HITLER | Aug. 19–Elected President and Führer

Hitler Feigns Respect for President von Hindenburg,
who dies later that day (August 2, 1934).

Already appointed Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler on this day in 1934 is elected President.

Now holding both offices, he no longer had any constraint. Hitler's dictatorship was in place.

How Hitler Became Chancellor

Germany was a strong democracy in the 1920s, when the country was prospering, even though the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were onerous Hitler had some modest success exporting the loss of German face.

The country's democracy was destroyed step by step as Hitler appealed to a public that was demoralized by the loss of the war, the Treaty, and then the Crash of 1929:

• Hitler blamed German labor unions for hurting the economy and won financial backing from business leaders by promising to break them. 
• After the Crash of 1929, he attacked the Weimar Republic for failing to protect the German people from financial panics and high unemployment and promised the public a better deal. 
• In 1930 Hitler's support jumped to six million votes, 8 percent of the German vote, making the Nazi Party Germany's second-largest. 
• In the 1932 contest for President of Germany, an anti-Nazi coalition supported 84-year-old Paul von Hindenburg against Hitler. Although von Hindenburg was reelected, the Nazi share grew more than four-fold, to 37 percent.
• Now afraid of the growth of the Nazis, in January 1933, von Hindenburg–even though he had made clear he despised his opponent–sought to control Hitler by appointing him Chancellor.

How Hitler Became Dictator

Although now Chancellor, the appointed chief executive of Germany, he was not a dictator. He was subject to the elected President, to whom the Germany Army reported. This Having irritated Hitler and he went about eliminating constraints on his actions: 

• In February 1933, the Reichstag building, where the parliament met, suffered a fire. Hitler used this as an opportunity to call for another election. This time, Nazi police under Hermann Göring intimidated Nazi opponents. Even so, the Nazis and their allies won only a bare majority.
• Later in 1933, Hitler consolidated his power through the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz). He started arresting and executing political opponents, and even purged the Nazis’ own SA paramilitary organization in a successful effort to win support from the German army. 
• August 2, 1934. Hitler visited President von Hindenburg to pay his respects.  A few hours later, von Hindenburg died. 
• After von Hindenburg's death, Hitler purged the Nazi Brown Shirts, his own storm troopers.
• On August 9, 1934, a plebiscite vote was held on August 19. Intimidation, admiration of job growth under Hitler, and fear of Communists, brought Hitler a 90 percent majority. Hitler decided to unite the chancellorship and presidency under the new title of Führer. He now controlled the army. His dictatorship was solidly in place.

TENNIS | DYC Senior Men's Doubles Finals

FINALISTS, SENIOR MEN'S DOUBLES (L to R): John
Jaxheimer, John Tepper Marlin, Tim Snell (Pro), Thomas
Gouge, Britton Browne. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

Amagansett, N.Y., August 6, 2016–In the DYC Senior (60+) Men's Doubles, the four finalists were: John Jaxheimer, John Tepper Marlin, Thomas Gouge and  Britton Browne.

After a tie-breaker in one set, the two teams won one set each after more than an hour and a half of play.

Instead of a third set, the match, running on overtime, was decided by a second tie-breaker.

The winners were: Gouge and Browne. All four players received glass bowls as trophies.

A photo of the handsome  trophy bowl is provided at right.

FRIENDS | Great Writing Companions (August)

Melville (L) and Hawthorne first met this day in 1850.
They are an example of a literary friendship that is associated
with the peak productivity of both writers.

Aug 5, 2016–By an accident of the calendar, three events occurred this day that highlight the importance of friendships in literary history.

One is the meeting of Melville and Hawthorne, who are part of the core curriculum of American high schools and therefore of American culture.

Another was the birth of Guy de Maupassant, whose stories are often assigned in school.

The Inklings group at Oxford and the Bloomsbury group in London, and the Round Table and Coffee House Club in New York City are more prominent examples of literary circles.

We sometimes forget the role of smaller or short-lived writing friendships.

Max Eastman, editor of the historic magazine The Masses, shut down by the U.S. Post Office in 1917, wrote about his own literary and personal friendships in his book Great Companions.

