My friend Henry Myers died on New
Year’s Day, at his home on Peak’s Island, Maine, just a month short of his
eightieth birthday. The following Saturday, Joy and I drove to the Portland
Quaker Meeting House for his memorial service. Nearly two hundred of his
friends and former colleagues showed up to remember him and to console his wife
Mary. Speaker after speaker reminded us of Henry’s basic decency, his endless
curiosity, his love for Mary, his enjoyment of sailing, and his undying
impatience with fools, liars and incompetents. More than one summoned the image
of Diogenes in search of an honest man.
Henry was dismayed by the demands of politics that led
otherwise decent human beings to compromise on matters where they really knew
better. And of course he had no patience with politicians whose moral or
ethical standards fell short of his own, or whose beliefs and principles he did
not share. Henry was not a prig; he was just a very decent, honest man. He must
have written thousands of letters to those politicians, and to the editors of
newspapers and news directors of television and radio stations, expressing his
concerns about perceived wrongs. If he learned that a subject he cared about
was to be discussed or a political figure was about to be interviewed on a
television or radio show, he would send penetrating questions to the
interviewers or news directors to be put to the scheduled guest. Almost
invariably he would be disappointed that his questions were never asked, or
that the interviewer never came up with the follow-up question he would have
asked. Every now and then, however, an interviewer would follow his advice and
rattle off the questions he had suggested. The subject of the interview might
not be as obliging, however.
Henry produced an email newsletter,
the Casco Bay Observer, which he mailed to dozens of correspondents, expounding
on his concerns over the shortcomings of public figures or depressing
developments abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Articles about
deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian relations were headlined “On the Edge of the
Abyss.” He would often fly an idea past me (and I’m sure many others) before
launching it as a CBO mailing. Almost always he hit the mark. All too often,
nobody in a position of power noticed.
I met Henry in Washington, in 1962. A physicist, a
graduate of MIT and CalTech, he worked on nuclear weapons testing issues in the
Science and Technology Bureau of the newly formed Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency. I was in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where
I looked after the Arms Control Agency’s intelligence needs, keeping its senior
officials apprised of breaking developments abroad and assisting key staff
members like Henry. Later I left the State Department and joined Henry in the
Arms Control Agency. We shared an office whose inside door opened behind the
desk of the agency’s chief scientist Herbert (“Pete”) Scoville. None of us,
Pete included, cared much for
bureaucratic protocol, but Pete’s secretary Julie Krenzel did, and it used to
drive her wild when Pete would open his door to consult with Henry – and
sometimes me – just as she thought he was supposed to be in a meeting somewhere
else or entertain an important visitor. (Pete also kept bottles of gin and
vermouth in a wall safe behind his desk, and would occasionally violate State Department rules by
breaking them out to observe with other privileged officials what he perceived
were important ceremonial occasions. Sometimes we were included as well).
Working with Henry was a treat. As
noted, he had little patience with pompous bureaucrats or dissemblers, and was
forever looking for the Honest Man who too seldom appeared on the scene. But he
was endlessly polite, if not always patient, with fools and incompetents. He
strongest criticism of sloppy work was often “it isn’t clear” what a writer of an endless report or a
briefer at a conference was saying, when what he really meant was “this is pure
crap.” But when he set out to
perform a study and produce a useful report of his own, he was always thorough
in setting forth the points he was trying to make. His arguments were carefully
documented, and his conclusions seldom challenged.
Working with him was fun, too. Channelling Shakespeare, Henry
one day announced that working for the government was akin to being in an endless
theatrical performance, and would often allude thereafter (at least to me) to
“another act in The Play” in
response to particularly absurd events in the daily routine. In 1967 the magazine “Scientific
American” sponsored a “Great Paper Airplane Contest,” and Henry was quick to
respond. He and I tinkered with many designs in our office, but finally
concluded that the most aerodynamic and interesting design already existed in a
Styrofoam coffee cup. We would poke holes in the cups, add and remove fins, but
the best and most capable flyers turned out to be the basic unadorned cups
themselves. Henry (or I) could get impressive performance out of one by holding
it at arms length, dangling down from the shoulder, then rapidly flinging it
forward with an underhand throw, releasing it with a spinning motion. We got a
satisfying amount of distance out of our various designs, even if they did not
go into elaborate acrobatic maneuvers.
