THE OLDEST PRESS CLUB IN THE UNITED STATES NOVEMBER 2011

Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc. an organization of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924by Charles Edward Russell, William O. Inglis, Perry Walton, and David G. Baillie.

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Society of the SiluriansLIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

AWARD BANQUETThe Cornell Club6 East 44th Steet

Wednesday, November 16thIn Honor of

RUTH GRUBERDrinks: 6 p.m.

Dinner: 7:15 p.m.Meet old friends

Merrimente-mail: silurians@aol.com

Reservations:(212) 532-0887

Members and One Guest $100 EachNon-Members $120

Ruth Gruber Winner of Silurians 2011 Lifetime Achievement AwardInternational Correspondent, Photographer on the Cusp of History

Humanitarian of Heroic Tenacity

Summer of ‘77

By Eve Berliner

Images that haunt the mind – a hoistedflag, desperate eyes, outcries, pieces oftime and memory, Ruth Gruber, at 100years of age, a wizened, rather beautifullittle butterfly, deep deep blue eyes peer-

ing into time, her wings outstretched,drawn to the dispossessed of this earth,refugees of Nazi death camps and fear,no one to give sanctuary. Her epiphany,the harrowing voyage of The Exodus1947, a ship carrying 4,500 Jewish Holo-caust survivors to British Mandate Pal-estine in defiance of the British blockade.

Shadowed by British men-of-war andunder constant threat, the Exodus wasbrutally attacked by a British flotilla, leav-ing three dead, 150 injured. The war tornvessel limped into the Port of Haifa,Gruber there with her camera to bear

witness. In the end, the British refusedthem entry and deported them back toGermany to the refugee camps ofElmden and Wilhelmshaven.

“I knew my life would be inextrica-bly bound by rescue and survival,” Ruth

Gruber would utter.Ruth, on that final tragic journey with

the desolate, in her white suit and wide-brimmed straw hat, amid the teemingmasses on board the prison ship,

Reel Inheritance FilmsRuth Gruber, special emissary of the Roosevelt Administration, documenting frontier life in Alaska, 1941.

Photograph by Ruth Gruber

The exiles of Exodus 1947, barred fromentering Palestine by the British, await de-portation back to Germany. A flag of defi-ance is raised overhead.

NYPD Mug Shot

Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, The .44 Caliber Killer who terrorized New York City during the summerof 1977, and murdered six young people.

By Owen Moritz

It may be hard to believe today, but inthe summer of 1977 New Yorkers fearedfor their very lives. A serial killer waspreying on young people. In slightly morethan a year he killed six people, woundedseven others. No one knew what helooked like and the descriptions from sur-vivors were so sketchy that each newcomposite drawing bore little resemblanceto the previous one. We weren’t even sureif we were looking for Jack the Ripper orJill the Ripper. There had been sugges-tions the killer might be a woman.

I was among a number of Daily Newsstaffers writing speculative stories on thepolice manhunt for someone calling him-self Son of Sam. In my case I was get-ting feeds from Bill Federici and Pat Doyleat police headquarters. Meanwhile, col-umnist Jimmy Breslin was working hisown sources.

We all knew certain things about thekiller—he stalked couples in secludedparking spots, used a .44 caliber revolver

and fancied pretty girls withshoulder-length dark hair.Thousands of women wereso terrified they cut or dyedtheir hair blond or made a runon blonde wigs at beauty sup-ply stores.

Moreover, there was themanic boast that put every-one on edge. He sent wildnotes to Police Captain Jo-seph Borrelli and Breslin.“Sam’s a thirsty lad,” hewrote Breslin, “and he won’tlet me stop killing until he getshis fill of blood.”

In the early morning ofJuly 31, 1977 the killer struckagain, stalking a youngcouple to a parked car inBensonhurst. He crept up si-lently as the pair kissed andfired away at close range.Stacy Moskowitz, 20, diedwithin hours and RobertViolante, also 20, lost an eye.

Ten days later, on Aug. 10,

PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2011

The Medical Wars

By Malachy McCourt

Concommitant with the rise of the teaparty we are now infested with the riseof that disgusting horror known as the bed-bug. Some people would rather deal withAl Qaeda than this new threat to our city.Very little is known about this verminousaddition to our society except that it doeslike living with humans particularly con-servatives as their blood has the bitter-ness quotient bedbugs need.

Our state government has passed a lawrequiring landlords to reveal the historyof bedbug infestation in any building orapartment they have for release or rent. Ican’t imagine landlords revealing anythingabout their close relatives the bedbug.

Unlike other bugs the bedbug reputedlydoes not carry disease. The housefly takesa stroll on errant turd and carries some ofit on its legs to your slice of bread. Themosquito sucks some malaria blood andspews it into your epidermis. The lousecarries typhus and the flea is delighted tocarry various other diseases.

When I was a resident in some of themore colourful slums of Limerick Irelandwe were hosts to all manner of bedbugs.My brother Frank wrote in vivid proseabout how he and my father carried amattress from the dreadful furnished roomwe had just moved into and beat it andshook it till the clouds of bedbugs lost theirhold and tumbled on to the wet pave-ment.

Having fleas was the cause of greatshame in holy Limerick as it was attrib-uted to having a dirty home. You werenot allowed fleas, lice or tuberculosis be-cause you would be destroyed by the vi-cious whispering gossip of your Catholicneighbours. We moved from furnishedroom to furnished sordid room accompa-nied by armies of hopper’s as my mothercalled them. Some people said youcouldn’t have fleas and lice at the sametime; same tale as not having mice andrats living in harmony. They were wrong.We had everything that walked crawledor flew. On any given morning one lookat us would indicate that measles had bro-ken out during the night and dotted ourfair skins with the usual red measles dotsbitten as we were.

