Anne’s Blog

Dominica 1974

Bill and I were on our way home from backpacking through Colombia and Ecuador, an adventure that included hitchhiking through Venezuela. We had the good fortune of getting a cross country ride in a sporty new car from a Seagram’s sales rep, quite a contrast to the other places we had explored via bumpy roads and buses. Venezuela was on a high from its petroleum development. In the coastal town of Guiria we secured passage in a small open air motor boat for a bumpy night crossing of what is aptly called the Boca Del Dragon– the mouth of the dragon. Across the twelve miles of rough water was our destination, Trinidad.

 We had been to Trinidad the previous winter, a multi-cultural crossroads of an island largely populated by Anglos, East Indians, and Africans.  To add to the mix we met three guys from Sweden in Tobago, the island off the NE top of Trinidad’s boot-shaped land mass, with whom we rented a house for a month. It did not go unnoticed that I was the only woman living with four guys:  Haakon (his dad was one of the owners of SAS airlines), Carl-Bengt, Matz, and Bill.  That the rent was just $20 also sticks in my mind after 45 years. The small white house was perched on a hill with a spectacular view of the Caribbean. Our days were spent on the white sand beach, then singing together at night. We also rocked out to Jimmy Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland  on the beach in an open air metal-roofed disco with a concrete floor.  It was a perfect getaway from the winter back home in Norfolk, VA where I had been working as a housepainter for $2.00 an hour.

Our second trip to Trinidad was far briefer.  Again we were there to catch the mail boat that plied the Caribbean from Trinidad to Jamaica.  Bill and I cooked and slept on the open air deck while our vessel, the Federal Maple, chugged its way to eight formerly British colonies. Our ship would travel all night and then stop for the day providing us the opportunity to explore such tropical islands as St Lucia or Barbados. This time around we were headed to the Island of Dominica to spend the month of May before our return to Jamaica, where Bill and I had met the year before in 1973. 

We had heard about the small, lush island of Dominica – where 365 rivers make their way to the Atlantic on one side and the Caribbean on the other. It was a land of immense natural beauty. We planned to spend a month in the tropical paradise while the Mail boat made its island circuit to Jamaica and back. Disembarking onto the wood pier we spotted a couple gringos, such as ourselves, before being shuffled into the Customs House.  The weather-worn wood building with open doors and windows was welcoming us.

First stop was the customs work desk where we were asked to open our bags– two worn backpacks. The officer picked up the herb tea on top of Bill’s, curious as to what it was. At that moment I got the feeling that I should slip outside and drop the wee bit of marijuana, hidden in my underwear, into the sea. Caught in the act, instead I was shuffled upstairs and searched by a uniformed woman who found our stash.

The next thing we knew the Custom Officer confiscated both our passports. To our good fortune we were told to come back in three days after the Trididad Carnival, a raucous celebration with colorful costumes and steel band music. The gringos we had seen, Skip and Kathy, were waiting for us, curious about what was going on inside. 

Our new friends had heard about a beautiful secluded place about an hour or so from Roseau, Dominica’s capital where a river ran into the sea.  We could camp for the weekend. After gathering food supplies we hailed a cab driver who was heading our way. The spot was stunning. Soft silky sand, a calm Caribbean sea on one side, banana and coconut trees galore on the other. As soon as we settled, Skip decided to explore the area. Instead we went swimming and became acquainted with the nearby beauty of where we had landed.

In between dips in the sea we watched some local men shimmy up the tall and slender coconut palms for the green nuts, a sweet refreshing drink. After they departed a young boy of ten years or so shimmied up the tall palms and dropped his butty to the ground below. Before leaving he told us that we should not plan to spend the night there. There were guys that may want to steal from us. While this communication was upsetting, we were caught between a rock and a hard place. After a couple hours Skip was still not back from exploring the area. It wasn’t like we could just leave him a note to where we were going. 

 

After discussion Bill, Kathy & I decided, just in case there was trouble, that we would sleep together in one tent. When Skip returned close to sunset we assured ourselves that there was safety in numbers. Plus there was really no other option as we did not have any way to contact a taxi for a ride. The taxi driver that had brought us here would be coming back for us after the holiday weekend. Thus for our protection, the sleeping line up was Bill & Skip on the outside and us girls on the inside. Bill had a machete if needed. We would be fine!

