Can museum expect another 'Titanic' reaction?

By MARY EVERTZ

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 10, 2000

It has been 38 years since we Floridians and others anxiously watched the developments in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Beginning Dec. 20, we will get Hollywood's view of the way crisis policy was handled in Washington in the New Line film Thirteen Days.

The timing couldn't be better for the Florida International Museum, which on Dec. 15 is opening its next feature exhibition, "The Cuban Missile Crisis: When the Cold War Got Hot."

The 10,000-square-foot exhibition will highlight the tense events of October 1962 during the crisis. Visitors will have the opportunity to see how close we came to nuclear war with the Russians.

If the movie does for this exhibit what Titanic did for that show at the museum, it should have another blockbuster event.

Screenwriter David Self obtained White House tapes, memoirs, oral histories and CIA documents to dramatize the 1962 showdown.

Directed by Roger Donaldson, the movie stars Kevin Costner (who co-produced) as JFK's aide Kenny O'Donnell. The film also features Bruce Greenwood as President Kennedy, Steven Culp as Robert Kennedy, Len Cariou as Dean Acheson and Dylan Baker as Robert McNamara.

Museum head Dick Johnston is hoping one of the actors can be here for the gala. Costner was in Tampa for the Final Four two years ago, so maybe Johnston can lure him back for another event.

A White House celebration

It was to be a real presidential party at the White House on Thursday night as some former residents were set to celebrate the Executive Mansion's 200th anniversary at a formal dinner. Former occupants George and Barbara Bush, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson were among those scheduled to attend the party hosted by current tenants Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Carters and Fords planned to stay the night.

East Timor mission

A recent piece in the Boston Globe focuses on former St. Petersburg resident Mark Salzer, his wife, Rebecca Wyse, and 2-year-old son, Emmett. In East Timor, Salzer will be working for La'o Hamutuk, an effort of international activists and East Timorese that was formed to increase local reconstruction and development projects.

Salzer and Wyse stress that their interest in other cultures and in watching a new nation build itself is what attracted them to East Timor.

Salzer, a Princeton graduate who holds a master's degree in education from Harvard, and Wyse, until recently a nurse at Boston's Fenway Community Health Center, met when she had a patient who spoke only Spanish. She called for a translator and Salzer came.

"Their lives bear witness to the profound effect social service work can have on privileged youth and provide some insight into the current movement against globalization," says the Globe.

Salzer visited East Timor in 1992. "It was a place where you were watched, and people would cross the street to avoid being seen with you," Salzer recalled.

When Salzer returned to the United States after his East Timor visit, he returned briefly to the human rights agency where he had previously worked. Then he made the move to Boston "because I knew there was a progressive community there." He went to work at the Pine Street Inn, a men's shelter, and became a science teacher at the Mary Curley Middle School in Jamaica Plain "because no one else was willing to do the work."

He also became Boston area coordinator of the East Timor Action Network, a nationwide volunteer group dedicated to increasing public awareness and shaping U.S. policy. "People don't have to go halfway around the world to do good," Wyse says. "I don't think what we are doing is any bigger or better than people who do the best they can here. You can make a difference anyway." Knowing Mark Salzer and his wife, wherever they go they will make a difference. He is the son of Iris and Stan Salzer of St. Petersburg.

Mark and Becky keep the Salzers informed about their activities via e-mail. They have been in the country for almost three weeks. The market, they report, is a 15-minute walk through their village to the main road, where they catch a bimo (minibus converted into public transportation vehicle) for a 10-minute ride. Becky says the entire market is covered with plastic to provide shade. The problem is that it's only about 5 feet high. Most people can easily walk under that, but the Salzers have to walk "crimpled over" through the market.

A woman at the helm

For the first time in its history, the St. Petersburg Yacht Club has a woman at the helm. Patricia H. Seidenspinner, well known in nautical circles, took the office of commodore at the club's annual meeting Oct. 10. Saturday, the club will honor Seidenspinner and her flag officers, CPA Skipp Fraser, vice commodore, and Holland and Knight lawyer Jay Fleece, rear commodore, at the annual gala, the Commodore's Ball.

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