For many of us, the January 2010 earthquake of 7.0 magnitude that devastated the nation of Haiti, was a tragedy that assailed our sensibilities for weeks, yet it seemed culturally as distant as had it happened on Mars, even though some 316,000 people died as a result. Earthquakes, after all, do happen. Buildings collapse. People die, tragically but inevitably.
They don't, however, die as inevitably in such large numbers. This was borne out a month thereafter, when an earthquake of 8.8 magnitude -- and that scale is logarithmic, so this was a hugely more energetic one than the one in Haiti -- struck Chile. Very few sensibilities in the USA were assailed, however, principally because only 523 Chileans died as a result, even though the impact of the earth's rumbling was some 60 times as great.
Paul Fallon did not need to be told why the death toll in Haiti was so much higher, nor did he have to be encouraged to feel empathy for the nation and its people. A Boston-based architect who grew up in Oklahoma, Fallon had been to Haiti previously and was well aware of the country's utter lack of building codes and propensity for building with unreinforced concrete -- deathtrap architecture when the earth starts shaking. He was also aware of the stark contrast with Chile's strongly-enforced codes and what a life-saving impact they had when the plates moved underneath Chile.
There are, I'm sure, people who prefer that charity "begin at home", as it were, and I'm sure I count many among my friends who take that a bit too strongly. But I know that if I had a talent, a skill, knowledge and interest that made me particularly qualified to render service to my fellow man, I would follow it to where it might best apply in or outside the USA.
Paul Fallon applied his, spending a good part of the subsequent few years in Haiti doing his part to provide for a future in however small a part of the country he could, one that would leave lasting benefit.
About 10 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake is the town of Grand Goâve, devastated as was so much of the country. He responded in his own way, with designs for what would become two earthquake-resistant buildings -- one an orphanage, the other a school -- in the town. Eventually living half the time in country, he supervised construction on the two buildings, including an innovative design to make them safer than most structures in the country. Fallon also became part of a group of Americans training the Haitians to build with higher standards, particularly where concrete construction is involved.
The stories of his time there are found in a number of sites, as well as in his book Architecture by Moonlight, an account of his years of personal effort as a part of the recovery effort, and equally of his connection with the people of the country. The orphanage, for example, was personal for the American family who planned it to honor the memory of the couple's daughter, who died in the earthquake, while the school was a church-based project of an organization called the Mission of Hope, a strongly missionary-focused group.
I can't try to describe the difficulty of building modern structures absent the convenience of modern machinery to do things like mixing concrete, or even moving building materials. I can't imagine in the 2010s having to substitute manual labor for what we would regard as the most simply automated parts of the construction process. I can't try to portray many equally altruistic groups having to compete for scarce resources, funding and equipment.
Fortunately, I don't have to; it is written in the book and the subject of a number of interviews and stories that I hope some of you will take a little time to search and peruse, such as this video.
The ending is not yet what we might wish; although the buildings with which he was involved were properly designed and built, the cost of construction of reinforced concrete for other needed construction, particularly of steel, is still beyond Haiti's capacity, and the building codes, or lack thereof, reflect that. The risk is still essentially what it was.
That actually doesn't matter as much for my purposes. Today I simply want to call a few more people's attention to one selfless person's actions to make a part of humanity better than it would have been had he not lifted a finger to help. There are others, heroes of our time, who find parts of their lives to devote to service of their fellow man -- with little or no tangible reward. All should be saluted.
As you might have somehow inferred, I know Paul -- known inexplicably as "Shorty" even though he is not particularly diminutive (few, compared to me, are). Shorty joined my fraternity at M.I.T. the fall after I graduated, and we didn't meet until I returned to Boston for a brief stay in 1974, and so knew each other only in passing forty years back.
Still, when you hear the name of a chronologically close-enough fraternity brother your ears pick up, and after the earthquake I started to hear about Shorty's efforts to help where he could. Reading into the story, I found myself very proud to have known him, proud to have shared the experience of what our brotherhood meant, glad that he has made so much more of his training and education for his fellow man than I can hope to, in my own life.
I know as sure as I write this that he did what he did, and continues to help out there, not for personal gain, but because of the innate goodness in him and the humanity that tells him to do what he can.
The founder of the fraternity we are both members of wrote, back in 1849, that our members should transmit it "not only not less, but greater than it was transmitted to us." There are men and women who apply principles like that even broader, to the whole world they live in, leaving it even better for their presence.
Few have done it as well. Good on you, Shorty.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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