I comfortably fell asleep to be awakened some hours later by the whoosh of machetes and our own screaming. The tent fell on us and we kept wailing. Thankfully they stopped and as we crawled out onto the ground they were already going through our belongings. As they rummaged through our back packs the four intruders lectured us on how we were rich Americans. We could just buy new things. 

Bill’s arm was bleeding profusely. I had been hit with lighter blows to my right eyebrow and leg, about six inches up from my ankle. Kathy had been whacked with a machete across her fingers and was bleeding as well. 

The four intruders did not belabor their animosity towards us. They said little more than that they were justified in taking our belongings because we could easily replace our things when we returned home. “Honkie, get off our island,” they admonished. The men left with my flute, a jar of honey, a couple silver rings, and twenty U.S. dollars. 

After our assailants departed, we gathered our remaining bags while Skip went out to hail a car for some medical help. To our luck a white citizen driving a VW van stopped.  He waited for us as we wrapped Bill in our sleeping bag and he slowly walked on his own to the roadside. My partner started chanting quietly, Shree Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram Om, something I had never heard him do before. 

The white stranger knew exactly where to take us. It was the middle of the night by this point. To our good luck the doctor manning this rural outpost with five beds was getting ready to leave in the next couple days. The only other medical care, if not for this, was the hospital in Portsmouth, on the other side of the island. Given the extent of his blood loss and wound,  Bill was attended to first. The doctor talked while he washed all the gouges. He grimaced while prepping him for stitches, then gave him a small stick wrapped in thick gauze, no anesthetic. The doc told him to bite down hard while he did his work. I could not look. There was no pain killer and lots of grimacing from my mate. His gash was deep and bloody. I was given five stitches in my right eyebrow and the same on my calf. Kathy was stitched and had her hand wrapped with what looked like popsicle sticks and gauze. To say we were in shock is an understatement. It helped to have comforting coincidences.  Friends of Bill’s from his home town of Norfolk VA , Bill and Meeta, were also visiting Dominica unbeknownst to us. His old friends  had heard that some gringos had been attacked and made their way to the outback clinic .

A couple days later Bill and I were transferred via taxi to the Portsmouth hospital, a few hours from the health center. There we were treated with an outpouring of care and concern. Bill was pretty banged up. The invaders’ machetes attacked below the knee on the shin, while the second most severe chop was on the top back of his head.
The worst was his arm. He was in good hands. The Chief of Surgery had gone to Harvard and beguiled him with stories as he was cleaning and caring for him. 

The hospital allowed me to cook our own meals in their kitchen, a comfort for me. I needed to find a way to dissipate my own fear. It was a twenty minute walk on a paved road to the open air market, blue skies, and light breezes of this beautiful place. I forced myself to walk alone on the road to the Portsmouth farmers market to let go of my fear that some men in a truck may stop and kidnap or kill me.  

Quite the opposite is what happened. At the market the old women offering calaloo, a spinach type green, plantain, guava, papaya  and mangos would not let me pay. I was the only gringo at the market and word had traveled fast about the attack. At first I resisted their generosity and the compliments they would shower on me, especially about my long blond hair. Then I let them nourish me with their generosity and care. 

The same started happening at the hospital. Word had gotten out about the attack and nearby residents would line up in our hospital room to give their condolences. An elderly Irish missionary was the most frequent visitor, and she brought some absolutely delicious scones, while others brought their version of callaloo. A widow grandmother brought a bag of her husband’s clothes. One day the U.S. ambassador showed up as did the police. No one had ever seen foreigners subject to this type of violence before. An investigation was underway. 

It was getting to be time for the mail boat to make its stop at Roseau for its return to Kingston, Jamaica.  Bill Jones and Meeta would sleep on the deck with me. I was comforted having their company.  Bill Boykin would be stable enough to fly, the doctors said, in another several weeks. Things were looking up. 

We lived at Bill’s parents home for a few months after his return to the states. It was there we were notified by the diplomatic offices in Dominica that they had caught the perpetrators of our attack. The material witnesses were a couple young women from the Virgin Islands who saw the men come into the house they were staying in with our belongings.  There was to be a trial to prosecute these men and the government was willing to pay for our trip, both travel and accommodations, to testify. I wanted to go but Bill had absolutely no interest. Skip and Kathy had no interest either.

So that was that. I know it was the times that we lived in. It was a more difficult period for people of color. Times have changed. It certainly has in North Carolina where I have lived for the past twenty five years,  My motivation in stirring  up such a difficult experience from my past is to recognize how lucky I was to have not lost my life and how wrong it is to judge someone by the color of their skin, what they wear or how much money they may have. 

