Go into the office of Seattle’s Interim Police Chief and you’ll find a desk with details of Seattle’s most important investigations. There’s a photo from the WTO protest, for which he was the field incident commander, and the uniforms he wears as the city’s top cop.

But there isn’t a trophy case. The closest thing is a basic black shelf that holds a dozen rocks with white handwritten labels: Mt. Rainier, July 31, 1999; South Sister, July 27, 1996; Glacier Peak, May 20, 1995; and more.

The mementos are from the sometimes-grueling adventures Jim Pugel, ’81, completes each year with his former University of Washington crew teammates.

“I think the lessons you learn in rowing apply to anything you do in life,” said Pugel, who has a Windermere Cup poster framed near his desk. “The ability to get up early every morning six days a week, be told what to do, beat the hell out of yourself, while staying in complete sync with eight other people.”

His straight-forward style – formed in part during his years at the UW – has made Pugel one of the department’s most respected leaders among the rank and file. However, he also is expected to face criticism for mocking homeless people in a 1986 department training video. The video was publicly released at his request the evening of April 25, and Pugel said he regrets the embarrassment it caused the department and profession.

Pugel, 53, is the fourth child in a family of nine that grew up in Mount Baker. He played football and ran track at O’Dea High School, and as a senior he received a recruiting letter from then-freshman crew coach Bob Ernst.

Pugel joked that he received the letter not so much for his skill, but because he was a high school athlete “with a heartbeat who was 5-foot-10 or more.” Ernst, a four-time Olympic coach in his 39th season at UW, doesn’t remember the specific letter, but recalls Pugel as one of his all-time favorites.

“He was a fun guy to coach because he was always working hard, he was all for the team, and he was always backing up the other guys,” Ernst said. “He’s the kind of guy a rookie could come up to and say, ‘Hey Jim, could you help me with this?’ And he would.

“He’s the kind of guy you’re proud to see get a chance to be the interim chief.”

As a sophomore in 1979, Pugel stroked the junior varsity to the Pac 8 Championships, and later the team went to the Festival of Oars in Egypt.

Pugel had the sense that he wanted to be a police officer as a UW underclassman, so he approached two professors for advice: the late Dr. Peter H. Rohn in the political science department and history professor Jon Bridgman.

Both were exceptional, influential teachers, Pugel said. Students would often visit Bridgman’s classes “even if they weren’t taking it because he’s such a good storyteller.”

The professors convinced Pugel that the police skills he needed would be taught by the department. So instead of studying criminal justice, Pugel earned a dual major in political science and English for the well-rounded approach they encouraged.

To pay his college costs—Pugel recalls tuition was $180 a quarter in the late 70s—he worked at the Rainier Brewery, Northwest Steel Rolling Mills and the Greyhound bus terminal. There he saw officers handle runaways and the men who preyed on them, and Pugel said some of his best interpersonal training came through that job.

Pugel was hired by the department in January 1983 after two years as a reserve officer, and one of his early car partners was current Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer. He became a sergeant in 1990, was promoted to lieutenant four years later, and advanced to Captain of the West Precinct – the one that covers downtown Seattle – shortly before the WTO riots in 1999.

He became an assistant chief in 2000, and will assume the role of interim chief role began after Diaz’s departure at the end of May.

“He’s always been really steady and thoughtful,” said Captain Neil Low, an author and UW Bothell graduate who was a platoon commander under Pugel during WTO. “Jim is a shining example of someone who’s proud to wear his uniform when he could wear a suit. And I think he’s inspired others to continue to wear their uniform.”

Same goes for potential police officers. Pugel, who is on the Washington Rowing Stewards, said some of the best young department recruits come from the crew program – and other Husky programs.

Several Husky grads are leaders in the police department, including Assistant Chief Mike Sanford, who earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the UW, Captain Chris Fowler who oversaw the department’s 2013 May Day response, and lead department spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb. When Pugel was a rower, City Councilman and mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell was on the Rose Bowl champion football team, and the gridiron guys would share meals in the shellhouse. Harrell, also a 1984 UW law school graduate, now sees Pugel as chair of the council’s public safety committee.

Most of Pugel’s siblings are UW graduates, as are his parents. Pugel’s younger brother, Chris, was on the men’s 1984 national championship crew team, and their sister, Anne, also rowed for Ernst. Two of Pugel’s daughters are UW graduates and one, Annie Pugel, is now in the UW Medicine General Surgery Residency Program working at Harborview.

“The family’s just incredible – one of those five-star families,” Ernst said. “Anybody with the last name Pugel, I’m signing them.”

Pugel remember the excruciating crew workouts – going from the 520 bridge to Interstate 90 and back – that taught physical and mental toughness.

But what’s best, he said, are those friendships formed in the shellhouse with the most beautiful backdrop. And there was something special about the cars honking in support from the floating bridges as they rowed by before 6 a.m.

“There’s nothing else like it,” Pugel said. “The journey was as good as the races.”

Casey McNerthney is a journalist at seattlepi.com.

Launched partly in response to a request from the National Guard at Camp Murray, the year program has five 8-week sessions, each featuring a business class and security class side-by-side.

