Peter Pond newsletter :: MARCH 2001 :: #7

I hope everyone had a pleasant winter. A lot has happened so there is a lot to report. Hits are pushing 5,000 for starters. Best to get right to it. This will be a long one.

PETER POND'S UNKNOWN GRAVE

I have always been sorry that even though it is fairly certain Peter Pond died and was buried in Milford, he never had a headstone. So the location of his grave has remained unknown. His mother, Mary who died in 1761, has one and it's still standing. My theory has always been that he was buried near her, and the marker, if there was one, was not as durable as Mary's. Well, I've interested the Milford bureau chief of the CONNECTICUT POST newspaper, which is my employer, in Peter Pond enough to have him write an article about all this. The reporter, Frank Juliano, has also become a Peter Pond Society member. He has made some inquiries, to wit:

March 25, 2001 CONNECTICUT POST

SEARCH IS ON FOR PETER POND'S GRAVE SITE IN MILFORD

By Frank Juliano

All this may carry over in a fellow Peter Pond Society member's theory on where Jean Etienne Waden, who may have been killed by Pond in the early 1780's in the La Ronge, SK, area, could be buried. A little background first. Iris Warner used to live in La Ronge where her husband, Al, was a mechanic at Air La Ronge. A writer and amateur historian herself, she heard about Peter Pond and the possibility he may have shot Waden since both were competing fur traders. She wrote to the Milford Town Clerk inquiring about its wandering native in 1987, and it was by amazing coincidence that I was in the town clerk's office the same day making a Peter Pond inquiry about an old deed, when I was handed her letter. But by the time I arrived at La Ronge Airport in July 1988 for my Clearwater trip, since Horizons Unlimited, my outfitter, was 20 miles away in Missinippi, the Warners had retired to British Columbia. I still stopped in to get Al Warner's forwarding phone number, then, since Iris told me about it, swung by the stone marker where Waden had been killed at Waden Bay on Lac La Ronge. To make a long story short, I have since resumed correspondence with Iris who told me Al had died but she was still interested in Peter Pond. She is in fact, a charter member, doesn't have a computer, and is one of two charter members I don't mind snail mailing newsletters to.She told me to stop mailing out of concern for the postage. Maybe I will after I send her this one. But one thing she told me is that a skeleton was dug up in the late 1980's near the monument. Rumors flared that it was Waden, but it turned out to be an Indian woman who had been in the ground about 80 years. Now Iris believes Waden could be buried on a place called Lime Island not too far out on the lake and that a radar scanner could find him. Ric or Selmer, take note.

PETER POND AND SIR ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

Here's some more interesting material on both Peter Pond and his star pupil, Mackenzie, from Natural Resources Canada Geomatics, an agency I would never have heard of if not for Iris. Incidentally, I intend to follow up on the status of Peter Pond's cairn at Prince Albert in another month, once winter leaves in earnest. To wit:

Remember my last newsletter on Judy Pond coming to Milford to interrogate me about her ancestor? It's set for April 14, and I'll give a full report on her visit afterward. Here's a story about her in the 2/16/01 Post by Juliano:

Finally, a tribute to a recently departed modern-day namesake. See if you can draw comparisons besides "fascinating, difficult, wonderful." You could probably say they were both adventurers, too. I spoke to this gentleman only once, never met him. People here in Milford remember him since he used to work at the YMCA. I was given the phone number for his sister, Pam, who lives in Bethlehem about an hour north of here. She gave me his number in Providence. He said he didn't know much about his ancestor but was the family representative while still in seminary at the cairn dedication in Prince Albert in the 1950's. Read on about his own interesting life. Pam alerted me to it. It's interesting how many Ponds I've found with connections to Yale. Small wonder Peter Pond the trader's diary ended up there.

COMMENTARY - R.I.'s Schindler of the Killing Fields

BYLINE: SHELDON WHITEHOUSE
DATE: 07-31-2000
PUBLICATION: Providence Journal Company
EDITION: All
SECTION: EDITORIAL
PAGE: B-05

A FASCINATING, DIFFICULT, WONDERFUL Rhode Islander a great Rhode Islander died June 20. The Rev. Peter Pond was born to privilege and wealth 67 years ago in Connecticut. He went to the Pomfret School, to Yale University, and then on to the Yale Divinity School. Even as a young man, his sense of activism was profound, and he showed a characteristic boldness that stayed with him throughout his life. As a divinity school student, during the Hungarian Revolution, in 1956, he flew to Hungary to establish a camp to takecare of children displaced by the violence.

After graduation, as a Congregational minister (late in life, he became a Roman Catholic), he went to Puerto Rico, where he established recreational centers for children in the barrios. He ran an outdoor exploration and mountain-climbing school in the White Mountains for inner-city children. And, years later, he tackled Southeast Asian gang problems here in Providence,through his hands-on work for the Indo-Chinese Advocacy Project.