My father refused to acknowledge the

Bedbug

bug’s existence except when nagged todo something. My mother spent hourscatching them and crushing them on herthumbnails but it was impossible to imag-ine an itch free, bite free night in any ofour crowded beds.

Most people keep dogs cats birds andgoldfish as household pets but our petswere the aforementioned vermin withwhom we were on very intimate terms.In some cultures the men cut their thumbsand mingle the blood in order to becomeblood brothers. Our bugs just helped them-selves at night without asking, with theresult that the McCourts are blood Brosto a vast number of the vermin world. TheBible tells us that Jesus wore a seamlessrobe which kept the lice and bugs in astate of frustration as they like to hangout in seams. Where else do they reside?Beds of course, armchairs and the filmindustry is quite annoyed that the bugs areslipping into cinemas now without payingone dime. They love to travel so now theyare frequent flyers much to the chagrinof the airline industry and they get rides

on the most luxurious of limousines tosome of the best hotels in these UnitedStates. They snuggle down in your lug-gage and disembark at the nearest bedwhere frequently they meet the love oftheir lives and they settle down for a whileparticularly if it’s the honeymoon suite.

As they are a somewhat benign miniterrorist you won’t get much sympathy ifyou call upon Homeland Security to helprepel them and despite the fact that ourcountry spends $2 million every minute ofevery day on defense, the U.S. cavalrywill not help you in any way.

However there is a sure way of killinga bedbug:

A. Secure two small blocks of wood 2" x 2"

B. Capture the bedbugC. Place bedbug on one block of woodD. Strike said bug with the other block

of wood until deadE. Repeat with all other bedbugs until

they are all dead It is not known if these creatures emit

any sounds but perhaps we could try an-

other elimination method. Suppose youtrap one of these little beasts and holdinghim firmly in tweezers, pull his legs offslowly with another tweezers and havingenlisted that electronic genius your son,who is an expert on sound, to set up themost sensitive sound system ever devisedso that the screams of the dying bedbugwill be heard by his family and by everybedbug in New York with the result thatthey will all flee to Alaska and take ref-uge in Sarah Palin’s house. I would ad-vise against letting bedbugs into yourhouse even if you are a Tea Party mem-ber because they don’t vote and they biteyou even if you feed them and they layeggs all over the place as well as thatthey are always off somewhere at themovies, Sarah Palin’s jet armchairs, otherpeople’s luggage, luxury hotels, syna-gogues and mosques and churches andthey use you as a walking ATM for blood.

They are not nice and I think theyshould be deported to a place that is with-out blood. Any conservative country willdo.

The great writer, thespian and raconteur, Malachy McCourt.

By Robert Bazell,Chief Science and HealthCorrespondent for NBC News

It was the regular afternoon story meet-ing a few months ago for that evening’sNBC Nightly News. The senior produc-ers along with Brian Williams the anchorand managing editor listen as correspon-dents and producers present the proposedpieces that will make up that night’s broad-cast. Some offers make it. Others arechanged or dropped.

I was offering a piece about the resultsof an early trial of insulin pumped directlyinto the brain with a special inhaler as anexperimental treatment for Alzheimer’sdisease.

“Is this a breakthrough?” Pat Burkey ,the executive producer, asked me.

I was about to respond when just in timeI noticed the suppressed smirks on enoughfaces around the table to realize that I wasbeing set up. So I stopped myself fromuttering my typical, expected rant about“breakthrough” being the ultimate mean-ingless cliché in science and medical re-porting. I saved myself from a part in theafternoon’s entertainment.

Let’s put aside for the moment that“breakthrough” has long been a lazy sub-stitute for an adequate explanation of whyan experiment or new treatment matters.Where does it originate?

It is the most common of the militarymetaphors invoked in medicine and medi-cal reporting most often for cancer, but byassociation with other conditions that canbe difficult or impossible to treat includingAlzheimer’s. We have had a “War on Can-cer” for almost forty years. We seek to“overcome the dreaded enemy” consist-ing of “invading” cells “overwhelming thebody’s defenses.” We work to “kill” theinvaders with “all the weapons in ourarmamentarium.” The attack can summonchemical weapons (the first cancer che-motherapy, mustard gas, was first devel-oped as a weapon of war) Treatment alsocalls in radiation attack and of course sur-gery.

The military medical metaphor ex-change goes in both directions. We hearoften of “surgical” airstrikes which equateto a cancer doctor removing all the tumorwith as little healthy tissue as possible. Butinevitably in cancer treatment as withbombing runs there is often “collateraldamage.”

“The Iraqis are sick people and we are

the chemotherapy,” US Marine CorporalRyan Dupre told the Times of London re-porter Mark Franchetti shortly after abloody battle outside the Iraqi city ofNasiriya in the spring of 2003.

The confluence of military and medicallanguage did not begin with our currentcancer “crusade.”

“A murderous array of disease has tobe fought against, and the battle is not abattle for the sluggard,” wrote ThomasSydenham, often portrayed , as theHippocrates of England in the mid-17thcentury. “I steadily investigate the disease,I comprehend its character, and I proceedstraight ahead, and in full confidence, to-wards its annihilation”

These days the military metaphors stickmostly to cancer and other incurable con-ditions like Alzheimer’s precisely becausethe “wars” against them have enjoyed rela-tively few successes. In the seminal workon this subject “Illness as Metaphor,” Su-san Sontag wrote that the military meta-phors for cancer persist as a “vehicle forour insufficiencies” regarding our attitudesabout death as well as an array of socialand economic challenges. Just as tuber-culosis carried a metaphor of romanticdeath before the advent of antibiotics totreat it, Sontag predicted that, as cancer

treatments improve, “the cancer metaphorwill be made obsolete…long before theproblems it has reflected so vividly will beresolved.”