The pairings include Principles of Cybersecurity and Business Communication, as well as Building an Information Risk Management Toolkit and Organization Change. Students will also have an internship where they’ll act as a cybersecurity consultant for a local company.

They were complete dumps. Old houses were nailed to giant logs and towed to the water. Houses were roped to low pilings situated every three to four feet on both sides of rickety, teetering and creaking docks with missing cross boards.

The area smelled of rotting wood, gas from the stoves and boats, and “a lake smell” comprised of water, plants and unknowns. Sometimes toilets opened directly into the water below the house floor—a water outhouse. And no one ever swam in the lake.

While in school, I lived with Pat Swanson Jorgenson in a houseboat on Lake Union. Our houseboat was located three blocks west from Eastmount Street, where we could park a car or catch a bus to campus. Our “luxury” houseboat—which had three bedrooms, an enclosed toilet and bathroom, and a combined kitchen/living room—floated on cedar logs at the end of the dock. There was a large window overlooking the lake. We could open the window and people could step from their boats into the living rooms. The large wall surrounding this window had been painted white, but everyone who entered this room had to continue drawing the spider web that now covered the wall. Black felt-tip permanent makers waited on the window sill. The ceiling was stapled with prints Pat found in Europe of sexually oriented drawings by famous artists.

This was the place where college students earning their living as musicians came to unwind after weekend gigs. Often they jammed with each other playing the music here they wanted to play—blues, jazz, classical and their own improvisations. They were not restricted to playing the popular rock or dance music – no continuous renditions of “Louie, Louie.”

Several students who worked at the North Lake Tavern joined the group and always brought leftover spaghetti and the tavern’s super pizzas. Everyone brought beer—usually Olympia or Rainier. Unfortunately, we were all going to change the world but had not considered our environment. The beer we consumed was in bottles, not cans, and the large living room window was the waste bucket for dozens of empty bottles that floated in the water in long lines and finally sunk. I remember that sight with remorse.

Music and singing floated from the houseboat. No one minded the noise because everyone on the dock came to see and hear the “professionals.” The musicians played until daylight when tiredness began to creep over everyone. People fell asleep on beanbag chairs and couches or left to visit Red Robin for a breakfast hamburger.

Red Robin at this time was a beat-up tavern located at the end of the University Bridge, famous for its great hamburgers served at all hours. Its windows overlooked the canal and you could watch the boat traffic as you ate your hamburger.

During the early morning dawn, the lake was filled with unusual birds. In three hours, they disappeared, leaving the birds that always swam on Seattle waters—mallards, coots and seagulls. To identify these birds, I retrieved my grandmother’s bird book, A Field Guide to Western Birds by Roger Tory Peterson.

My visitors and I were pleased to recognize canvas-back ducks, “scooped billed” shovellers, tiny buffleheads, and the only completely black duck, the American scoter that resembled Daffy Duck. Stately long-throated grebes dove for food, and once a brightly colored wood duck stopped for a visit. We saw loons with diamond necklaces and the pudgyfaced lesser scaups. As spring approached, we watched the mallards make nests on the tops of the pilings and then we saw the many little ducklings hatch. Few survived the first few days, but everyone attempted to protect them from cats, rats and birds of prey.

Living on a houseboat was a way of life that brought about a great deal of companionship, sharing and good humor. Students studied together and played music together, had potluck meals and vicious Monopoly games. Everyone helped each other to fix anything. If someone fell in the lake, he or she was helped out and thrown into the shower. Houseboats were the first giant waterbeds. The sounds and smells of the lake and the rolling rooms could eliminate worries and lull you to sleep.

—Bonnie Nelson Powell graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in art education in 1963. She currently lives in Leavenworth, Wash.

• 1950s
• 1970s
• 1980s
• 1990s
• 2000s

1950s

JERRY WHITE, ’50, a retired major general in the U.S. Air Force, has been elected vice chairman of the board for Aerospace Education for the Air Force Association.

DONALD McELIGOT, ’59, professor at the University of Idaho and the Idaho National Laboratory, received an award at the International Conference on Engineering Education for his leadership in innovative research and scholarship.

1970s

CHERYL TOWNSEND WINTER, ’73, ’79, ’81, ’09, has retired from her practice in periodontics practice. She is writing a book about aging.

DANIEL CHERKIN, ’74, ’78, AND CLARISSA HSU, 93, ’00, have received grant awards from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Cherkin is investigating back pain and Hsu is looking at ways to connect patients with community resources. The two are associated with both the UW and Group Health Cooperative.

SHERWIN R. SHINN, ’74, has received the American Dental Association’s 2013 Humanitarian Award for his 22 years of providing oral health care to people in more than 20 countries. He is also the co-founder of two organizations that work internationally to provide dental treatment.

LESLIE E. GRANT, ’78, was elected to lead the executive board of directors of the Organization for Safety, Asepsis and Prevention for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

GLENN R. STREAM, ’78, ’82, family physician in Spokane, has become board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

1980s

NINA JABLONSKI, ’81, distinguished professor of anthropology at Penn State University, is starring in a YouTube video released by the National Institutes of Health discussing how lifestyle impacts the health of skin.

CAROLYN PHELPS, ’81, is hosting a program on public radio in Duluth, Minn., to educate the public about mental-health concerns. Phelps is a licensed psychologist.