This fifth day of August highlights three pairs of friends who illustrate three major forms of literary friendship–parallel productivity (Melville and Hawthorne), mentoring (Flaubert and Maupassant) and exchange of letters (Snyder and Berry).

• In 1850, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne (parallel productivity) met through a picnic at Monument Mountain near Stockbridge, Mass. Melville followed up by visiting Hawthorne at his red farmhouse close by in Lenox, where Hawthorne gave him two bottles of champagne.  For a year and a half, they kept up their friendship living six miles apart. It was the most productive time in their writing lives–their five greatest books were being written or published. The House of the Seven Gables was written in 1850 and published in 1851. The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick (dedicated to Hawthorne in 1851) were published a year apart. Melville's The Blithedale Romance (1952) and Melville's Pierre; or The Ambiguities (1852) were written while they were neighbors.

• In 1850, the great French short-story writer Guy de Maupassant (mentored by Gustave Flaubert), was born in Normandy. Gustave Flaubert used to have him to lunch on Sundays, and he would discuss Maupassant's writing. Flaubert considered him his disciple and introduced him to Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry James. Maupassant began publishing his first stories a few weeks before Flaubert's death in 1880. Flaubert praised Maupassant's first short story, "Boule de Suif" extravagantly and it is still considered one of his best stories. Maupassant takes a realistic/pessimistic view of the world and anticipates the realistic writers of the 20th century,  many of whom praise his work. In the 1880s, Maupassant wrote most of his work–300 stories and five novels. In the 1890s he became self-destructive, and he died in 1893.

• In 1934, Wendell Berry, friend of Gary Snyder (exchange of letters), was born near Port Royal, in Henry County, Kentucky.  Berry, who considers himself a Christian, criticizes other Christians who fail to take environmental issues seriously. He also takes strong positions on the death penalty, nuclear power plants and the war in Vietnam. In 1973, he began corresponding with California poet Gary Snyder, a practicing Buddhist. Berry worried about fighting evil, but Snyder responded that his real enemy was "ignorance, stupidity, narrow views". Over four decades they exchanged 250 letters on writing, religion, farming and philosophy that are collected in Distant Neighbors (2014).

I am grateful to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac blog for noting these three events today.

DEATH | July 23, 1996–Ham Fish

Rep. Ham Fish, Jr.

On the 20th anniversary of his, the Poughkeepsie Journal posted the following tribute to Congressman Hamilton Fish. It was forwarded by his publisher son. (Fish's NY Times obit is here.)

Where have you gone, Ham Fish? 

Flamboyant? No.
Self-promoter? No.
Loud? No.
Public-service driven? Yes.
Consensus-builder? Yes.
Impeccable integrity? Yes

There was always a regal sense about Ham Fish, Jr. He was a congressman. A statesman. A true champion of the people he served for 26 years in the House of Representatives. 

He was from Millbrook, but also called Washington, D.C. his home. That was only appropriate given that his family’s roots in service to America dated to the Revolutionary War.

July 23 marked the 20th anniversary of Fish’s 1996 death from cancer. Too many folks today know Fish’s name only because the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge was renamed in his family’s honor. That’s appropriate because the enduring reputation of Hamilton Fish Jr. — the fourth Hamilton Fish — was of a public servant who connected others, who spanned differences, who showed a pathway. He was a Republican known as a moderate. He worked issues first, party notwithstanding. Cross that political aisle to get something done? Welcome them to your side? You bet.

And Fish, scion of one of New York state's most enduring political dynasties, did it without a shred of the bluster and grandstanding many politicians rely on today. He inspired confidence by doing his job and doing it well, not by telling you how well he did his job.

He’d call or stop in at the Poughkeepsie Journal on occasion, and unfailingly provided a distinguished presence. His voice was firm. His mannerisms confident. His earnestness clear.

That was the consensus about Fish’s work during Watergate, when he served on the House Judiciary Committee and cast a significant GOP vote to impeach President Richard Nixon in 1974. “Colleagues from both sides of the aisle said the moment epitomized Fish’s high ethics and demonstrated his commitment to the democratic process,” the Journal reported in the news story about his death.

Fish also was the chief Republican sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, mandating parity for those often denied it. He was key in getting laws passed to block discrimination against women and minorities; to fight hate crimes; to ensure fair housing tenets; and to fight apartheid. And that’s just the start of the list.