Abraham Fuks of McGill University(whose works provided me with some ofthe quotes above) argues that militarymetaphors are part of “the shift of atten-tion of the physician from the patient tothe disease entity.” Because of the mili-tary metaphors, the patient’s body be-comes the battlefield where the heroicphysician fights “the enemy”. Meanwhilethe patient, like the civilian population in awar zone is reduced to the bystander of-ten suffering extensive unintended harm.Medicine could do a better job, Fuks ar-gues, by thinking more in terms of patientsand not just the diseases that afflict them.

Medical journalism, I would argue couldserve its audiences better than simply de-claring whether or not a finding is “break-through” (through the enemies defense).Certainly at NBC my views on the matterare known all too well.

My report on insulin as a potential treat-ment for Alzheimer’s did air that night al-though like almost everything in medicalresearch the early findings must be re-peated in a larger, longer study. Stay tunedfor further breakthroughs.

NOVEMBER 2011 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 3

The Question Box

The great Sandy Koufax’s perfect game for the Los Angeles Dodgers against theChicago Cubs on September 9, 1965.

The “shot heard round the world,” Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning, epic home run forthe New York Giants against Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Groundson October 3, 1951. It endures as perhaps the most dramatic play in baseball history.Thomson seen here in ecstatic embrace with Giants manager, Leo Durocher.

Oklahoma’s record 47 game winning streak came to a stunning end in 1957 with atouchdown by Dick Lynch, rolling around right end from 3 yards out, one of the greatesttouchdowns in collegiate football history.

By Ray Corio

Ever wonder about the aver-age weight of major league umpires?Or if a perfect game can includean error by the winning team? Orwhy baseball players spit so often?

Quite a few readers were curiousabout those and other such sports-re-lated matters, I learned, during my “in-terim” term tending to The New York Times SportsMonday QuestionBox from 1984-1993.

Over a range of more than 400 col-umns, distilled from an average of 15-20 letters a week, I answered roughly2,000 questions. But one I never an-swered stands out: which sport elic-its the most questions?

Baseball, unquestionably. By a cityand country mile. It made up more than85 percent of the letters submitted. Beit Super Bowl week, Kentucky Derby week, the N. C.A.A. basketball tour-nament, the Olympics or World Cup,readers wanted to know “If a runneron second base with one out leavesthe base too soon....”

The national passion for the na-tional pastime was just dandy for me,a lifelong sports nut encased in abaseball shell. So when S. LeeKanner retired in 1984 as the Ques-tion Box editor at The Times, this assis-tant sports editor, naturally, was askedto pinch-hit until a successor emerged.

What an at-bat!

By the time the column was retirednine years later, I had been nicknamed“Mr. Box” and designated as thestaff’s go-to guy for any reporter oreditor in the entire newsroom.

Beyond the newspaper, friends andrelatives also caught on. “Hey Ray,I’ve got one I bet you can’t answer,” became a daily challenge, and nuisance.

The column, born whenSportsMonday was created in 1978,invited readers to submit questions onany aspect of sports: statistics,records, rules or strategies. Soundsdry, even by Times standards, so Iwould enrich the answers with asmile or two. And a cartoon by TomBloom with a witty caption helped, too.

Letters arrived from all types, par-ticularly doctors, teachers and retir-ees; lots of retirees.

There were inquiries from Brazil(basketball), Canada (curling), and theentire United States (fencing, boxing,six-day bicycle races, etc.) Even aquestion from my former high schoolmathematics teacher, who remem-bered me from the school newspa-per. That led to a reacquaintance.

Another reader wondered if I wasrelated to Ann Corio, the legendarystripper from burlesque days. It’s aquestion I’ve been asked manytimes, and the answer is still, ‘’Noteven barely.”

As for sports questions, they of-ten demanded research, which oftenturned up an irony or interestingnote that upstaged the original ques-tion. This was all pre-Internet, so mysources were record and rules books,as well as phone calls to team mediadirectors (not so good), halls of fame(better), headquarters for the sports(even better), the Elias Sports Bureau(always reliable) and often majorleague umpires like Marty Springstead(the best). I learned never to dis-agree with umpires.

Over the years, I also learned how truly popular Babe Ruth, Ted

Williams, Joe DiMaggio, SandyKoufax, and the Bobby Thomson-Ralph Branca dynamic still are.

Here’s a sample question:

If a Dodger fielder dropped a foulpop during Sandy Koufax’s perfectgame against the Cubs in 1965, wouldthe perfect game be spoiled?

The answer: Hardly, so long asKoufax retired the batter and everyother one without anyone reachingbase. But the fielder would becharged with an error for ‘’prolong-ing the player’s at-bat.” So therewould be an error for the winning teamin a perfect game by the winningpitcher.

And this one: Did Bobby Thomsonhit any other home runs off RalphBranca in 1951 before the pennant-winning ‘’shot heard ‘round’ theworld” in the playoff against theDodgers?

The answer: Thomson hit two oth-ers off Branca that season, one inthe first playoff game two days ear-lier. Interestingly, Branca allowed 19homers that year, 11 to the Giants,and Thomson hit 8 of his 32 homersoff the Dodgers.

For one question, I got the an-swer directly from the subject, DickLynch, whom I met at mychiropractor’s office (apparently a fre-quent hangout for ex –football play-ers).

Lynch was a former Notre Damehalfback and defensive back, whose3-yard touchdown run against Okla-homa in 1957 ended college football’slongest winning streak at 47 games.A reader wondered if Lynch had everplayed at running back during his ca-reer with the New York Giants inthe National Football League.

