Page 46 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition
P. 46

Part One




             That winter, Frankie invited Wash to go to her father’s home in Vermont. Ellsworth
             Cornwall was a professor of politics in Middlebury College and, like his daughter,
             was an avid skier, and so they invited their visitor to go skiing with them. But Wash
             would not be persuaded. “I was always worried about making the grade—and now
             skiing! I was thinking what would happen if I broke a leg. My father had sent me to
             the States to study, not to have fun.”


             During that same visit, Wash volunteered to do the vacuuming—something that must
             have been, to him, a novel and engrossing experience, because Frankie remembers
             him “cheerfully maneuvering the Hoover vacuum around the living room furniture.
             He was having a good time. Ed was startled by this picture. He quietly took me
             aside to say that when Wash was at home he lived in a house with an abundance of
             servants.”


             Still, Frankie says, “Wash was always fun to be with. He was lively, cheerful, optimistic,
             and extremely intelligent, an attribute he never used simply to impress people. He
             was thoughtful and helpful and, as I discovered when I pressed him for some training
             in accounting, he was patient. From Ed I learned something of his background—that
             his father was an important banker in Manila, that he was a friend of Wellington
             Koo. But Wash was secure about who he was and what he did and could do and
             didn’t feel the need to broadcast his background.”


             Frankie was the friend that Wash gifted with the duck from the client he audited. “I
             bought a duck for her once from the place where I worked— a small duck. I carried
             this duck on the subway, and the subway in those days was so crowded. I was worried
             that when I arrived there it would be pressed duck. I didn’t know if the passengers
             knew it was a duck.” Setting her PhD aspirations aside for the moment, Frankie
             took and cooked the duck.  “Duck was extraordinary fare for us, a great treat,” says
             Frankie. “I hope I did it justice.”


             One afternoon, Frankie took a walk with Wash, Ed, and another friend named Jan;
             they had decided to take a spaghetti dinner at Caruso’s, an Italian restaurant on 42
                                                                                         nd
                                                         th
             Street. The only problem was, they were on 116  Street—74 blocks away. But they
             marched gamely downtown and got to the restaurant. There’s no record of how Wash
             felt about that excursion—but Frankie remembers that he appeared the next day
             wearing new golf shoes with one-inch-thick rubber soles, just in case.





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