j a m e s a. j o s e p h

S AV E D F O R A P U R P O S EA Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values

S AV E D F O RA P U R P O S EA Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values

J A M E S   A . J O S E P H

Duke University Press Durham and London 201 5

© 2015 Duke University PressAll rights reserved

Printed in the United States of Ame rica on acid- free paper ∞Designed by Heather Hensley

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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication DataJoseph, James A. (James Alfred), 1935– author.

Saved for a purpose : a journey from private virtues to public values / James A. Joseph.pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-8223-5896-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8223-7554-8 (e- book)1. Joseph, James A. (James Alfred), 1935–

2. Ambassadors— United States— Biography. 3. Executives— United States— Biography.

4. African Americans— Biography. 5. Ethics.

6. Leadership. I. Title.E748.J768A3 2015327.2092— dc23

[B]2015001927

Cover art: Photo by Barbara Banks, barbarabanks . com

Preface viiAc know ledg ments xi

Prologue: A Plane Crash in the South Pacifi c 1

I. The 1950s: The Genesis of Moral Consciousness

1. Growing Up Black in Cajun Country 132. Sunday Mornings in Louisiana 233. On the Banks of the Mississippi 34

II. The 1960s: Applying Values to Social Movements

4. A Spiritual Journey at Yale 455. Alabama: Th e Search for an Ethic of Protest 546. California: Th e Other War on Campus 74

III. The 1970s and 1980s: The Application of Moral Reasoning

7. Cummins Engine Com pany: Capitalism with an Ethic 958. Debating Disinvestment: A Visit to South Africa 1149. Th e Car ter Administration: Private Wants and Public Needs 12810. Civil Society: Th e Public Use of Private Power 149

CONTENTS

IV. The 1990s: Moral Lessons from South Africa

11. From Activist to Diplomat: Race and Reconciliation in South Africa 177

12. Dismantling Apartheid: Th e Unfi nished Agenda 19313. Ethics and Statecraft : What I Learned from Nelson

Mandela 21414. Presidential Diplomacy: Th e Clinton Visit to South Africa 232

V. The Twenty- First Century: Leadership and Public Values

15. Leaders Learning from Leaders 24916. A Lexicon of Public Values: What the Virtuecrats Did Not

Tell Us 264

Epilogue: Building Community by Design 277

Notes 285Index 291

A gallery appears aft er page 92

William Lee Miller described his book on Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln’s Vir-tues, as an ethical biography, “a book of a diff erent sort from those whose authors write about moral ideals and moral choices from the perspective of a commune, a sanctuary or a library.” Much the same can be said about this book. It is in many ways an ethical autobiography, a very personal account of a moral journey through a fascinating period of American history. It is a story of half a century of seeking to identify and apply values to all three sec-tors of American democracy: the private sector driven by markets, the public sector driven by ballots, and the third or so- called in de pen dent sector driven by voluntarism and the institutions of civil society. Th e manuscript was com-pleted while I was in residence at the University of Cape Town, and in the best African tradition of storytelling uses seminal moments from my own experience to raise critical questions about the relationship between private virtue and public values.

I have been encouraged to write this book by my students and faculty colleagues at Duke and the University of Cape Town, by graduates of the leadership program I launched in South Africa more than a de cade ago and in Louisiana aft er Hurricane Katrina, and by members of vari ous audiences around the world who have invited me to lecture at their universities and to speak to civic groups in their communities. I write with both strong per-sonal conviction and great passion. Yet this book was written with many au-diences in mind: students in public policy, ethics, theology, business, and public management courses; those who are developing leadership programs and designing curricula for leadership studies; managers in business and the institutions of civil society in search of best practices; and all those in the

PREFACE

viii • Preface

general public who want their leaders to be more moral, their institutions more humane, and their communities more caring.

Th e narrative is set against the backdrop of a continuing public debate about the role of ethics in public life. Th e prologue recalls a defi ning moment in the South Pacifi c when my rescue from a plane crash in deep and distant Micronesian waters left not so much an emotional scar as a sense that I had been saved for a purpose. I took the trip to help sort out a moral dilemma in American foreign policy; but aft er hours on a life raft waiting and hoping to be rescued, I was led when I fi nally reached shore to ponder larger questions about the meaning of life and the genesis of the human capacity to engage adversity without being consumed by it.

