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The family of the late Andrew Silk ’76, a renowned journalist
and social activist, encourages generations of Haverford and Bryn Mawr
students to follow in his footsteps. by Brenna McBride
Andy Mathieson ’05 wasn’t expecting the frantic, frazzled
environment of a New York Times–style newsroom. A hopeful journalist
who admires humor columnists like Dave Barry ’69 and occasionally
contributes his own witticisms to the Haverford/Bryn Mawr Bi-College News,
Mathieson applied for a summer internship with The School Administrator
magazine to get some experience with a professional, monthly publication.
He knew the Arlington, Virginia-based magazine, edited by Jay Goldman
’78, had a small staff of what Goldman liked to call “three-and-a-half
people” and approached each issue at its own pace. It met his needs.
During the course of the summer, Mathieson assisted the magazine staff
with copy editing, coded articles to be processed by the graphics designer,
edited book reviews, wrote his own reviews for an internally published
packet delivered to the American Association of School Administrators,
and started compiling the annual index of the year’s articles. He
sat in on editorial and design meetings, where his ideas and opinions
were encouraged by Goldman and staff. He was sent on assignment to cover
an AASA talk on school safety and drug prevention, where he was impressed
by school superintendents’ ongoing efforts to tackle these issues.
“I was overwhelmed by the array of responsibilities and the amount
of trust the staff had in me,” he says. “I didn’t feel
at all led around or patronized.” He feels privileged to have been
involved in setting a “nationwide agenda;” copies of The School
Administrator are found in the offices of school superintendents and principals
across the country. And he takes particular pride in the September 2002
issue focusing on spirituality in schools. He played a large role in the
production of this issue and, Jay Goldman tells him, it has elicited an
enormous response from readers.
Mathieson knows that his experience wouldn’t have been possible
if he hadn’t been able to support himself with a stipend from the
Silk Fund, instituted by former New York Times business columnist Leonard
Silk and his wife Bernice in memory of their son Andrew ’76, a respected
journalist who died of lung cancer in 1981 at the age of 28. Andy Mathieson
means to follow in the footsteps of another Andy, a talented writer and
committed social activist with an unshakable belief in the often-underestimated
power of the printed word to change the status quo.
Andy’s father, Leonard, had been a newspaperman since his high school
years. At the University of Wisconsin, he edited the campus humor magazine
and wrote music reviews for the New York Times, because it was the best
way to obtain free records. He wrote for his hometown newspaper, the Atlantic
City Press, and for Business Week before joining the New York Times as
the author of the business page’s twice-weekly “Economics
Scene” column.
“From the beginning, we believed that being involved in current
events was a great career path,” says Mark Silk, Andy’s older
brother, a former staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who
now holds a seat at the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life
at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Bernice Silk remembers how her husband would initiate conversations about
his day at the Times and about the news of the world every evening at
the dinner table, during Andy’s youth in Montclair, N.J. “Andy
was a talker,” she says. “He loved to participate in these
discussions.” Leonard even helped Andy get a summer job at the Times
as a copyboy.
“He loved the excitement and gratification of seeing himself in
print,” says Bernice.
Andy was already picturing a future as a reporter, but he planned to major
in philosophy in college—a program counted among Haverford’s
best in the 1970s. It was more than academics, however, that attracted
Andy to the College, Bernice recalls: “He fell in love with the
place, the atmosphere, Quakerism, honesty, the down-to-earth environment.
He met the kind of people who appealed to him.”
One of these people was Juan Williams ’76, a senior correspondent
at National Public Radio and former host of NPR’s “Talk of
the Nation,” and author of the bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America’s
Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. Williams and Andy bonded over their mutual
interest in journalism, and Williams’ admiration of the New York
Times in general and Leonard Silk’s column in particular. “I
was originally intimidated by him,” says Williams, “not only
because of who his father was, but because he was so clearly focused on
journalism as a career.”
Andy joined the Haverford/Bryn Mawr News as a writer; his skill and perseverance
earned him the position of managing editor in 1972 and editor-in-chief
during the 1973-74 academic year. He relished the challenges of putting
the paper to bed every week, and the pressure of delivering stories on
time.
