BLOOMBERG:   ….South Korea will face “a very big obstacle to our growth” unless families have more babies, Gyeonggi Governor Kim said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. The government needs to be “more active” in providing child care and lowering families’ education cost, he said.

Women with careers, who tend “not to marry and not to have children,” have added to this “difficult” issue, said Kim, the third-most-favored candidate from the ruling Grand National Party for next presidential election, according to a Realmeter poll this month. Gyeonggi province has introduced incentives for encouraging government employees to have more children, Kim said.

South Korea’s fertility rate was 1.21 per woman in the last five years — the fourth-lowest in the world, according to United Nations data… (more)

EDITOR:  This is quite an irony for the Watchdog’s generation, some of whom were declining to have children due to fear of over population.  Because of work of a menial nature  performed in 1959 as a graduate student in economics for Professor Carlo Cipolla, one of the original researchers of the “Demographic Gap”, the Watchdog was among the first to presage the drop in birth rates that occurs now in advanced industrial nations whereby reproduction rates are less than the 2.1 child per woman required to maintain a stable population.   

In his Sunday News column “The media and the meltdown”, Gil Smart reminisces:  “I was 11 years old when Three Mile Island became a household term, my brother 9, my sister two months from being born. We fled to New York to stay with my grandparents. I didn’t understand the complexities of what was happening; what child could? But I had the creeping sense of running away from a monster, from something seeping toward us like a spreading, metastasizing virus.”

I was 42 years old, standing in a line to purchase tickets for a flight from Charleston, WV to Harrisburg, PA when I overheard a couple of ‘suits’  in rapt conversation about the news coming from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.   Since I had heard some accounts of problems with the reactors, I found their conversation sufficiently alarming to  interrupt with a question:

“We live about twenty miles from Three Mile Island in Lancaster County.  Is there any reason for me to be concerned about danger to my family?” One of the men  said “We’re nuclear engineers on leave to provide advice.  If my family were within twenty miles, I would get them out of there as quickly as possible.”

I exited the line, found a pay phone, called my wife and said “Please pack some bags and you and the kids should drive to the Philadelphia airport and take a flight out to Los Angeles to visit with your family.  Please do this within the hour.”

She did and for years afterwards I took a ribbing for having over re-acted.   Much later I learned that a partial melt down had occurred and we had been only a half an hour from possibly a Chernobyl type disaster.   Then I felt better about our actions.

Post script:  Editor Marv Adams also knowingly  discusses the TMI event in his column “The chill of March.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is from the Watchdog’s  journal entry of over half a life time ago.  It has not been altered, despite the embarrasing vanity of a young man.  I am told that the next day the New York Times carried a front page photograph from which I was  recognizable, presumably one that June Vance had taken and had been handed over to the Vatican authorities.  It was an inestimable honor to have been of service.

Sunday May 20. 1972 was our first day in Rome. I had unintentionally but carelessly affronted my mother-in-law June at the hotel breakfast table and my wife Terry and mother Hannah offered me condescending sympathy for my faux pas.

We had been traveling through France, Switzerland and now Italy together and until that morning I had evaded Mother’s suggestion that I take a bus tour with them. The tour races us through the streets of Rome stopping only briefly for others to take snapshots, and we all are happy when the bus parked before some relic shops on the fringe of the square before St. Peter’s Cathedral  so that we could escape to wander through the Basilica and see what we could of the Vatican City. Though my mother and I are Jewish, June a Christian Scientist, and Terry a Unitarian, we all looked forward to the prospect of seeing the Pope give his blessing at noon.

At my suggestion we first walked the length of St. Peters by the middle aisle so that we could get an overall concept and then returned to the front in preparation for viewing the chapels and art works that line the side aisles. June wandered over to the first chapel on the right which housed Michael Angelo’s famous Pietà, while I distracted myself, Terry and Mother by standing on the red circle near the front entrance on which Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope in 800 AD before the construction of the present St. Peters. Thirty five years old, the head of construction and management companies, owner of six apartment complexes in Central Pennsylvania, and father of three, my well-developed ego whispered in my ear that I was not unworthy to stand in Charlemagne’s place!

As I started to saunter toward the right aisle my attention was arrested by a flash followed by a man’s guttural cries and loud thuds. The spectators let out a moan as they stepped back in shock from in front of the first chapel.

