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Special 2011 commemorative issue
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As the days ticked by, hope began to fade that he would be rescued
The Ordeal of John CaliPolice thought the deaths of his wife and daughter were a murder-suicide, but he was adamant they weren’t and he would prove it Heartwarming StoriesA Family For Freddie Will anyone want to take a chance on a ten-month-old boy who was born without arms?
What Oscar GaveHe was only a child, but he knew that loving and being loved are the most important things in life
A Mother’s Plea A tale of a mother who knew what she was doing to her son was wrong but who couldn’t break free from her shackles to the past
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Stories to Inspire The Man Who Wouldn’t QuitIn 1949, George Haley, a young Negro, was given the daunting task of improving race relations at a Southern university in the US. This is his story
The Night I Met Einstein A lesson in life – and music – from one of the world’s most brilliant minds
Overtaken by JoyAs author Robert Louis Stevenson says, to miss the joy is to miss it all
The PresentIt was a kind of magic, the old woman told the boy. And indeed it was: her gift would illuminate novelist James A. Michener’s life
Drama in Real LifeKidnapped and Buried AliveHis abductors had entombed him in a flimsy box in the middle of nowhere.
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Thought-Provoking TalesThree Days to SeeWhat would you look at if you had just three days of sight? Helen Keller, blind and deaf from infancy, lets us in what she chose
Choose LifeThere are times when our failures, guilts and sorrows lead us to despair. But we need not give in . . .
Unforgettable Albert EinsteinHow shall I sum up what it was like to have known Albert Einstein and his work? It was akin to the revelation of great art that lets one see what was formerly hidden
Stories to Thrill YouNight Train to ChittagongSet in the highly-charged days of the struggle for independence and World War II, two young men with two different viewpoints clash
The Little Heroine of CastlewoodFirst, 14-year-old Karen Hartsock fought an inferno to save her brother and sisters, then she fought even harder to save herself
Light-Hearted ReadsFather HensThere’s no understanding a nervous father, until you become one
Jaws: The Movie That Almost Got AwayThe movie turned out to be a huge hit at the box office but this blockbuster about a great white shark almost didn’t get made
Bonus ReadThe Unsinkable TitanicThe complete account of the world’s most famous maritime disaster and the long search for the remains of a massive ship that would not be forgotten
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Departments Letter From the Editor 05
Dora Cheok on the gift of storytelling
Word Power 07
Quotes 09
Humour in Uniform 35Funny stories from the armed forces
Laugh 51It’s the tried and true medicine
Life 104It’s really like that
@Work 144
From the Scrapbook Cover Evolution 17
Smoking and Cancer 59
I Am Joe’s Body 65
Automobile Safety 73
Scientology Revealed 79
What Really Happened at Chappaquiddick 85
Contributions From Renowned Writers 111
Conversations With Leaders 117
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W hen I was approached to work for Reader’s Digest, my first thought was, “Hey, Alex Haley was an editor
there!” Haley authored the ground-breaking novel, Roots. He wrote the book while working as an editor for the US edition back in the 1960s. While people remember him for Roots, I remember him for a story he wrote for the magazine – “The Man Who Wouldn’t Quit” (p.10).
I don’t remember how old I was when I read it. I do remember it was from a very old copy of Reader’s Digest. The story was so compelling that I’d committed the writer’s name to memory and looked up his work later on at university.
Fast forward to 2011 and my staff and I have been presented the rare opportunity to produce this very special edition of Reader’s Digest Asia. We started ploughing through our massive archives in search of classic
stories that are timeless in their ability to inspire, educate, thrill and entertain. The first thing I did was to go look for Haley’s short stories. The stories in this Classic Collection are gifts. They are experiences passed on from one person to another, one generation to another. James A. Michener in “The Present” (p.30) articulates this beautifully, “It is such gifts and such experiences – usually costing little or nothing – that transform a life and lend it an impetus that may continue for decades.”
It is my hope that these stories will continue to lend impetus to a new generation of readers out there, decades on.
A Storyteller’s Gift
We love letters! Send in your thoughts – both the cheers and the flames. Write to [email protected]
Editor-in-Chief Dora Cheok on the Classics
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In 1949, George Haley, a young Negro, was given the daunting task of fostering integration and improving race relations at a Southern university in the US. He accepted the challenge. This is his story
● BY Alex Haley ILLUSTRATION Gérard DuBois
The ManWho Wouldn’t Quit
In low tones the dean was explaining to a prospective law student the conduct expected of him. “We have fixed up a room in the basement for you to stay in between classes. You are not to wander about the campus. Books will be sent down to you from the law library. Bring sandwiches and
eat lunch in your room. Always enter and leave the university by the back route I have traced on this map.”