Part I begins in the segregated South, growing up black in Louisiana’s Cajun country. It was a time of brutal assault on both my dignity and my humanity; yet there was a refusal to hate and a development of the moral and spiritual intelligence that enabled me to rise above the hostility that could have so easily consumed me with rage. It was here in the 1950s that, greatly aided by the black church of my father, I learned to say no to the impulsive urge to respond in kind to those who used vio lence and intimidation to limit our reach, but could not stifl e our dreams.

Part II chronicles the search for values to guide my engagement in the social movements of the 1960s. Th ere is a fi rsthand account of the moral challenges in moments of great danger, trying to or ga nize a movement and integrate a community in Alabama that served as the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Th ere is also a report on painstaking but transforming experiences in California during the campus debate— oft en overshadowed by the Vietnam War— regarding the moral use of knowledge. Th e questions we raised about the civic responsibilities of a university, the public role of re-ligion, and the emphasis on res pect for the humanity of the adversary should have special relevance today for those who compete in the public square for positional leadership. Indeed, it was on the front line of activism in the tur-bulent 1960s that I learned that there is oft en no adversary more dangerous than the religious zealot or the self- described patriot who bars the door to social change because he is convinced that he is executing the will of God.

Th e chapters in part III share the insights of my eff orts to apply ethics to the more traditional leadership roles of a demo cratic society. My constant concern with what was the right thing to do kept me in the domain of ap-plied ethics, striving oft en to apply the ethical theories I had so studiously examined in my theological studies to real- life issues and dilemmas. It is a story of the professional challenge of a business executive seeking to make the case for capitalism with an ethic, including support in the 1970s for dis-

Preface • ix

investment from South Africa, a debate that led to the fi rst of many trips to that country. It is the story of a government offi cial seeking to distinguish private wants from public needs. It is also the story of a spokesperson for benevolent wealth raising moral questions and proposing ethical standards for the public use of private assets.

Th e chapters in part IV tell the story of four fascinating years at the end of the 1990s as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, the period in which Nel-son Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and others sought to reconcile both confl ict-ing images of the past and the deep racial divisions caused by the apartheid policy of separate development. Looking through the special win dow of an additional fourteen years of part- time residency in that remarkable country, this section chronicles my eff orts to distill lessons for the United States from the South African experience with forgiveness and reconciliation. It includes a look at what I learned from Nelson Mandela and concludes with a snapshot of the remarkable displays of presidential diplomacy by Bill Clinton when he delivered on a promise made to me earlier at the White House that he would come and visit.

Set in the early twenty- fi rst century, the fi nal section of the book is about leadership and public values. It tells the story of a partnership I launched and led between two world- class universities in South Africa and the United States to help build a culture of ethical leadership. It showcases the contribu-tions of some of the young leaders in the program who have gone on to high- profi le leadership roles in their communities and countries. Th e last chapter brings this narrative to a conclusion by identifying a lexicon of public values that have shaped and guided my engagement in public life, whether as a so-cial activist, a business executive, a government offi cial, or in the many other activities that have challenged me to integrate values into my work.

An epilogue off ers a portrait of the resilience of the people of Louisiana as I joined them in rebuilding their lives and literally remaking their state aft er Hurricane Katrina. As chair of the board of directors of the Louisiana Disas-ter Recovery Foundation set up by Governor Kathleen Blanco, I was able to help empower groups that had long been denied access to the corridors of power where decisions about their future were made. Th e journey that began in Louisiana had fi nally come full circle. Th e passion that was once refl ected in the strong drive to leave the state of my birth had been transformed into a passion to help change it.

I cannot name the many people who contributed to the writing of this book, both those whose insights are an im por tant part of the story and those who helped put the manuscript into print. But to all those who recognize them-selves in these pages, even when not mentioned directly, I express my heart-felt gratitude.

I owe special thanks to:

My wife, Mary; my son, Jeff rey; and my dau gh ter, Denise, who all encouraged me to fi nally give birth to this mysterious manuscript that I seemed unwilling to let go.