RANDY DAHLGREN, ’84, ’87, professor and chair of the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis, received the Yandang Friendship Award from the city of Wenzhou, China, for his contributions as an expert in improving environmental quality.

BRANDT L. SCHNEIDER, ’86, has been named dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

CARRIE K. YORK, ’86, ’91, was inducted as a Fellow of the International College of Dentists at its 83rd annual convocation in San Francisco.

1990s

CHRIS ERICKSON, ’91, is the general manager of the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore. For the past 20 years, he has been in the hospitality profession.

CINDY HUANG, ’94, is an associate with the Seattle law firm Helsell Fetterman. She has also assisted low-income families through the King County Bar Association’s legal clinics.

KATHLEEN MOLES, ’95, has been named interim executive director of the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner. She previously served as curator of exhibitions.

2000s

TARYN KAMA, ’02, was honored at the UW Women’s Center’s gala event: Women of Courage: Braving New Horizons. She started a company devoted to fostering women’s involvement in the outdoors.

TEMA MILSTEIN, ’07, received a 2012 Fulbright Award to study in New Zealand. She examined the challenges, successes and possibilities of sustainable ecotourism practices. She is a professor at the University of New Mexico.

A democratic society needs a professional intelligence service, staffed by liberal-arts educated individuals of integrity and imagination, and that the study of intelligence as an enterprise is important to military, diplomatic and political history. —Yale historian Robin Winks

WHEN W. STULL HOLT arrived in Seattle in the fall of 1940 to start his new job as the chairman of the University of Washington history department, the university was thrilled to have a rising faculty star to modernize the department. But the UW was getting much more than a proven scholar and teacher in Holt, who was recruited here from Johns Hopkins University. The New York City native—who went on to teach at the UW for nearly three decades—embodied a concept I call the “Warrior Intellectual.” That refers to highly educated men, mostly faculty at leading universities like the UW, who chose to leave their jobs during wartime to serve their country. A decorated veteran of World War I, Holt’s patriotic instincts spurred him to once again act on behalf of his country in September 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor, when he sensed America’s entry into World War II was only a matter of time. Little did anyone know that this scholar, teacher, husband and father—perhaps best known for his 1933 book Treaties Defeated by the Senate, which became a standard in many graduate courses—would go on to become a hero during the second world war. But looking back on Holt’s life, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

During World War II, Holt fashioned a magnificent collaboration with MI-9, the British intelligence service which saved the lives of thousands of Allied pilots (and others) who were behind enemy lines. For his top-secret work in the field known as “Escape and Evasion,” Holt received the most prestigious honor the British government can bestow on a foreigner—the Order of the British Empire. Uncle Sam presented him with a Silver Star, one of the highest military decorations.

But the legacy of this professor, who retired from the UW in 1967, runs much deeper than the life-saving work he did in Europe 70 years ago. The escape-and-evasion theories and techniques he developed then are still being used today by the U.S. military. An East Coaster through and through, W. Stull Holt was educated at Cornell and George Washington University. He was making his mark on the faculty of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore when Solomon Katz, the renowned UW history professor and administrator, came calling to bring him to the Pacific Northwest. Here, he was one of a legion of “Warriors Intellectual” who made such a difference to this country.

The Rise of the Warrior Intellectual

Perhaps the most famous American example of a “Warrior Intellectual” is Theodore Roosevelt, outspoken proponent of “the strenuous life.” While not an academic, he was a prodigious intellectual, a serious reader and accomplished writer on a wide range of subjects. His book on the Naval War of 1812, for instance, was regarded by the Royal Navy as the authoritative scholarly work on that subject.

Yale historian Robin Winks understood the theory underlying the concept of the “Warrior Intellectual.” In his book Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961, Winks wrote about a contingent of Yale professors and students who interrupted their campus lives at the outset of World War II to join the un-uniformed spy ranks of the intelligence community—in this case, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), forerunner of the CIA.

Those gentlemen did not fit the “Ivory Tower” stereotype widely applied to campus-bound scholars. Instead, they fill the subset of “Warrior Intellectual,” part of the larger group of “Active Intellectuals,” who don’t restrict their pursuits to college campuses but get involved in their communities, civilian and military.

Holt was a prime example of both groups, as his military (and political) careers attest. While the Warrior Intellectual, as a scholar, is primarily engaged with the “life of the mind,” he is just as willing to defend his country. Many did so during World War II, coming from Ivy League institutions and public universities—like the UW.

Winks’ book, which was published in 1987, explored the underlying bonds between the university and the intelligence communities. While it focused on the group from Yale, the book’s end notes state: “The story I would most like to be told is that of W. Stull Holt, the American scholar who was in charge of liaison with Britain’s MI-9, the escape-and-evasion operation that helped get downed Allied pilots (and others) out from behind enemy lines. Holt sought to achieve the same magic for the American Eighth Air Force, and though his work is attested to MI-9: Escape and Evasion, 1939- 1945, a book by M.R.D. Foot and J.M. Langley, there is an important record to be set straight. Holt had been a professor of history at Johns Hopkins and subsequently at the University of Washington, and I had known him and admired his work.”