I took a couple of steps to see through the crowd and saw a bearded man standing behind a large statue and swinging a sledge-type hand hammer while yelling to viewers. I turned to hand off my guide book to Mother or Terry, did not wish to waste the precious seconds to reach them and simply threw the book in their direction. No one in the throng had moved to stop this atrocious act and, as I ran up and swung my long legs and body over the banister that separated the viewers from the chapel, I studied the mad man, making sure that neither he nor any visible confederate had a gun (in which case I might well have changed the direction of my charge.) I ran up to the right side of the statue in preparation to grab his arm when he would aim his next blow. Since he was standing slightly to the right and behind the statue, he was in an impossible position to swing downward without having to risk being thrown by me from his higher perch. (Though never very athletic, I do stand six foot four inches tall, weigh 185 pounds, and jog a mile several days a week on our “farm.”)

But the assailant was not looking for a fight. Rather I was simply being used by him to turn to the second part of his pre-conceived drama as he quickly retreated upon my approach first to a thirty inch high pilaster to the right rear of the statue and then stepping up to the adjoining five foot pilaster which stood in the far right corner of the chapel. From there he shouted his rationalizations to the horrified crowd as I placed myself between the statue and him. As he was exhorting the crowd I felt the need to symbolically express my protest and, seeing a little plastic candy basket on the floor nearby, I stepped down momentarily, picked it up and futilely threw it up at him, harmlessly hitting him on the chest. By now several men had arrived and clawed at the madman’s ankles from below his perch. I had regained my elevated position between the madman and the Pieta. Several men yelled in Italian for the police who did not come. (We learned later that they had gone out into the square to prepare for the protection of the Pope at noon.) I thought it would be much better to allow the assailant to continue his speech making from his isolated and innocuous position until the police came rather than to pull him down and risk the crowd harming him. Nevertheless as others pulled at his ankles, I was caught up by the action and also helped pull him down but managed to catch him as he fell in my direction, absorbing most of his weight as his chest was caught between my left shoulder and my face, leaving me with the feeling of a bloody nose and an abrasion on the top of my nose which lasted several days. The crowd dragged him off as I ineffectively protested in loud English that they should not harm him.

As I surveyed the situation I saw the left hand of the Madonna lying intact as thought pleading from the floor. Scattered across the chapel were marble chips which several other men and I carefully collected and placed on the base of the statue. I carefully surveyed the area to make sure that everything appeared in order and that no one was pocketing souvenirs and then climbed out from the chapel. Men stood in front of the banister weeping as thought their children had been mangled before their eyes.

June had stood next to the assailant before he jumped over the banister into the chapel and had regained sufficient composure after the initial horror to take pictures on her simple camera which later that afternoon we turned over to Francesco Vacchini, a Vatican official and which, to date, have not yet been returned.

Terry had a shocked look on her face and tears running from her eyes and walked towards me clutching the arm of my diminutive mother. My wife had feared for my safety in that the flash and thuds had suggested a bombing and assassins.

I had no desire to await the reporters since I have shunned publicity all my business career, questioning the desirability of being readily recognized and fearing other’s envy and the exposure of the children to kidnapping. Those persons with whom I interact usually know who I am and treat me in a manner of commensurate with my achievements. Besides I am highly skilled in projecting to strangers the manner in which I expect to be treated.

As the significance of what had occurred sunk in as we attempted to resume our tour of the cathedral, I joked to my family- “If Catholics have been right all the time, while the rest of you are burning in hell I may will get a free pass into heaven.” The joke so caught my imagination that moments later, as I watched others dabbing their heads with holy water close to the scene of the recent disorder, I could not resist the urge- yes, me a confirmed agnostic with a Jewish background- to dab my forehead with the holy water lying in the fount of Bernini’s cherubs!

Every man must question his basic courage and decisiveness and I suspect that I have had reason to question my bravery and to consequently fantasize great acts more than most persons. It is gratifying beyond description to look back upon one’s cool and decisive response to an emergency and to subsequently bask in the adoration of one’s family. It also gave me an insight into what constitutes bravery.

A revelation to me from my experience is that most acts of perilous social service are probably performed by persons used to resolving problems, directing others and with a strong sense of self importance rather than by people who have less than normal fear.

As an example, I met a couple the following day who had been viewing the Pieta and they described to me how the assailant had jumped over the banister, ran up behind the statue, thrown off his cloak which knocked over the candelabra and, exposing the mallet, had commence his terrible attack on the Madonna. The gentleman who was apparently in his late forties and who came from Brooklyn said that his first thought was that it was “a demonstration to show that the statue was unbreakable”. Incredible? I think not.