“I never had a down in thepros,” Lynch told me, pointing outthat the Giants were so successfulthat they kept him at defensive back and kick returner. Lynch man-aged 37 interceptions and scored 7 touchdowns, but the player whocarried the day for Notre Damenever carried the ball from scrim-mage as a pro.

That answer was obtained easily,but others, like the weight of umpiresand the penchant for spitting in base-ball, wound up in my can’t-answerfile, along with one I received a yearafter the column had been phasedout. It came from a marketing con-sultant in Englewood, N.J., a fre-quent contributor:

“Hey, what happened to RayCorio and his Q&A?”

Barney Stein

Losing pitcher Ralph Branca.

PAGE 4 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2011

Observations from Down Under

Continued on Page 6

Society of the SiluriansOfficers 2011-2012

PresidentTONY GUIDA

First Vice-PresidentHERBERT HADAD

Second Vice-PresidentGARY PAUL GATES

SecretaryJOAN SIEGEL

TreasurerMORT SHEINMAN

Board of GovernorsLEO MEINDLGOVERNOR EMERITUS

LINDA AMSTERBETSY ASHTONIRA BERKOWEVE BERLINERJERRY ESKENAZIALLAN DODDS FRANKRICKI FULMANLINDA GOETZ HOLMESMYRON KANDELBERNARD KIRSCHROBERT D. McFADDENBEN PATRUSKY

Committee Chairpersons

AwardsEVE BERLINER

DinnerMORT SHEINMAN

LegalKEN FISHER

MembershipMORT SHEINMAN

NominatingMYRON KANDEL

Silurian Contingency Fund TrusteesLARRY FRIEDMAN,CHAIRNAT BRANDTJOY COOKMARK LIEBERMANMARTIN J. STEADMAN

Silurian NewsEVE BERLINER, EDITOR

Continued from Page 1

Son of Sam Terrors

Continued on Page 6

1977, by a turn of fate, I was assigned tothe 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift as a vacation fill-in. The fateful evening started slowly. Buttoward midnight we were hearing mur-murs from headquarters that detectiveswere pursuing a lead in Yonkers. We weregetting leaks–the suspect was a post of-fice worker and investigators had foundhis battered car.

The news travelled fast. We awaitedan official press conference. But 1977was an election year and Mayor AbrahamB. Beame, fighting for his political life,wanted to be on hand for the announce-ment. That meant nothing definitively un-til after 1 a.m.

Meantime, rumors of an arrest wereswirling and I was told to start writing.Like a mirage, the news room filled upwith veteran reporters, offering their ser-vices for one of the great news stories ofthat or any era. Editor Mike O’Neill ar-rived from his home in Westchester, acopyboy having dropped him off at TheNews before parking his car.

O’Neill promptly bumped Bill Umstead,the night assistant managing editor, fromthe news slot–a humiliation the lateUmstead never forgot. Some minuteslater, into the now busy and hummingnews room, came a police officer in uni-form, escorting a black youth.

He asked to see O’Neill. “He was driv-ing your car,” the officer told the editor.“Do you know him?”

“Yes,” O’Neill said. “He’s my driver.”More facts were coming in from Doyle

and Yonkers sources. The suspect, ar-rested outside his Yonkers apartment, hadtold detectives: “Well, you got me.” In-side his cluttered car, cops found not onlythe Bulldog .44 caliber weapon, but alsoa fully loaded submachine gun and a let-ter addressed to Suffolk County police.He apparently planned to hit theHamptons next.

Meantime, it occurred to me that in thepell-mell fury of writing we didn’t have

the suspect’s name from police. I turnedto Brian Kates, in the next seat, who wasphoning everyone he knew in Yonkerswhere he used to work.

“Do you have a name for the perp?” Iasked.

“Yes,” he answered. “DavidBerkowitz.”

It was one of those jarring moments.Any name is possible. But Berkowitz? Iknew a few people named Berkowitz andnone of them was a serial killer.

Finally, well after 1 a.m., in a scene ofbedlam, the mayor made the announce-ment that his constituents were aching tohear: “I am happy to announce that thepeople of the City of New York can resteasily this morning because the police havecaught the person known as Son of Sam.”

Back in the news room, O’Neillshouted, “Keep writing.” Pages wereadded to the news hole to make room forsidebars and pictures.

My lead remained unchanged. (“A 24-year-old, gun-loving mailman was arrestedlate last night as Son of Sam, the .44 cali-ber killer who has terrorized New Yorkfor more than a year and murdered sixyoung people. ‘Well you got me…’”). But

New York Daily News

Serial killer, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, who stalked and killed his victims, set off apanic that consumed the city.

inserts and urgent updates were addedthrough the night.

Staff members called the victims’ fami-lies for comment. When we got infor-mation that Berkowitz may have grownup in the Glen Oaks section of Queens,reporters scoured the now-quaint cross-street phone book for the names of resi-dents to call. A reporter was dispatchedto Glen Oaks, presumably to knock ondoors at 3 a.m. and ask if anyone knewBerkowitz. Another tip: he had attendedhigh school in the Bronx. These develop-ments became grist for the followingday’s editions.

Another mystery was solved. Wheredid Berkowitz get the weapon? He hadserved with the Army in Vietnam, a de-

New York Daily News

The rampage of murder comes to an end.

tective explained, and “it was a gift froma buddy” in May or June, 1976. He hadalso been trained in guerrilla warfare,which could explain his stealth moves intracking his victims.

A front page proof came up. Acopyeditor, Harry Demarsky, didn’t likethe headline–thought it had Berkowitz ar-rested and convicted–and so told O’Neill.The editor redid the headline to its iconicstate: NAB MAILMAN AS .44KILLER.