Note: I have been carrying around this story for fifty one years. Thanks for reading it. Let me know what you think.   

Veterans Day Remembrance

Veterans Day Remembrance
Veterans Day Remembrance

In high school my father convinced his mom to pay for private French lessons, what I imagine to be an unusual request of an only child to his widowed mother in Pittsburgh PA. After graduating college in1938 my father took these language skills to travel in Europe, an activity I imagine myself doing. Instead I traveled around the Caribbean and South America after high school. My mom gave me eighty dollars and a backpack for my graduation present. After attending four high schools in four years Mom knew I had no interest in heading to college from high school like both she and my father had.

It was WWII that brought my father back to the U.S. and then enabled his return to Europe.  As part of the mandatory draft, James M Eichelberger, Eich as my father was known by friends, enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private.  He recorded his occupation as a writer, editor and reporter, skills he would put to use deceiving our enemy. Eich became an expert in what was then called black and grey propaganda. Black propaganda was totally made up stories, what would be called “fake” news today, whereas grey propaganda had elements of truth to it. 

I know very little about his service to war besides the few references he made in the letters he wrote me between 1982 and 1989. I have these twelve typed letters in plastic sleeves ordered by date in a three ring binder now. Upon the occasion of reflecting on what Veterans Day means to me I have opened the notebook to the following that he typed to me on December 15th,1987.

I know my mother kept all my letters from World War II and they could be a gold mine. My mother copied them and sent some around to friends, here, there and elsewhere. Art John found about ten of them in an old trunk of his and I am impressed with my powers of observation and expression then. Alice has them and there must be a couple hundred pages of what is now history.” 

Art John was a friend of my father’s who was to have the autobiography my father had been promising me a copy of for years. Alice is my mother and the wife he unexpectedly abandoned when I was six years old. My dad’s mom, my grandmother, died suddenly, just a few months before my parents married but Eich makes little mention of what happened to all the letters he had written to her during the war except to say my mom had them. None of the war time correspondence from my father surfaced after either of my parents’ deaths.

Veterans Day is another jab to my heart. Eich certainly understood the importance of the history he was a part of. But I ignored the opportunity to ask him directly about the stories haunting his head and those he had committed to the page. Earlier in the same letter his wrote;

I do not make carbons because this new machine isn’t good at it; but I sometimes have things Xeroxed in a shop around the corner. I am writing on a Canon S-58 and am thinking of getting a Canon photo copier. Both are Japanese electronic wiz gadgets and I think I need them. I should make copies of what I write.

Yes, I think now, you should have made copies and left them in manila envelopes with my name on them. A few months later, on February 20 1988 in another letter to me my father wrote:

I have been working pretty hard, particularly on the autobio, which is in the form of a journal: daily entries of current interest and a daily raid of my recollection of people, places and events. It’s astounding what the mind can dredge up; I am almost at page 300 and I am far from finishing WWII. I was only a little fish of a captain but I swam just under the waves made by the big names of the epoch. I was in England, North Africa, France and Germany and saw everything but the surrender. Where was I then? Probably in bed with the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I drank vodka with Russians. Does anybody in your generation ever think of the retreat from Dunkirk and what it meant? It’s right for flower children to deplore war but it’s not so bad if you’re lucky. 

I do deplore war. In fact I was arrested on the Capitol steps in Washington, DC protesting the Vietnam War as part of the 1971 May Day demonstrations. But I am glad that my dad feels he was lucky.

Besides the letters through which Eich referenced his war time, as well as stories that his friend and partner Miles Copeland immortalized in his own autobiography The Game Player confessions of the CIA’s original political operative (published in January 1989 just 10 months before Eich’s death), I have two documents related to my dad’s military service. The Registrar’s Report is a WWII relic I found on Ancestory.com. It describes his physical characteristics, such as his six foot height, brown hair and blue eyes, but says nothing of his wicked intelligence or wry sense of humor.

Registrar Report
Registrar Report

The other document is a three page dispatch from  the War Department’s Strategic Services Unit dated February 13, 1946 and transmitted in code or cipher. My father was to receive a French Reconnaissance Medal and Decrete #5 but his name was initially spelled incorrectly. I have no idea what he did to receive such distinction nor if he ever actually received the medal.  Also called the Medal of French Gratitude, the honor was first awarded in WWI by the French government to citizens who had risked their lives to support the war effort. 