And those family roots? His great-great grandfather, Nicholas Fish, fought in the Revolutionary War with George Washington. Nicholas Fish’s son, Hamilton Fish, joined Congress in 1842 before becoming New York’s governor. Why name his son Hamilton? It was in honor of his good friend, Alexander Hamilton.

The second Hamilton Fish became a member of Congress in 1909. The third Hamilton Fish, who died in 1991, was in Congress from 1921 to 1945 and was a Republican foil of fellow Dutchess resident Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Newburgh-Beacon Bridge naming honors contributions of every Hamilton Fish.

As a highly contentious presidential race revs up, those who remember Ham Fish wonder if civility — Hamilton Fish Jr.-style civility and accomplishment — can ever again rule the day."

DUTCH HISTORY | Johan and Jimmy Huizinga

Johan Huizinga was a founder of the field of cultural history. He
wrote critically about Fascism in the 1930s, was arrested in 1942
for speaking out against the Nazis, and died in prison in 1945.

July 24, 2016—Wally van Hall, who has been called the "Prime Minister of the Dutch Resistance," as a young man in 1929 went to New York to work with his brother Gijsbert (Gijs) van Hall. 

They met up with their Dutch friend Jimmy Huizinga and they had a great time, according to Aad van Hall (son of Wally van Hall).

I emailed Charles "Leidschendam" Boissevain (the middle name is to distinguish this Charles Boissevain from so many others) to ask whether Jimmy Huizinga was the son of the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, and the answer came back overnight from him and Marleen van Hall Habraken (daughter of Gijs van Hall, who became Mayor of Amsterdam after the war):

Yes! Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) had two sons Leonhard (1906-1980), author of a humorous book and some articles, and Jacob "Jimmy" Herman (1908-1983), who was a good friend of Wally and Tilly van Hall and often stayed with them when they were living in Staten Island, New York. (Another son, Dirk, shows up on searches.) Marleen has pictures of Jimmy with Gijs, Wally and Emmie (Gijs' wife) in good spirits in their garden. Marleen reports as follows [translation by Charles]:

Jimmy wrote for the NRC (the NRC and Algemeen Handelsblad merged in 1970 into the present NRCHandelsblad). When Emmie went back to Holland he arranged for her to write about American literature, for quite a long time. They were also friends with Jimmy's older brother Leonard Huizinga, his wife and daughter (born in 1930). We have a picture of a summer house that our families rented in Noordwijk, a well-known village on the North Sea, 20 miles north of The Hague. I remember Leonard saying that children should be seen, not heard!

I am grateful to  Charles "Leidschendam" Boissevain, Marleen van Hall Habraken and Aad van Hall for the above information.

Postscript, August 2, 2020: I just heard from T. J. Rider McDowell, who said: "Jimmy Huizinga was my surrogate grandfather. Great guy." 

In his Erasmus Lectures at Harvard, Loe de Jong quotes Jimmy's father Johan Huizinga as saying: "History, like good sherry, should be dry." The following on Johan is from various Internet sources.

Johan Huizinga

Johan was the son of Gröningen Physiology Professor Dirk Huizinga and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after Johan was born. He was a student of Indo-Germanic languages, graduating in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, learning Sanskrit in the process. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.

In 1902 he started writing about medieval and Renaissance history, with his first writing a biography of Erasmus. He  became Professor of General and Dutch History at Gröningen in 1905. In 1915, he was appointed Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942, when the Nazis removed him. He opposed Fascism in the 1930s and in 1942 spoke critically of the Nazi occupiers. From then until his death in 1945 he was locked up by the Nazi regime. His body lies in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.

Huizinga, The Play Element of Culture.

