Lesson Twenty-Two

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. The Treasury Department announced today that it is lowering the
guaranteed interest rate on some U.S. savings bonds. NPR's Barbara
I
Mantell reports that the I point decline to 6% came as no surprise
2
to investors. 'The Treasury said it is lowering the rate. on savings
bonds to bring it in line with other market interest rates which have
been falling all year. For instance, money market mutual funds are
now yielding just over 5%; five-year treasury notes are trading at
about 6.5 %. So the government has been paying a premium "Jo peo-
ple buying savings bonds, and it's turned out to be an expensive way
to finance the public debt. The relatively generous 7.5% rate on the
bonds have made them very popular in the past few months. Since
the beginning of August, sales have been about double the usual
pace. And this week, the rush to buy savings bonds intensified be-
cause of reports that the Treasury was going to cut the rate any day,
and people wanted to lock in the old rate. Savings bonds bought be-
fore tomorrow, the day the cut goes into effect, will still yield 7.5%.
I'm Barbara Mantell in New York."

2. After a meeting today of southern Africa's front line states,
Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda said a number of front line
leaders hold South Africa directly responsible for the plane crash
that killed Mozambique President Samora Machel. Kaunda said
there was circumstantial evidence linking South Africa to the crash,
but he didn't say what that evidence was. He said it's up to the
Pretoria government to prove to the contrary. Official Soviet radio
said today all clues point to Soviet-South African complicity in the

death of Machel.

3. President Reagan today named a black career diplomat to be U.S.
Ambassador to South Africa. Edward Perkins, now Ambassador to
Liberia, would succeed retiring Ambassador Herman Nickel. NPR's
Phyllis Crockett has more: ' Perkins is the third man President
Reagan has considered in three months in his attempt to appoint a
black to this sensitive post. North Carolina businessman, Robert
Brown, turned down the job after questions were raised about his
business dealings while he served in the Nixon Administration. Then
Terrance Todman, Ambassador to Denmark, turned down the job,
,apparently because he disagrees with the Reagan Administration
policy towards South Africa. Perkins has been a foreign service offi-
Icer for twenty-eight years. He's fifty-eight years old and has served
in Taiwan, Thailand, Ghana and at the State Department before be-
coming Deputy Chief of the U.S. Embassy in Liberia in 198 1. He be-
came Ambassador in 1985. Black and white South Africans as well
as many in this country have said that naming a black ambassador is
meaningless as long as U.S. policy toward the white-ruled govern-
ment remains the same. I'm Phyllis Crockett in Washington.'

n Two: News in Detail

President Reagan today nominated a career foreign service offl-
to become the first black U.S. ambassador to South Africa. The

long expected move comes as t4e Senate gets set to vote tomorro
on overriding President, Reagan's veto of a bill that would impo
more economic sanctions on South Africa. The newly named env
is Edward Perkins. He is now the American Ambassador to the we
African nation of Liberia. NPR's Phyllis Crockett has'a report:
It's been three months since President Reagan first indicated hi
desire to appoint a black to this sensitive post. Perkins is the Presi
dent's third choice. In July, the President had planned to name
black ambassador during a televised speech on South Africa. But t
man under consideration, businessman and former Nixon-ai
Robert Brown, withdrew his name after questions were raised abo
his business dealings.
Then, the administration's next choice, Terrence Todman, Am.
bassador to Denmark, turned down the job, apparently because he
disagrees with the Reagan Administration policy towards Soug
Africa.
In contrast to the President's plan to name his first choice in a
national speech, today's announcement came with no fanfare.
was no news conference, no press briefing, nooppor@i
tions today. Instead, a notice was handed out to re
White House that Perkins was the President's choice
the low key announcement was a response to the earlier
ment of some top White House officials who felt the first
became public before adequate scrutiny. They expect Pe
easily confirmed by the Senate.
Perkins has been a foreign service officer for twenty-eight years,
He has served in Taiwan, Thailand, Ghana and in Washington, D.C,
In 1981, he became the 2nd in command at the U.S. Embassy
Liberia. In 1985, he became Ambassador. He is fifty-eight years ol
His wife is Chinese. They have two children.
When President Reagan first indicated his intention to appoij
a black ambassador, blacks and whites in South Africa said thi

naming a black will make little difference if U.S. policy remains the

same. The Perkins announcement comes one day, after President

Reagan offered to impose strong sanctions against the South African

government if Congress drops its stronger sanctions.

Secretary of State, George Shultz, told Republican senators to-

day that a votetdoverrid@thePresident's veto: of a sanctions bill

n
would undermine his gotiating position in ext month's summit

"meeting with Soviet leaoer Mikhail Gorbachev. The House overrode

:die veto yesterday. The' Senate is expected to take it up tomorrow.

I'm Phyllis Crockett in Washington.