J. Irwin Miller, the former chairman of Cummins Engine Com pany, who was a re nais sance man and early mentor from whom I learned much about ethics and the bottom line of business.

Phil Sorensen, who brought me into or ga nized philanthropy and en-couraged me to think strategically about how social change takes place.

Pete Reckard, who was my pre de ces sor as chaplain of the Claremont Colleges and who lured me to California when I needed some time away from the intensity of the 1960s movement I had helped or ga nize in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Cecil Andrus, the former secretary of the interior, who persuaded me to join him in Washington as undersecretary of the Department of the Interior.

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS

xii • Ac know ledg ments

Th e fellows in the binational leadership program who encouraged me to share the lessons I learned from trying to apply ethics to leadership roles in business, government, and civil society.

My students at Duke, Claremont, the University of Cape Town, Yale, and Stillman, from whom I learned as much as I taught.

Arlie Schardt, a good friend who was willing to read this manuscript with the same thoroughness that led him to off er great editorial advice for my two previous books.

My staff in many settings for their valuable support throughout the pro-cess of this work.

Prologue

A Plane Crash in the South Pacifi c

It was August 1978. Jimmy Car ter had been elected president almost two years earlier and I had been persuaded to leave a comfortable job in business to join his administration in Washington. But here I was on an overcrowded life raft , thousands of miles away from my new offi ce a few blocks from the White House, waiting and hoping to be rescued. I had miraculously survived a plane crash in the South Pacifi c, had made it to a life raft , and was helping the wounded and hoping that my staff and other members of my del e ga tion were all alive.

Th e experience of waiting on a life raft , wondering whether I would survive the Mariana Trench with ocean depths of more than 18,000 feet, is not one I wish to repeat or recommend. But I recall it here be-cause it has caused me to refl ect oft en on the meaning of that moment. Was I saved for a purpose?

For centuries, visitors to the mostly tiny islands of Micronesia have called them paradise, with some convinced that if we could re- create Eden, it would emerge as a Pacifi c island. Almost perfect in their beauty and intrigue, some are known for their sharp peaks, coral reefs, water-falls, and beautiful lagoons. But others are remembered primarily for the bloody battles of 1944 when Allied troops sped across the Pacifi c to repel Japa nese invaders. Names like Saipan, Eniwetok, and Truk still remind us of the nightmare of World War II.

2 • Prologue

My trip to the South Pacifi c started out primarily as a visit to Bikini and Kili to meet with Micronesians who had been displaced from the Bikini Atoll because of nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s by the U.S. military. Th e soil still produced radioactive coconuts and was obviously unsafe, but despite the danger to their health the Bikinians had voted overwhelmingly to resettle their ancestral home. My job was to decide whether the Car ter administra-tion should agree to their request, thus honoring the demo cratic pro cess that had seen an almost unanimous vote of the elders, or act as guardian for the younger generation, who did not vote, but who by returning to Bikini would be sentenced to an early death.

Th e typical ethical decision involves a choice between right and wrong. Th e Bikini decision challenged policymakers in a diff erent way. We were caught in a confl ict between right and right. We were being challenged to choose between two courses of action in which each alternative was the right thing to do, but there was no way to do both. I had grown up in a black church and had oft en been moved by the “feel- good” inspirational ethics of my father, who was a Baptist minister. I had even gone to seminary to gain the tools for “objective” moral reasoning, but I had not really thought very much about what happens when there are multiple acceptable solutions— not the one right answer that I had been taught to fi nd. Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the holy host of ethicists whose teachings had fascinated me as a student at Yale Divinity School provided a good framework for refl ection about right versus wrong, but here I was on my own in public life trying to decide between right and right.

I deci ded to go to the Marshall Islands to learn more about what had in-formed the decision of the elders. Had they fully understood the information provided, for example? Th e Marshallese language had no word for radiation and radioactivity or for strontium 90 or cobalt 60, terms very new to me as well. Th e translation in Marshallese was “sickness” or “poison,” but the Bikin-ians could see lush growth everywhere. Some who had tasted the coconuts reported that they were larger and sweeter than those on the island before the people were removed.

