Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1490

Letter to Heath’s grand­son, Irvan T. O’Connell, Jr., in the Marines in Korea.

August 23, 1953

Dear Irvan:

It was a fine thing to get a nice though short note from you. There are about a thousand things I would like to talk to you about. Spencer has been helping me enor­mously and we have been exchanging creative ideas with several prominent men in the scientific and academic world. I certainly do wish you could be in on some of this. I would like to send you a really long letter but I hardly see how I can do it right now. Just for a sample I am enclosing carbon of the last page of one of our letters to Dr. Edmund Sinnott, Dean of the Yale Graduate School. You think you have few intellectual contacts, but it is not very different here. I will try to send you some more copies of our interesting correspondence.

I am certainly glad to hear that all is going well with you. Delighted to see that letter to your parents commending you so highly. I suppose we must take all that horse-trading you write about with as much good humor as possible. It only goes to show that there can be no rational behavior in any setup that is fundamentally based on antag­onism and force. Maybe this horse-trading is one of Nature’s devices to ameliorate the rigors of arbitrary organization.

The religious aspect of everything connected with Society and its organization is most fascinating. Hope to send you soon some copies of letters along those lines.

Everything seems well with all of us here: Beatrice happily married and now in New York returning from Europe, your mother very full of good works – church, garden, and so forth, your father forging ahead as strong as ever. Lucile happily circumstanced in her new home and social environment. You must get back at the earliest possible date. We all want you and need you.

Affectionately,

SH:sm

Enc.

P.S. Sending you some of our latest printed matter.