Winks wasn’t the only one who thought highly of Holt. In 1988, historiographer Peter Novick, in his history of the historical profession, That Noble Dream, validated Holt’s commitment to action in the public arena as well as to ideas and ideals by calling him a “belligerent interventionist.”

Thomas J. Pressly, the late, legendary UW history professor who was brought here by Holt himself in 1949, once wrote that, “Stull declared war on Germany in 1936, although the U.S. did not get around to that position until 1941. I suspect that Holt never rescinded his 1914 declaration of war on Germany, but just suspended it from 1918 to 1936.”

Theodore Roosevelt perhaps summed it up best when he wrote: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood … if he fails, at least [he] fails while daring greatly. So that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

Clearly, minus Roosevelt’s nasty assesment of sideline critics, Holt meets the standard, a true avatar of the “Warrior Intellectual.”

The Great War Beckons

Great War Gratitude
This 1919 issue of the American Field Service Bulletin pays tribute to Americans like Holt who lived in France and served so admirably as ambulance drivers during the first world war.

After “the Great War,” Holt returned to Cornell, where he completed his undergraduate degree under famed historian Carl Becker, his M.A. at George Washington and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins. He then settled into the academic life, teaching and writing. He followed public affairs keenly and was never an ivory-tower intellectual; his military interventions showed otherwise, as did his political activism: he was a two-time delegate to the National Democratic Convention and a member of the Platform Committee.

Holt Returns to War in a Different Role

On a trip to Washington, D.C., in September 1941—three months before Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor—Holt called on the War Department, hoping to be cleared for a combat flying role. His age of 45 unsurprisingly disqualified him, but one Air Corps officer, recognizing Holt’s trained skill in the gathering, evaluation, and transmission of evidence, told him that he was fit for intelligence work as a staff officer.

After months of waiting for an assignment—a War Department acquaintance had alerted him that the Department had been swamped with similar requests—he wrote an old Baltimore friend with close ties to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. Holt’s letter explained that this was the only time he had ever asked for a favor of this kind. The activist urge of the Warrior-Intellectual had prevailed over any favoritism concern.

On July 24, 1942, Holt finally received his orders from Major General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, the legendary commander of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, based in England. Spaatz knew British Brigadier Norman R. Crockatt’s intelligence operation and wanted an American clone.

Holt’s mission: emulate Crockatt’s success to serve the fliers of the Eighth Air Force. While Holt would no longer experience the thrill and danger of combat flying, this assignment was the next best thing—his ticket to a command position in the dramatic, thrilling world of “escape and evasion” and in its connected responsibility of interrogation. Interrogation involved three main components: debriefing Allied fliers after successful missions; interviewing “escapers and evaders” (those who escaped from German prisoner camps or those who parachuted or crash-landed and then evaded capture, navigating pre-designated escape routes to “safe houses” and “helpers” who led them to freedom); and finally, getting information from German prisoners of war – fliers and ground forces, after Holt’s responsibility was enlarged after the D-Day invasion to include ground troops.

A Perfect Model: Brigadier Crockatt

Britain, entering World Wars I and II at their outset, developed a sophisticated military intelligence infrastructure composed of a set of “MI’s.” By the end of 1941, these units, commanded by Brigadier Norman R. Crockatt, were in charge of managing two areas of military intelligence: one concentrated on communication with British and Commonwealth POWs, escapers and evaders; the other unit oversaw interrogation of enemy POWs.

Holt was not just impressed with the way the British organized its intelligence program. He was also taken with Brigadier Crockatt’s leadership abilities. Holt, already an Anglophile, came to see Crockatt as the best of the best — not just respected but revered by his men. Holt followed suit, and soon he, too, became revered by his staff. What made Crockatt such a brilliant leader was that, as a twice-wounded, twice-decorated infantry officer in World War I, he understood the divide between combatant and staff, and worked to reduce it. Crockatt was “clear-headed, quick-witted, a good organizer (sic), a good judge of men and no respecter of red tape,” according to the book written by Langley (himself an escaper) and Foot (himself an academic don from Cambridge).

Early on, while forming his unit, Holt made a key decision that reflected similar personal qualities as well as his respect for the network Crockatt had built. He decided to use the British escapeand- evasion system and not attempt to create separate American organizations in German-occupied countries.

After the war, Holt characteristically commented on the oddity of making that decision without consulting anyone. He found it strange that his decision was left to a civilian then in the uniform of a Major (italics added to reflect his wry self-image) with no real military training. Clearly, Holt displayed two crucial leadership traits: personal initiative as well as the ability to not let his ego get in the way. In 1943, however, Holt almost lost his command in a classic bureaucratic turf war with the Pentagon. An examination of relevant documents reveals that Crockatt took the rare step to intervene on his behalf with U.S. military leaders—a touchy matter across national lines. That helped convince General Jacob L. Devers, Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, to keep Holt, a decision he defended with the remark, “They can’t run the war from Washington.” Also, perhaps, without the clearly functional Crockatt-Holt partnership.

The Matter of the “Other Front”

Military historians are primarily concerned with why and how battles—and ultimately wars—are won and lost: the clash of arms, and the “big-picture” strategic, tactical, and logistical analysis. Holt was no longer eligible for this “fighting front,” but definitely for the “other front,” with its own set of strategy, tactics, and logistics. This was the front of “Escape and Evasion.”

