Jeeves Goes to War: Why is the Pentagon sending soldiers to butler school?
By Tom Anderson
Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2003, at 2:53 PM PT

Somewhere in Iraq, a young soldier is handing his three-starred boss a bottled water on a platter, or pressing the general's uniform, or serving his dinner guests dessert—from the left side, of course. 

The military has always provided personal assistants to top brass: There are 300 "enlisted aides" who cater to three- and four-star generals and admirals. But now the Air Force and Navy are sprucing up their service by enrolling some aides at the Starkey International Institute for Household Management, the country's premier school for domestic help. The Pentagon, in short, is now training butlers.

It's true that not everyone in uniform can be a special forces commando. Still, the notion of sending soldiers to butler school hearkens back to the Pentagon's bad old days of $640 toilet seats.

Mary Starkey—that's Mrs. Starkey to you—started the eponymous institute in 1989 after nine years of running a staffing business for butlers, cooks, maids, and nannies. Students live at the school's Denver mansion for anywhere from a week to two months, where they learn skills such as silver polishing, flower arrangement, and cigar etiquette, as well as household management training, according to the school's course catalog. The school has published five texts on household management and has more than 600 alumni serving in wealthy households worldwide. Starkey grads work at the White House, the Pentagon, and the vice president's residence, a school official says.

It's no surprise the military chose Starkey: Mrs. Starkey has applied robotic discipline to managing manual tasks. Her trademark "Starkey Household Management System" is a perfect cross between Jeeves and boot camp. She demands that her trainees keep meticulous records of their employers' wishes, so service is seamlessly customized. "If a household is not following a system, it's always in crisis mode," she says. Mrs. Starkey urges students to create a "service matrix," which enumerates how the tasks should be handled—from the employer's diet to the bathroom cleaning regimen.

The Army trains its own servants at its advanced culinary program at Fort Lee, Va. But the Air Force and Navy supplement their basic enlisted aide training with the butler schooling at Starkey. The Navy started at Starkey in 2000, and the Air Force sent its first troops last year. "Within Department of Defense, or the Air Force, there currently is no school to teach all aspects of household management, and Starkey International is the service industry leader in this type of training," says Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens. "In order to make best use of the tax dollar, we look to utilize existing commercial practices where nothing like it exists in the service, rather than creating those in-house."

The Starkey training does not strain the Pentagon budget. Together, the Navy and Air Force probably won't spend even $100,000 for Starkey classes this year. The Air Force plans to send a dozen students to a special one-week class at Starkey it recently developed with the school. Also, three veteran airmen will take the school's standard four-week, $6,400 course. Neither the Air Force nor Starkey will say how much the one-week course costs. The Navy Supply Systems Command in Mechanicsburg, Penn., will send 10 sailors to Starkey this fiscal year.

Mrs. Starkey, 54, will discuss the finer points of household management passionately, but won't make a peep about her military work. "We just don't talk about it in public," she said. "Our clients are confidential for security reasons." Yet Starkey's Web site says it is "the official Household Management school for the military enlisted aide program."

Starkey's military grads also are mum on the subject, citing the same preposterous security concerns. "Things are tighter than ever and security considerations are higher than ever," replied one Navy vet who trained at Starkey when asked about the school. Is he afraid Iraqis will sneak in and replace dessert forks with fish forks? Is he worried al-Qaida will booby-trap his shoe polish kit? 

It's more likely that Mrs. Starkey and her military alums are silent for fear of drawing attention to what is, fundamentally, a boondoggle. In recent months, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been pushing for a leaner, meaner, and probably less Jeevesier military. In a June speech at the National Press Club, Rumsfeld said, "To have 320,000 military personnel doing jobs that are not military tasks is not a good thing for the department."

It's hard to imagine that Rumsfeld believes that planning a formal dinner party is a "military task." He could—and he should—stop the Starkey training tomorrow. But, oh, how the generals would complain! After all, where else can you find good help these days? 

