John Bradley Wood – 50th Reunion Essay

John Bradley Wood

125 Spinney Mill Road

Arrowsic, ME 04530

islandsurveys@gmail.com

College: Saybrook

What happened to me? I stayed with the program (journalism) for 10 years, then found something I love (land surveying), someone I love (my wife of 40 years), and someplace I love (midcoast Maine). I spend my days shuttling between them.

I had actually landed a job teaching high school English when The Boston Globe called in 1970. I started as a general assignment reporter at $108 a week.

In many ways, working at The Globe was a dream job. I covered everything, I was good at it, my prospects were good…but increasingly, I didn’t love it. Good news: I met my wife; bad news: we covered school desegregation. The Globe won a Pulitzer, but we were burned out.

I took a leave of absence, hoping I wouldn’t return, and moved to Maine. We lived in a yurt, I built houses, Manli joined a dance company. We found a terrific piece of land overlooking the Kennebec; with minimal help, I built a house that has been generously described as “post-hippy multi-roof.”

We weren’t quite done with newspapers, though. In 1981, we moved to Beijing to help start China Daily, China’s first English-language newspaper. It was like moving to Mars. China had just emerged from the Cultural Revolution; many people had never seen a foreigner. Diplomats serving in Beijing got hardship pay, and they lived a lot better than we did.

By the time we left, two and a half years later, China Daily was up and running. We made lifelong friends, and we went almost everywhere and saw almost everything. We’ve returned many times…for the Olympics, to launch the US Edition…but the traffic and the pollution make it less attractive than it used to be.

When we returned to Maine, I got an entry-level job as a land surveyor, about which I knew nothing. It was like putting my hand in a glove: here was the history I loved, the math I took at Yale but never had a use for, the independence, the variety, and the outdoor work that made every day an adventure. Although I started late, I soaked it up like a sponge; by 1987 I had my license, and in 2000 I went out on my own.

You won’t find Island Surveys on the Big Board, but it supports us and gives us the freedom to travel and now to spend the winter in San Francisco. I have no intention of retiring; as Tom Brady said recently, “I love what I do. I’m doing it better than I ever have. Why would I quit?”

Meanwhile, life kept happening. Manli worked for an executive search firm while commuting to San Francisco to care for her parents; when they died, in their 90s, they left her the house. This was fortunate, because I ran afoul of the health care system in Maine and nearly died. We now get excellent care from Kaiser Permanente (a model for national health care) and are reasonably healthy.

Only after my father-in-law died in 1997 did we learn that, as Chinese consul general in Vienna in 1938, he saved the lives of thousands of Jews by issuing them visas to Shanghai…he’s known as “the Chinese Schindler.” Manli has spent 20 years uncovering the story and now has a third career speaking and writing about her father. We’ve just returned from two weeks in Italy thanks in part to the city of Milan, which added him to their Garden of the Righteous and named a square in Chinatown after him (Piazzetta Ho Feng Shan).

I look forward to seeing you, hearing from you, or at least reading about you.