These were the years when the News served as a breeding ground for some
of today’s most notable journalists, such as Dave Wessel ’75,
economics columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and Joe Quinlan ’75,
former Emmy-winning senior producer for the “MacNeil-Lehrer News
Hour” and past executive producer at Time Inc. News Media.
Quinlan is currently the president of Q*com, which provides strategic
advice on a range of media-related issues, but he still thinks affectionately
of the man who gave him his first column. At Haverford, he was involved
in student government, working in the public relations office, and serving
as a Customs person, and didn’t feel comfortable committing himself
to the responsibilities of a regular reporter or editor at the News. “But
Andy came up with a solution,” he says. “‘Write a column,’
he said, ‘even if it’s every other week, and write about stuff
going on in the world.’ Thus was born ‘Q and Co.’”
Quinlan remembers his class as a precocious one when it came to journalism.
“Several of us had already worked at newspapers before coming to
Haverford, and knew we wanted to work in the business. But Andy was clearly
the best among us, both as a reporter and editor. He had such a big mind
and restless spirit, not to mention quick wit, in that little body of
his.”
Chuck Durante ’73, now a partner at the Wilmington, Del., law firm
of Connolly Bove Lodge and Hutz LLP, was editor of the paper when Andy
began as a reporter. He was impressed with the positive changes his successor
brought with him. “The year Andy was editor-in-chief, the News broke
free of its reliance on the stodgiest, least visually appealing elements
of the New York Times,” he says. “He brought a visually imaginative
approach to the design, and demonstrated an allegiance to the basic principles
of dogged reporting. And as an interviewer, he knew how to ask uncomfortable
questions in a way that was not confrontational.”
“Andy’s writing had a strong social and political consciousness,
and showed his compassion for all people,” says Juan Williams. “He
understood that he had a voice and a power he could express with his pen.”
Dave Wessel and Andy Silk were drawn to journalism for many of the same
reasons. “We wanted to shine light in corners of the world, take
readers from their comfortable, sheltered lives and bring them to places
they would never go.” And although Andy wrote about intercollegiate
issues such as Haverford’s path to coeducation, Wessel saw how he
cast his gaze far beyond campus. “He was always looking for a way
to think outside the boundaries of Lancaster Avenue.”
No one anticipated just how far outside these boundaries Andy’s
thoughts lay, until he announced his intention to spend his junior year
as a visiting reporter in South Africa, covering the apartheid situation.
Of everyone, his family may have met this decision with the least amount
of surprise.
Mark Silk was familiar with Andy’s interest in author George Orwell,
who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and immersed himself in the world
of that country’s poor and disenfranchised. “For Andy, South
Africa was a way to follow in Orwell’s footsteps. In the 1970s,
apartheid was the obvious great evil; it made sense that he was drawn
to that.” Leonard and Bernice Silk had also witnessed Andy’s
involvement in the Vietnam anti-war movement as a teenager, and knew of
his commitment to combating injustice. The Silks themselves had previously
visited South Africa, and Leonard put his son in contact with staff members
at the Pretoria News and the Rand Daily Mail.
Juan Williams was awed by his friend’s willingness to put himself
on the line in order to get the true story of apartheid and its victims.
“He considered it the big story of our time,” he says. “He
seized the opportunity to tell stories that would open people’s
eyes.”
Upon Andy’s return for his senior year, he picked up where he left
off with his studies and lived in a group house that included Chuck Durante.
Durante credits Andy with introducing him to NPR’s “All Things
Considered,” and marveled at his roommate’s passion for the
printed word in all languages. “He read journals, papers, and magazines
not available at most newsstands, many from overseas,” he says.
“He’d be up reading until midnight, not just for his assignments.”
Andy graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and received a prestigious
Watson fellowship, which would allow him to pursue an individual project
outside the continental United States. It was natural that he would return
the country that had weighed on his mind and soul since he’d left.
Even though the apartheid conflict had now heated to a dangerous degree,
Andy returned to South Africa to investigate working and housing conditions
of black migratory laborers.
