Connections in Today's Global Village
Two trustees reflect on the life-changing experiences of international travel and philanthropic work, and create ways to help current students and faculty share their enthusiasm.
By Mary Grauerholz
Sukey Nichols Wagner '56 and Diana Davis Spencer '60 didn't know each other in the 1950s when they took their first forays out of the United States. But with a pinch of imagination, it's easy to envision them together on an international quest, voraciously absorbing foreign experiences that would lead to a lifetime of travel and a deep appreciation for the benefits of global education and cross-cultural communication. And thanks to their support, Wheaton students and faculty will have access to such experiences for years to come. (Pictured: Diana Davis Spencer, left, and Sukey Nichols Wagner.)
In 1958, 19-year-old Spencer embarked on an around-the-world trip with her parents, Ambassador Shelby Cullom Davis and Kathryn Wasserman Davis. At about the same time, Wagner was preparing to become a bride and take her first trip abroad—to Europe—with new husband Rodney Wagner. Both women eventually picked up visas the way other people pluck flowers in a field, quickly expanding beyond simple travel to live under foreign roofs and create programs aiding the destitute.
"Once you've really done that—lived deep enough in another culture—you will forever read international politics differently," Wagner said. "You'll also see your own culture differently." She was speaking by telephone from Sarasota, Fla., where she was visiting her daughter, Quinn, and Quinn's family (including three of Wagner's six much-adored grandchildren) and her father (who is 101 and was playing golf that afternoon).
A thousand miles north in Wellesley, Mass., Spencer echoed the psychic change that cultural experience brings.
"Travel changes you, takes you into a totally different way of life," Spencer said. She sits before a roaring fireplace in the living room of her home. In the distance is the ring of phones and faxes from the room that houses the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation. Spencer is surrounded by art collected during her travels—such as an exquisite Japanese screen and a handsome Russian teapot—and photos of her family, including her daughters, Abby and Kim, and her late husband, John Spencer.
When Wagner and Spencer finally met at Wheaton four years ago, they sensed a kinship right away. "We each recognized in each other an interest in international programs," Wagner said. Both women have a wealth of foreign experience that has molded their view of politics, education and the human condition. Both continue to travel to other countries and contribute, as volunteers, both philanthropically and socially.
"You look at other people and realize they're making their lives with few material goods," Spencer said. "I think you come away feeling 'less is more' and you want to do something." Through her family foundation, Spencer has instituted several new Wheaton programs. She initiated the Davis International Fellows Program, which funds internships abroad, and created Russian Studies Day, which brings together undergraduates at Wheaton, Wellesley and Harvard. Her foundation created in 1995 the Davis Russian Research Center at Harvard, and Spencer encouraged the establishment of the Russian colloquium.
The Wagners pass along opportunities to Wheaton students through the Filene Center for Work and Learning and the Fund for Global Programs. The Wagners began an English language camp at Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, where Wheaton students teach local children to speak English as they play sports and practice computer skills. The couple was the guiding force in establishing Wheaton's Center for Global Education. Wagner's father established the Lovis Sawyer Nichols Scholarship fund in honor of her mother, Lovis Sawyer Nichols '25. The Wagners also contribute to a scholarship pool for minority students through the Alumnae/i Association.
Though both Wagner and Spencer were exposed to a variety of people and cultures during childhood, leaving the United States for the first time was an indelible "first."
"I was dying to get out of the country," Wagner recalled. At the time of their marriage, Rodney Wagner already had traveled widely, with many trips to Southeast Asia. "He convinced me that it was even more interesting to go into a culture unlike your own."
Europe was merely an appetizer for the feast of travels that was to come to the Wagners. Living in Turkey from 1965 to 1967 seems to have been a life-changing event. "It was very peculiar ... Everything was very distinctively Turkish," Sukey Wagner said. "Today it's a part of the global village."
The Wagners also began a program that sends books to the Vela School in South Africa, and that association has led to even more international opportunities for Wheaton students and faculty. The couple also lived in Beirut, where Rodney worked as a banker, and Sukey, at age 40, earned a master's degree in sociology.
Wagner says her global perspective began "long before I came to Wheaton." Her father was a banker in Barre, Vermont, a town with a huge cache of granite and a strong Italian, French-Canadian and Scottish population. As a child, she was exposed to various languages, foods and ways of living. Going on to Wheaton expanded that experience, and today Wagner looks at the school with great affection and respect: "It is just full of life. I'm so proud of it.
"My personal goal is that every student at Wheaton has some kind of cross-cultural experience," Wagner added. "I mean by that, getting so far into the life of another worldview that you can look back at your own country or culture and see it through their eyes."
Wheaton's new Center for Global Education is a hand-in-glove match with both women's desires for a vehicle to pass cross-cultural opportunities to Wheaton students.
"People-to-people contacts—that's what it's all about," Spencer said of the power of the Center for Global Education and of her own lifetime of weaving foreign experience with social change and personal development. She credits her parents with instilling the basic value. Through her father's ambassadorship and her mother's community work, she spent her teenage years mixing with students from International House in New York City and the children of Swiss acquaintances of her father's. In Hong Kong, she describes seeing hoards of refugees, "which opened my eyes to opportunity." The experience led her to consider social action and journalism as her life's work. She was a newspaper journalist and freelance writer for several years.
"It makes you more inquisitive," Spencer said of her travels. In Bombay with her parents, she saw both grinding poverty and spiritual awareness. She reflects on the trip to India. "You've seen yogis, a snake charmer, a cow wandering the streets of Delhi." Her parents introduced her to a prominent scientist and his wife, and Spencer traveled with them to their village. Among her transforming experiences, she said, was the sight of people lying on platforms as a regular way of life.
In 1957 Spencer traveled through East Berlin tenements: "I really saw firsthand what the Cold War was all about," she recalled. A visit to the U.S.S.R. two years later, in the midst of mounting friction between that country and the United States, was an eye-opener. "The Russians couldn't have been friendlier." She has also seen sweatshops in China and 7-year-olds working full-time jobs in Morocco and Tunisia.
Spencer's travels continue at warp speed. She recently returned from an awards ceremony for Stone Soup Heroes in New York City, also attended by Walter Cronkite. Cronkite, Spencer explained, is making a documentary on the people chosen as heroes. Spencer presented an award to Steve Mariotti, the president of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. Spencer planned to meet Margaret Thatcher at a Heritage Foundation dinner, and hopes to travel to Cuba soon with her mother, Kathryn, 95.
Wagner continues her connection with the Robert College program in Turkey, where 60 to 70 Wheaton students now have been through the program. She attended a reunion last fall for 20 students, who shared their experiences. "Many spoke about what an interesting situation they find themselves in now, with political conflicts [and] living in a Muslim country. That's not a very common thing in America."
Both Spencer and Wagner have an abiding hope that more cultural exchange will lead to greater understanding among humanity, especially in light of Sept. 11, 2001. "I hope we'll have a great deal more tolerance for one another, know that we don't have all the answers to human quandaries," Wagner said.
"It's more enriching to, instead of feeding your own psyche, do something for others," Spencer added. "Do you really need that extra coat?"
Mary Grauerholz is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer.
Photo credit: Nicki Pardo