In August 1968, President Lyndon Johnson had announced that Bikini was no longer needed as a nuclear test site, and that cleanup and rehabilita-tion would prepare the island for the return of its former inhabitants. Th e multimillion- dollar cleanup included burying test debris in fi ft y- foot pits, plowing up the entire island, and removing the topsoil. And in 1971, fi ft y thousand new coconuts were planted, and breadfruit and other foods indig-enous to the Marshall Islands were brought in. One former resident reported that every house on Bikini was so close to a drinking coconut that it was like

A Plane Crash in the South Pacific • 3

having a lemonade stand or free soft drink machine on the corner. To add to the magnetic pull of returning to their ancestral home, there was an experi-mental farm on neighboring Eneu Island where sweet watermelons, squash, and bananas were growing well.

Th e magnitude of the challenge I faced was obvious from the beginning of the planning for the trip, but while still pondering the dilemma involved, I deci ded to enlarge the trip to include the major district centers, and selected outer islands from the Micronesian group that included the Marshalls, Palau, Ponape, Truk, Yap, Guam, and other islands administered by the United States under a trustee agreement with the United Nations. We were nego-tiating the future status of the group of islands that had been taken from the Japa nese during World War II, so as an advocate for some form of self- government it seemed im por tant that I meet with as many representatives of the local people as I could reach in a two- week visit. Seeking to follow the standards of frugality that brought President Car ter considerable attention, but in retrospect very little credit, I declined the use of the shiny new plane the navy originally off ered for the trip and accepted the off er of the naval commander of the South Pacifi c region to use his plane instead. Th e bud get savings were enormous.

Ruth Van Cleve, director of the Offi ce of Territorial Aff airs in the Depart-ment of the Interior, had persuaded me to make the trip. It was not diffi cult because oversight of territorial aff airs was one of the many responsibilities I had been asked to assume when Cecil Andrus, the new secretary, and I discussed my role as the undersecretary. I would be the highest- ranking U.S. government offi cial to visit the area, and the Micronesian leaders, who were part of a culture that was rather rank conscious, were very excited about my coming. I wanted them to know that the Car ter administration took its responsibility for the group of islands very seriously. Th e people of Bikini wanted to know how soon they could return to their home. Others wanted to know where we stood on the completion of the status agreement.

A few months earlier, I had learned from Mrs. Van Cleve that Bikini was not yet safe for human habitation. Th is was very disturbing to the island-ers who had been moved off Bikini in 1946. Th ey had been relocated to Kili Island, fi ve hundred miles to the south, but throughout the years they longed to return to the home of their ancestors. While Kili was safe from ra-dioactivity, it was unsatisfactory for many other reasons, including the fact that the beleaguered Bikinians had been neglected for many years by their trustee, the U.S. government. I was especially eager to inspect the temporary facilities that were being constructed for the small group of returnees who had prematurely resettled on Bikini only to learn that it was still unsafe.

4 • Prologue

On my previous visits to the region, I had sworn in the governor of Amer-ican Samoa and represented the United States in a ceremony celebrating the new status of the Northern Marianas as an American commonwealth. I had become friends with the governor of Guam and always enjoyed the hospi-tality of the people of Guam. Th is trip was not very diff erent. I had spent a wonderful eve ning at the governor’s residence and headed for the Naval Air Station early on the morning of August 15, arriving at about 9:00 am for our scheduled 9:15 departure.

Our fl ight plan called fi rst for a visit to Ulithi, an outer island in the Yap District where I was to dedicate a medical dispensary before moving to Yap itself to participate in a groundbreaking ceremony for a new dock. But as we prepared to leave Guam, I noticed oil leaking from the right engine of the plane. I pointed this out somewhat ner vously to the navy admiral who had been my host and travel companion for the trip. He reassured me that this was not unusual and that the plane was one of the safest models ever built. I had no reason to doubt him, since we had been landing on coral reef strips and enjoying the aerial view of spectacular lagoons and small islands without incident for more than a week.