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Dear Prudie, 
I am a 25-year-old woman who is eight weeks away from getting married for the first time. My intended is more than 10 years my senior and financially more established than me. However, I have established my own career and have been quite successful on my own, so I do not need anyone to support me. He has previously been married, and I guess one could say it was bitter. She put him through the ringer financially after only a year and a half of marriage. I have always said I understand why men or women feel it necessary to have a prenup, but now that I am faced with it, I feel quite differently. I feel like the magic of our marriage, our partnership, our friendship has been taken away. What do vows really mean? Nothing if in lieu of them there is a contract. I feel as though this is a reflection on me and a remark that he does not trust me. Not only that, I feel like I am giving this man the best years of my life and there are no guarantees for me, either. He is planning for our divorce, and I am planning on our future. I am about to give up on the dream of true love, and maybe I should realize marriage is a business deal. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 

—Shell Shocked 

Dear Shell,
Prudie is sympathetic to your feelings. It is not hard to see why this would feel like, "Sign on the dotted line, or forget the whole thing." Perhaps it's small comfort, but that's the way things are going these days, especially with people who are big earners or who have inherited money. It would be nice for you, as well as romantic, if your betrothed didn't feel so burned by his failed marriage, but he does, and that's the way things are. Whether there's a prenup or not, marriage IS a contract, and maybe it's "progress" to plan ahead for a failure (since 50 percent of marriages, now, do fail) rather than deal with it when emotions are raw. The prenuptial agreement, by the way, in no way takes the place of the vows. It is a contingency financial arrangement, not unlike a preplanned funeral. And because these agreements are two-way streets, you might feel better if you asked for a "best years of my life" clause. Prudie knows of a case where custody of the dog was written in. Do try to put this aspect in the background and program yourself to concentrate on the romance part. 

—Prudie, acceptingly
-*-*-*-
Dear Prudence,
I have been married for six years, and for the most part, my husband and I get along great. We do have one recurring argument, however, and that's about giving money to his parents. For a variety of reasons (low-paying jobs, a lifestyle they can't afford, poor judgment, etc.), his family is always broke (to the point where they have no money in their pockets and none coming in for a couple of weeks), and they are constantly asking my husband for money. He is the only one out of five kids who makes a decent living. He informs me of their request, I get irritated, and he winds up giving them the money anyway. We're not wealthy, and we have things that we need to save for (home remodeling, vacations, having kids), and I resent giving my hard-earned money to people who never seem to be able to improve their situation. I understand my husband feeling this need to take care of them, especially when they made sacrifices for him when he was growing up, but isn't that the job of parents?

—Not a Bank

Dear Not,
This is always a sticky wicket and an understandable source of irritation. Perhaps the only workable solution is a) for you to accept that your husband cannot NOT help his parents, but b) for him to agree on a certain amount of money each month that will not be exceeded. Sometimes this just goes with the territory.

—Prudie, charitably
-*-*-*-
Dear Pru,
My best friend of many years finally ditched her louse of a husband. He did nothing at home, did not contribute to household finances despite having a good job, and ignored my friend except when it was sex time. Then she was told he had another woman on the side! She ditched him, after 15 years. He got half of everything. Now he is back in her life. They "see" each other and have spent weekends together. It is very awkward for us because I have made it clear I don't like him. I think she will take him back. This woman has a great job and is very well thought of. Why would someone who has it so together want such a jerk in her life? I would lose all respect for her if it happens. I fear our friendship may drain away, and I don't know what to do.

—Disturbed

Dear Dis,
Whatever the reason for the louse's return, you are not the one who has to take him back. Regarding your relationship with your friend, let her take the lead. Chances are you will meet, now, as girlfriends and not as couples. If you really can't stand the prodigal louse, there's no use pretending. As for why people have jerks in their lives, Prudie cannot help but think of the old joke: When told her son was wanted by the police, the woman said, "Well, there's no accounting for taste." 

—Prudie, philosophically
-*-*-*-
Dear Prudie,
My parents were married for nearly 40 years but were divorced last year because of my father's infidelity. Things happened about six years ago when he hooked up with a 19-year-old girl. We (my other two siblings and our mother) struggled to try to rescue the marriage during that period. The final standoff was that if he went with this girl, he wouldn't have us. He made the choice by divorcing my mother. (She was then in her early 60s and just a helpless housewife.) Just for some sexual pleasure, he gave up his wife and all his children. I totally lost respect for him. About three years ago, I stopped bringing my daughter to see him. The hard part of this ordeal is explaining it to her. She has asked about grandpa many times, saying that she misses him. I've been telling her that grandpa is busy or on a business trip, etc. But as she grows older, she is starting not to believe what I say. I know that some time I will have to explain it to her in a way that makes sense—but I don't know what to say. Sometimes I think about inviting my father over to see her ... she is just a small kid and deserves a granddad. But on the other hand, I don't want my daughter exposed to such an unethical person. What's your opinion about this? 

