Текст книги "The American Way of Death Revisited"
Автор книги: Jessica Mitford
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Just what happens to the money that is collected on the “pre-need bronze deal” is not quite clear. The pre-need space buyer receives for his money a salable ownership interest in an existing bit of real estate, whereas the pre-need “bronze” buyer receives only a certificate telling him that when he dies a piece of metal will be manufactured and set in his grave. The seller meantime—and it may be a very long time—has the use not only of the money paid for the memorial-to-be, but an additional sum which the purchaser has been obliged to pay for its perpetual care! Regulatory laws that might give the buyer some measure of protection have not yet, in many states, been enacted.
Another idea used by most cemeteries is the “perpetual care fund.” The uninitiated might expect that, having paid a pretty penny for a crypt or a grave, the costs of upkeep might be borne by the cemetery. Not at all. There is added to the cost of cemetery and mausoleum space a surcharge of 10 to 20 percent for future care; some mausoleums charge as much as 25 percent of the price of the crypt. Graves need tending, it is true, but the care that needs to be lavished on a cement crypt is somewhat hard to envisage.
The monies so collected are kept by the cemetery owner, supposedly as an endowment fund to guarantee such care forever in the future, a promise palpably incapable of fulfillment. Nevertheless, the magic of pre-need selling has swelled these funds in many cases to huge proportions. The money held in such funds in the United States totaled over $1 billion in 1961 and has swelled to over $20 billion in the ensuing thirty-five years.
The cemetery operators to whom these funds have been entrusted have not always been as scrupulously honest in their stewardship as one might hope. The itinerant promoter who moves his sales crew into a community to saturate it with pre-need sales is hardly the type one would expect to sit around and wait for his sold-out cemetery to fill up, much less wait forever to lavish perpetual care upon it. And when he moves on to the next community, he has not always been able to resist the temptation to take the perpetual care fund with him—for safekeeping, of course, or at least to dip into it for a loan at low interest to purchase new cemetery property. After all, the money is there to be invested.
A fund of over $20 billion, available for investment at the discretion of cemetery owners, can serve as a powerful political weapon. Only after the misappropriation of funds became a public scandal did a few state legislatures begin to impose legal controls on the investment of cemetery trust funds. The potent cemetery lobby (it is the envy of the funeral directors, who carry less weight in the state legislatures) has contrived to secure laws that are not unduly burdensome, and in some states the regulation of perpetual care funds is placed under the benign authority of a board composed entirely of cemetery owners.
Municipal cemeteries are operated as a public service and are often partially subsidized by public funds. Since they do not as a rule advertise, or send salesmen out on commission, they are able to offer cemetery space and services at moderate cost.
What happens when, for the first time, commercial cemeteries move into a community where there is already a municipal cemetery? A sales team blankets the community, sells pre-need lots at from three to ten times the price charged by the municipal cemetery, which has no advertising or pre-need promotion budget. The reaction of the city fathers is likely to be, “Now that sufficient burial space is available from a private source, why spend money to operate a municipal cemetery?” or, “Let’s raise our rates and make it self-supporting—if they can do it, why can’t we?” In the latter case, the municipal cemetery gets itself an advertising appropriation, perhaps hires a crew of pre-need salesmen, and up go the charges correspondingly.
Cemetery men have also found in pre-need selling a means of cutting themselves into the veterans’ market, a source of business from which they would be excluded by the federal laws which give veterans and their wives the privilege of burial in national cemeteries without charge. Pre-need selling enables the cemetery man to outflank the undertaker. He gets into the home first—years ahead of the undertaker, in fact—seduces the family with his glossy catalogues, and points out that the veteran’s $300 burial allowance can be applied to the cost of the grave. That one must die in a VA hospital or nursing home to qualify may never get mentioned.
Pre-need cemetery promoters, in considering whether a particular community is ripe for exploitation, are least of all concerned about whether there is a deficiency of cemetery space. All they want and need to know is how often the town has been previously canvased by pre-need salesmen, and how many householders already own cemetery lots. Consequently, duplication of cemetery facilities goes on apace. Once, in hearings on a cemetery application in Los Angeles, there was testimony from numerous sources that there already existed sufficient cemetery facilities to handle all burials in the Los Angeles area for the next hundred years.