We learned how police broke the case.A vigilant dog-walker had come forwardfour days after the Bensonhurst attackand told police she remembered seeing acream-colored Ford Galaxy parked ille-gally near a fire hydrant. The killer“looked right in her face,” a detective said.Berkowitz’s car had been ticketed anddetectives were able to trace the ticketback to Berkowitz’s Yonkers address.

At 5:10 a.m., a police official con-firmed the .44-caliber gun seized inBerkowitz’s car was the weapon used inthe murder of his last victim. Also in hiscar was the trove of a sick mind: A pairof men’s underpants, soiled maps, news-paper clippings of his six murders–and theparking ticket.

NYPD Police File

The first Son of Sam letter to CaptainJoseph Borrelli of the New York City PoliceDepartment.

Radioman Eric Williams, now broadcasting from Melbourne, Australia,with former President Bill Clinton.

By Eric Williams

Melbourne, Australia – When lookingat the local newspapers, and viewing thenewspapers from back home online, thelate New York Times columnist, WilliamSaffire, would have a field day. Now Iam not professing to come anywhere nearthe brilliance of the late master of the ori-gin of various English words, but one thingbecomes clear for this ex-pat: I may bein an English speaking nation, but we donot speak the same language. Or write it,for that matter. This is especially true inthe matter in which headlines are written,or the reporting of certain events.

One case in point is the recent sen-tencing of Judith Moran, the mother of

one of Mel-bourne’s crimefamilies. Hereis a 60-ishwoman whohas lost twosons, and twohusbands inthis city’sgangland warso f r e c e n tyears. JudithMoran wasfound guilty ofplanning outthe gangland-style murderof her brother-i n - l a w ,D e s m o n d

‘Tuppence’ Moran, in broad daylight, ona calm weekday afternoon in Ascot Vale,a wealthy Melbourne suburb, in June2009.

Moran, 66, had received a stiff 26 yearsentence in August of this year, and thelocal papers screamed with headlines,and sub-titles, depicting Moran as, “A sadold hag with a tragic past.” While theHerald Sun court reporter, Paul Ander-son, started the first paragraph of hisstory with a quote, “Judy Moran was anevil witch who deserved a lonely death injail.”

This is not to say that American, andespecially, New York City newspapers,in general, do not use harsh terms whendescribing the act of a bad guy. But the

use of such words, and phrases, “sad oldhag” and “evil witch,” struck this writeras raw, and edgy.

Testimony during the dramatic trial hadrevealed a riff between ‘Tuppence’ andJudy Moran. ‘Tuppence’ had paid his sis-ter-in-law $4000 dollars a month follow-ing the death of his brother, and nephews,but he grew tired of that near decade-long arrangement, and confronted Judyin early 2009 about it. Judith Moran, wholived the lavish life of a gangster’s moll,had believed ‘Tuppence’ had access to afortune of ‘Black’ money “stooked” away(as the local papers put it) by her late gang-ster husband, Lewis. The secret stash ofso-called ‘Black’ money has not beenfound, and the fate of Desmond‘Tuppence’ Moran, is now in the recordbooks.

What also strikes me is the use of cer-tain English words and phrases one wouldnever see in an American publication.Phrases such as a ‘Standover man,” usedfor the muscle, or enforcer by a gangster,comes to mind. A “punter,” or gambler,and the act of “punting” is another thatjars the senses. One sentence by An-drew Rule, the noted Herald Sun associ-ate editor, and crime reporter, who is alsothe co-author of the UNDERBELLYbooks, would make an American readerre-read the following sentence severaltimes. “Judith Moran had already movedin with another violent career criminal,Lewis Moran, who had graduated frompick pocketing and standover to whole-sale and retail drug dealing to subsidisehis punting.” If you didn’t know what

NOVEMBER 2011 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 5

Witness to History

Continued on Page 6

Continued from Page 1Runnymede Park, a mother figure tothem all. Her powerful story and searingphotographs of the Jewish refugees sur-rounded on all sides by a barbed wirecage, raising the Union Jack flag – theflag of Great Britain – upon which theyhad defiantly painted the hated Swastika– was published by the New York Her-ald Tribune on its front pages in Paris andNew York, picked up by the AssociatedPress, and seen around the world!

It’s been an epic life.* * *

It all began on September 30, 1911 inBrooklyn, New York, Ruth, one of fivechildren born to Gussie and David Gruber,émigrés from Russia with aspirations fortheir daughter. They resided at 14Harman Street in Bushwick in an insularloving Jewish world and Ruth dreamedof being a writer. Her father gave her alittle upstairs space to work and Green-wich Village on Harman Street was born.A poet at age 15.

But Ruth had to get away. She had toget out of Brooklyn. She had to get awayfrom her family and the cocoon whereshe couldn’t breathe. She loved her fam-ily but she needed to break free.

In 1931, Ruth won a fellowship fromthe Institute of International Education tostudy in Cologne, Germany where shelived with a German Jewish family, theHerz’s, and their daughter, Louisa, andwon a Ph.D in one year’s time from theUniversity of Cologne. At age 20 shebecame the youngest person in the worldto receive a doctorate. The subject of herthesis: “Virginia Woolf: The Will to Cre-ate As A Woman.” Ruth was mesmer-ized by her courage to write as a womanand believe in herself as a woman.Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” be-came her bible. She would ultimatelybe invited to tea by Virginia Woolf, theimage of Virginia in her long silk gownlying in front of the fireplace, a cigarettebetween her fingers, endures still; theletters they exchanged, one of her life’streasures.

The most ominous, portentous experi-ence of her year-long stay in Germany,never to be erased from the mind, washer attendance at an enormous Hitlerrally in 1932. Hitler on the march, theHerz’s, her German host family, nearhysterical at her unyielding determinationto go. She traveled by herself across theRhine, and there, in a huge fair groundsfilled with hundreds of thousands ofpeople, she was seated in an area re-served for German citizens. She foundherself remarkably close to the podium,surrounded by tens of thousands of brownuniforms, SS troops with Swastikas em-blazoned on their arms. At last, the doorsflung open and Hitler entered, surroundedby thirty bodyguards. A total silence fellupon the stadium. No one dared to speakor move.