Doubts and fears concerning whether he should act distorted the obvious reality. On the other hand, the years of being boss, of taking charge, of the gradual building of right to lead and decide caused me to unemotionally and calculatedly take the entire situation, evaluate the amount of risk (minimal risk for maximum results), and take proper action on four priorities as they became apparent: 1) Stop the damage to the statue; 2) Contain the madman until the police could arrive; 3) Try to protect the assailant from harm once he was neutralized; and 4) Pick up and protect the pieces from the statue so that it could be restored. I suspect that he men who lead the charges from the beaches into the enemy infested hills are those who are acting more from their habit of taking charge and their impatience with lack of decisive action rather than from motivations in common with individuals who perform dangerous acts to their persons such as tight rope walkers and test pilots.

After the Italian press (to the extent that my wife could glean from her limited Italian) seemed to indicate that the “foreign” tourists had stood immobile and that a woman had tried to sell her film to the highest bidder (June had given her film to the authorities), I finally went to talk to the Vatican representative of Il Tempo, a Roman newspaper. A former report from the London Times, Guglielmo Rospigliosi was gracious to make reference to my impressions in a follow up article the next day. According to Mr. Rospigliosi the assailant, Laszlo Toth, was a religious fanatic who thought it sacrilegious to portray God as having a mother and was only aiming his blows at the Madonna. Toth was a Hungarian who had most recently resided in Australia and repeatedly sought interviews with the Pope and apparently attacked the Pieta to publicize his beliefs.

In passing I mentioned that I had mistakenly assumed that the statue was made of plaster and that fine chips had flown in all directions and that the wrist and hand had appeared hollow. Mr. Rospigliosi excitedly related how two fingers had carelessly been broken from the hand a hundred years ago and that it had been drilled in order to make appropriate repairs which led to my momentary confusion of marble for plaster.

A favorite movie of mine is the western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” At the end Jimmy Stewart portrays an elderly statesmen in a moment of personal satisfaction with himself and enjoy great courtesies from a railroad conductor, as well he was entitled to having been a Congressman, Ambassador to England, and earlier and presently a Senator. His smugness is crushed when he realizes that the honors being rendered were strictly based upon the mistaken legend that Stewart had killed a desperado years before. As we had lunch after the Pieta episode in a neighborhood Italian restaurant not far from St. Peters, my Mother urged that I contact the papers and I resisted the strong impulse with the observation that after all of my building and business accomplishments and my aspirations for future successes, I would hate to be known by my acquaintances simply as the “man who saved the Pieta.”

By Robert Field

A few occurrences particularly stick out in my memory concerning the frantic election campaign in 1980 from which Arlen Specter rose from what most considered a political grave and surprisingly emerged as a United States Senator.  (Arlen was  a fraternity brother of my older brothers Martin and Joe at Penn and later attending Yale Law School with Joe.    Arlen and other college friends of my brothers, all destined to reach positions of distinction,  were frequent Sunday dinner guest at our house from when I was thirteen years old.)

Having switched parties to become a Republican and subsequently twice being elected district attorney of Philadelphia, Arlen successively lost a Philadelphia mayoralty race to Jim Tate, then was defeated for  re-election as district attorney, was beaten in  a tight primary race against John Heinz for the U. S. Senate, and was  finally rejected by the voters in a gubernatorial primary against Dick Thornburg.   Arlen’s political future was so bleak that he had decided to represent his law firm in New Jersey.  I recall the electrifying news only about eight weeks before the Pennsylvania primaries in 1980 that Republican Dick Schweiker had decided not to run for re-election.    Both Specter and I happened to be in Atlantic City on the following day and I excitedly ran to join him as he walked towards me along Atlantic Avenue.  We then went to lunch and I helped plan the forthcoming fund raising efforts…