The dean felt no hostility towards this young man; along with the majority of the faculty and trustees, he approved the admis-sion of 24-year old George Haley to the University of Arkansas School of Law. But it was 1949, and this young US Air Force veteran was a Negro. The dean stressed that the key to avoiding violence in this Southern school was maximum isolation.
This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest March 1963
October 2011 11
The ManWho Wouldn’t Quit
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This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest November 1955
A lesson in life – and music – from one of the most brilliant minds in the world
● BY Jerome Weidman ILLUSTRATION Thomas Fuchs
W hen I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philan-thropist. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests
were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments. Apparently I was in for an evening of chamber music.
I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf – only with great effort can I carry the simplest tune, and serious music was to me no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down and when the music started I fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in my own com-pletely irrelevant thoughts.
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He was only a child, but he knew that loving and being loved are the most important things in life
● WORDS D.W. David ILLUSTRATION Lim Heng Swee
WhatOscar Gave
“W ould you consider letting me take Os-car?” nurse Bonnie Porter asked Dr Ralph Harris. “I want to be his foster mother.”
“You’re crazy,” the doctor replied. “You’re single. You’ve got your job. How can you care for a sick child?”
That night Bonnie couldn’t sleep. She had been touched by Oscar from the moment his Mexican-American mother had car-ried him into the Loma Linda University Medical Center, 105 kilometres east of Los Angeles in April 1973. He was six, but no bigger than a two-year-old. He weighed just 11 kilograms, and his large dark brown eyes showed only fear. He had been born with defective kidneys, and he was dying from kidney failure, heart failure and anaemia.
Dr Harris, the medical centre’s paediatric kidney specialist, and a team of colleagues had administered blood transfusions,
This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest July 1975
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What would you look at if you had just three days of sight? Helen Keller, blind and deaf from infancy, gives her answer
● BY Helen Keller ILLUSTRATION Harry Campbell
ThreeDays To See
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. Now and then, I have tested my seeing
friends to discover what they see. Recently I asked a friend, who had just returned from a long
walk in the woods, what she had observed. “Nothing in particu-lar,” she replied. How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring, I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep.
This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest March 1933
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This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest February 1985
● WORDS Ardis Whitman ILLUSTRATION Gary Taxali
Choose Life
There are times when our failures, guilts and sorrows lead us to despair. But we need not give in. We can rise, walk again and . . .
“M y strength fails me and the light of my eyes is gone from me . . . I am ready to fall and my pain is ever with me.” How well we understand that ancient text, writ-ten in guilt and suffering by the psalmist
King David almost 3000 years ago. Which of us can get to the end of our days without being struck down by trouble so great that we are “ready to fall”?
Perhaps someone you love has left you or been snatched from you by death; or you have been let go from a job that gave meaning to your existence; or a beloved child is in trouble; or you have done something wrong and are overburdened by the backpack of guilt you are carrying.
The worst part of it is that when these crises come, we can’t imagine a way out. We may try various forms of running away – alcohol, meaningless love affairs, rounds of parties – or just
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This article first appeared in
Reader’s Digest October 1986
There’s no understanding a nervous father – until you become one
● WORDS Hugh O’Neill ILLUSTRATION Pete Ryan
FatherHensT he night after we brought our first child home from
the hospital, I held him in the street-light half-darkness of our living room. Joshua was crying, a little pink bird, his breath ragged, his arms and legs stretching aimlessly. I sang him an old Irish tune and
found myself calling him Mackey – from the Gaelic word for son.In those first moments of fatherhood, I imagined all the dar-
ing acts I would perform in my boy’s defence, all the intruders I would subdue. I laughed, noticing with a shiver the contrast be-tween my dark fantasies and the perfect sweet-soft boy I cradled. As he fell asleep, a smudge of yawn and mew, I thought about my own father and a legacy that has made its way into my heart.
My father was a mother hen. Though it was my mother who raised the seven of us and did the thousand daily chores the brood demanded, it was my father’s job to worry about us. For him, it was an article of faith that life was out to get his kids, that no creatures as fine as his children could be safe in
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