Part 27

On my way to the door, I ask him one last question: Does he still have time to read the Bible every day?

"Yes," he replies, grinning, "That's what I was doing when you came here and that's what I'm going to do after you leave."

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WESTSIDER DAVID HAWK Executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A.

3-11-78

During the final days of World War II, a captured resistance member sat alone in a black prison cell, tired, hungry, tortured, and convinced of approaching death. After weeks of torment, the prisoner was sure that there was no hope, that no one knew or cared. But in the middle of the night, the door of the cell opened, and the jailer, shouting abuse into the darkness, threw a loaf of bread onto the dirt floor. The prisoner, by this time ravenous, tore open the loaf.

Inside was a matchbox. Inside the matchbox were matches and a scrap of paper. The prisoner lit a match. On the paper was a single word: "Coraggio!" Courage. Take courage. Don't give up, don't give in. We are trying to help you. "Coraggio!"

The prisoner never did find out who wrote the one-word message, but the spark of hope it provided may well have saved his life. The story is told in Matchbox, the newspaper of Amnesty International U.S.A., one of the largest branches of the worldwide human rights organization that received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1977.

David Hawk, executive director of Amnesty international U.S.A., sits behind his desk on a weekday morning talking about how the group originated and what it has done to earn the prize.

"It was started in Britain in 1961 by a lawyer named Peter Benenson," says Hawk, whose name belies the fact that he has been involved in civil rights for nearly half of his 34 years. "It started over a trial that was going on in Portugal." Benenson launched a one-year campaign to call attention to the Portuguese prisoners.

Soon the idea became so popular that a permanent organization was created. Chapters sprang up in other countries, and members began to work toward freeing "prisoners of conscience" on every continent. In the past 17 years, Amnesty International -- or "Amnesty" for short -- has aided in securing the release of nearly 13,000 individuals who were imprisoned not for crimes, but for personal beliefs that went against their governments' official policies.

"We're a nuisance factor," says Hawk. "We organize letter-writing and publicity campaigns on behalf of individual victims of human rights violations. It's the letters and the publicity that are Amnesty's tools for securing their release or bettering their conditions while they're in. At first it sounds strange to think that people sitting in living rooms in the United States can help someone in a fortress prison on an island in Indonesia, or in Siberia. ... You deluge certain people with so many letters that eventually it becomes an issue. Then the government asks, 'Is holding this person worth the trouble?' And on occasion, the answer is no."

The secret of Amnesty's success is its huge number of volunteers -- 170,000 in 78 countries -- who work on the case of a particular prisoner for years if necessary. They send letters and telegrams not only to government officials, but also to the prisoner himself. At times they send packages, or give financial aid to his family, or arrange for legal aid.

A 100-member research team in London makes sure that every new case is thoroughly documented before assigning it to an "adoption group" of 12 to 20 people. This group generally receives the names of three prisoners from three different political systems, and meets once a month to work on the cases until a result is obtained.

The Riverside adoption group, dating back to 1966, was the first one established in the U.S. Today there are more than 100 in 32 states. All of these are monitored by David Hawk and his staff of 20 full-time workers at their Westside office. The $750,000 annual U.S. budget comes from members' contributions, foundations, and church agencies.

Hawk assumed the leadership of A.I.-U.S.A. in 1974. "In the early '60s I worked in the civil rights movement in the Deep South," he recalls. "From 1967 to 1972 I was one of the organizers of the Moratorium Against the War. Then I worked in the McGovern campaign."

At about the same time he graduated from Union Theological Seminary, and from there went to Oxford University in England, where he found out about Amnesty International. Returning to the U.S., he applied for the vacant post of executive director and was accepted. Ever since then he has been a resident of the West Side. David's wife Joan, a potter, is the editor of Matchbox.

Hawk's biggest concern these days is to focus attention on the human rights covenants that President Carter has signed and is planning to send to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The covenants are worded almost the same as the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed in December, 1948. "Put into treaty form," explains Hawk, "the articles will carry more weight. It's very important for governments to agree among themselves that they shouldn't torture their citizens, and should give them fair trials, and should provide food and housing and education for their citizens. Amnesty wants all governments to ratify the treaty."

Anyone interest in volunteering some time to this worthy organization should write to: Amnesty International, 2112 Broadway, Room 309, New York, NY 10023.

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EASTSIDER WALTER HOVING Chairman of Tiffany & Company

12-22-79

When Walter Hoving took over as chairman of Tiffany and Company in 1955, he gave his designers one simple rule: "Design what you think is beautiful and don't worry about selling it." The rule applies as much to store's eye-catching Christmas display windows as to the three floors of jewelry, silver, china, and crystal at the corner of 5th Avenue and 57th Street. Hoving's unique combination of business wizardry and impeccable taste has paid off dramatically: since he joined the company, Tiffany's annual sales haver gone from $7 million to $73 million.

A tall, soft-spoken, former Brown University football star whose unlined forehead and vigorous appearance belie his 82 years, Hoving has a voice like Jimmy Stewart's and kindly yet authoritative manner. On his conservative gray suit is a tiny silver pin with the words "Try God." Leaning back in the comfortable desk chair at his vast, teakwood-paneled office at Tiffany's on a recent afternoon, he answers all questions thoroughly and unhesitatingly.

"We don't think in terms of price at all. Whatever we sell has got to be up to our standard in quality material, quality workmanship, and quality of design. ... You see, you've got to have a point of view in this thing. That's all we've got is a point of view, and we stick to it."

What he calls a "point of view" others would simply define as "taste." And Hoving is well qualified to have strong opinions in this area. At the age of 30, three years after joining R.H. Macy and Company, he was already a vice president and merchandising director. At that point, says Hoving, "I realized that design was going to be a coming thing, and I really didn't know much about it. So I matriculated at New York University in their arts department, and I took courses on period furniture, old silver, historic textiles, color and design. It took me three years, twice a week at night. ... Then, of course, I could learn by going into people's homes that were beautiful, in England and France, at museums -- wherever I was. You learn if you have a basis. And so I advise anybody who comes into this business to get knowledgeable about decorative arts."

After leaving Macy's, he climbed steadily, becoming vice president of Montgomery Ward, president of Lord & Taylor, and president of Bonwit Teller. Upon arriving at Tiffany's, one of the first things he did was to discontinue selling anything that didn't conform to his esthetic standards, regardless of profit.

The current 180-page catalogue lists almost 100 items under $25, along with such unabashed luxuries as a porcelain dessert service for six priced at $4,200 and an unpriced "seashell" necklace of 18-carat gold with diamonds set in platinum. Tiffany's carries no synthetic gems because, according to Hoving, "everything here is real," and no men's diamond rings because "we think they're vulgar." He adds: "I dropped antique silver. I saw no reason why Tiffany should carry it. You can get antiques anyplace. Our job is to make antiques for the future."