On Sept. 23, 1977, Andy was preparing to leave for the funeral of activist
Stephen Biko. He had been interviewing residents of a squatters’
town called Modderdam near Cape Town, and needed to go there to retrieve
his notes from a friend’s house. Yet he didn’t have a permit
to enter the town, an infraction that brought the police to escort Andy
home. Suspicious of Andy’s desire to keep them away from his room
and from “personal” items, the police searched his desk, drawers,
wardrobe, trash can, and suitcase. They eventually confiscated tapes and
notes of his interviews; none had been conducted illegally, but several
sources had wished to remain anonymous.
Concerned for his subjects’ welfare, Andy spoke with a friend who
chastised him for his secretive conduct. “Either you decide to work
completely openly, or you function like a spy,” his friend told
him. “If you are caught, you accept the consequences.” At
the friend’s urging, Andy contacted his American consulate and arranged
to board the next flight out of South Africa.
“Was it right to run, and let others straighten out the confusion
I was leaving?” Andy wondered in an article called “Flight
From South Africa.” “How could I—I, who had been told
that I was different than other visitors because I felt so deeply about
South Africa?” Back in the United States, he would transform his
experiences into a book, A Shantytown in South Africa.
In 1979, he joined the staff of the Norfolk Virginian Pilot, where he
forged a friendship with Jane Eisner, now a social issues columnist for
the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He had a high moral compass, and was
upset about anything that wasn’t right,” says Eisner, who
lived around the corner from Andy in Norfolk. “At a time when the
Pilot was going through changes, we were the ‘young whippersnappers’
with new ideas.” Eisner left the paper in 1980 to join the Trenton,
N.J., bureau of the Inquirer, and it was here that she received the call
from a mutual friend that Andy had been suffering from a racking cough.
He was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. He was 27 years old, and had never
smoked in his life.
In typical Silk fashion, he used his writing as an outlet for his pain
both physical and emotional. He chronicled his tests and treatment in
a lengthy, candid article for the New York Times Magazine, where he revealed
that, despite a favorable prognosis, he knew the disease could recur at
any time. “Aware that I might reenter the world of tumors and platelet
counts at any time, the trials and setbacks in the world that once filled
me with anxiety now appear to be the most exquisite luxuries.
“I now know what a friend—who had seen battle in Iwo Jima—meant
when he said early in my recovery, ‘One day you will look around
and discover that the sky is more brilliant and the flowers more fragrant
than they have ever been before.’ ”
Andy’s optimism in the face of his odds redefined the word “undaunted.”
He settled in southern Connecticut and became editorial page editor of
the Greenwich Time. He married his longtime girlfriend, Nancy Perlman.
“Andy was prepared to act as though everything would be all right,”
says Mark Silk. “It took a huge amount of mental strength to fight
through the physical hardships.”
On Dec. 12, 1981, Andrew Silk died in New York Hospital. He was 28.
At first, Andy’s family and friends dealt with their grief and confusion
in their own way. Some chose solitary outpourings of emotion. Some brought
groups together to reminisce about the man they had lost. And some, like
Jane Eisner, turned their sorrow into action. In 1982, Eisner and her
husband—who had been inspired by Andy to become an oncologist—visited
the Soviet Union to meet with Jewish refusniks. It was a dangerous time
to be in the country; they were almost refused entrance, and were followed
once inside. “But we saw it as a fitting tribute to Andy,”
says Eisner, “who tried so hard to fight social injustice.”
She wrote a magazine story about her trip, and acknowledged Andy in her
introduction.
Soon, the Silks and several of Andy’s classmates started to circulate
ideas for a way to more permanently memorialize their son, brother, and
friend, a way that would, preferably, involve his alma mater. A group
of Andy’s friends, including Juan Williams and Dave Wessel, appealed
to then-president of Haverford Robert Stevens to support a program, funded
by the Silks, that would offer guidance, assistance, and advice to Haverford
and Bryn Mawr students interested in journalism careers. “Because
neither school had a formal journalism course,” says Bernice Silk,
“we felt like we were providing something substantial to the students.”
“We made it clear to Robert Stevens that providing such a program
would be an important statement about Haverford,” says Juan Williams.