Having saturated a community with pre-need graves, crypts, vaults, and memorials, and having established a perpetual care fund the control of which is firmly under his thumb, how next can the cemetery promoter cash in on his privileged position? It should surprise no one who has come this far that men of vision in the industry have already looked ahead and come up with the ultimate solution: a prepaid package that will include not only burial space and marker but “casket,” hearse, undertaking services, and flower shop as well.
We have seen that funeral home charges are today eight to ten times what they were thirty years ago. And while cemetery prices have increased correspondingly, the leap in profitability has been nothing short of spectacular. SCI, for example, reported a profit margin of 34 percent for its cemetery operations in 1995, a performance which would do credit to any corporation in the Fortune 500, compared with a still robust 22 percent for its funeral establishments. And the cemeteries in North America that yield the highest returns are those, like Forest Lawn, that have self-contained mortuaries and flower shops. It is these that the corporate consolidators scramble for most avidly, leading to bidding contests that some securities analysts consider rash.
After Words
Tempest in New York:
Hearing Slams Cemetery Marketing Practices [11]11
This article first appeared in the Funeral Monitor, March 25, 1996. Reprinted with permission.
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By any standard, it has not been a great public relations year for cemeterians. In California, recent headlines have widely spread the story of grim violations at numerous prominent cemeteries, including disinterment, multiple burials, non-maintenance, and fraud/embezzlement. Now comes New York, where the controversy has taken a new direction and focused not so much on cemetery maintenance, but on ownership policy and marketing practices.
Under New York law, cemeteries are not-for-profit enterprises, regulated in part to help ensure that sufficient money is set aside for perpetual care. The current debate therefore centers on the following questions: Is it proper, then, to allow funeral homes, established to make money, to acquire an interest in cemeteries? And could pressures for profit this year endanger the sanctity of care in the years to come? The State Cemetery Board held a hearing in Albany last week to address these and other issues as part of broader legislation on cemetery reform taking shape in both houses of the New York legislature.
As usual, the hearing placed on public view a distorted image for funeral service. The recent expansion of The Loewen Group and SCI into the New York cemetery market is the underlying factor which has brought the issue to a head. It is no secret that both companies have bought many funeral homes in the region in recent years—and they are increasingly buying cemeteries as well.
The New York State Funeral Directors Association, for one, has mixed feelings about this development. Wayne Baxter testified that his membership is concerned that joint ownership might expose the public to excesses by unscrupulous funeral directors. He said regulations may be needed to ensure that money from the nonprofit cemeteries is not funneled into the profit-making funeral homes—a scenario that is more conceivable with joint ownership. The National Catholic Cemetery Conference, through spokeswoman Ellen Woodbury, also charges “conglomerate ownership” with an “outrageous litany of untruths and misinformation” designed to steer mourners away from religious cemeteries. “We have a 2,000 year old tradition of caring for the dead as a matter of faith, not as a matter of profit,” she said. Finally, Rabbi Elchonon Zohn, speaking for the Jewish Community Relations Council, also considered joint ownership problematic, maintaining that there is an incentive to adopt marketing practices that could generate immediate profits (such as selling two-for-one grave sites), but weaken a cemetery’s ability to maintain care when its space is sold out.
Whether true or not, recent alleged selling tactics by a Loewen Group sales person have provided ammunition for the reform camp—and made no friends in the major Roman Catholic diocese on Long Island. A Loewen representative, offering a “free crypt” at a nearby Loewen-owned cemetery, made the mistake of approaching Ellen Woodbury, director of cemeteries for the Rockville Centre Catholic Diocese and President of the National Catholic Cemetery Association. It was not a pretty picture—and Ms. Woodbury claims to have captured it all on tape.
“Congratulations,” the voice on the phone told Ellen Woodbury, “You’ve won a free grave.” It was a telemarketer on behalf of The Loewen Group seeking an appointment. As widely reported in the New York Post, one of the first things the sales person did upon arrival was hand the promised “free grave” certificate to Woodbury and her husband. She soon made it clear, however, that the giveaway grave was less than desirable. It was in a section of the cemetery where, she said, the graves are sinking. “Wouldn’t you rather be in the aboveground crypts under development?” the saleswoman asked. She said the “free grave” certificate could be turned in for a discount in a “better” part of the cemetery—and the cemetery would guarantee the Woodburys a 15% discount at a local Loewen-owned funeral home as long as financing was made in advance. As described, a perfectly legal sales pitch was transformed into a blatant cemetery/funeral home tie-in, not to mention a classic bait-and-switch marketing maneuver.