—On the Horns of a Dilemma 

Dear On,
Boy, these geezer-Lolita couplings give Prudie a pain … but that is not the question you asked. Regarding your little girl, you really only have two options. Your father's association with the nymph is unlikely to influence your child, so you might consider letting them have visits while you make yourself scarce. If you absolutely want nothing to do with him and wish there to be no contact, then you will have to find a way to explain that you and grandpa have had a serious disagreement, which means, for all intents and purposes, that her grandpa is essentially gone from her life. If Prudie had to choose for you, it would be to let the two of them get to know each other without your feeling that you must relate to him as you did, pre-Lolita.

—Prudie, parentally

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Kavitha Maria Mathew, a daughter of Valsa and Dr. George Mathew of Syosset, N.Y., was married yesterday to Nirmalan Nagulendran, the son of Dr. Nirmalam Nagulendran and Dr. Veluppillai Nagulendran of Cumberland, Md. Sri Chaithanyananda Navaratnam Wijayaharan, a Hindu priest, performed the ceremony at the New Huntington Townhouse in Huntington, N.Y.

Ms. Mathew, 33, is an architect in Manhattan. She graduated from the University of Virginia and received a master's degree in architecture from Columbia. Her father is a pediatrician in South Ozone Park, Queens.

Mr. Nagulendran, 32, is an associate at Miller, Meyerson, Schwartz & Corbo, a law firm in Jersey City. He graduated from George Mason University and received a law degree from Seton Hall University. The bridegroom's mother is a child psychiatrist with the Allegany County Health Department in Cumberland. His father is a psychiatrist in Cumberland. 

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Moving to defuse a crisis for thousands of high school students, New York State's education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, yesterday set aside the results of last week's Math A Regents exam for seniors and juniors. The test is required for graduation, and many educators had described it as inordinately difficult.

Mr. Mills's decision, which came after four days of rising clamor from principals, parents, lawmakers and members of the Board of Regents, allows local school authorities across New York to issue diplomas to seniors who failed the test but passed their math courses, and to certify that juniors who failed have passed the math graduation requirements. Sophomores and freshmen who failed may have to retake the test, although their scores may be adjusted upward after authorities complete an investigation.

Mr. Mills acknowledged that the test was technically flawed, but declined to say whether its defect lay in the phrasing of its questions, the level at which its passing score was set, or in some other feature. 

"I think we made some mistakes with this exam, and it's up to us to identify and correct them," Mr. Mills said. Early results of a survey by the State Department of Education showed that only about 37 percent of the students who took the test on June 17 scored at or above the passing level of 55, compared with 61 percent in June 2002. 

Educators said it was the first time that test results had been scrapped since the commissioner and the Board of Regents in 1996 began converting the Regents tests from a battery of optional tests taken to achieve higher honors into graduation requirements for all New York students. 

Mr. Mills's predecessor, Thomas Sobol, could recall only one time in the 80-year history of Regents testing that results had been set aside — and that was when a newspaper published a stolen answer sheet before the test was given. One State Education Department official, however, said he believed other results might have been set aside.

Mr. Mills made his decision in close consultation with Robert M. Bennett, the retired president of the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, who is chancellor of the Board of Regents. Mr. Bennett said that all 16 members of the board had come to consensus in a series of phone calls on Sunday and Monday on the need to set aside the results.

"This was a moment of embarrassment," Mr. Bennett said. "We heard big-time from parents, who got very upset about their kids' education, which I think is a good thing — so lesson learned, but more to come. We're not finished with this."

Mr. Mills said he was appointing an independent panel of mathematicians and others to review what went wrong. In the meantime, he also announced the suspension of the next administration of the Math A Regents, scheduled for August, to give testing experts time to rectify problems identified by the panel.

The emergency decision came just in time for thousands of seniors who had failed the exam, because graduation ceremonies are scheduled for this week at many of the state's 1,000 high schools. Since passing the exam was a prerequisite for graduation, many schools had to consider whether to allow those who had failed to participate in the ceremonies. 

On the test, students were given three hours to answer 335 questions, which ranged across concepts of algebra, geometry, probability and statistics. The test is intended to be administered to students at the end of their sophomore year, but advanced students can elect to take it as freshmen, and students who have failed it can try repeatedly to pass it.

One of Mr. Mills's deputy commissioners, James A. Kadamus, said that the results of a preliminary survey conducted in recent days had provided data that resists any quick diagnosis of the test's basic problem, especially since students seem to have performed at different proficiencies depending on their grade levels. In the sample results gathered in the survey, 30 percent of the seniors had passed the test, compared with 27 percent of juniors, 48 percent of sophomores and 81 percent of freshmen, Mr. Kadamus said.