As part of the Office of Strategic Services, the storied OSS, I like to  imagine my father supporting the Resistance in occupied France by posing as a French man cooperating with the Germans. I am certain he spoke German as well as French. Although both of my father’s parents were born in PA, they were of German ancestry. Moreover, after the war when my dad was pursuing a Doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Chicago, his academic records indicate he passed his French and German examinations at a high level.    

Eich would have been planted behind enemy lines in Paris, a place he loved, a place he was comfortable in; if one can ever be comfortable in a war. Perhaps my father had a hand in  leading  propaganda efforts in Paris. I keep front and center that he got his start in the dark arts of deceit with black and grey propaganda.

In one of his books Miles Copeland mentions a French poetess my father took up with at the end of the war. Who is not to say they fell in love while developing newspaper articles and radio broadcasts to lead our enemies astray. Maybe he helped save the lives of her family in the waning days of war and for this he was to receive the French Reconnaissance Medal. When Eich left my mother in Beirut when I was six and my brother was only six months old, he went off to Paris to resume a romantic relationship with a French poetess he had met during the last day of the war.” ( Copeland, The Game Player, pg 218.)   

Aside from the letter quotes I have already shared, there is one more letter dated October 17, 1988, less than a year before he died, in which my father references his own war time service and more broadly his work for the CIA. 

My old, old friend Art John from Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago and Harvard has been keeping a Xerox of my MS. It’s always prudent to keep any material of historical interest in duplicate but in this case I didn’t think it was worth a bank vault. If you care to store a lot of hot stuff— when they’re older the kids might like to read about their grandfather’s odd and extensive participation in the 20th century– you are the one who should have it. Art is an historian and he thinks I should offer some of it for publication, particularly the section on the second world war. I haven’t got to the CIA and the Middle East yet and Art and I are of two minds about publishing this kind of revelation. Eisenhower would be involved as would U.S. relations with Great Britain, France, Egypt, Iran and a lot of other  places. I’ll think about it. I do have a long way to go and am up to 500 pages now. 

I did not receive the manuscript my father had been working on the last years of his life. Nor did I try to track down Art John when there might have been an opportunity to find him. My dad died before the internet was born. Moreover, while my dad was aging in Washington DC, I lived over a thousand miles away in Key West, Florida with my husband and soon to be three children. Our last child,Taylor, was born exactly nine months after my Dad’s death. 

It is terrible to regret missed opportunities but I do nonetheless.

I am also a believer in miracles. Perhaps in someone’s attic sits my father’s manuscript and it will find its way home to me. Perhaps someone reading this post will have more internet sleuthing prowess than me and will reach out to help. 

Meanwhile this Veteran’s Day, although my father has lost his voice, I am gaining mine. 

Here’s to the veterans of war, whether the fight be in our heads or out in the world. We all deserve to recognize the struggle from which compassion is born.

~ Anne E Tazewell

The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.

― Goldie Hawn

How to Buy a Green Used Vehicle

My husband Richard needed a new car. He loved his Toyota Insight, a gas sipping hybrid electric vehicle that he had put 185,000 miles on over 5 years, mainly driving back and forth to our one room cabin in Southwest Virginia. Given the rugged driveway up to our mountain getaway, he wanted a car with more heft. Furthermore, we wanted a vehicle with more space since he and I are planning a road trip to promote the September 1st release of my memoir, A Good Spy Leaves No Trace: Big Oil, CIA Secrets and A Spy Daughter’s Reckoning.

The book ties my career in clean energy to an investigation of my father’ life, a man I didn’t really know. Turns out my dad was on the ground floor getting the U.S. hooked on cheap middle east oil and I have been working for the past twenty plus years on just the opposite. My career has been focused on promoting the alternatives to guzzling fossil fuel in our cars and trucks – biodiesel, ethanol, natural gas, propane, electricity and, of course, fuel efficiency.

Thus, it is important to me that the vehicle we use to tour around promoting my book NOT be a conventional gasoline vehicle. I want to practice what I preach and thankfully my husband is game to go along with me.