The Loewen saleswoman did not have the good sense to at least stop right there, and apparently went right on to slander the condition of and long-term outlook for Catholic cemeteries in the area. In a letter obtained by this Monitorfrom Ms. Woodbury to the Diocese of Rockville Centre, she notes: “The part of the presentation which concerned me most was when my husband and I mentioned we were Catholic and felt inclined to choose a Catholic cemetery rather than a non-sectarian one. The counselor insisted that Catholic cemeteries are not maintained as well as Washington Memorial Park, have very limited space, and are definitely not funded, being totally dependent on the diocese in which they are located to support the care and maintenance of the grounds and building in the future. She continued that, as a result of the Church’s current financial condition, there would definitely be no funds available in the future for the maintenance of their cemeteries. When approached, she insisted that even Pope John Paul refused to permit a special cemetery collection to help dioceses offset this expense. These are outlandish statements and lies.”
The state attorney general is reviewing the tape for possible violations of consumer protection laws and other regulations—and The Loewen Group would also appreciate having a copy. Larry Miller, of The Loewen Group’s Cemetery Division, clearly stated that criticism of any religion is not part of the company’s sales program—and vowed to investigate and fire any employee found to be engaging in religion bashing. He also said that Loewen telemarketers are trained to follow a carefully written script and “everything is above board.” According to Miller, the “free grave” offer is genuine and not part of any bait-and-switch scam, and he noted that “thousands” of people have taken advantage of the offer in 38 states in which the company has holdings.
Marketing, as always, is probably one of the touchiest areas in funeral service—given the volatility of the topic and, often, the vulnerability of the client—and this latest dustup only reconfirms the point. Done correctly, there is nothing illegal about telemarketing: A service or product is available at a fair price and you, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer, should know about it.
Certainly, with 9,000 employees, The Loewen Group or any other large mega-business is going to have its share of overzealous sales people who aggressively cross the line into unfair and/or fraudulent marketing ploys. Is the basic problem a compensation system based on commissions? Does that particular motivating factor impel too many sales people over the line? No easy answers here. In conversation with Loewen cemetery division officials, it became clear that commissioned sales people are the traditional—and proven—way to go, and that straight salary or salary/commission combinations have not yielded the optimum sales results. To this Monitor, the key element is to hire the best and insist on sales training—heavy-duty training which explicitly outlines strict limits, largely scripted presentations, and provides no excuse for lack of knowledge about the dos and don’ts.
The Loewen Group and any other deathcare enterprise must maintain a strong company policy against high-pressure selling tactics—and promptly fire those who venture off the reservation. It has been said before: Other businesses can afford their occasional bad apples a lot better than funeral service can.
9. SHROUDLAND REVISITED
Nothing in Los Angeles gives me a finer thrill than Forest Lawn…. The followers of a triumphant Master should sleep in grounds more lovely than those where they have lived—a park so beautiful that it seems a bit above the level of this world, a first step up toward Heaven.
—BRUCE BARTON, quoted in Art Guide to Forest Lawn
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park of Southern California is the greatest nonprofit cemetery of them all; and without a doubt its creator—Hubert Eaton, the Dreamer, the Builder, inventor of the Memorial Impulse—is the anointed regent of cemetery operators. He has probably had more influence on trends in the modern cemetery industry than any other human being. Mrs. Adela Rogers St. Johns, his official biographer, sees Forest Lawn as “the lengthened shadow of one man’s genius.” Even as she was writing those words, that long shadow was creeping over much of the cemetery land in the territorial United States; today it spans oceans, extending to Hawaii and even to Australia.
The Dreamer and his brainchild are already known to tens of thousands of readers through The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh—to whom Mortuary Managementrefers as “Evelyn (Bites-The-Hand-That-Feeds-Him) Waugh.” If there are skeptics who think that Mr. Waugh may have been guilty of exaggeration, a visit to Forest Lawn should set their minds at rest.