She could never forget that voice. Itwas unlike anything she had ever heard .Piercing and almost subhuman, terrify-ing in its fever pitch of emotion and evil,its mad crescendo screamed over andover: “Death to the Jews. Death toAmerica!”

* * *Gruber returned to the United States

and at age 24 was personally asked byHelen Rogers Reid, publisher of The NewYork Herald Tribune, to join that greatpaper’s staff as a special foreign corre-spondent.

Gruber became the first foreign cor-respondent to fly through Siberia into theSoviet Arctic! The year,1935. Stalin’slong rumored Gulag was expanding.Gruber penetrated the Siberian Gulag, in-terviewed Soviet political prisoners ex-

iled in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet So-cialist Republic of.Yakatsk. She inter-viewed and photographed the exiles.There were said to be tens of thousandsof prisoners all over Yakutkia Republic,Gruber pushing deeply into the Soviet Arc-tic, traveling to Igarka, near the ArcticCircle.

With the outbreak of World War II in1941, Ruth Gruber was asked by HaroldL. Ickes, President Roosevelt’s Secretaryof the Interior, to become his special as-sistant. Shortly thereafter, she was dis-patched to Alaska! The ostensible pur-pose of her exploration was to determine

Photograph by Ruth GruberRefugees awaiting forced deportatation from Haifa, 1947.

Courtesy of Ruth Gruber

A young Ruth Gruber at her typewriter.

the feasibility of homesteading woundedand shell-shocked returning Americansoldiers to the Alaska Territory. Gruberdocumented frontier life and the uniquerole of women, traveling the Alaska fron-tiers. She fell in love with Alaska. Shebecame enchanted with the Eskimos andtheir way of life, and the powerful rolethat women played in their society.

Upon her return to the United States,the U.S. House of Representativesblocked the pay of Dr. Ruth Gruber de-claring, “It was time to stop the propa-ganda of Communism.” Her new book,“I Went to the Soviet Arctic,” expressed“Communistic philosophy.”

“Any of us who vote to pay thiswoman’s salary is not fit to sit in theHouse of Representatives,:” shoutedRep.Taber.

Here is the book’s closing sentence:“But I know that some day I shall go

back, and bathe again in the Yenisel atMolokov Island, take midnight walks inIgarka, work with its newspaper peopleand pioneers, get up at dawn at a polarstation, swim in the Arctic Ocean and rushback to a steaming breakfast shouting“Zdravstvuitye” until that full-mouthedgreeting seems to ring across the Arc-tic.”

* * *In 1944, while war and Holocaust

raged, Gruber was assigned a secret mis-sion to escort 1,000 Jewish refugees fromEurope to the United States, in what wouldbe a harrowing voyage of sanctuary. Act-ing on executive authority, PresidentRoosevelt secretly circumvented the gov-ernment policy of strict quotas that keptour doors effectively sealed against East-ern European Jews, and moved to giveshelter to 1,000 Jewish refugees. Hedropped the project in the lap of InteriorSecretary Harold Ickes who assignedRuth Gruber to lead the mission. Ickesformally declared Gruber to be a Gen-eral. In the event the military aircraft inwhich she was flying to Europe was shotdown by the Nazis, her life would be pro-tected by the Geneva Convention.

Throughout the 13 day rescue, theArmy troop transport Henry Gibbins washunted by Nazi seaplanes and U-boats.In the end, the refugees were locked be-hind a chain link fence with barbed wireat Fort Ontario in Oswego New, York, thethreat of deportation at war’s end a cruelreality. Gruber fought on, lobbied for theUnited States to give them permanentrefuge.

When the war ended the Oswego refu-gees remained in America.

This was the only attempt by theUnited States government to shelter Jew-ish refugees during the Second WorldWar.

* * *In 1946, Ted Thackrey, editor in chief

of The New York Post, asked Gruber tocover the work of a newly created Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Pal-estine.

The Committee was to decide the fateof 100,000 Jewish refugees who were liv-ing in European camps as displaced per-sons, [DPs]. The Commission traveledthroughout Europe, Palestine and the Arabcountries for four months, collecting tes-timony in Munich, Cairo, Jerusalem, Tyre[Lebanon], Haifa, Baghdad and Saudi

Arabia [Gruber not permitted entry] –with another month of deliberation inSwitzerland. They toured the displacedperson camps of Germany, many filledwith orphaned children. They went toDachau. They attended the NurembergTrials of the German war criminals,Gruber staring into the face of HermannGoering, head of the German Luftwaffe,dressed in his immaculate blue uniformstripped of its medals.

Ben Gurion testified before the Com-

Photograph by Ruth Gruber

Families from Romania reunite in Haifaport, 1951.

Photograph by Ruth Gruber

Holocaust refugees, imprisoned by theBritish in the hold of the Runnymede Park,which will transport them back to Germanrefugee camps,1947. Gruber was the onlyjournalist permitted on board by theBritish to accompany them on their terriblejourney.

PAGE 6 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2011

Society of the SiluriansPO Box 1195,

Madison Square StationNew York, NY 10159

212.532.0887www.silurians.org

In Memoriam

William Alexander

Gloria Clyne

George N. DeGregorio

Sidney J. Frigand

Bill Gallo

George Kimball

Marvin Smilon

Joseph Wershba

Gruber 2011 HonoreeContinued from Page 5mission, as did Chaim Weizman and GoldaMeir.