The two fronts were conceptually interconnected in two crucial ways: returning escaped fliers to the front lines; and the gathering and protection of vital intelligence. (We must also not forget the importance of the creation of a communication system to maintain prisoners’ morale during the trying ordeal of imprisonment). Ideally, if “escape and evasion” worked properly, airmen who were freed from behind enemy lines could return to fighting status; that was how the “other front” resupplied the “fighting front.” Escape was almost the easy part. Evasion was trickier, involving the knack of inconspicuous travel; learning the escape lines; connecting with “helpers,” members of the “Resistance” who risked torture and death to man “safe houses” and guide evaders to ultimate rendezvous and return to England.

Each of these roles offered opportunities to gather valuable intelligence, such as: 1) how to identify guards who might be induced to aid escapers; 2) was there a change in the demographic of guards which might reflect a manpower shortage; 3) what population groups should be avoided, such as fanatical Hitler Youth or residents of heavily bombed areas, who were more likely to execute fliers summarily; and 4) what was the state of the German transport system? In addition, a special type of intelligence was required. It concerned Allied criminal behavior—that is, the identification of stool pigeons among our captives. Archival documents include Holt memoranda listing American personnel accused by fellow POWs of betrayal, to be turned over to the provost marshal.

It was the joint responsibility of MI-9 and Holt’s PW&X Detachment to train Royal Air Force and Eighth Air Force airmen to deal with missions gone wrong and to orient them to the ethos of the prisoner-captive relationship, as defined by the Geneva Convention of 1929.

“Name, Rank and Serial Number”

Getting to Safety
In this notepad–supplied by the British government–Holt took notes about his top-secret work training Allied forces about escape and evasion. “In teaching code,” he wrote, “don’t let boys talk outside the classroom about the codes.”

When positions were reversed, with the Crockatt/Holt team acting as interrogators of German POWs, the information-gathering system process was enhanced by hidden microphones secretly recording conversations between prisoners. (Documents detail fascinating transcriptions of German generals agreeing, in essence, that things would have been different had they, and not that idiot Hitler, been running the war; and that they were doing their jobs as professional soldiers, not as Nazi ideologues.)

Rewarding The “Helpers”

When Allied prisoners escaped confinement, they were considered “evaders.” They then made contact with the “helpers,” whose noble efforts did not escape the Germans. In the summer of 1944, the Germans established in Paris the SD (SichersheistDienst: Security Service) for Counter-Evasion. By 1944, the Germans had penetrated or broken up many of the Allied evasion organizations operating in enemy-occupied territory. So successfully had they learned the methods of these organizations that they were able to organize large-scale counter evasion services of their own.

One document lists 168 U.S. and British escaped POWs who were recaptured; and, contrary to any convention, were sent to Buchenwald, where two of them died in that notorious death camp. Obviously, many more “helpers” met a similar fate.

Holt knew very well the dangers his team of “helpers” were facing every day. He later selected Major John F. White to head up a new awards unit which recognized and rewarded those who risked their lives to help Allied prisoners get home to England and Alliedcontrolled Europe.

The result, approved by the chief of G-2 [Intelligence Dept.], was a complex system of graded awards—reimbursements and decorations. The gratitude of the helpers is documented by a deluge of emotionally charged thank-you letters received by White’s special unit. There was another kind of award as well. Captain Dorothy Smith, sent to Brittany to certify the contributions of a legendary Resistance leader, went beyond the monetary: she married him.

How Much Success? A Look at the Numbers

The number of escapers and evaders, as calculated by the British War Office, tells an amazing story of endurance and success for the thousands of people who risked their lives after being behind enemy lines.

These figures reflect the fact that Britain had been fighting in all theaters of World War II, involving significant numbers of fighting men, since 1939. This early phase of the war was more a time of defeat—and capture—than of victory. The numbers cover the war theaters of Western Europe; including neutral Switzerland, which was a key haven, largely for escapers; and the Mediterranean, the latter because in 1943, Holt’s responsibilities had been enlarged beyond the Eighth Air Force to include army ground forces in preparation for the invasions of North Africa and Europe.

British, including Dominion, Colonial, and Indian personnel: Escapers: 18,703. Evaders: 4,116. Total: 22,819. U.S.: Escapers: 1,806. Evaders: 5,653. Total: 7,459.

Holt’s Military Legacy

While researching the Holt story, I learned that Suzzallo Library had been contacted by Colonel (Ret.) Greg Eanes, who had a special interest in learning more of Holt’s “back story” as well as of his military career. He had hoped that the library and Holt’s family might have relevant documents. Suzzallo had plenty regarding Professor Holt. The family had plenty of material, which I had been examining through Tom Pressly’s intervention and the family’s cooperation, regarding Colonel Holt. Eanes, whom I met months later at the National Archives, had an understandable motivation. He was the Holt of the Gulf War of 1991, managing “Escape and Evasion,” and realized his huge debt to Holt’s methods and philosophies, which underlay his own. He also concluded that, besides the book MI-9, Holt—who died in 1981 at the age of 86—had not received anywhere near due credit.