Huizinga founded a whole field of study, cultural research. His knowledge of languages led him to examine the role of playing, of games, in the formation of culture. He believed that games preceded culture, that animals instinctively know how to play and that playing leads to culture. Huizinga attempts to classify the words used for play

Greek

παιδιά — pertaining to children's games

ἄθυρμα — associated with the idea of the trifling, the nugatory

ἀγών — for matches and contests

Sanskrit

krīdati — denoting the play of animals, children, adults

divyati — gambling, dicing, joking, jesting, ...

vilāsa — shining, sudden appearance, playing and pursuing an occupation

līlayati — light, frivolous insignificant sides of playing

Chinese

wan — is the most important word covering children's games and much much more  cheng — denoting anything to do with contests; corresponds exactly to the Greek ago. sai — organized contest for a prize

Japanese
      asobu — is a single, very definite word, for the play function

Semitic languages

la’ab (a root, cognate with la’at) — play, laughing, mocking

la’iba (Arabic) — playing in general, making mock of, teasing^[13]

la’ab (Aramaic) — laughing and mocking

sahaq (Hebrew) — laughing and playing

Latin

ludus — from ludere, covers the whole field of play

Huizinga's study of culture stood him in good stead in the 1930s when he started to research and write critically about the culture of Fascism. He studied it as a game. He said:

You can deny almost everything: the beauty, the truth, the spirit of God. You can deny seriousness. But you can never deny the game.

MED BIZ | Gamma Knife Kills Neuroma (Updated May 1, 2017)

Note pressure of the
titanium frame on head.
You get used to it.
Selfie by JT Marlin.

I lost hearing in my left ear a decade ago. The ear doctor said there was a 5 percent chance it was an acoustic neuroma a.k.a. a vestibular Schwannoma. I had an MRI and sure enough, that is what it was. It was small, 4 mm., but in a bad place, the vestibular ear canal.

Having already lost most of my hearing in the left ear, I decided to wait before doing anything about the neuroma.

Executive Summary

Nurse feeds me water through a
titanium cage. Photos by Alice
Tepper Marlin.

The decision to go yesterday for the Gamma Knife op was based on deterioration in my sense of balance.

The neuroma had grown to 8 mm. The vestibular ear canal controls balance. As a doctor told me: "When you hear the sound of hoofs outside the window in the USA, do you assume a zebra or a horse?" The horse is this case would be the neuroma's interfering with my balance. Anything to do with my balance should be assumed to relate to the neuroma.

So yesterday morning I had the Gamma Knife procedure. I am informed it successfully killed the neuroma (although the process of its dying may take weeks or months), so unless you want to know more, that is the end of the story. My balance sense is improved.

More Detail

A neuroma or schwannoma (also known as a "Schwann cell tumor" or a "neurinoma,"or "neurolemoma") is a benign nerve sheath tumor composed of Schwann cells, which normally produce the insulating myelin sheath covering peripheral nerves. The tumor cells can be thought of as feeding on a nerve, but they stay outside the nerve. The tumor causes trouble by pushing the nerve aside and/or up against a bony structure. Schwannomas are relatively slow-growing and are almost always benign, so they don't spread.

Dr. Wang sets up the Perfexion machine. 

A neuroma can be removed via microsurgery as well as radiation. Microsurgery requires cutting a hole in the scalp and (I understand) feeding a tiny pair of scissors up through the ear canal. I didn't like the risk associated with that, especially when the seventh and eighth nerves are intertwined and a frequent enough byproduct of the surgery is some loss of control over facial nerves on that side of the face. Think Phantom of the Opera.

The "Gamma Knife" radiation procedure  avoids having to cut through the skull or physically cut out the tumor. Instead, it bombards the neuroma with gamma rays from dozens of different directions. After enough of this the neuroma cries "Uncle" and goes into a funk that ends with its death.

"The neuroma is a weakling among tumors and is ready to give up the ghost with a little bombardment," is how I remember Dr. Michael Sisti summing up the situation.  The downside is less worrisome than the hole-in-the-scalp and mini-scissors strategy for the surgery.

The Gamma Knife is an advanced radiation treatment for adults and children with small to medium-sized brain tumors and diseases such as abnormal blood vessel formations called arteriovenous malformations, epilepsy, and trigeminal neuralgia (a nerve condition that causes chronic pain) and other neurological conditions.

That takes care of what I know of the medical science. You can stop here or review what happened during the 9-10 hours that were occupied by the surgery.

The Surgery Narrative

Getting ready to open the machine.

For those contemplating or just curious about the Gamma Knife procedure, here's how my day went  yesterday:

4:30 a.m. Shower and dress in clothing with no metal anywhere (even metallic snaps are verboten). I wore a polo shirt and jogging pants.