Occasionally during this trip, I read from a briefi ng book while fl ying between the beautiful and enchanting islands that give Micronesia its special allure. Aft er leaving Guam and soaring comfortably high above the ocean that had once known the turbulence of a vicious war, I started fi ngering through pages that had been prepared to remind me of the politics of the region and the culture and economy of a community for which I had di-rect oversight. Suddenly there was an unusual sound from the right engine. To the astonishment of everyone on the plane, the engine slowly stopped. I started fi ngering through my briefi ng book again. I needed a diversion. Th e fact that I had read everything in the book several times didn’t diminish the desire to go through the material again. As I contemplated the seriousness of our predicament, I wondered whether we would return to Guam where more sophisticated pieces of rescue equipment were likely to be available.

When it appeared that we were continuing straight ahead, I turned to Adrian Winkle, the high commissioner of Micronesia, to inquire whether we had reversed our course. I had appointed Adrian to his position despite some opposition from a power ful congressional committee chair, but all this was behind us now. Here we were settled together in the vip seats of an old navy plane with Wallace Green, at that time my deputy, sitting directly across fac-ing me, and Ruth Van Cleve, who, as my chief advisor on Micronesia, was sit-ting on my right. She said something about watching the horizon to see if the sun was in the right place. I had no idea which direction we were headed, so

A Plane Crash in the South Pacific • 5

I had no sense of where the sun should be, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Ruth as usual was elegantly dressed with high heels and expensive purse. She had once almost declined an invitation to accompany me to a ceremony at the White House because she did not have her white gloves.

Admiral Dave Cruden tried to reassure us that everything was under control by telling us that we were returning to Guam and the plane was ca-pable of fl ying back on one engine. A member of the crew even gave us the expected arrival time in Guam, but we deci ded he was confused since his estimate of how long it would take and what time we would land didn’t add up correctly. Ordinarily one would not bother to check out this sort of trivia, but I was not the only one who felt the need for diversion.

For the fi rst time, I felt a little anger. Why had the navy allowed us to be placed in this predicament? Why had I turned down the more modern, but very expensive, plane originally recommended? Aft er all, no one would give me credit for the budget- conscious decision to accept the admiral’s off er in-stead. Th e anger soon gave way to a brief moment of anxiety and fear. Th ere was tightness in my stomach, a shiver down my back, and a twitching on my face now tanned by the Pacifi c sun. Our plight was now obvious. We were informed that the plane was losing altitude and the crew would have to throw out our luggage. What an irony. Ricky Bordallo, the governor of Guam, had invited me to leave most of my luggage at Government House since we were coming back by way of Guam and intended to be in Yap and Palau for only a couple of days. I packed with this in mind, putting the things I needed in my tennis bag and attaché case, but I deci ded the next morning to take everything with me. Aft er all, I needed the additional space to bring back the colorful story board art I had been encouraged to wait until Palau to buy.

I tried to step back from all negative emotions, to expel the emerging threats from consciousness. Suddenly, I no longer felt anxiety or fear. Th ere was a surprising calm. My emotions were all positive. It was as if there was a limit beyond which fear could not go, and aft er it was reached, there was only calm. I remember very little of the fear, only the serenity with which I faced the succeeding moments. Having put on my life vest and assured myself that I knew the location of the fl ap that I needed to pull to infl ate it, I focused on the exit door that I knew I must reach quickly when we crashed. We had determined in an earlier conversation that Adrian Winkle and I were the only two passengers who could not swim, but even this was behind me as I completely blocked out any negative thoughts. Th e back door was opened and members of the crew began to throw out both the luggage and the musi-cal instruments of the thirteen navy bandsmen accompanying us to the gala ceremony in Ulithi.

6 • Prologue

I looked around for the envelope I had been instructed to use for my glasses, but fi nding nothing, I put them in my shirt pocket. Th roughout all of this there was complete quiet, a silent discipline that reminded me of mock combat drills at Fort Devens in Mas sa chu setts, where as a twenty- one- year- old com pany commander I had learned to repress my own emotions in order to set an example for the men under my command. My mind was suddenly fi xed on the terror in the eyes of the crewman who had instructed us to put on our life jackets. I did not feel his fear, but I was moved by the tears visible in his eyes.