The relevance of the Liberal Arts

How are Holt’s actions ascribed to a liberal arts/social science curriculum? The first is his decision to emulate, but not necessarily duplicate, Brigadier Crockatt’s highly effective team. He chose cooperation over competition, allowing his unit to use British experience to shorten the learning process. Holt’s value system permitted the application of cool reason to answer the central question: how most quickly and effectively could he bring his command up to speed? Others might have promoted a spirit of competitive nationalism— Yanks over Brits: we’ll gain our own experience and do better than they. I argue that the values of a liberal arts education helped point Holt to his decision. It reflected a proper choice of values.

The second instance was Holt’s deep concern to recognize the huge and high-risk contributions of the gallant members of the Resistance in the occupied countries, without which the success of Escape and Evasion would have been critically at risk. To Holt, recognition meant real follow-through: the establishment of a unit solely devoted to that end. It is not difficult to recognize here a profoundly meaningful application of humane values to the terrible realities of war.

It is also not difficult for those who studied the liberal arts and social sciences at the University of Washington, some perhaps with the guidance of W. Stull Holt, to feel a measure of institutional pride … and to recognize that Yale historian Robin Weeks’ specification had, indeed, a good measure of justification.

With deep gratitude, this article is dedicated to the UW, especially its stellar History Department and magnificent Suzzallo Library, where I studied and researched, guided by professors and archivists who became both mentors and friends. The University has become the focus of my and my wife Rosemary’s educational and social lives, and we feel deeply indebted to it. In addition, we honor two remarkable people who died in 2012 and without whom this effort would never have even been conceived: Professor Tom Pressly and Jocelyn Holt Marchisio, loving and admiring elder daughter of Stull Holt. Stull brought Tom to the UW. Jocelyn welcomed Rosemary and me into the family, with full access to the Holt family papers. Ave atque vale!

—Jim Kahn holds an A.B. in history from Princeton and a master’s in history from the UW. He is currently working on a book on W. Stull Holt.

They were complete dumps. Old houses were nailed to giant logs and towed to the water. Houses were roped to low pilings situated every three to four feet on both sides of rickety, teetering and creaking docks with missing cross boards.

The area smelled of rotting wood, gas from the stoves and boats, and “a lake smell” comprised of water, plants and unknowns. Sometimes toilets opened directly into the water below the house floor—a water outhouse. And no one ever swam in the lake.

While in school, I lived with Pat Swanson Jorgenson in a houseboat on Lake Union. Our houseboat was located three blocks west from Eastmount Street, where we could park a car or catch a bus to campus. Our “luxury” houseboat—which had three bedrooms, an enclosed toilet and bathroom, and a combined kitchen/living room—floated on cedar logs at the end of the dock. There was a large window overlooking the lake. We could open the window and people could step from their boats into the living rooms. The large wall surrounding this window had been painted white, but everyone who entered this room had to continue drawing the spider web that now covered the wall. Black felt-tip permanent makers waited on the window sill. The ceiling was stapled with prints Pat found in Europe of sexually oriented drawings by famous artists.

This was the place where college students earning their living as musicians came to unwind after weekend gigs. Often they jammed with each other playing the music here they wanted to play—blues, jazz, classical and their own improvisations. They were not restricted to playing the popular rock or dance music – no continuous renditions of “Louie, Louie.”

Several students who worked at the North Lake Tavern joined the group and always brought leftover spaghetti and the tavern’s super pizzas. Everyone brought beer—usually Olympia or Rainier. Unfortunately, we were all going to change the world but had not considered our environment. The beer we consumed was in bottles, not cans, and the large living room window was the waste bucket for dozens of empty bottles that floated in the water in long lines and finally sunk. I remember that sight with remorse.

Music and singing floated from the houseboat. No one minded the noise because everyone on the dock came to see and hear the “professionals.” The musicians played until daylight when tiredness began to creep over everyone. People fell asleep on beanbag chairs and couches or left to visit Red Robin for a breakfast hamburger.

Red Robin at this time was a beat-up tavern located at the end of the University Bridge, famous for its great hamburgers served at all hours. Its windows overlooked the canal and you could watch the boat traffic as you ate your hamburger.

During the early morning dawn, the lake was filled with unusual birds. In three hours, they disappeared, leaving the birds that always swam on Seattle waters—mallards, coots and seagulls. To identify these birds, I retrieved my grandmother’s bird book, A Field Guide to Western Birds by Roger Tory Peterson.

My visitors and I were pleased to recognize canvas-back ducks, “scooped billed” shovellers, tiny buffleheads, and the only completely black duck, the American scoter that resembled Daffy Duck. Stately long-throated grebes dove for food, and once a brightly colored wood duck stopped for a visit. We saw loons with diamond necklaces and the pudgyfaced lesser scaups. As spring approached, we watched the mallards make nests on the tops of the pilings and then we saw the many little ducklings hatch. Few survived the first few days, but everyone attempted to protect them from cats, rats and birds of prey.

Living on a houseboat was a way of life that brought about a great deal of companionship, sharing and good humor. Students studied together and played music together, had potluck meals and vicious Monopoly games. Everyone helped each other to fix anything. If someone fell in the lake, he or she was helped out and thrown into the shower. Houseboats were the first giant waterbeds. The sounds and smells of the lake and the rolling rooms could eliminate worries and lull you to sleep.