“He understood that what Andy stood for was the best of the school’s
values, and what the school was teaching its young people.” Stevens
agreed, and plans for the Silk Fund’s initiatives began to take
shape.
In the beginning, Leonard Silk arranged to bring a cadre of journalists
to campus during the first few weeks of the school year to advise Haverford/Bryn
Mawr News staffers on the direction their paper should take. A variety
of reporters from the Inquirer (such as Jane Eisner) and other newspapers
would also meet with students at different times throughout the year,
answering questions and offering career counseling. Michael Paulson ’86,
now an award-winning religion reporter for the Boston Globe, was on the
receiving end of these guidance sessions when he was an editor for the
News.
“It was incredibly helpful, and so generous of Leonard,” says
Paulson. “It was inspiring for those who were just starting out
to interact with successful, skilled people.”
These campus visits would, in 1984, evolve into the annual journalism
symposium that continues to this day. Organized by the Silks (Mark took
over Leonard’s duties when the latter died in 1995) and Pam Sheridan,
director of public relations at Haverford, the event brings together a
panel of top-flight journalists from news sources throughout the country
to discuss their careers and issues pertaining to today’s business
of news coverage. In the past, members of the panel have debated religion
and the media, the impact of new technology, coverage of presidential
elections, and tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. The
symposiums benefit curious students, but are also open to members of the
Haverford/Bryn Mawr communities and the surrounding area.
“The success of the panel is largely based on the quality of the
journalists who volunteer their expertise,” says Bernice Silk. “It’s
a credit to Leonard and to Haverford that they take it so seriously, and
welcome the opportunity to introduce students to journalism in a realistic
way.”
Many of Andy’s closest friends—such as Jane Eisner, Dave Wessel,
Juan Williams, and Joe Quinlan—have been frequent guests of the
symposium since its first year. “It’s always an honor to come
back and discuss the sort of timely, weighty topics that have been chosen
over the year, and to meet different generations of students interested
in the craft,” says Quinlan. “There’s always a tinge
of sadness for me personally, because I know what a kick Andy would get
out of running those discussion groups.”
“Andy lives on through his friends,” says Williams. “It’s
critical that we who knew and loved him can convey what he was about,
and share his mission of using your powers for a greater purpose.”
“When you’re in your 20s and someone close to you dies, it’s
a searing experience,” says Wessel. “Everyone who knew Andy
saw his unrealized potential, and to see it lost…you want to do
something to keep the flame alive, prevent his memory from vanishing,
and encourage future Andy Silks.”
The Silk Fund helps encourage these future Andys not only through the
symposium, but also through a stipend awarded to Haverford and Bryn Mawr
undergraduates who obtain journalism internships during the summer. The
Fund provides for compensation to be paid by the participating newspaper,
and the stipend supports students’ travel and living costs. Originally
limited to the two newspapers that employed Andy, the Virginian Pilot
and the Greenwich Time, the internships can now be served at newspapers,
magazines, and news organizations across the United States.
“I couldn’t have afforded to work at The School Administrator
this summer without the help of the Silk family,” says Andy Mathieson.
“I like to think that my future career path started in my little
shared desk space at the magazine, and I’ll always know in my heart
that it was the Silks who made this possible.”
The first Andy would have beamed with pride.
Andrew Silk Journalism Interns
1982 Paula Block
1983 Penny Chang
1984 Beth Liebson
1985 Sarah Allen ’87
1986 Kate Shatzkin ’87
1987 Thomas Hartmann ’88
1988 ———
1989 Colette Fergusson ’90
1990 ———
1991 Brad Aronson ’93
1992 Eric Pelofsky ’93
1993 Aparna Mukherjee (BMC)
1994 Ellen Chrismer
1995 ———
1996 Abby Reed ’99
1997 Ryan Isaac ’98
1998 Daniel Lathrop ’99, Jill McCain (BMC)
1999 Ivan Weiss ’01
2000 Nicole Foulke (BMC)
2001 Rekha Matchanickal (BMC), Monica Hess (BMC)
2002 Andrew Mathieson ’05