Showing posts with label 1966-1971. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1966-1971. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 26, 2011


I believe Dr. Hopkins had a number of models he'd periodically rotate on table display. I remembered the one above on the table when I stopped up once to the manor house, as I had made note of the strange hieroglyphs. There was a little man inside the cockpit, but the plastic bubble covering the cockpit was a bit opaque and hazy. This was likely the original model from 1954, manufactured by the Lindburgh Company.

Usually, the illuminated model was in steady use in the John Hopkins Spring mansion, and the saucer was lit up every evening it was there.

(Image courtesy Kimberly A. King, of Altamont, TN, Amazon Customer)

The Beacon













Beginning in 1966, the first year I first began visiting the estate on an infrequent and irregular basis, I was made aware that Dr. John W. Hopkins had installed a small beacon in the manor house.

This beacon was visible, through the windows of a great room that looked out towards the porte cochier. Resting on the top of a mahogany occasional table was a small plastic model of a flying saucer. Though always in view, the saucer was more noticable at night at night when it was plugged in and lit.


Dr. Hopkins never explained to any I know why he put the model there nor why he lit it at night when he was on the grounds. I thought it was a unique personal touch, and I was always strangely reassured by seeing the saucer illuminated at night when I walked past the great house on my way home. Just seeing that little bright saucer made me feel like a wayfayer seeing the porchlight welcoming me home, and that was all was well with the world.

The saucer may not have been exactly the same as the image above, which is the Adamski model. I recall Dr. Hopkins's model being a solid white plastic, which when glowed from within when lit like a nightlight and which had a small red bulb atop encased in a plastic bubble.

Here is a link to download the complete book by George Adamski, Inside the Space Ships.

http://www.universe-people.com/english/svetelna_knihovna/htm/en/en_kniha_inside_the_space_ships.htm
Retrieved: 7.25.11

Inside the model kit:
http://obskuristan.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/adamkitinside.jpg
Retrieved: 7.25.11

History of flying saucer model kits:
http://www.strangemag.com/scalemodelenigmas.html

Monday, July 25, 2011

Dr. Schoenfeld's Visitors to Williams College: Rhena Schweitzer, 1966-1971








Gene Schoenfeld was a busy man during his residence at Williams College, but I would encounter him now and again on the estate. One time, he lit one of the pathways for me by flicking on his motorcycle headlamp, twisting the handlebars as if he were aiming a flashlight, and so I was able to make my way down the slope in the dark of night.

One of Dr. Schoenfeld's more notable and surprising guests during that era was Rhena Schweitzer, the daughter of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who another resident on the estate remembered meeting at Gene's home at Farley Hall; she still regards this encounter as one of the genuine privileges of her lifetime. She recalled Rhena to be a sophisticated older woman whose very European bearing was memorably elegant and her conversation or observations quite intelligent and sophisticated. When Albert Schweitzer died in 1965, Rhena assumed the duties of running the hospital her father had founded.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer's sweeping worldwide celebrity during his lifetime is most difficult to explain now. He rarely appeared on the radio or television, and he became immensely well known only through his books and articles published about him or his works. The name Albert Schweitzer became synonymous with good deeds.


(Photo of Rhena Schweitzer from The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship
Antje Lemke (far right) with Albert Schweitzer’s granddaughter, Christiane Engel, and daughter, Rhena Schweitzer Miller at Chapman University)
http://www.schweitzerfellowship.org/features/giving/endowed_abl.aspx

Retrieved 7.25.11)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhena_Schweitzer_Miller)
Retrieved 7.24.11

(Photo of Rhena Schweitzer and Dr. Albert Schweitzer
by Erica Anderson/Syracuse University’s Schweitzer Collection, via Associated Press, 1963 from NY Times Obituary 2.28.09)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/africa/01miller.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1311639014-OPAjGuJbYCHjRUU1J86+xw
Retrieved 7.24.11

Physician Takes a Lease on Farley Hall 1966-1971










In 1966, Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld saw a newspaper ad for a place to rent in a Berkeley newspaper, dialed the phone number for his initial inquiry, and eventually rented Farley Hall on the campus of Williams College. Farley Hall was a building once used to house the English department at Williams College, and Gene remained in residence there from 1966-1971. Dr. John W. Hopkins was Gene Schoenfeld's landlord during that period.

Dr. Schoenfeld is an iconic figure from the sixties who continues his work and publishes to this day. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Schoenfeld early in his career worked with Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Gabon, Africa in 1960, served as a Ship's Surgeon for the American Lines in 1964, after which he settled in the Bay Area to continue his practice. He remains a highly respected and much beloved figure certainly for Bay Area residents.

Dr. Schoenfeld's column on health matters was first published in the Berkeley Barb c.1967, and his Dr. HIP Pocrates column soon appeared regularly in the San Francisco Chronicle, before being nationally syndicated. Schoenfeld's column remained in print steadily from 1967-1973 and was revitalized 1978-1979.

As an early claim to radio fame, Dr. Schoenfeld appeared first on the hip underground radio station KMPX (Jive-95) founded by Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue c. 1967. Dr. Schoenfeld was one of the first, if not the first, doctors to answer call-in questions live on the air. Gene continued with his broadcasts when the radio station moved up the dial to become KSAN, and soon he was broadcasting weekly (1971-1972). Everyone, but everyone, in the Bay Area and beyond knew Gene Schoenfeld as "Dr. Hip".

(Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D. Resume
http://www.eugeneschoenfeld.com/resume.html
Retrieved: 7.15.11

On March 7, 1969, Dr. Hip was featured in Time magazine in which he outlined his concerns:

"Why does he write his ill-paying column? Someone, he feels, should minister to the barricade brigade's medical ignorance, and "the best approach to any serious problem must be education." Now Grove Press has published a collection of his columns called Dear Doctor HIPpocrates — Advice Your Family Doctor Never Gave You. Yet Schoenfeld, at 33, has no desire to rise above the underground, 'where I don't have to censor my material.' Instead, from his ramshackle little bachelor home in the Berkeley hills, he continues his public-health work and the column for the sense of fulfillment it brings."

(Note to Time: Farley Hall was hardly a "ramshackle little bachelor home in the Berkeley Hills", but I guess that's how you preferred to write about anything to do with "hippies" or "the underground" at the time.)

(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839789,00.html
Retrieved 7.24.11

Here is a recent online television interview, where Gene talks about the golden years of the '60s and working with Dr. Schweitzer at his famed leper hospital in Lambaréné.

I remember that Dr. Schoenfeld always had a large photograph of Albert Schweitzer, obviously clipped from a newspaper, tacked on his bulletin board at Farley Hall.

The memory of Albert Schweitzer continues to inspire and be held dear, as this one statement about him best shows: "Schweitzer, however, considered his ethic of Reverence for Life, not his Hospital, his most important legacy, saying that his Lambaréné Hospital was just 'my own improvisation on the theme of Reverence for Life. Everyone can have their own Lambaréné.'" 1]

1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
Retrieved: 7.24.11

http://www.archive.org/details/JonHammondDr.Hippocrates_EugeneSchoenfeld_akaDr.HiponHammondCastKYOURADIO
Retrieved: 7.24.11


(Photo of Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld by Alvan Meyerowitz, 2009)
(Photo of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, Gabon, Africa, 1960 by Marilyn Silverstone)
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/Marilyn-Silverstone/1960/GABON-Dr-Albert-SCHWEITZER-NN132056.html
Retrieved 7.24.11