I was among the one and a half million who passed through the entrance gates one year; the guidebook says they are the largest in the world, twice as wide and five feet higher than the ones at Buckingham Palace; and (presumably to warn anyone rash enough to try hefting one) adds that each weighs five thousand pounds.
It is all there, just as Mr. Waugh has described it, although in the intervening years since The Loved Onewas written, there have been many additions, so the overall impression is that today it far transcends his description.
There are the churches, ranging from wee to great, the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather incongruously furnished with wall-to-wall carpeting, the Great Mausoleum Columbarium, primarily patriotic in theme, with its Memorial Court of Honor, Hall of History, Freedom Mausoleum, and Court of Patriots. “Does one have to be a citizen or sign a loyalty oath to get into the Hall of Patriots?” I asked a guide. “No, ma’am!” was the answer. “Anyone can be buried there, as long as he’s got the money to pay for it.” (This is not strictly true; Forest Lawn refused convicted rapist Caryl Chessman’s last remains “on moral grounds.”)
There are statues, tons of them, some designed to tug at the heartstrings: Little Duck Mother, Little Pals, Look, Mommy!, others with a different appeal—partially draped Venuses, seminude Enchantresses, the reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, to which Forest Lawn has affixed a fig leaf, giving it a surprisingly indecent appearance.
A 1996 visit to Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale confirmed the extraordinary stability and vigor of the business.
There has been no change in style. The Dreamer has been put to rest in the Court of Honor, but the vulgarity of his Dream is being maintained with a sure and faithful hand—shooting-gallery statuary, gift shop, Wee Kirk o’ the Heather. Changes are in terms of scale only. There are now five Forest Lawns in Southern California where once there stood one—Hollywood Hills, Cypress, Covina Hills, and Forest Lawn-Long Beach, “formerly Forest Lawn-Sunnyside,” complete the roster.
Forest Lawn’s “life size replica” of Michelangelo’s Davidwas toppled from its pedestal and demolished, fig leaf and all, in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971. Another replica, sans fig leaf, installed a decade later fared no better. David was removed when ladies’ groups took exception to his full frontal nudity.
While Forest Lawn operates funeral parlors and flower shops in each of its locations, the sale of burial plots is still the core of its business. Medium-priced graves are now priced at $5,580 in the Vale of Faith to $10,900 in the Terrace of Brilliant Star; 15 percent is now added for perpetual care. Should you want something better, $27,000 will get you into the Terrace of Sunlit Skies, and for $31,000 you may join even more select company in the Garden of Honor (which features piped-in pop hymns, a feature that might make it, for some, their idea of perpetual purgatory). You may if you wish install an approved statue, but to do so you must buy four or more grave spaces.
The population of Forest Lawn, over 200,000 in 1961, has been augmented by new arrivals at the rate of 6,500 a year. On all sides one may see the entire cycle of burial unfolding before one’s eyes. There is a museum in Chicago containing an exhibit of hatching chicks; the unhatched eggs are in one compartment, those barely chipped in another, next the emerging baby chicks, and finally the fully hatched fledglings. The Forest Lawn scene is vaguely reminiscent of that exhibit. Here is a grass-green tarpaulin unobtrusively thrown over the blocked-out mound of earth removed to ready a grave site for a newcomer. Near it is a brilliant quilt of mixed orchids, gardenias, roses, and lilies of the valley, signifying a very recent funeral. Farther on, gardeners are shoveling away the faded remains of a similar floral display, possibly three or more days old. Between these are scores of flat bronze memorial plaques bearing the names of the old residents. In the distance, the group of people entering one of the churches could be either a wedding party or a funeral party; it’s hard to tell the difference at Forest Lawn.
Other sights to visit are the hourly showings of the Crucifixion(“largest oil painting in the world”) and a stained-glass reproduction of The Last Supper. Mrs. St. Johns says of the Dreamer, “In Missouriese, he had always been a sucker for stained glass.”