In the end, the twelve members of theCommission unanimously agreed thatBritain must allow 100,000 Jewish immi-grants to settle in Palestine. President

Harry Truman im-plored Great Britianto open the doors ofBritish Mandate ofPalestine.

But the BritishForeign Minister,Ernest Bevin, wouldnot relent.

The answer was“No.”

Britain renouncedits Mandate over Pal-

estine. It no longer wanted to rule.The nascent United Nations created its

own Committee – the United NationsSpecial Committee on Palestine –UNSCOP.

Tribune owner Helen Reid assignedGruber to accompany UNSCOP as a spe-cial foreign correspondent, traveling, onceagain, to Europe, Palestine, Egypt, Leba-non and Syria.

On November 29, 1947, the 58 mem-bers who comprised the United NationsGeneral Assembly began voting on thePartition of Palestine into separate Jew-ish and Arab entities, Gruber, in the presssection overlooking the proceedings, as 33nations including the United States ofAmerica and the Soviet Union, voted Yes,13 No votes, largely from the Arab states,10 Abstentions, Great Britain amongthem.

The State of Israel was born.* * *

Through the ensuing years, Ruth’swork has remained relentless – coveringthe Yemenite “magic carpet,” transport-ing of 50,000 Yemenite Jews to refuge inIsrael on “wings of eagles,”[1949], thesecret airlift of 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Is-rael, [1951], the North African exodusoff the coast of Tunisia and the ingather-ing of Jews from Romania, the SovietUnion and Ethiopia [1951 to 1988]. Ruthwould be the chronicler of every majorJewish emigration to Israel.

* * *The little birch bark cradle had been

given as a gift to Ruth in 1935 by an oldwoman named Marfa Mokhaolovna in asmall village near Yakutsk in the SovietArctic.

The 104-year-old Yakut woman casti-gated her for not being married andwarned her sternly, “Don’t wait too long.”She brought out a beautiful birch barkcradle and said she had rocked every oneof her 20 children in that cradle. It wasconstructed of birch bark ingeniouslycarved to fit a baby’s body. There was ahole at bottom’s end which emptied into abirch bark potty.

“It’s yours,” said the old woman.Ruth carried Marfa’s cradle back to

New York and sixteen years later rockedher own children, Celia and David, in it,who passed the revered tradition along toRuth’s grandchildren, Michael and Lucy,her daughter’s children, Joel and Lila, herson’s.

An unconventional spirit, Ruth Grubermarried Philip H. Michaels at the age of40 in 1951. He is the father of her chil-dren. Her second marriage to Dr. HenryJ. Rosner in 1974, occurred after her firsthusband’s death.

Ruth Gruber is the author of 19 booksabout the worlds she has traveled and thehistory she has witnessed. She was hon-ored in 2010 by the International Centerof Photography with a major exhibition ofa lifetime of her photographic work. She

Courtesy ofRuth Gruber

Ruth Gruber

is the subject of a searching and ac-claimed. 2010 documentary portrait en-titled, “Ahead of Time: The ExtraordinaryJourney of Ruth Gruber.”

Ruth Gruber, one of the great humani-tarians of the 20th century, a renownedphotojournalist of immense poignancyand power, fearless. There is in Ruth adeeply felt sense of self as a Jew, as awoman, and as a human being. She wasa feminist pioneer of immense courage,her life consumed by rescue, sanctuaryand liberation of the victimized, thehunted, her dedication to the fate ofthose she covered profound.

Her great hurt, she would tell the NewYork Times in February of 2001, is thatthe United States of America did not actto give refuge to the desperate, top offi-cials of the State Department deliber-ately, delaying the visas of Jews, the vi-sas of thousands of people who ulti-mately perished in Nazi concentrationcamps, a tacit acquiesence by the UnitedStates government to the annihilation ofJews.

“They knew what was going on.They knew about the death camps. Theycould have saved hundreds of thousands.

“The indifference haunts me, it hauntsme every day.”

New Members

Jon AndersonWriter, Columnist, Chicago Tribune, ContributingEditor based in New York, Time & Life magazines,Montreal Bureau Chief, Correspondent, Reporter andColumnist, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Daily News,currently, independent writer.

Joseph BergerReporter, Columnist, Editor, New York Times, Reporter,Newsday, Reporter, New York Post. Author of threebooks, Silurian Peter Kihss Award winner 2011.

Elliot BrownEntertainment Lawyer, Reporter, UPI -New York,Reporter, Chicago Tribune, Chicago American, PocanoDaily Record, Harrisburg Evening News and thePhiladelphia Inquirer. Roberta HershensonFreelance writer, Arts/Culture, Columnist, “Footlights,”The New York Times, Contributing Writer to the Times,Opera News, The New York Sun, Classical Singer andothers. Contributing photojournalist, The New YorkTimes. Carol LawsonAdjunct Instructor, Writing, New York University,Reporter, New York Times

Jane Weston LinskyNew York Times Staffer, Sunday Magazine, CultureDepartment, Arts & Leisure Section, Editor, SundayTelevision magazine Bill MaddenSports Columnist, New York Daily News, SportsReporter, UPI

Kate McLeodBoard of Governor, Overseas Press Club Foundation,Reporter specializing in Automobile industry:Contributor, The Houston Chronicle, Chief Executiveand Motion magazines, and online news websitesForbesAuto.com,Thecarconnect ion.com andAutobytel.com. Columnist, Girl Driver USA, syndicatedin newspapers and online.

Robin ReisigLecturer, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism,Reporter, Washington Post, Village Voice, The Ameri-can Lawyer magazine and the Southern Courier.Contributing writer “News of the Week in Review,”“Book Review” and “Travel” sections, The New YorkTimes, Copy Editor, and Editor Feature Page andOpinion Sections, Newsday and New York Newsday.