It niggles at my consciousness that the cars and trucks we drive are the number one source of climate changing greenhouse gases. According to the EPA, transportation is responsible for a whopping 29% of greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon dioxide that is flooding our atmosphere and threatening our future.[1]

2021 Greenhouse Emission by Sector
2021 Greenhouse Emission by Sector

For the kind of traveling we are looking to do it is challenging to find the perfect vehicle. My first choice would be an all-electric vehicle. EVs are fun to drive! They are powerful with lots of torque and much more efficient to operate than a car with an internal combustion engine. Plus, they have zero tail pipe emissions. In addition, as the electric grid is increasingly powered by renewable sources such and wind and solar, an electric ride will just get cleaner.

At this point in time though, electric vehicles are just not roomy enough to accommodate all the stuff we will want to travel with: camping gear, music equipment and the books I intend to sell. In a couple years this will change with the introduction of several pickup trucks coming on the market. The iconic Ford F 150 will be all electric in 2013, joining Tesla’s Cybertruck and startups such as Lordstown Motors and Rivian, some of whom plan to have vehicles rolling off the assembly line later this year.[1]  

I know how much fun it is to drive an EV because I currently own a Chevrolet Volt. I purchased it new in 2012 to share with my son Rio who lived in Boone at the time, but that is a whole other story. The Volt, for those who may not know, is unique in the car world because has a fully electric drive vehicle that can go up to 50 miles on electricity than seamlessly switch to gasoline for another couple hundred miles. It is a great commuter car for going back and forth from Carrboro to NC State University, where I work, but it’s not practical for long road trips since its fuel economy is only 34 MPG on gasoline.

Richard & our new used 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid
Richard & our new used 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid

I did a comparison of Richard’s and my two existing vehicles, the Chevy Volt and Honda Insight with the car we had suddenly fallen in love with and ended up purchasing a couple weeks ago. It is a 2019 AWD RAV-4 XSE Hybrid. Yes, it still runs on gasoline but for its heft and inside spaciousness it still gives us 40 MPG. It handles the driveway up to our cabin no problem and thanks to a remodel of the interior in 2019, offers more space for our gear than older RAV4.

There are some excellent on line resources that can help conscious car buyers that want to go green and potentially save green (as in dollars)

The following is the comparison of our vehicles from the U.S. EPA Green Vehicle Guide.

Vehicle Guide
Vehicle Guide

The U.S. Dept. of Energy also has its own very useful on line tool for comparing new and used vehicles fueleconomy.gov. I was happy to see that the RAV4 Hybrid we purchased rates a 9 out of a possible 10 points for its greenhouse gas emissions of 205-237 grams of CO2 per mile. To put this in perspective the most polluting vehicles emit almost 4 times the GHG per mile.

Energy Impact Score
Energy Impact Score

By buying green you will also in be saving green. Althought he RAV 4 Hybrid comes with a $2,400 price premium as compared to the regular RAV 4, the EPA Green Vehicle Guide says that I expect to save $2,500 over 5 years driving an annual 15,000 miles as compared to the average vehicle on the road today that gets 27 MPG.  Check it out at www.fueleconomy.gov![1]

The RAV4 Hybrid carries a $2,400 price premium over a regular RAV4 of a comparable trim level. But keep in mind that hybrid models come standard with AWD while regular models come standard with FWD. If you compare a hybrid model to a gas-only AWD model of a comparable trim level, the hybrid is only $1,000 more expensive[2]

Go Green and Save Green with your next vehicle!

[1] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=41307&id=31618&id=26366&id=41127

[2] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/toyota/rav4/2020/toyota-rav4-vs-rav4-hybrid/

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29890843/full-electric-pickup-trucks/

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions

Pedal Power & Pedestrians

The future is happening now is Heidelberg, Germany and other cities around the world where urban planners are putting human health and our planet’s future front and center of how we live and work. In 2018 U.S. transportation related emissions were the single greatest source of climate warming emissions. This is changing with strategic planning to build pedestrian centric communities like Heidelberg’s Bahnstadt, or Rail City where over 5,000 residents live in high rises that are “so well insulated that they require almost no energy to heat” according to the New York Times Jack Ewing Residents can walk or ride a bicycle to schools, grocery stores, and their offices. There are also six car sharing station, each with two electric vehicles. If residents or visitors need to go to the city center – where electric buses ply the streets- than they can take a train.

Bahnstadt housing is arranged around courtyards with playgrounds and connected by walkways.
Bahnstadt housing is arranged around courtyards with playgrounds and connected by walkways.Credit…Felix Schmitt for The New York Times

I can’t wait to visit someday!