Behind the Hall of Crucifixion are the museum and gift shop. The purpose of the museum and the method used to assemble its contents are explained by Eaton in Comemoral. If a museum is established, people will become accustomed to visiting the cemetery for instruction, recreation, and pleasure. A museum can be started on a very small—in fact, minimal—scale, perhaps to begin with in just one room with just one statue. Once started, it will soon grow: “I speak from experience. People begin to donate things with their names attached, and bring their friends to see them on display.” The result of this novel approach to museology is an odd assortment of knick-knacks—old coins, copies of the shekels paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus, a bronze tablet inscribed with the Gettysburg Address, some suits of armor, Balinese carvings, Japanese scrolls, bits of jade, some letters by Longfellow, Dickens, etc., and lots more.
The museum received front-page publicity in the Los Angeles press in 1961 on the occasion of the Great Gem Robbery. With his enviable flair for showmanship, Dr. Eaton managed to turn the robbery and even the actual worthlessness of the “gems” to good account in a half-page advertisement in which he made one of the most touching appeals ever addressed to a jewel thief: “We feel that you cannot be professional thieves, or you would have known that neither the black opal named ‘The Pride of Australia’ nor the antique necklace could be marketed commercially. These two are valuable principally for their worth as antiques…. The emerald and diamond necklace has small retail value today, because the cut of the stones has been obsolete for many years, and it would be difficult to sell it except as an antique.” But it is when he speaks of the need to care for the black opal (named by whom “The Pride of Australia,” one wonders) that he is at his most affecting: “We do hope that you bathe it every few weeks in glycerin to prevent it from shattering.” Kidnappers! From the bottom of a mother’s heart I beg you to give my baby his daily cod-liver oil!
A deeper purpose for the maintenance of a museum in a cemetery is also explained by Dr. Eaton: “It has long been the custom of museums to sell photographs, post cards, mementos, souvenirs, etc.” The visitor is summoned to the gift shop (“while waiting for the next showing of the ‘Crucifixion’ ”) by one of those soft, deeply sincere voices that often boom out at one unexpectedly from the Forest Lawn loudspeaker system. Among the wares offered are salt and pepper shakers in the shape of some of the Forest Lawn statuary; the Builder’s Creed, printed on a piece of varnished paper and affixed to a rustic-looking piece of wood; paper cutters, cups and saucers, platters decorated with views of the cemetery; view holders with colored views of the main attractions. There is a foldout postcard with a long script message for the visitor rendered inarticulate by the wonders he has seen. It starts: “Dear–, Forest Lawn Memorial-Park has proved an inspiring experience,” and ends: “It was a visit we will long remember.” There is a large plastic walnut with a mailing label on which is printed “Forest Lawn Memorial-Park In A Nut Shell! Open me like a real nut… squeeze my sides or pry me open with a knife.” Inside is a miniature booklet with colored views of Forest Lawn. There is an ashtray of very shiny tin, stamped into the shape of overlapping twin hearts joined by a vermilion arrow. In one of the hearts is a raised picture of the entrance gates, done in brightest bronze and blue. In the other is depicted the Great Mausoleum, in bronze and scarlet with just a suggestion of trees in brilliant green. Atop the hearts is an intricate design of leaves and scrolls, in gold, green, and red; crowning all is a coat of arms, a deer posed against a giant sunflower, and a scroll with the words JAMAIS ARRIÈRE. Never in Arrears, perhaps.
Forest Lawn pioneered the current trend for cemeteries to own their own mortuary and flower shop, for convenient, one-stop shopping. The mortuary “is of English Tudor design, inspired by Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire, England. Its Class I, steel-reinforced concrete construction is finished in stone, half-timber and brick,” the guidebook says. There are twenty-one slumber rooms and a palatial casket room, with wares ranging in price from $325 (gray, cloth-covered wood flattop) to $25,000 (48-ounce bronze, protective lock, plush beige velvet interior).
The Forest Lawn board of trustees says of Hubert Eaton, “Today, Forest Lawn stands as an eloquent witness that the Builder kept faith with his soul.” It is to the official biography of Eaton, and to his own writings, that we must turn for a closer glimpse of that soul.
If a goal of art is the achievement of a synthesis between style and subject matter, it must be conceded that First Step, Up Toward Heaven: The Story of Dr. Eaton and Forest Lawnby Adela Rogers St. Johns is in its own way a work of art. Mrs. St. Johns is best known as one of the original sob sisters, a Hearst reporter in her youth and later editor of Photoplay, the first Hollywood fan magazine.