Richard SternSenior Editor, Forbes magazine, Columnist at the DailyNews, Editor, Institutional Investor. Director, Stern &Co., a media communications business.

Tabloid SensationContinued from Page 4

Dawn came up through the big win-dows of the Daily News Building. It wasnow the morning of August 11th. Thethunderous presses downstairs were stillrunning. Then, suddenly, we were told tostop. “Hold your notes,” someone yelled.From unionized drivers came word thatat 7 a.m. their night was finished. Withtheir stranglehold on delivery, there wasno other way to distribute the paper.Many drivers also worked shifts atMurdoch’s Post, an evening paper.

The Son of Sam edition flew off thenewsstands. The Daily News had beenselling fewer than 2 million copies a daysince the mid-1970s, down from the highsof its halcyon days. But it’s a safe guessthe paper sold more than 2 million copieson Aug. 11, 1977. No one doubted wecould have sold more if the drivers stayedon the job.

In the end, Americans saw a paunchy,nerdy-looking man with a disturbing smilewho had set off the greatest manhunt incity history. Berkowitz admitted to someof the crimes, but not all. He claimedmembers of a satanic cult were involved.While some experts put credence in his

claims, no other persons have ever beencharged. He contended he got his ordersto kill from neighbor Sam Carr’s blackLabrador retriever–hence his Son of Sammoniker. Reputed to be a model prisoner,Berkowitz is serving life in prison.

A postscript. Dreary news stories ex-ploring Berkowitz’s upbringing, drug useand demons ran for days without relief.Then, six days after his capture, on Au-gust 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died. The re-lief in the office was palpable. The King’sdeath brought a new cycle of stories, whileBerkowitz’s saga, though not his murderspree, drifted into history.

Thoughts Down UnderContinued from Page 4‘standover’ or ‘punting’ meant, you wouldbe lost.

Then there was one hilarious quote ofan elected official who referred to a col-league he had differences with, as a“Gormless git.” Gormless, of course,means one who is stupid, and who is notthe sharpest knife in the cupboard. Thequote made headlines all across Victoria,as it was about land rights for Aboriginalsthe two elected officials had clashed over.The word Gormless may be a far cry fromthe Yiddish word “Shumuck,” but bothwords do pack a punch.

What also packs a punch is the strik-ing similarity between what one reads inAmerican publications, and in newspaperson these shores, regarding the recentOccupy Wall Street protest events. PaulKrugman, the economic columnist for theNew York Times, referred to commen-tary by critics as widely spread over thepolitical spectrum from, say, NPR, toCNBC to the Fox News Cable Network.Krugman referred to what he called, “aweary cynicism, a belief that justice willnever get served, (that it) has taken overmuch of our political debate.”

Much could be said about critics of theOccupy Wall Street spin-offs on theseshores, like, Chris Berg, the widely re-spected voice of reason found in The Agenewspaper in Melbourne. Or, in contrast,by the Australian Rush Limbaugh-wannabe, Andrew Bolt, whose shrill com-mentary that there is an absence of spe-cific demands by the protesters shouldtranslate into not taking them seriously.Yet, reaction to that stance from bothpundits has brought a surprising storm ofcriticism from both readers of the news-papers that carry their critiques, and thebroadcast organs that air their views.

The Rupert Murdock-owned HeraldSun screamed with the headline, MAD-NESS, as the Occupy Melbourne sit-insreached a head with the arrest of 95 people.New York Daily News-like photos of theskirmish dominated the first seven pagesof the paper. Mounted police on horseshad surged through the crowd of roughly500 Melbournians, accompanied by attackdogs, pepper spray, and batons. The moresedate AGE placed the story on pagethree, with few photos, and little commen-tary. While the national newspaper, THEWEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, quite sur-

prisingly, had no coverage of the dramaticevents that took place in Melbourne’s cen-tral business district, at all.

In a quote right out of former New YorkMayor Rudolph Giuiani’s playbook,Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle,called the protesters “disruptive,” and thatthe original group of occupiers had beentaken over by “professional protesters whowere likely to cause trouble in the CitySquare.” He defended the tough tacticsby the state-run Victorian police in clear-ing the City Square, tactics that have beenwidely criticized in the public arena.

Also in the public arena is the sharp criti-cism of public gambling, or punting. Butagain, here is the use of the word that willmake an American reader look twice. Fromelected officials to the clergy to public ana-lysts, they all criticize the proliferation ofthe ‘pokie’ machines across Australia.Pokie machines are what Americans knowas the ‘one armed bandit,’ found in thegambling halls in Las Vegas, Atlantic City,and in Yonkers, New York, close to the racetrack. Gambling is big in Australia. So muchso, that even the Australian Football League(AFL) has a hand in the pokie machinebusiness. One could not imagine the NFL,NBA or Major League Baseball in the U.S.having a hand in such business.

This is not a criticism; I am just notingthe differences here between the twocountries in the matter of sport and gam-bling. There was no such event here, likethe 1929 World Series, where membersof the Chicago White Sox team hadcheated, and thrown that championshipcontest intentionally, to benefit bookies,and organized crime.

AFL clubs in Victoria control about2,500 out of the more than 30,000 pokiemachines in this Australian state. Publicrecords indicate that Victorian clubs, suchas Collingwood, the Western Bulldogs,and Hawthorn earn up to $30 million dol-lars each in annual pokie revenue. Newlaws to restrict the amount punters cangamble are on the table, and owners ofsome of the AFL teams are not happyabout it. This proposal, supported byPrime Minister Julia Gillard, has causeda crisis, and threatens to bring down heroffice.

What is clear to this observer is thatlanguage, politics, the media, and publicofficials mimic each other in similarways. They may say it in different ways,and use different words, but the result inpublic policy and message is the same.