Very soon the instructions went out to close the back door. Shortly there-aft er the plane touched down on the Pacifi c waters. I felt relief. It had been much smoother than I expected. I even felt gratitude to the pi lot. But within three to fi ve seconds, just as I started to unbuckle my seat belt, there was a second impact. Th is one was vastly more ferocious. Th e sound was deafen-ing. Th e plane was breaking apart. Luggage or bodies (it must have been bodies as all of the luggage should have been thrown out) were everywhere. I was obsessed with one thought— get to the door quickly.

Once at the door, I stood for a moment and realized that even though I could not swim, I had no fear. How could that be? I was standing at ocean level and could see nothing but water in every direction. Suddenly, I dis-covered that to my left there was a member of the crew infl ating a raft . He appeared to be the only other person ahead of me. I reminded myself to pull the string on my life jacket, but I had already deci ded that I could fl oat to the raft even if my vest did not infl ate. It was a strange time to think about it, but I remembered the hot aft ernoons spent in Sylvia Leeser’s pool in Claremont, California. Having been denied access to the local swimming pool in Loui-siana closed to blacks, I never did learn to swim, but I had learned in Sylvia’s pool to fl oat from one end to the other. Th e distance to the life raft seemed about the same.

I pulled the string, the jacket infl ated, and I jumped into the water. For-tunately, I did not recall Ruth’s observation during the life jacket demonstra-tion that there had been no mention of shark repellent, which she thought was standard equipment for this kind of fl ight. While I had smiled at the time, thinking about it then would have totally immobilized me in the water. But I soon approached the raft , where a crewman already there helped me aboard. Th en we helped others. Th ey kept coming. I wasn’t aware how many were alive, but I thought our raft was the only one afl oat. I looked around for Ruth, Adrian, and Wallace Green, my deputy who had accompanied me on previous trips, usually by slow ships and fast boats, through the treacherous waters of Micronesia.

A Plane Crash in the South Pacific • 7

Our raft was soon full, and then overcrowded. We were piled on top of each other and there were still others clinging to the side. I helped pull Adrian into the raft . He was struggling to get over the side, muttering quietly that he could not swim. I grabbed a leg, and two crewmen also pulled. He made it into the raft , but I still saw no sign of Ruth and Wallace. I could see other people in the water, so I knew there was hope.

Off in the distance, I saw a bag that looked like mine. I wondered how long it would stay afl oat. I could also see Wallace standing on top of the wing of the plane looking around; probably for me, since he had promised to stay close by when he learned I could not swim. Aft er about ten minutes on the raft , right before our eyes, our plane sank. As it disappeared from view, I saw two welcome sights: a second raft off in the distance and Wallace in the water swimming to a third. It looked for the moment like all thirty passengers had survived.

A fi xed- wing plane from the Guam Air Force base was now circling overhead. It could not provide any help directly, but it was comforting to know that we had been spotted. It was time to rearrange the raft . Two people were lying across my legs. One of them was in a state of shock. He kept say-ing that he couldn’t breathe. Several of the people clinging to the side were bleeding badly. I looked around and realized for the fi rst time that others in the raft were also bleeding. One of the young men who had been helping to pull others aboard actually had a deep cut across his hand. He had never complained but he was obviously in pain. I off ered to tear off a piece of my T- shirt, but he had a blood- stained handkerchief and he only wanted help in tightening it. To my continuing astonishment, I suddenly realized that I had a long (although not very deep) cut on my right forearm and a shorter cut on my left hand.

One of the members of the crew had a radio that he could not get to oper-ate, but he kept trying anyway. We all sat anxiously hoping that the plane we had seen above had notifi ed someone who could arrange our rescue. We also wondered aloud why it was taking so long for rescue vessels to arrive. Aft er all, we had been told that we were near Guam just before we touched down. Actually, we were farther out than we originally thought.

