society. You’ll never get me to give up on what I want this country to be.”

Profiles in Creativity The Saturday Evening Post