—Bonnie Nelson Powell graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in art education in 1963. She currently lives in Leavenworth, Wash.

Photography instructor Mel Curtis teaches UW students the fine art of the Jr. Birdman pose while they gather at the Castel Sant’Angelo (Castle of Angels) in Rome during the UW Design in Rome Program. Chris Ozubko, director of the UW School of Art (wearing a black cap in the photo), led the group on a field trip through the neighborhood. The Rome class is still offered as an early fall program in design, art history and photography. Connie Wellnitz was on the trip and she snapped this photo.

A world-renowned Husky tradition—one often called the best free event anywhere in Seattle—began with a front page sports story. It was May 1986 and veteran columnist Blaine Newnham quoted UW coaches as saying that nothing in the world compared to their crew teams’ Opening Day, which had been held in conjunction with the ceremonial first day of Seattle’s boating season since 1970. Thousands of boats and spectators lined the course. The Montlake Cut provided a natural amphitheater. And Husky teams ranked among the nation’s best. “The stage is set in Seattle,” Newnham wrote in The Seattle Times, “why not use it?” The next day, John Jacobi, founder of Windermere Real Estate, went to men’s coach Dick Erickson and women’s coach Bob Ernst with a proposition. “Let’s get the best team in the world here,” he said, offering to be the title sponsor. “Who’s the best team in the world?” Both Soviet squads had just won the world championships. But the Cold War was ongoing. The Berlin Wall was still years away from coming down.

“Well,” Jacobi asked, “can you get them here?” It wasn’t easy. Ernst started by calling contacts with World Rowing in Switzerland. He enlisted the aid of former Husky athlete Norm Dicks, an influential U.S. Representative. Planning meetings more than 30 people deep with FBI agents, State Department officials and Seattle police followed. Once a deal was struck, the Secret Service were all over the UW campus and Jacobi’s home. As the Soviets practiced in the days leading up to the race, armed police officers remained stationed nearby. But that first Windermere Cup created the rich, unmatched tradition Newnham and the Huskies had hoped for—and an unforgettable Seattle moment.

John Buller, ’71, former UW Alumni Association president and current Seafair chair, remembers years before the Windermere Cup when the Opening Day crew races would be held on the same day as the football spring game and crowds of roughly 25,000 would gather. There also was the hot May afternoon in the early 90s when there was the impromptu water balloon fight among boats that felt much like the Seafair fun of late summer.

“They’re doing “Tequila” and the Husky fight song, and you’re going through the cut and everybody’s cheering,” she recalled. “It was one of the biggest thrills.”

THE TIMELESSNESS of the tradition is now enhanced during the day’s first race by the presence of crews from the Ancient Mariners Rowing Club—a group featuring athletes whose college days began during the Eisenhower administration. And still, like the guys half a century younger, they have the same camaraderie and work ethic, braving the cold rain in early morning practices. No wonder the experience leaves some visitors thinking that the UW is too good to depart.

In 2001, six of the Romanian women’s crew jumped ship after the Windermere Cup, defecting for a better life in Seattle. Two of the young women joined the UW team and one, Sanda Hangan, ’07, was named Pac-10 Newcomer of the Year. The promise of a top-quality education and an association with a top-quality rowing program was what motivated her move, Hangan told reporters the following year.

It wasn’t the first time a foreigner was swayed by the Windermere Cup. Roberto Blanda left the Italian national team to join the Huskies from 1992-95, though he went back home before enrolling at Washington and later competed for Italy in the Olympics.

As the Windermere Cup heads into its 27th edition, the results have become more predictable. The Husky men’s varsity eight have won 20 of the 26 Windermere Cups, with the only exceptions since 1990 being the 2006 win by the Russian national team and Croatia’s Olympic squad victory in 2001. The UW women have won 18, including the last six. Last year, University of Virginia men’s coach Frank Biller told a reporter his team was looking forward to testing their championship lineup at the Windermere Cup, “to see how much we get our butts kicked by the U Dub.”

No matter who wins, starting that two-kilometer course among all those party boats and yachts, then going through the Montlake Cut with thousands of screaming fans is a life-changing experience, just like it was for the Soviets in the 1987 Windermere Cup.

“I never heard a single word of the coxswain during the race,” reigning world champion Andrej Vasiljev told Newnham that day. “Even the finals of the World Championships are not as impressive as this.” —Casey McNerthney is a journalist at seattlepi.com.

Tadayoshi Kohno’s experiments are the stuff of science fiction movies: using a kid’s Erector Set to spy on its owner, tracking a runner using his mileage monitor or even hackers taking over a car while it’s driving and forcing it to brake to a stop. The only difference between Hollywood make-believe and reality is that this white hat hacker doesn’t need special effects to make them reality.

He’s already overcome all those challenges and he’s constantly looking for more. And thanks to the increased use of computer chips that send out or receive information digitally in even seemingly simple devices like toys, ski goggles, cars and pacemakers, there will be no shortage of challenges in the foreseeable future.

The reason is simple, really.

Adding computers to items that haven’t been online before makes them hackable. As an example, Kohno points to an Erector Set that came with a built-in wireless connection and a web camera that would allow the owner to control the resulting homemade contraptions via the Internet. While it may sound like innocent fun, its connection to the Internet might also give a less-than-well-intentioned- hacker the ability to spy on the child and her family.