But Peter's most blessed work took place far away, in a dark and terrible time, in a place few Americans cared about.

Many years ago, Peter's mother was married to Amb. Edwin Stanton of the U.S. Foreign Service, one of the fabled "China Hands." The ambassador thought that America was backing the wrong side in China, and that Chiang Kai Shek was corrupt and would lose. For this heresy, Ambassador Stanton was sent off to Thailand. There, Peter's mother fell in love with Thailand, and when her husband died she stayed on as an American expatriate. She became a tutor to the Thai royal family, and she had access to the royal compound, and to the royal family itself, that no other Westerner obtained.

Her love of Southeast Asia was transmitted to Peter Pond, providentially for thousands of Cambodians.

In 1975, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took over the government of Cambodia and began one of the most appalling mass murders in human history. In its intensity and scope, it was more ravaging even than the Nazi atrocities of World War II. Anyone with education, professional training, or even mechanical skills was marked for murder. In a small country with a population of less than eight million, it is estimated that Pol Pot and his monstrous regime murdered nearly two million people. No one knows for sure, because the "Killing Fields" were so many, and so brutal, and so few records were kept.

Into this bloodbath stepped Peter Pond. The activism and boldness that marked Peter Pond also marked his humanitarian response to the Cambodian killing machine. He could not stop it, but he could get people out. Perhaps you have seen the movie Schindler's List; Peter became the Schindler of Cambodia. He used his skill and determination, his personal wealth, his Southeast Asian contacts and connections, and his considerable personal courage to run truck convoys full of Cambodians across the border to safety in Thailand. When the convoys were stopped, Peter bribed or bluffed their way through.

As his work came to the attention of the Cambodian regime, they told him to stop it. He trusted that they were not yet serious, and continued to send truck convoys full of Cambodian families to safety. Finally, the Pol Pot regime told him to stop it and this time they meant it, but Peter misjudged.

Peter went to Site 8, a border Khmer Rouge camp, in an attempt to work with people trapped there who wanted to get away. He was building a library, looking for reasonable leaders he could deal with. He and a driver were headed to the nearest town to buy supplies when their car was stopped and Peter was shot. His driver took him back to Site 8, where the medical aides administered plasma, stopped the bleeding and contacted the Red Cross, crying as they worked on him. Although he survived and returned to work, his health was undermined, and he was never after as vigorous. Eventually, he developed serious health problems from the shooting.

I saw the scars that the bullet wounds left on Peter, and it frankly is amazing that he could have survived. His body was stitched with wounds. But survive he did, and he returned to his work, this time in the refugee camps across the border in Thailand. Here, Cambodian refugees were often the victims of plunder, extortion, rape and other forms of abuse. Peter fought and begged and protested and prayed and in general made a fuss about what was happening to the Cambodian refugees. At Camp Sakeo, staying after the camp closed at night and all U.N. workers left, Peter found that the camp was being used as a rest-and-recreation facility for Khmer soldiers.

The Thai military directed that camp men and boys should go back into Cambodia to fight the invading Vietnamese communists, as a buffer to protect their country from Hanoi. Peter announced, and handed out flyers,that the temple was a sanctuary and people did not have to leave. The people stayed, and the Thai military arrested Peter. Peter languished in prison in Thailand until he was finally released by a royal pardon issued by Queen Sirikit of Thailand.

As Cambodia stabilized, Peter maintained his interest in that country's affairs, and he remained involved for the rest of his life with Cambodian politicians who were trying to rebuild a government from the ashes left by Pol Pot.

Here in Providence, Peter was active in the Southeast Asian community, and with the Indo-Chinese Advocacy Project. This project, well ahead of its time, worked with kids involved in gangs and other misbehavior to try to end the violence before it started, or hold people accountable for the violence once it was done.

Peter's most enduring legacy, however, will be his children: He and Mrs. Pond had eight children of their own or from previous marriages, and they adopted 15 Southeast Asian children. When Queen Sirikit visited Peter in prison, she said that, as in a fairy tale, she wanted to grant him three wishes. He asked that three Cambodian orphans be allowed to go to the United States. They were Arn, Lakhana and Soneath, the first three adoptive children to come to the family. The willingness of the Ponds to open their hearts and home so wide, for so many, is a measure of this exceptional family, and this exceptional man.

Much of what he did, he did far away, in a continent and country America had turned its back on. Few people know what he did. But he was exceptional, and he lived among us, and we should mark his passing.

Sheldon Whitehouse is the attorney general of Rhode Island. Mr. Whitehouse's father, Charles Whitehouse, was U.S. ambassador to Thailand and Laos during the 1970s. He also served as deputy ambassador to South Vietnam. In the 1950s, he served in Cambodia as a Foreign Service officer, when Sheldon Whitehouse lived in Pnom Penh.