5:30 a.m. Taxi with Alice to the basement of the New York Presbyterian Hospital Children's Hospital, where the Gamma Knife center is located. That Hospital is where my eldest sister, Olga E. Marlin, was born in 1934. Fortunately all six of us siblings are still living, aged 71-81.

Dr. Wang watches the Perfexion machine,
with data at his left. 

6:30 a.m. I am checked in. Alice gets a visitor's pass, I get two bracelets, one indicating my name and doctor and various numeric IDs, and the other listing allergies. I also get a hospital bathrobe. We are introduced to half a dozen people who have different responsibilities during the procedure.

The first task was to put the
titanium frame on me. The metal is unusual because it isn't affected by the magnets in the MRI machine. This is one of the two most unpleasant parts of the procedure because it must be absolutely, positively tight on my head.

7:30 a.m. I was given 0.5 mg. of valium to help face the placement of the helmet and the tight MRI that followed. The frame was tightened in four places on my head and they all bled. Discomfort occurred during this difficult process, involving three or four people – one of whom was injecting a numbing fluid, something like Novocaine (generic name procaine). Alice said that a woman in the next treatment room had been in tears briefly during this step (I couldn't hear it).  Alice had to stay outside while this was done and was concerned, but she said she heard me cracking jokes after a while and all the attendants were laughing, so she was relieved. After five minutes I got used to the frame and the three of us who were waiting for the procedure paraded, or were wheeled, around like aliens from Star Trek or The Empire Strikes Back.

Nurse puts on ice to reduce
swelling at pressure points.

8:00 a.m. A clear-plastic thing that looks like a transparent hair dryer and was mysteriously called a "halo" was put on me. Dr. Tony Wang used it to take measurements of my skull. This information was presumably fed into the computer to help it decide where to target the gamma rays.

10:00 a.m. I went in for the brain MRI of the brain, with the titanium frame on. This was the second step that the valium helped me deal with. The MRI ensures that the location of the neuroma would be entirely up to date. I have always used the Dove Open MRI, because it doesn't make me feel like I am being buried in the catacombs. The hospitals don't like the Open MRI so much because the more-open machines sacrifice some detail.  For Gamma Knife purposes, it has to be the closed MRI, so I felt as though I was stuffed into the capsule space like a sausage (the photo is of the Perfexion machine, which provides a lot more space than the MRI). Luckily, the small amount of valium was enough to prevent any panic. I was given ear plugs, which was a good thing, because the noise seemed to be considerably louder than in the Dove machine.

12:00 noon. After Dr. Sisti and Dr. Wang conferred on a strategy, I was brought in to the "Perfexion" Gamma Knife machine and by this time it was programmed with measurements and the irradiation plan. It was almost an anti-climax. The zapping of the brain is quiet. No noise, just an occasional hello from Dr. Wang and Alice. And then I was out of there.

Data from Perfexion machine.

1:00 p.m. Dr. Sisti says they got all of it but it might take six months before the neuroma was completely dead. Meanwhile, he said, "play tennis". Apparently it helps with the sense of balance.

1:30 p.m. Headed home with a bandage on my head.

I am grateful to Drs. Sisti and Wang, to all the attendants, to Alice for accompanying me, to all those who said they prayed for me, and to the divine being(s) who respond to prayer. And now... back to work.

Update, May 1, 2017

Today I brought in the MRI taken after six months. Dr. Sisti was happy with the outcome and said that, unusually, the Gamma Knife had cut a hole in the neuroma so that it now had a doughnut-like shape. I am to come back after another brain scan in July 2018, and then he expects to be able to say with some finality that the neuroma is dead.

KENYA | Olga Marlin: A Dream that Made History

Prof. John Odhiambo, Vice-Chancellor of Strathmore University and
 Olga E. Marlin, on the award to her of the D.Litt. degree, 2011, the
first woman to be so honored. Photo by John Tepper Marlin.

She left the comfort of Europe to empower African women. The impact is continental, writes Lilian Aluanga, Sunday Standard, Nairobi, Oct. 22, 2005.

