Field, Dorothy

Dot Field

"You had this Stephen Galatti character, who had the overall vision of how the thing could begin, the drive and the willingness to push people and make this very unlikely thing get off the ground and go, and was willing to call up anybody he knew and ask them for money. The combination with Dot, from whom he learned many things, who had a tremendous warmth---she was the obvious mother figure, but she was more than that, although she was supremely that---students weeping on her shoulder. I remember one time Dot was always subject to being seasick and was lying in her bunk the students continued to file in and weep on her shoulder while she lay in her bunk. She had a wonderful ability to speak honestly to anybody, and have them understand her genuine willingness to help.

"Dot taught the rest of us a little of that---as much as we were up to, which was never anything like her. We learned how not to be frightened of emotions and how to talk to people objectively and yet with sympathy. We learned how to express something of this in our letters."

__ Blaikie Forsyth, quoted in W.P. Orrick, The First Thirty Years, AFS International Scholarships, 1947-1976, New York: AFS, 1991.

DOROTHY FIELD: PROFILE

by Elizabeth Becker
(From Our Little World)

A familiar sight to all AFS staff members is Dorothy Field, watering can in hand, slipping unobtrusively among the plants in the office. Mrs. Field, who joined AFS almost twenty years ago (November 5, 1941) has worked for the organization longer than anyone except Mr. Galatti, and indeed, her spirited personality has permeated the entire atmosphere of AFS.

Mrs. Field. who grew up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where her father owned and was headmaster of a boys' boarding school, spent much of her girlhood riding her pony and walking through the woods near her home. One of her memories is climbing to the top of Storm King Mountain near her home to watch the Wright brothers' first distance flight from Albany to New York.

After leaving school, she married a Brooklyn pediatrician. They honeymooned in Labrador, which led characteristically, to social service: Dr. and Mrs. Field established for the Grenfell Mission, a dispensary on the coast, where aside from giving medical aid they inaugurated courses in religion and a rental library. When they returned to Brooklyn, she managed her husband's office, a task which kept her occupied, with the exception of the years between 1928 and 1932 which she and her three sons spent in Hungary, until the beginning of World War II when she joined British War Relief.

Before the US entered the war, her oldest son, Manning, volunteered for the AFS ambulance corps, then serving French and British forces in the Middle East. Several days later Mrs. Field volunteered her services to AFS. When she was introduced to Mr. Galatti, she was "scared to death of him; he looked like such a shrewd man."

She told him, "I would like to volunteer. I can work hard, I have endless energy, but do nor have funds to contribute to AFS." And she is still working with infinite energy. "All three of my sons returned from the war. I never thought they would.

I feel so humble to have all three again. I can't work hard enough to make up for that.

Her first AFS job involved keeping the books and a record of contributions as well as all the other necessary odd tasks of a general office worker. As more Americans joined AFS, Mrs. Field say, worked for communication among the families of the volunteers. Parents sent their sons' letters to the Field Service, and Mrs. Field compiled, edited, and published them, with a wary eye on the contents, in a monthly magazine. She also put the magazines in envelopes and trundled them on a dolly from the office, then at 60 Beaver Street, to the Wall Street post office.

In 1947 AFS inaugurated its present scholarship program, with fifty students coming from ten countries to America, half of whom attended secondary schools. Mrs. Field handled their health and personal problems, which remain her major interests, consequently becoming known as the AFS "mother." She is remembered by those who worked with her in the early years as having "both shoulders damp with students' tears." Her instant recognition of the most effective approach to all students, her lively sense of humor, and her warm personal interest and confidence in each individual have made her an exemplar of the AFS spirit.

In the early days there were many problems. One student arrived completely terrified of New York and the year awaiting her. Mrs. Field escorted her around the city in order to build up her confidence. When asked if she was hungry, the girl replied that she was, but turned pale at the idea of eating a hot dog. She had understood only the words "eat" and "dog."

Most of the students the first year attended private boarding schools in New England and Pennsylvania. Mrs. Field and Ward Chamberlin, formerly a major in charge of the AFS ambulance corps in India and now AFS legal advisor, visited each student in Mr. Chamberlin's old tin lizzy. She still regularly corresponds with these students, including the Czechs now behind the Iron Curtain for whom she has particular concern.

She was one of the chaperones on the first bus trip. It was the longest trip ever made---more than 6,000 miles---and encompassed the Midwest, the Rockies, Texas, and the Deep South. Of it she says, "It was like a road company playing two shows a day." Her biggest problem lay in finding acceptable ways to release the energy of 30 vigorous students; she returned to the bus one time to find one boy---she nicknamed him "Gorgeous"---stripped to the waist, swinging from rung to rung on the luggage rack.

It was largely on the bus trip, she said, that the AFS spirit came into being---"this sense of human values and closeness of people with one purpose." The trip also resulted in OLW [Our Little World] (which received its name the following year) to perpetuate this spirit.

Mrs. Field's travels in the cause of AFS have, in fact, been Odyssean; she has visited Europe and Asia as well as each of the United Stares. In the summer of 1949 she visited former students and helped organize committees to promote AFS in Europe, and was also in charge of taking the first Americans to Japan in 1957. Knowing that she would be drinking tea in Japanese fashion, sitting on her heels on the floor, she faithfully practiced deep knee bends as she bent over filing cabinets and sat at her desk with her feet tucked under her.

The following year she and Steve Galatti Jr. escorted 100 Greek and Turkish students to the US. The plane broke down and the group was stranded in Athens without hotel reservations. After standing in the heat for long periods, the students complained of sore feet, which Mrs Field spent much of her time soaking in Epsom salts.

Her solicitude for each student needs is matched on another level by her pleasure in caring for each plant in the office. One of her hobbies is gardening, particularly growing roses. At her home in Suffern, she recently moved a ton of dirt with shovel and wheelbarrow, graded the top soil, transplanted 40 rose bushes, and built a stone terrace around her apple trees. She is also in charge of landscaping the AFS terrace a project she shares with the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State.

Although she recently celebrated her 70th birthday, she does not often contemplate retirement. When she does, however, she faces the dilemma of choosing among the many appealing places she's visited or staying with the rose garden and her grandchildren. Whenever the day comes, AFS will lose a personality who deserves in Mr. Galatti's words, "so much credit in having created the atmosphere which has made AFS unique."