Dr. Eaton, apparently born under whichever star it is that guides a man to seek his fortune below the earth’s surface rather than above, started life as a mining engineer, and in short order acquired a gold mine in Nevada. He and his cousin Joe organized the Adaven Mining Company and built a company town named Bob. It was here in Bob that Dr. Eaton ran slap-bang into his first miracle—the first of many, it turns out. One night a group of union organizers (or, in Mrs. St. Johns’s words, “a gang of desperadoes bent on murder”) came threateningly up the hill towards the mine—no doubt, Eaton thought, armed with dynamite. “ ‘Unless God takes a hand,’ Hubert Eaton said, his voice cracking, ‘there’ll have to be bloodshed.’ The foreman beside him nodded grimly.”
Just when all seemed lost, the strains of “Home Sweet Home” suddenly filled the night air. This proved to be too much for the desperadoes; silently they slunk away back down the hill. “ ‘Looks like He took a hand,’ the foreman said grimly, wiping the tears from his cheeks unashamed. ‘We’d better give thanks, the way I see it,’ Eaton said.”
From then on, miracles dogged the footsteps of Hubert Eaton. The next thing that happened to this Child of Destiny was that his mine failed. “That night Hubert Eaton spent longer on his knees, which he had been taught was the proper way to say his prayers, than usual. Since the earth was created for man’s use, a man had a right to ask God to help him locate the vein of gold that’d been in his own mine.” To no avail, however. Fortunately for Eaton, Destiny had other plans for him this time. He had lost a mere million in the mining venture, a trifle indeed compared with what lay in store for him in future years as he pursued his Dream. And it is to the site of the Dream that we are now led.
The year was 1917; the place, a run-down, weed-infested cemetery called Forest Lawn. Hubert Eaton, as he stood regarding this scene, was trying to make up his mind whether or not to accept a job as manager of Forest Lawn. “If you suggest to Dr. Eaton, in his late seventies, that Destiny led him there, he will give you an I’m-from-Missouri look and say gruffly, ‘There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation, does there?’ ” In any event, he went back to his hotel room and there wrote out his vision of a future Forest Lawn: “filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statues, cheerful flowers, noble memorial architecture… where memorialization of loved ones—in sculptured marble and pictorial glass—shall be encouraged…. This is the Builder’s Dream; this is the Builder’s Creed.”
The Memorial-Park idea was born. Thus it has come about that today Forest Lawn is “a garden that seems next door to Paradise itself, an incredibly beautiful place, a place of infinite loveliness and eternal peace.”
Dr. Eaton lived by certain moral precepts learned in childhood at his daddy’s knee. They are: Perseverance Conquers All; A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place; Anything That Is Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well; and Let the Chips Fall Where They May. In the course of pursuing his Dream, he also developed a sort of informal business partnership with God. For “unless God was with him, this was a pretty lonesome business.” As he told a Rotary Club meeting, “Christ in Business is the greatest thing that can happen to business. We must in return give business to carry on for Christ.” In his own bluff, Missouri way, he interprets the New Testament, including his Partner in his plans, at every turn: “No, he could not see anything in the Teaching against abundance…. Everybody wasn’t called upon to don the brown robe and sandals of St. Francis.”
Eaton’s search for art treasures with which to adorn Forest Lawn led him to Europe on several occasions, and was frequently aided by divine intervention. There was some difficulty getting permission from the Vatican authorities to have a copy made of Michelangelo’s Moses, but a “Man who could tell the Red Sea to stand still so the Children of Israel could get across ahead of the Egyptians ought not to have any trouble getting his statue reproduced,” said Eaton, and “Of course, a lot of it was prayer. But I figure we got at least an assist from Moses.” The firing of the stained-glass reproduction of The Last Suppergave some trouble, but “ ‘Nonsense and balderdash,’ Hubert Eaton shouted. ‘Of course God wants it finished.’ ” And finished it was.
If much of the Forest Lawn statuary looks like the sort of thing one might win in a shooting gallery, there’s a reason for that, too. Some of it was bought at fairs—over the objection of the board of directors—but “as [Eaton] became a benevolent and paternalistic dictator and despot over his Dream Come True, he always met opposition with a gay and somehow endearing determination to win.”
