Roman Proud, Wayward Widower
by
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Rolling south, the Acela sped full tilt along Amtrak's ribbons of rails turned silvery by rain. Roman's eyelids fluttered a few seconds, then drooped shut as the image of Ellen Porter beckoned, flickering on like a holograph… or a sweet hallucination. Oh, Ellen, the imperfectly beautiful Peace Corps Volunteer! All that she ever shared of her life floated back as her voice echoed in Roman's reverie. Born near San Francisco, Ellen came of age in the early 'sixties, yet no stringy-haired, pot-tripping hippie was she. No, for had there been a Peace Corps poster girl back then, it would have been Ellen - the willowy blonde of the creamy complexion whose shining intellect lit her dazzling blue eyes, so dazzling that they compensated for the modest attributes above her midriff. Recruited to teach at an Andean university, she soon blossomed full-flower into young Roman's evolving vision of a great beauty, a beauty a bit less than perfect.
Ellen earned her bachelor's degree from Smith College, the elite women's school near the heart of President Kennedy's home state. She, too, was drawn to the dashing President's bold programs for peace, though, unlike Roman, the urban Easterner, Ellen grew up a continent away on a squat houseboat in Sausalito within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. Her father was a fearless, sun-bronzed surfer. One night, he bailed out of marriage to pass his days propelling his shortboard forward over the waves to defy the Hawaiian ghosts of Kauai's Polihale Beach. And her mother? If Ellen's father hearkened to the surfer gods of the Pacific, her mother answered to uncaring muses. Katie Porter's seascape aquarelles gathered dust on gallery walls until the managers bargained them away to the tourist trade. The houseboat was too small for hanging or storing Katie's canvases and, worse yet, too confining for Ellen. Hemmed in on all sides by the houseboat's gunwale, Katie's lone child had nowhere to skip and run about on sunny days.
"Katie,” - so Ellen was trained to call her mother - “can't I play on shore? Or sit at the end of the dock with the fishermen?” Later, the tall, vigorous teen displayed a mind as quick and powerful as her limbs were long. She yearned to raise anchor or break free to climb the heights of the world beyond. “Katie, if we sell more paintings in May, will we have enough for me to go to Spain with Monica? Her daddy's sending her to Madrid on a summer exchange program.” Katie Porter seldom earned that much disposable cash in May or any other month.
Yet Ellen's high school Spanish yielded an Easter week trip to Tijuana, south of San Diego's border. One morning, when the yellow bus sat mired in mud near a barrio, she aimed her boxy Kodak Hawkeye at Mexican children romping in a sculpture garden of car wrecks and other hulking junk. Trailed by yelping dogs, the children scampered over to stare up at the young gringos gawking down at them from behind the bus windows. Taken aback, Ellen forgot to snap a picture. She never forgot their faces.
At Smith College, Ellen double-majored in art history and math and delighted in biology, but being bright had its downsides. When gossiping about their first exam marks at Smith, her classmates groaned. Here was Ellen, another all-A's curve-breaker. But they cheered upon discovering Ellen in the sports pages of The Sophian, Smith's newspaper. She was a scholar-athlete, though her athletic prowess sputtered her freshman year. Learning that Smith fielded a basketball team the year after basketball was invented in nearby Springfield, she sought to share in that heritage. Though a tad under five-feet-nine, she made junior varsity power forward. Yet the coach kept her mostly on the bench.
"Coach, Holyoke's already down nine points. Can't I go in now?” she finally pleaded.
"Next week Ithaca hosts an exhibition game,” said Coach. “I'll start you there.”
Who was she kidding? thought Ellen. Ithaca hasn't even fielded an intercollegiate team yet. That summer, Ellen traded her ponytail for a pixie cut, trained for her first love, and cruised to a berth on Smith's varsity swim team. In her final two years, she garnered fists full of medals in the 200-meter and 400-meter individual medley and medley relays. Ellen could turn heads, too. Like a few blessed tomboys who metamorphosed into star athletes in high school or college, she stood out from the crowd. College jocks driving into Northampton from the University of Massachusetts would lean out their windows, toot their horns at Ellen on Elm Street or Main, and sing out, “C'mon, Baby, let's do the twist!” Amherst frat boys in open convertibles crooned, “It's now or never...”
Model-tall, with the sunniest, dimpled grin at Smith, Ellen was unspoiled, winsome, and cute - still the girl nurtured on Seventeen's wholesome essays and fiction. Her smile radiated warmth, free of seduction. And so no editors would have tapped her for a trendy Mademoiselle cover. And surely not for a centerfold in Playboy that had begun lavishing color spreads on topless glamazons. No, for Ellen, like many female athletes, was nicely sculpted yet a bit small-bosomed. Fortunately cover models or centerfold girls were not on the Peace Corps' search-list. To launch a 1963 university initiative, the Peace Corps contracted with Cornell's renowned anthropology department to pilot a project featuring academics. “Bingo,” shouted a Peace Corps recruiter in Washington after glancing over Ellen's application, “perfect!”
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About the Book
Flower power, black power, and Woodstock animated the late '60s. But what of the early '60s? What of the golden years animated by America's thousand days of Camelot as John Kennedy presides over the White House, boldly turns back the Soviets by his naval quarantine of Cuba, and launches the Peace Corps? Idealism flowers, sweeping up young Roman Proud whose journey to the New Frontier goes from Columbia University to Peace Corps training at Cornell University, then on to service in South America's Atacama Desert. Along the way, Long Island debutante Regina, a Barnard College pre-med, and Ellen, a Smith College scholar-athlete recruited by the Peace Corps, shape Roman's formative years - by jilting him. Returning to New York in the mid-'60s, Roman signs on to the War on Poverty with a more subdued vision of life and work. Decades later, Nadia, a once-aspiring ballerina, flees Russia to Washington, rouses Roman, now a widower, out of his apathy until he's on the verge of proposing - only to become jilted again. Yet, by spring 2005, unbeknownst to each other, Regina, Ellen, and Nadia take turns dazzling Roman with their newly rekindled passion. Avenged and reveling in their ardor, the gleeful, wayward widower betrays their trust. Will he care to retrieve his honor, choose to stay true to one woman again, and give thought to what he should do with the rest of his life?
About the Author
As President Kennedy began inspiring the world from the White House, Tino Calabia answered the call to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer. After teaching in Peru, he returned to New York where he had earlier earned a Columbia University Master's in English. Helping to launch the War on Poverty, he introduced programs like Head Start in the South Bronx. Recruited into New York City government, he soon directed community-based projects throughout many of the City's poverty neighborhoods.
Moving to Washington in 1975, where he earlier won literary prizes as a Georgetown University student, he continued serving minorities through Federal civil rights work. As a volunteer, he rated foreign high school applicants vying for scholarships to study in the U.S., and then, during the year, counseled students and their host families. Visiting Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet Union nations, he led seminars for alumni of Senator Bill Bradley's initiative, the Future Leaders Exchange Program.
He lives near Washington, his birthplace, with his wife, an international advocate for refugees and internally displaced persons. Both rack up air and road miles visiting their children and grandchildren. One son studied and worked for four years in Europe. A second son worked for four years in Japan and just completed his seventh as a Foreign Service officer in South America. A daughter studied in London, worked in Manhattan's hospitality industry, and is now earning a Masters at Oxford University.