Tag Archives: Bill T. Jones

“On Time”

It doesn’t seem to mean as much as it once did, but it used to be that having your face on the cover of Time magazine was truly a sign of celebrity, notoriety, or significance.

*Time started publishing in 1923, and on October 13 of the following year readers and newsstand browsers may have been startled to find the diamond-drill eyes of Glenn Curtiss (“handy at fixing things”) boring into their souls. Glenn’s photo spotlighted an article (“At Dayton”) about a recent international air meet which he had NOT attended, but where “his name was on every man’s lips…. At least every other plane of those assembled bore a Curtiss motor. Not one plane but bore some evidence to the contributions he has made to mankind’s knowledge of the air and his agility in it.”

*Curtiss’s portrait was photographic, befitting a former Eastman employee who had sidelined as a professional photographer in his teens. But the April 5, 1926 cover featured a sketch of Corning’s Alanson B. Houghton, grandfather of “Amo” Houghton. Alanson of course had been president of the Glass Works and had represented the district in Congress, but the article (“Nought on Stumbles”) was more interested in his bleak take on European affairs – he was our ambassador to Great Britain, following three years as ambassador to Germany (our first since the declaration of war in 1917).

*A color painting of Navy Air Chief Towers (“not ships or planes, but planes plus ships”) adorned the cover of Time on June 23, 1941. Admiral John H. “Jack” Towers was not from Steuben County, but came here in 1911 to learn to fly and to test the navy’s first aircraft (a seaplane) on Keuka Lake. He was a pallbearer at Glenn’s funeral, and a warm supporter of Curtiss for the rest of his life. The article (“Sailors Aloft”) concerned debates over the independence and composition of the military air services. Ernest Hamlin Baker painted the cover.

*Corning’s Robert E. Woods, First Captain of Cadets at West Point (“duty, honor, country”) got a Hamlin painting on June 11, 1945. Besides his graduation and commissioning as the war drew toward its end, an article “The Long Gray Line” noted Woods as the only man to have played for both teams in the army-navy football game… first as an Annapolis midshipman, and later as a cadet at West Point. Woods’ class would be the last to graduate during the war, which ended on September 2.

*The October 10, 1994 cover (“Black Renaissance: African-American Artists Are Truly Free at Last”) returned to photography, this time in color and this time featuring the far more cheerful countenance of Wayland’s Bill T. Jones, representing the article “The Beauty of Black Art.” Noting that he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985, Time reflected that “today he works with the intensity of someone who knows his time is running out.” Twenty-five years after publication, we’re glad to report that Bill T. Jones is still going strong.

*It’s interesting to look at who did NOT make the cover of time. Neither Amo Houghton nor his father appeared, despite their long careers in industry, business, and public service. IBM president Thomas J. Watson Sr. never made it, though Tom Junior did.

*None of the “big three” birth control crusaders – Margaret Higgins Sanger, Edith Higgins Byrne, and Katherine Houghton Hepburn (all contemporaries from Corning) were on the cover. Nor were the Corning researchers who made dramatic breakthroughs in fiber optics. Neither was author and film critic Charles Champlin of Hammondsport. His contributions were INSIDE the magazine, over the course of 17 years as a correspondent for Time and Life.

Geniuses

Leave a reply

Who is a genius around here? A lot of people would say that Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport was a genius, and you could certainly make the case. He excelled in designing, using, and manufacturing engines, airplanes, motorcycles, and travel trailers – not to mention making his mark in city development. He might have been what Arthur Squires called a “maestro of technology.” All with an eight-grade education! So Glenn probably qualifies.

Just lately a lot of folks might think about the Hathwar brothers of Painted Post. Sriram (2014) and Jairam (2016) were each co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee – in both cases, after a nail-biting struggle that tens of thousands of us watched live on TV. (Not that they felt any pressure, of course!)

We have two folks locally who are “officially” geniuses. They were honored with John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grants,” for “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction… not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.” The award includes a large stipend, recently raised to $625,000.

BILL T. JONES moved to Steuben County as a child, in a family that came first as migrant farm workers, and was graduated from Wayland High School in 1970, then went on to SUNY Binghamton. He got his MacArthur Fellowship in 1994.

But in his “spare time” he has also picked up Kennedy Center Honors; two Tony Awards; a National Medal of Arts; the Dorothy and Lilian Gish Prize; and six honorary doctorates, besides being inducted into the Steuben County Hall of Fame and the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame… and numerous other honors.

At Wayland he was active in drama and at Binghamton in dance. He has made his mark as a dancer and as a choreographer, and he has been honored for his influence in the development of young American artists. Under his senior photo in the Wayland yearbook is the verse, “Where be bonds to bind the free? All the world was made for me!” Prophetic words, we’d have to agree.

DR. MARC EDWARDS, who got his MacArthur fellowship in 2007, has had a life and career that in a sense are mirror images of Bill T. Jones’s. Dr. Edwards was born in Hornell (1964) and lived in Troupsburg until the family moved to the Buffalo area, where he got his schooling. (His grandmothers still live in Steuben County.) While Bill T. Jones has soared in the arts, Marc Edwards has excelled in the sciences.

In 2004 Time Magazine named him one of America’s most innovative scientists, and just a couple of months ago Time named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He’s been most in the news recently for his role in blowing the whistle on the Flint water crisis; he earlier played a similar role in Washington, D.C., in that case tackling the Centers for Disease Control directly and publicly… and successfully.

Dr. Edwards is Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Like Bill T. Jones, he has won numerous academic and professional awards.

Looking at the Flint case MSNBC said, “Up against ignorance and indifference, Edwards and [colleague] Hanna-Attisha were right, they were brave and they were insistent… these two tough, caring researchers are the detectives who cracked the case.” We can only applaud.