Long before Jim Archer came to be the thoughtful elderly man many Hopkins students have become friendly with in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library (MSE), he was a soldier, teacher, world traveler, musician and auditor.
Archer visits the MSE library as often as Hopkins's most rigorous students. A Hopkins alumnus in his 80s, Archer visits the library on an almost daily basis to work on his own literary projects and to chat with his many friends among Hopkins's student population. A few weeks ago, I joined Archer's group of student admirers and sat down to talk with him about his experiences, his activities in the library and the best stories of his life.
It was when Archer's wife died in 2002 that he became an MSE regular. Fluent in French since his youth, Archer began translating French novels written by women of Muslim backgrounds into English.
"The difficulty [with translating] is not understanding," he said. "It's when, especially in conversations, you try to find the best way to say it in English. I have to use the dictionary, I have to make choices. It's not easy - it's work, but I like it very much."
About three months ago, Archer finished translating a novel entitled Scherezade.
Upon completing the translation, he found that the novel had already been translated twice - but he told me this cheerfully. In addition to his work with translation, Archer spends his time crafting his own poetry. "I'm a poet, actually," he confessed to me.
"Two years ago, going through my papers, I found three poems I had written 40 years ago. I looked at them and I said, you know, they're not bad. Just by chance I met a wonderful woman poet, Japanese - and I showed them to her and she said, 'You know they have substance to them, they're solid.' She said, 'What are you doing now?' and I said 'I haven't written anything for 40 years.' She said, 'Get to work.'"
Archer has composed numerous poems since that conversation, and sends them to the Japanese poet for review.
Although he was born in Philadelphia in the 1920s, Archer spent most of his early childhood in Chile, where his father worked in the Copper mines as an engineer. His family lived there for a total of six years, and Archer still has vivid memories of his experiences there. Along with habitual drives up into the Andes in the family Studebaker, Archer recalls family trips "down to the sea."
"Very early on I had a wonderful feeling of the sea to such an extent that it used to be that whenever it was mentioned I could smell the sea."
His family moved back to the States in the middle of the Depression, and settled in West Virginia. Archer's parents met at a teacher's college. Archer reminisced about his father, who was a basketball and football star, and "the best dancer in the school."
Upon moving back to the States, Archer's mother worked as a teacher, while his father continued his career as an engineer, employed by the Works Progress Administration.
As he grew older, Archer was pressured by his father to join him in the field of engineering. He had different aspirations.
"I wanted to go into the fighting. I had followed the war back from the time of the Ethiopian war in 1936." As soon as he was old enough, Archer became a radio operator in the Navy and shipped out to the South Pacific in 1945.
Languages, French in particular, have always been an interest for Archer, but became particularly useful for Archer when, as a student at St. John's College in Maryland, he left the States for Paris. Three weeks after arriving in Paris, Archer met his future wife at a gathering organized by her family.
"When I got there I saw two beautiful French women. One of the young women was dressed ?? la Parisienne and the other one, my wife, had beautiful long dark hair that she didn't do anything with, and she wore khaki trousers and a sweater with stripes across it, and she had these beautiful intense eyes. I knew immediately that she was the one I preferred."
Archer married Catherine a year later in Paris, where the pair lived for several years and had a "marvelous time."
While in Paris, Archer participated in the post-war rebuilding of Europe, first working for the Marshall Plan's office in Paris, and later at the American delegation to NATO.
Upon moving back to the States, Archer's wife taught French and French Literature at a variety of area schools, including Goucher College. After spending some time at the Peabody Conservatory, Archer jokes "in the long run, I had realized that I just didn't have it when it came to musical composition." He too joined his wife in teaching for a time, working at the Berlitz School.
Before Archer began his library routine seven years ago, he had a long career with the Social Security Administration.
In over three decades in the department, Archer worked in systems analysis as well as auditing. He found the job satisfying because of the people he worked with. While working there he formally studied at Hopkins, taking night classes.
Given Archer's unique perspective, drawn from a lifetime that has now seen everything from the Depression to the election of America's first black president, I was curious to find out the single most important thing Archer has seen thus far in his lifetime.
He told me: "the single most important experience was the eight years when Bush was in presidency. If that man were treated correctly, he would be in prison for the way he has treated the American people.
He is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis. He went to war unconvinced . . . because he was swollen with the idea of power."
When asked about the state of American politics in 2009, Archer told me that Barack Obama is "God's gift to America."
"When I first saw him speak, I was hoping he would do it. And I feel now that he is facing enormous problems, and he is probably going to stumble on the way, but he has ideas, and I think he'll accomplish things."
My talk with Archer was habitually interrupted by other students, friends of Archer's, constantly stopping to say hello. Before concluding our chat, Archer told me: "I'm lucky with people I've met - my wife - and I'm lucky with people I've met here."