Section Three: Special Report

Tapescript
Fifty years ago, British aviator Beryl Markham became the fi

person to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean, from east to west. Her
achievement was mar@ though, as were many of her
accomplishments.
Markham had set out to fly from London to New York. She
ended up flying from London to Nova Scotia. That flight and other
aspects of her extraordinary life are told in Markham's book West
with the Night. This week, many public television stations will broad-
,cast a documentary about Markham called "World without Walls'.
NPR's Susan Stanberg tells Beryl Markham's story.
New York City, September 6, 1936, a tickertake parade, and
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia greeting a tall, blonde English woman
who, just the day before, had completed a 21-hour-and-25-minute
flight across the Atlantic, Ebbingdon, England to a nameless swamp,
non-stop.
'Miss Markham, may 1, on behalf of the city of New York, ex-
tend to you, a sincere welcome and our congratulations on your
splendid flight across the ocean.'
'Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so
much.'
Nine years after Lindbergh, and going in the other direction, his
Spirit of Saint Louis, soloed New York to Paris, Beryl Markham,
thirty-four years old, had flown seventeen of the twenty-one and a
half hours in fog and darkness, with no fuel gauge, no radio, no idea
where she was most of the time, to crash land, after the engine of her
monoplane died in a bog on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The
next day, she was being cheered in New York.
'It was a hard battle against the elements above the ocean, fog
and storm, but pluck and endurance crowned one of the most gruel-
ing flights on r cord.
"I am so pleased to have got @re; I only wish I could come in
my own machine.'
" And now, onto a New York hotel, to be interviewed by

a movie waker, Mrs Markham, just what were you thinking about
while flying through all that fog and storm?"
'Well, my one thought and ambition was to get to America.'
'When above the sea, what did you eat or drink?'
'I didn't have anything until the last half hour when I had a
taste of brandy.'
'Just one?'
'No, two, I'm afraid.'
Aviation was very young then. Every single day without fail,
there were two or three articles in the newspapers about people being
killed in aircraft. It was completely new sport. Mary Lovell has just
completed a biography of Beryl Markham. The book will be pub-
lished next spring.
The engines were not very reliable. All she had was a compass
and some kind of direction-finding equipment that didn't work very
well. She really didn't know where she was for a long time. She had
no idea how far off the coast she was, whether her fuel would last. I
think the one time in her life she has been frightened was then.
For most of her eighty-three years, Beryl Markham was indeed
fearless. As a child growing up in Africa, she faced down a maraud-
iiig lion. As a trainer, she forced high-strung racehorses to obey her.
As an old woman, she drove her car through a machine gun fire during
an attempted coup in Kenya. She wanted to keep a luncheon date. It
was simply her nature to confront danger.
" There's a coolness to her. She's not a very trusting person.'
Writer Judith -Theuman. 'I think any person who's lived by her wits
would probably have developed that coolness. Look at the astro-
nauts. I mean, it's a quality that you see it in fliers. You see it in safl.
ors, or you see it in hunters, and Beryl was of that stamp.'
There were other interpretations of Markham's coolness. Some
said she lacked the sense to be afraid. People often said nasty things
about Beryl Markham, especially other women. It"s easy to fi

out why.
'She was beautiful. She was very seductive. She was well bom.
And she was strong and ambitious and fearless and smart. So, you
know, it's a lot to take."
Ironically, recognition did come to Beryl Markham, but only in
the last years of her life. Since West with the Night was reissued
three years ago, it's sold briskly. There are 300,000 copies in print
now, and royalties from the book gave much needed financial securi-
ty. More recognition will come with the showing on public television
this week, of the documentary about her. More recognitions still,
when Mary Lovell's biography comes out next spring. And another
biography is in the work for publication in a few years. So the story
of the woman who flew west on that difficult, dangerous night in
1936 will be told and re-told.
Through'the darkness, wedoed between extra fuel tanks that
had been fitted into the cabin for the long journey, her small plane
bucking fog and storms and headw,'.nds, the Atlantic Ocean black
beneath her, Beryl Markham flew west withthe.@ht, completely

alone.
"You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about
other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch oth-
er people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against
loneliness. If you read a book or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a
dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as
natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would nev-
er have bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words
out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed
continents, each man to see what the other looked like. Being alone
in an aeroplane, for even so short a time as a night and a day,
irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and
your own hands in semi-darkness. Nothing to contemplate but the
size of your small courage. Nothing to wonder a bout but the beliefs,

the faces and hopes rooted in your mind. Such an experience can be
as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side
at night. You are the stranger.'
Beryl Markham died in Kenya this past August. She was
eighty7three. Her ashes were scattered from a light aircraft over the
hills at Inguro - her beloved childhood home. In Washington, I'm
Susan Stanberg.