“We actually looked at a number of children’s toy robots. You’d be surprised at the number that even have video cameras and wireless connections,” Kohno says. The 34-year-old associate professor of in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering doesn’t want to be a killjoy, though. The school’s only cybersecurity expert just wants to raise public awareness of potential concerns most consumers haven’t even considered, but should. “We really need to get people to think about security proactively. People are not thinking about it [now] because they haven’t been burned in the past,” he says.

The same goes for product makers who are adding the chips, he adds. Although some folks within companies have expressed concern about possible security implications, the worry hasn’t translated into action because many of the manufacturers involved haven’t had to worry about computer security before.

If the experiments he and his researchers have conducted are any indication, there’s plenty of room for concern. The smart meters people have installed in their homes to monitor energy usage are a case in point. While the level of communication between consumers and utilities is a good thing because it can help them be more energy efficient and save money, Kohno’s team discovered a potential lack of security could allow a hacker to learn more about a family’s habits all the way down to what television shows they watch.

In another experiment, Kohno’s team also hacked into a car, flashed its lights, unlocked the power locks and started the ignition without a key. They also managed to put on the brakes while the car was moving. In a far more sobering development, he’s even shown that it’s possible to hack into pacemakers, insulin pumps and other medical devices. “I think the risk today is pretty small. If someone needed a medical device I would absolutely get one. The point is to understand these vulnerabilities,” he says.

Although he enjoys thinking up new targets and experiments, he isn’t doing it for fun. Instead, he’s trying to stay several steps ahead of the hackers and find other potential problem areas. “We try to anticipate what will be the new hot technologies over the next 10 years” and look for their vulnerabilities so they can point them out to the manufacturers and the government to make products more secure.

Once he and his team successfully hack a device, they try to get manufacturers to plug security holes. Two major organizations within the auto industry, the automotive engineering group SAE International and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research, responded to his car experiment by setting up task forces to study ways to increase car security. Fortunately, most hackers don’t have the same level of sophistication as Kohno’s team.

Another way to put pressure on manufacturers to pay attention to security concerns is to educate shoppers. Although most try to prevent computer viruses and identity theft, the issue of cybersecurity for everyday, household consumer goods hasn’t yet resonated with most people.

“It’s safe to say that the average consumer of these technologies doesn’t think about it. My hope is that that changes. I would love it if Consumer Reports started analyzing security” and parents start asking, “Is this toy that I’m buying for my child going to compromise his security?” Kohno has already started to push the needle in that direction by developing a card game centering on security. He also covers many of the same issues in his senior level security class, of course. Since security is an issue that crosses all of science and many different disciplines he says he believes that it should be covered long before students are in their final year.

“Our introduction to computer programming classes are taken by a huge number of people, not just people interested in computer science. I would love it if security was available to undergrads and all people taking computer science,” he says, adding, “I would love it if we could integrate security as early as we can into the curriculum.” Until he can convince consumer magazines to focus on the issue of cybersecurity, his classes are the best way to have an impact on the problem in the long term. And not a moment too soon.

As he said on a recent episode of NOVA scienceNOW in which he was featured, “Our privacy is slowly eroding over time and we need to make a conscious decision to let it happen or try to stop it.”

—David Volk is a Seattle freelancer writer. His last piece for Columns was on Huskies in the wine industry.]]> http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2013/features/kohno/feed/ 1 http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2013/golf/ http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2013/golf/#comments Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:11:09 +0000 pfontana http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/?page_id=2984 Continue reading →]]>

The Husky golf teams find themselves in a similar position: perched high in team and individual rankings. So high, in fact, that the phrase “national champion” can’t help but creep into conversation.

“I don’t know that we’ll continue to talk about it, but that was our expectation from the start,” says Mary Lou Mulflur, ’80, coach of the No. 1-ranked women’s team. Likewise, men’s coach Matt Thurmond notes that the subject is familiar to his No. 6-ranked squad. “I don’t need to remind them or put it on bulletin boards.” Leading the way for the men’s team is the trio of senior Chris Williams, sophomore Cheng-Tsung Pan and junior Trevor Simsby, all of whom were named to the watch list for the Ben Hogan Award, the highest honor in men’s collegiate golf. Williams has spent the last several months as the world’s top-ranked amateur, while Pan now sits atop the collegiate rankings. The women’s team is a young one. Leading the way is sophomore SooBin Kim, ranked second among collegians, and freshman Charlotte Thomas, named the Pac-12’s Women’s Golfer of the Month in September.

While some express surprise that these powerhouse programs are situated in the Northwest, the coaches think it may actually be an advantage. “The assumptions are that if you have perfect weather all the time, you’re going to build more skill,” notes Thurmond. “I think it might be the opposite.” Mulflur adds that the perception that this isn’t a golf hotbed puts a “chip on the shoulder” of her team. Whatever the motivation, both teams will have plenty of opportunity to display their resilience as they face the gauntlet presented by their Pac-12 competition. “You’re well seasoned by the time you get to the post-season,” assures Thurmond. Both coaches believe that their teams still have room for improvement—and expect it. Short of making any assumptions, Mulflur guarantees: “It’s going to be a fun ride.”—Paul Fontana