Immediately upon Arlen successfully squeaking through the primary, I headed off to Pittsburgh, recognizing the need to solidify Republican and corporate support because Arlen had little popularity due to his liberal background, his change of parties, and campaigns against John Heinz and Dick Thornburgh and since the Democrat nominee was the popular former mayor Flannery of Pittsburgh.   Fortunately when you represent a senatorial nominee, there is no problem obtaining meetings on short order with CEOs of even the largest corporations.  A particular obstacle was Gulf Oil, whose top executives Arlen had savaged for alleged improper campaign contributions in  1975.  I placed call to Gulf’s president’s executive secretary, said I was in town representing Arlen Specter, and appointment was arranged for later that day.  I was impressed at Gulf, one of the Seven Sisters of world wide oil companies, with the calm and hush surrounding the executive floor.  (Top executives should always be surrounded with extra personnel to be able to effectively and promptly respond to urgent matters and emergencies.)  When I met Gulf President Lee, I started by telling him that I had known Arlen since my youth and both Lee and I recognize  that Arlen can sometimes be impetuous and say the wrong things.  Nothing more had to be said.  Gulf threw their support behind Specter.  To this day, I don’t know that Arlen knows that I made a semi-apology on his behalf!

As Specter’s statewide finance chair, I was summoned to the Republic Convention that spring in Detroit to meet with top officials of the Republican Party to discuss the forthcoming election campaign with the goal of obtaining greater financial support.   Arlen, wife Joan Specter, their son Shanin Specter, and the campaign manager Gordon Woodrow were asked how good a campaign organization we had and all spoke in the affirmative.   When they turned to me as Finance Chair I said “If Ronald Reagan thinks Arlen Specter is going to help him carry Pennsylvania, he’s mistaken.  If Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker thinks Specter will be there to add a pivotal Republican vote, he’s mistaken.  And if Arlen Specter thinks he is going to be member of the U. S. Senate, he’s mistaken too…   We are totally amateurish.  We need help in running the campaign.” Of course that wasn’t what Specter and the others wanted to hear when the invited me to the gathering.   I was all but ostracized from the Specter campaign….

Three weeks later I was at a Pittsburgh dinner reception in the back yard of the president of U. S. Steel Corporation.  I had succeeded in arranging for Republican Minority Leader Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee to be the guest speaker.  (Before it was known that Baker would attend, they offered to hold the event in a small reception room at a downtown hotel!)   I had a painful ingrown toe nail, had not been invited to the other events, and was watching from the rear, figuring this was my last involvement in the campaign.  A young man in his thirties walked up to me, asked if I was Robert Field, and introduced himself as Rob Mossbacher III from Texas.  He said “I’m an aide to Senator Howard Baker, your comments in Detroit were reported to him, and he has sent me to give the campaign and you all the assistance you need.” We got started the next morning in Philadelphia.  We never would have won without Rob’s guidance and interventions on our behalf…

I had to address the State convention of the National Rifle Association because Arlen could not make it (in retrospect, probably wanted to avoid it.)  Question: “What do I tell them on your behalf Arlen?” Answer:  “Anything you like.  But remember it may be printed on the front pages of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh newspapers the next day.” Those were my working orders for the campaign as I dealt with political and business leaders throughout the state and nation.

I had arrived in Pittsburgh in late October and received a frantic call from our tearful regional campaign manager.  She said that a representative of Governor Ronald Reagan’s campaign had called to cancel the breakfast that had been arranged a few days earlier.  She gave me a name and number to call, and I inquired what seemed to be the problem.  I was told they did not feel that we could arrange for 300 guests at a $250 a plate breakfast within one weeks time and the governor did not want to be embarrassed so they were cancelling.   I told him he was wrong, that we had anticipated the event and Pittsburgh, unlike Philadelphia, was a corporate town and the sponsors would arrange for all the seats to be filled.  He was not receptive.   I then asked him a simple question:  “What reason should Arlen give the attendees for Governor Reagan not having made the event?” He said “What do you mean, we’re cancelling.” I told him “This is a Specter, not a Reagan event, the tickets have been sold, and we are not about to change our plans.” He called back twenty minutes later to say the governor would attend.

It was about three days before the primary.  Arlen and I were driving down Second Avenue towards the State Capital for a meeting and I reminisced:  “I guess you feel better about having lost the race for governor now that you may soon be a United States Senator?” His quick and emphatic reply:  “Robert, I have never regretted undertaking any political campaign.  You can’t get a hit sitting in the bull pen.”

Arlen had been sworn in as senator and after a brief reception he and I walked up to his office.   He pointed to the chair behind his desk and said “Robert, you should be sitting there rather than me.” Although Arlen is a lot smarter than me and did accomplish some very good things, he gave me cause at times – especially since 2002 – to reflect that he may have been right.  (To be continued)