Neither Julie nor Gladys Cleek, our ever-patient secretary, were amused,
however, particularly when our contrivances flew out the door and into the
corridor, startling important bureaucrats on important business.
After we both left ACDA, Henry
first tried consulting on his own, establishing “Myers Associates” in his tiny
Georgetown living room. Joy designed a brochure for it, but it did little
business. In the tumultuous 1968 Presidential election campaign, Henry joined Scientists and Engineers for McCarthy
and helped develop position papers and press releases for the candidate. While
he was in Chicago for the infamous Democratic convention, he wisely stayed out
of the streets when Mayor Daley’s police went on a rampage, beating up McCarthy
supporters.
Henry then worked for the US
Congress, on the staff of the House Interior Subcommittee on Energy and the
Environment, concentrating on nuclear energy. He was at the center of investigations of the Three Mile Island and Brown’s Ferry reactor accidents, and
endless debates over nuclear waste disposal. He was frequently at odds with accepted
wisdom on nuclear policy, both domestic and foreign, particularly when the latter involved the Israeli nuclear weapons program. He became convinced, and argued
persuasively, that Israel had received clandestine shipments of enriched
uranium from a Pennsylvania plant, but domestic politics complicated all his
efforts to expose the diversion.
When he left the Interior Committee,
he moved to Maine, and to the surprise of his friends, bought a lot on Peak’s
Island, just outside Portland Harbor, and built a house there. Then, to the
even greater surprise (and delight) of all his friends who had became accustomed to
the likelihood that Henry would be a bachelor all his life, to the age of 65 he
married a wonderful Island dweller, Mary Lavendier. They settled in on the
island, though they also bought and restored two old houses in Waldoboro, on
the mainland. In Portland, Mary, an accomplished artist, maintained a studio while Henry rented office space on a wharf where he
went each day to crank out his occasional newsletter, The Casco Bay Observer.
He and I were in email correspondence almost weekly, usually to explore how he
might turn his latest grievance into a pithy CBO editorial on war and peace,
the endless impending disasters in the Middle East, the laudable (a few) and
incompetent (many) politicians, from the Maine State House to Capitol Hill to
the White House, and a wide assortment of economic, political, and
environmental outrages. There was never a shortage of material on which to
comment, and Henry did it well.
Henry loved to sail. Early in our
acquaintance he became the joint owner with other friends of an ancient 26-foot
wooden yawl named “Voyager.” “Old V,” as he called her, was fun to sail, and I
had the pleasure of many good day-sails on Chesapeake Bay, both with Henry and
on my own with my family (his partners seldom seemed to use the boat, and were
happy to let it be used, even if one of the owners wasn’t aboard). Old V leaked
a lot, and the engine was persnickety, but she was fun to sail.
Henry also developed a fondness for
a succession of cantankerous cars. The first one I knew was a green Triumph TR3
sports car. He called it “Old Green”,
and when it gave up the ghost it was followed by a gray SAAB – “Old
Gray”, of course. When “Old Green”
was retired, Henry fantasized that it might be nice to take it to a wrecking
yard, have it compressed into a cube and use it for a coffee table. Wisely, he
never did.
After he moved to Maine, Henry
found he had not shaken the sailing bug, and a few years ago bought a
fiberglass Cape Dory sloop that he kept in Rockland, down the coast from Peak’s
Island. His co-owner told me at the memorial service that Henry would often get
great pleasure out of just sitting in the cockpit, enjoying the day, without
bothering to leave the dock or hoist sail. I could identify with that.
There was a lot to love about Henry
Myers.
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| Henry Richard Myers, 2/1/1933 - 1/1/2013 |