Finally a he li cop ter arrived. A couple of men— medics I hoped— jumped out and began to seek out the more seriously injured. Th ey operated with a precision and competence that I found fascinating. As a young lieutenant in the Army Medical Ser vice Corps, I had once taught medical evacuation classes to rotc cadets in New England. But here I was sitting on a raft watch-ing real craft smen at work. Th ey took those with the worst injuries and sent them up to the he li cop ter, going up with them as they were lift ed by a cable.

8 • Prologue

When the badly injured had been secured on the he li cop ter, they off ered to take me—as the ranking offi cial— next. But I could still see others bleed-ing, and my cuts, including a third one I had just discovered on my forehead, were more superfi cial, so I declined and suggested that they take another one of the more seriously injured. A ship soon arrived, but it continued to another raft . Finally, a second ship also appeared. Th ere was no ladder on board, so the crew threw out a rope, which I tied securely under my arms while three men on the deck pulled me up. Several hours aft er the crash, I was fi nally out of the water. But as I banged against the side of the boat, I even longed for the Jacob’s ladder— a rope tied together to function like a ladder— which I had come to intensely dislike during other parts of my jour-ney through Micronesian waters.

Once on board, I went below, stretched out across a bunk, and collapsed. Sometime later, I was awakened by someone wanting to know my name. I asked about survivors, but he had no information. He would check and let me know. I went back above to fi nd that we were arriving in Guam. Th e other ship was already there and ambulances were parked on the dock.

I was met by Governor and Mrs.  Bordallo and inquired immediately about Wallace and Ruth. Th ey told me that they were checking. I was taken to the governor’s limousine, where I waited to fi nd out about survivors. He and Mrs. Bordallo soon returned and informed me that Ruth and Wallace were both safe but had injuries that would cause them to be hospitalized.

I felt both relief and dismay, wondering if my family had heard about the crash and how my wife, Doris, would explain to my two young kids, Jeff rey and Denise, where I was and how close they had come to losing their father. What I did not know was that Doris had already been called by relatives who had heard an announcement on the radio that a plane carry ing a se nior Car-ter administration offi cial in the Interior Department had gone down in the Pacifi c, and it was not yet known whether there were any survivors. She had also been called by a friend with a diplomatic post abroad who, upon hearing the news fl ash on British radio, contacted the White House Situation Room. And just as she hung up and turned on the tele vi sion for breaking news, she received a third call. It was from Cecil Andrus, the secretary of the interior, who had been monitoring the news from the Situation Room. He informed her that I was safe and would be able to travel in a few days. Th e dismay I had felt earlier soon turned to grief as I learned that two members of the crew had gone down with the plane.

Th roughout my visits to small Micronesian islands and beautiful lagoons, I was reminded why no one at my level in government had ever visited most of these areas. Th e many risks I had taken partly explained why, but what I

A Plane Crash in the South Pacific • 9

saw and learned made the risks worth taking. Th ese islands were now the last American colony. Th ey were poorly equipped to function in a modern world. We had used the islands and their people for our own national purposes and made ourselves responsible for them, but we had not acted responsibly. On my way to the hospital to visit survivors, I thought as much about the neglect of these islands by their American patron as I thought about the dangerous journey I had traveled in search of an answer for not only the people of Bi-kini, but the larger Micronesian dilemma.

Aft er an eve ning at the governor’s mansion, trying to sleep and watching Mrs. Bordallo stitch together the holes in my badly torn shirt— the only one I had left — I woke up to the local newspaper headline, “Saved for a Purpose.” It seemed that aft er my rescue, while still struggling to fi nd my bearing, I was lucid enough to interpret the day’s event on a cosmic scale.

Th e sense of destiny I felt as a child was now reinforced, and while I could not imagine what lay before me, I knew in my heart that I had been saved for a purpose. As Carl Jung once said of himself, I felt as though my life was as-signed to me by fate and had to be fulfi lled. In the years since that fateful day in the Pacifi c, I have refl ected oft en on my good fortune. While the incident has left no visible scars, it has certainly left its mark. When I look back, I think not so much about the moment of anticipation before the plane hit the water, the time on the life raft , or the rescue, as I do about the values that led me to Micronesia in the fi rst place and how much my decision to go to the South Pacifi c was based on the same moral sentiments that now provide the integrating theme of this book.