More Thoughts on Walter Kidney '54

I first met Walter Kidney on a playing field my junior year. It was the one to your left as you go down the lane, between Lancaster Avenue and the pond. He and I were among Haverford’s worst athletes; even the rudiments of touch football were lost on us. The athletic department insisted even gentle eccentrics get exercise. So we had to take part, sign up on a list. As a whistle blew for scrimmage, Walter’s attention was somewhere else. He was watching something behind us at the edge of the field. A squirrel, he observed aloud.

In my senior year, in connection with some course, I had reason to visit his room. German, I believe, but I can’t be sure. He was intently studying a plate from a large architecture book. A huge ornate fireplace, it may have been something designed by Henry Hobson Richardson for the mansion of a railroad magnate. I asked him if he liked it enough to have one in his home.

Even then I had taken a fascination with architecture. While at Westtown School, I attended the sale of the old George W. Childs Drexel estate on Bryn Mawr Avenue and developed an unfortunate taste for mansions. Other forms of human habitation held no interest for me. Only mansions mattered.

Walter’s reply was surprising then but looking back, typical of him. Yes, he liked it as a design, but in order to own something like it one would have to be wealthy. Since I will never be wealthy, I don’t really think about owning it. For a young man about to start out in life to say that he would never be wealthy seems now shockingly pessimistic. But really, it was good advice. I should have listened.

Walter was a loyal Haverfordian and attended alumni gatherings regularly. One was held on the grounds of Friends Central School while a classmate was its headmaster. The old Wistar Morris estate, on City Avenue in Overbrook, it was stone, Gothic Revival. I asked Walter what he thought of it. It lacks a sense of repose, he replied.

Walter remained my touchstone for things architectural. For a three-year period I even owned a mansion, in Oak Park, Illinois. It had twenty-three rooms and was designed by a noted English architect. I sent Walter some pictures of it. As a used-book seller I kept in touch with Walter, quoting architecture books now and then. He would thank me but said that his library consisted mostly of Dover Publications reprints. He didn’t need expensive originals.

For the architecturally uninitiated, the most useful of Walter’s books is his The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1880-1930 (New York: George Braziller c.1974). It went through several printings, even appeared in paperback. It might still be in print, if not use the Internet. Try Bookfinder.com.

The moral for me of Walter Kidney’s life seem to me, in retrospect, that those who consciously strive to build careers as I did, in the end achieve little. By single-mindedly doing his thing, pursuing his interests and at the same time recognizing and accepting his limits, he built one that was distinguished.

Edward P. Rich ’53
Halls, Tenn.

Another View of the Death Penalty

I know it may come as a shock to you and most of the members of the Haverford community, however, not all of us are bleeding heart, starry-eyed liberals. Please count me among the hard-bitten conservatives, who, while admittedly are few and far between in the Haverford community, are also are against death. We are particularly against the wanton killing of an innocent German tourist. I feel that regardless of the obviously terrible life that Mr. Peterson had (“Against Death,” Spring 2006 Haverford Alumni Magazine), there is no excuse for what he did, and society has no obligation to feed and clothe him at a cost of millions of dollars over time.

Liberal attempts to justify these horrendous crimes and the liberal movement to eliminate capital punishment are a disservice to every law-abiding citizen in this country. Regardless of how old he was at the time he took an innocent life, and he should have forfeited the protection of being a juvenile.

Oh but capital punishment has been shown not to be a deterrent to crime. That’s because liberals have instituted a system of endless appeals. In Texas we recently executed the Mexican illegal known as the railroad track murderer. He killed 13 people, some of whom died horrible deaths. Because of appeal after appeal, it still took over 10 years to carry out his sentence. On the gurney, he admitted he deserved what he was getting.

Mr. Peterson, in my book, is still a piece of trash. Before you call me a racist, let me say, in my book, anyone who takes another person’s life is trash, whether they are black, white, brown, yellow, or green with blue spots. In my town we bury our trash in a landfill. That’s what we should do with people like Peterson. The comedian Flip Wilson had an expression, “the Devil made me do it.” The line was funny, but nobody believed it was an excuse. I don’t believe lack of brain development, or “my Mother was mean to me,” are excuses for murder. Peterson may be doing better in jail, but to tie his behavior to the idea that he is saving hundreds and that would not have happened if he had been executed is specious reasoning and small consolation to his victim’s family.

Henry J. Dvorken ’49
Wichita Falls, Texas

Restoring Some Humanity

I just finished reading the cover story of the Spring 2006 issue of the Haverford Alumni Magazine, “Against Death,” by John Lombardi. Never have I read a more engaging profile piece in any alumni magazine.

What drives the piece is the juxtaposition of two lives that seem so very different yet converge through the writing to show how important every life is, particularly when Lombardi begins the piece by explaining Peterson’s life.

Having worked with many kids from broken homes in broke-down, dangerous neighborhoods, Lombardi’s description of Peterson’s life brought me waves of empathy for young Damon Peterson. Lombardi’s writing restores Peterson’s humanity by showing us what drives people to their regrettable actions, so that we do not see Peterson as just some punk kid who’s gone bad.

Both Peterson and Harper have worked hard to remind America of how we’ve lost our humanity and have helped us gain a little of it back. The thought that any rational adult would believe that any child deserved to die for their crimes is absolutely absurd. Thanks, John, for bringing this issue out from the back sections of America’s newspapers.

J.J. Pack, Jr.
English Instructor
Pennsylvania State University, Abington

Dissapointment and Dismay

I was disappointed and upset to see and read the latest issue of the alumni magazine. The cover story, “Against Death,” was the antithesis of the good work Stephen Harper is doing and which I have always thought of Haverford as striving to do. The story of Damon Peterson was used purely as a dramatic effect with little thought as to how Peterson was being portrayed or how race issues were being replicated right in this very article. Peterson and his family were spoken of like savages or even animals. While the hardships Peterson’s family suffered were detailed, the article never explored the larger societal issues at play or any positive elements in his own community. Harper was spoken of as a great white savior. I would doubt that someone who was drawn to this work by seeing the light or good in all people would have wanted to be portrayed in this manner. The work Harper is doing is vital and important and should be reported. The ignorant manner in which it was reported and dramatized was offensive.

I am a white woman who lives and works in a predominately African Ameri-can community. I can’t begin to imagine how offensive this would be to African American alumni and students. I personally credit Haverford with my early understandings of the reality of race relations in America. It was through non-academic offerings such as a workshop on privilege and another on race that I started to have some appreciation for issues of race and class. I find it so hard to understand how this same institution could then publish such an article.

Kate O’Shea ’98
Philadelphia

John Lombardi Replies:

The detailed description of Damon Peterson’s childhood (“Against Death,” Haverford Alumni Magazine, Spring 2006), was meant to bring home to the middle, upper-middle, and upper class readers of this alumni magazine the circumstances that contributed to his becoming a thief and killer—something so far outside their experience as to be nearly unimaginable. His race and the race of his attorney, Stephen Harper ’76, are irrelevant to a story about the morality or immorality of the juvenile death penalty, which doesn’t draw the color line.

My “ignorance” and implied racial insensitivity amount to a distaste by Ms. O’Shea and other critics for the “mucky reality” one of them has denounced in a separate letter to the highest officials of the College. But the imposition of a “political” critique on a work of objective journalism really argues for a vetting of unpleasant reality, in favor of projecting a politically correct ideal.

I thought P.C. and “deconstruction” (the psychoanalysis of texts), French
intellectual fads of the ’80s, had long since been discredited.

-J.L.