(The full story of Olga Marlin's life is in her memoir, To Africa with a Dream, first published by Scepter in 2002 and then in a new edition in 2011 with photos, by Boissevain Books, New York, N.Y.)

She enjoys eating nyama choma and ugali, knows Kenya better than many post-Uhuru citizens and has witnessed the country’s transition from colonialism to Independence under Jomo Kenyatta, to Daniel Moi and on to Mwai Kibaki.

Most importantly though, she has made her contribution — though quietly away from the media glare — to the making of modern Kenya.

At 27, an age when many women in her birthplace would be thinking of starting families and living in dainty cottages with picket fences, she chose to give up the comfort of Europe and accompanied a group of eight women who were coming to live in Africa.

She landed in Kenya. The country changed her. She embraced it as home, became a citizen, and set out to do her best to make her new home, then trapped in racial discrimination, a better place.

Meet Olga Marlin, a founder member of the Kianda Foundation — the pioneer in setting up a multi-racial secretarial school at the height of the liberation struggle in Kenya.

Olga made the journey from Ireland in 1960 not out of a sense of adventure, but because of a deep conviction that God wanted her to do something for Him with her life.

Now in her 70’s — and still every inch as elegant, charming and poised as she was in her late 20’s — Olga remains modest, though happy, about her role in helping lay a foundation for thousands of African women who are now top executives in various organisations both locally and internationally.

To Olga, the eldest child in a family of six, African women were in a vicious circle those days: "They needed education for freedom and freedom to be educated."

And her efforts paid off, judging from the list of some of Kianda’s former students. From Health Minister Charity Ngilu to Evelyn Mungai-Eldon, founder of the Evelyn College of Design; from Pamela Mboya, the late Tom Mboya’s wife, to Honourable Victoria Sebagarika, an MP in Uganda; from Christina Kenyatta-Pratt to Gaone Masire-Moyo, the successful daughter of Botswana’s ex-president Ketumile Masire; from Zipporah Mayanja, a top Ugandan diplomat in Belgium to Hannah Rubia, the wife of Saba Saba hero Charles Rubia. It is a long list of strong African women, who no matter the direction they took, they excelled.

Olga (far right) and other members of staff show President Jomo Kenyatta a photo album of the college when the late leader visited the college in 1970. 

To date, Kianda, a household name in secretarial studies, has seen hundreds of thousands of girls pass through its doors, a far cry from its humble beginnings in a tiny cottage along Nairobi’s Waiyaki Way with only 17 students.

Born in New York City 1934 to Ervin Ross Marlin and Hilda Gerarda van Stockum, Olga remembers travelling a lot as a child thanks to her father’s status as an employee of the United Nations.

She attended primary school in Washington, before the family moved to Montreal Canada in 1947, where she completed her secondary school before joining the Trinity College in Dublin for a Masters in Modern Languages.

"My father had always wanted me to go to Trinity College because that was where he studied and also met my mum," she says. Although the family moved back to Canada, Marlin chose to stay on in Ireland, where her life would forever be changed when she met members of Opus Dei (Work of God), a personal prelature of the Catholic Church.

"Never in my whole life did I think I would meet a saint," she says in reference to the founder of Opus Dei, Saint Josemaria Escriva. Olga laughs as she continues, "When I was 10 years old, I used to tell people that I would like to get married and have 10 children.

"My attitude towards life was totally changed and I felt that God wanted me to serve him in some way," she says.

Therefore, when Olga was selected as part of a group of eight women whom St Josemaria chose to send to Kenya, she was only too happy to comply even though she knew it wouldn’t be easy.

But nothing had quite prepared her for the shocking reality on the ground. She arrived in Kenya when residential areas were segregated, as were clubs, schools, restaurants, and even the public transport system.

Social interactions between the races was taboo, and Olga and her group soon realised that they would have a difficult time selling the idea of a multi-racial school that would see white students learning side by side with their Asian and African peers.

Initially the idea was to set up a finishing school which would give African women a chance to acquire secretarial skills in courses that would help them get better jobs and uplift their living standards. At the time, Olga says, people thought they were mad to even come up with such an idea, but a female member of the Kenyatta family whom the group met soon after their arrival, gave them the courage to move on.

