LETTERS

Much has been published since his recent death, to eulogize the life of former U.S.Sen. Ralph E Flanders. Since a great deal of it came from young newspapermen who never knew Flanders except in his later years, I ask indulgence as a friend of forty years standing to fill in some of the gaps.

The key to Ralph Flander's life can be expressed in one sentence. There will be no more men like him.

The temper of our times, with its emphasis on the fetish of college degrees and the false values attributed today to the same acts against and surely will prevent the rise to prominence of the old-fashioned, self-made American genius. For such was Ralph E. Flanders.

Vrest Orton, entrepreneur, writer, editor, and trenchant observer of the Vermont scene, played a major role in the creation and shaping of this magazine* in its early years. He died last December at the age of 89. The favorite descriptive word writers saved for Vrest was "crochety," a reference to his firm political conservatism and the fierce written invective with which he expressed it. But he had many other accomplishments. The author of 19 books and associate of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser and other American writers, he was also one of the early giants of the mail order business in the U. S. His Vermont Country Store remains a leader in that field. He was a native of Hardwick, for most of his life a resident of Weston and a Vermonter, through and through. *(from Vermont Life Magazine)

In the obituaries I could not help but sense, and in same even read an apology and even snobbish intellectual disdain of the fact that Sen. Flanders never attended college. He only had, some writers exclaimed, a mere high school education Not to go to college is, of course, today a shocking heresy. It marks a man as a social, economic and intellectual misfit; a pariah disadvantaged and underprivileged for life.

Such disadvantages never bothered Ralph E. Flanders. Some can take advantage of their advantages and many In college today without entrance requirements and without matriculation can't even do that. But Ralph was a fellow who took advantage of his disadvantages.

Why? Because like so many distinguished and great Americans of his generation he was raised on what today's highly paid Vermont Poverty Fund Bureaucrats sneer at and call abject poverty....the meager life of a small Vermont farm. Here to answer the why, Ralph Flanders learned to work, very soon after he learned to walk!

When his family moved to a mill town in Rhode Island, Ralph's habit of hard work stood him in good stead because he was able, because he had to, work his way through high school and even help support the family This was at an age when thousands at today's young men arc rioting, burning and practicing anarchy in a protest against the kind of success that Ralph Flanders sought and obtained by work. . a word foreign to today's revolutionaries.

Ralph, when in his teens, became an apprentice in the shops of Browne and Sharp of Providence, where in several years of hard work, he learned the highly skilled craft of a toolmaker.

Then he began thinking, creating ideas and writing them down. Soon, without having graduated from a school of journalism or "creative writing," Ralph was contributing learned articles to the leading magazine of that day in the field of mechanics. These articles were so important that in his early twenties he was offered and accepted the editorship of the most respected organ of his craft.

His career was so replete with honors and accomplishments that only to sample a few peaks will or course leave out much. He invented many machine tools and techniques; became president or one of the highest quality machine tool companies in the United States; wrote many books on economics and other learned subjects; was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and finally U.S. Senator from Vermont. What was the secret of this man's constant achievement?

Apart from work, imagination vision, and pertinacity, he reached the top in dozens of fields because no one told him he couldn't. He excelled in business without a MBA from Harvard; in banking without a degree from Tuck, in writing and editing without a Nieman Fellowship and finally in politics without a Doctor's degree in political science.

Over fifteen universities honored themselves by awarding him honorary degrees, but he had already achieved all the honors without benefit of any university. This man became a great leader because of self-reliance. He was a self-starter, and a self-actuated American striving to build instead of tear down. That's why he was respected, admired and listened to.

This self-educated man was the most erudite gentleman I ever knew: he could not just talk on any subject, he made a contribution to it. Hours of conversation with Ralph Flanders provided me, as it did to so many other fortunate Americans, unique, abiding and profound inspiration and stimulation. Ralph E. Flanders could say more in three paragraphs than writers today try to say in three books.

He put to shame many college presidents of today and he possessed more, and shared more, wisdom during his long life of nearly 90 years, than hundreds of college professors I could name. And unlike both, he was not a coward.

Today, when our colleges and cities are being rent asunder by Spock- marked delayed adolescents, still yelling, as they yelled in their mothers' arms, for instant, complete gratification without earning any, Ralph E. Flanders life was different.- he never raised his voice, he spoke with the Vermont understatement and when he talked he said something.

No, there will be no more men like Ralph Flanders. Unless, I believe, Americans who love their country as he loved it, get rid of the current domination, of our schools colleges, churches, government, society and even family life by mixed-up, misguided, floundering left-wing intellectuals who have never, as did Ralph E. Flanders, made a single contribution to our nation or to the creation of a better life for future generations of Americans.