Retired President Moi is introduced to a member of staff at the college in 1981

"You have arrived at a very good time to open a school for girls. Our women need education to become self-reliant, respect themselves and make themselves respected. This can only happen when they are financially independent. Your school should provide them with the necessary skills," the Kenyatta family member said.

After a brief teaching stint at Kenya High School, then a whites-only school, Olga moved on to carry out their vision. 

By 1961, after months of giving music lessons and coaching students in various subjects to raise money, the group was ready to start.

But there was a problem. One of the students was Goan and the city council would hear nothing of registering Kianda, first located in Valley Arcade — a white residential area — and two with a non-European student on board.

They would first have to seek the approval of the residents, the council said. 

Her proposal to the residents was flatly rejected and Marlin was crushed. "It was simply one of the worst moments of my life," she says.

She then knew that they would have to move out of the area if their mission to give African girls a chance to study was to be fulfilled.

One of her students offered to help. Her father, Paddy Rouche, owned an estate agency in Nairobi’s Westlands and had just identified a parcel of land along Waiyaki Way (Kianda School’s present location), which was on the border of a reserve on which the Japanese embassy also stood.

At this time, the government also decided to declare some plots in the area multi-racial and Kianda (Kikuyu for valley) finally found a home which would be led by Olga until 1980.

It would be the first of several educational institutions put up by the Kianda Foundation in its quest to uplift the educational standards and general welfare of women in Kenya.

Registered in 1961 in Nairobi, its development has over the years given rise to a primary and secondary schools as well as the Kibondeni Catering School and the Kimlea Girls Technical Training College in Kiambu. 

Mama Ngina Kenyatta is shown around the college on a visit in the 70s

The latter has saved hundreds of girls from the degrading and exploitative child labour rampant on the coffee plantations in the district.

Although Marlin now had a place to put up the classrooms, a more difficult task awaited her — convincing African parents to allow their daughters to enrol for secretarial courses at the college.

"Most of them were hesitant to allow their daughters to be trained as secretaries and feared that they would become wayward and get lost in Nairobi," she says.

Eventually, they got their first African student — Evelyn Mungai-Eldon — who set the pace for her peers and was an articulate, hardworking student able to hold her own even though she was obviously different.

Says Olga, "She used to walk to school everyday and was bright and very competitive in class." 

Evelyn did well in her studies and landed a job with the East African Community on completion of her one-year training.

Kianda increasingly became popular, especially with large organisations in the region due its high quality training. It attracted students and teachers from as far as Greece, Mexico, Spain, US, Ireland, France, Egypt, Ethiopia, Botswana, Uganda, and Tanzania.

At Independence, the school lost some of its white students, who in fear of reprisals from Africans, chose to go back home. But the numbers picked up again as the demand for secretaries grew in a newly independent Kenya and the wider east African region.

So impressed with Kianda College were companies that they proposed the start of a bonding programme with the college. Under this programme, the organisations agreed to pay a year’s fees for the girls, inclusive of boarding and pocket money, so long as the girls signed an agreement to work with the companies upon graduation. Bursaries were sourced for girls from poor backgrounds without corporate sponsorship. 

Long before the country gained independence, Olga had forged deep friendships with the wives to some of the men who were later to hold high positions in government. Most of them had gone through Kianda and Olga made up her mind to ask them for help.

Tom and Pamela Mboya (right) on a visit to the college in an undated picture

While some of her colleague went overseas to raise funds from well-wishers, Olga sought out her old students. One of them was Pamela, who married Tom Mboya. Another was Hannah, the wife of Nairobi’s first African Mayor, Charles Rubia.

She recalls a visit to Rubia’s office at the time: "He was very gracious and understood my dilemma and the need to empower these girls. I will never forget what he said to me: ‘Olga, we knew each other when you were nobody and we were nowhere. I will help you’."

She remembers Tom Mboya as a robust trade unionist whom she was humbled to meet. 

"I was introduced to Tom by Jemima Gecaga (a sister to Dr Njoroge Mungai)." Her ties to the Mboya’s would later see him sponsor several students to Kianda before his tragic death through an assassin’s bullet.

Just before he died in 1969, Mboya sent the current Kisumu Mayor Prisca Ouma to meet Olga.

She was the last student he was to send to the college.