One interpretation of this data was that the freshmen and sophomores who took the test were generally stronger math performers, while the juniors and seniors were students who struggle, Mr. Kadamus said.

A significant percentage of students appear to have simply given up after struggling with about half the test. "One possibility we're looking at is that there was something about the accumulation of questions which caused greater difficulty than the individual questions," Mr. Kadamus said. "The whole was greater than the sum of the parts. So it looks like there was a discouragement factor."

One student who experienced that discouragement was Joey Morgan, a sophomore at Putnam Valley High School in Putnam County, who took the test for the fourth time on June 17. "Parts 1 and 2 were fair, but on Parts 3 and 4 it was like — Whoa! I've never seen anything like this," Mr. Morgan said, adding that he believed he had failed, but had not been officially notified.

Not all students failed the test. At the Benjamin Banneker Academy in Brooklyn, a dozen seniors who needed to pass the test to graduate attended after-school and Saturday morning tutoring sessions all spring — and all 12 passed the test, Daryl Rock, the school's principal said.

"When I was taking the exam, I kept saying to myself, `Oh my God, this is too hard,' " said Kimberly Boone, an 18-year-old senior, who had failed the test three times.

She earned a 73 on the test, the highest in her class at Banneker. "Tears came to my eyes I was so happy," she said.

Mr. Mills's decision brought praise from some education officials.

"The commissioner believes in standards to his core — he is Mr. Standards — and he saw that this was a flawed test and rather than making excuses he took quick, decisive action," said Randi Weingarten, president of the city teachers' union. "I give him a lot of credit for that."

Steven Sanders, the chairman of the Education Committee in the State Assembly, who has been critical of the decision to transform the Regents tests into a graduation requirement, congratulated Mr. Mills for his decision, but added: "This is an opportunity to now revisit and reconsider the policy of high-stakes, do-or-die exams. Exclusive reliance on any particular exam on any given day is an inherently flawed process."

But Joel I. Klein, the New York City chancellor, who said he called yesterday to congratulate Mr. Mills, argued that the debacle on the Math A test should not be interpreted as a blow to the standards movement. "This is not to eliminate testing," Mr. Klein said. "This is to eliminate a test that was way out of line."

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THE burial ground at Old St. Peter's Church in Van Cortlandtville contains unmarked graves holding the bodies of at least seven French soldiers who died during the Revolutionary War, according to local lore. Growing interest in their fates has prompted members of the Van Cortlandtville Historical Society to research the men's backgrounds and family histories in the last few years; the third observance to honor their sacrifice and this part of France's role in American history will be held on Thursday, the day before the Fourth of July. 

"In 2001, we placed little French flags in the ground and crosses where we thought they were buried," said Laura Lee Keating, Cortlandt town historian. "It was sad, thinking about these soldiers dying in another country so far from home. The French ambassador brought a jar of soil from Paris and sprinkled it over the ground."

Francophiles in Westchester are making a cause célèbre of the 225th anniversary this year of France's recognition of the fledgling United States of America, which made it the first country to do so. And although earlier this year France's objections to the United States' plan to invade Iraq generated criticism of the French nationwide, there are signs of renewed appreciation of French culture, history and other influence across Westchester County, where evidence of a French presence is pronounced in places.

Local history buffs are working to highlight French-American friendship by marking and recognizing the significance of the 600-mile Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, which marches across Westchester on the route taken by French armies as they traveled from Rhode Island to Virginia and back to Boston during the Revolutionary War. Odell House, a dilapidated house in Hartsdale which French Gen. Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French expeditionary force in North America, used as his headquarters for six weeks during the campaign with George Washington, is to be turned into a museum. And grant money for markers, studies and other such commemorative efforts has started to flow. 

Those who seek to recognize France's contribution to United States independence point out that the French were among the first of this nation's friends. 

"Back then, France was a significant power and we were the 98-pound weakling, the reverse of what it is today," said Jeff Canning, president of the Van Cortlandtville Historical Society, whose headquarters overlook Old St. Peter's Church and its burial ground. "France, for whatever reasons, joined our cause when we desperately needed it and allowed us to hang in there. A bunch of us think it's important to acknowledge that and remember what they did."

Another defender of the French, Cole Jones of Bronxville, makes a hobby of re-enacting the role of a typical French soldier from the Revolutionary War during historical war games. He is often ribbed by his counterparts, he said. "The guys in the British regiment, especially, say, 'What are you thinking?'" he said. "I tell them that the French army was the most professional and powerful in Europe at the time. And they were here."

Not all Americans defend the French. Sofia Cavallo, 15, a student at the French-American School in Larchmont, said that a woman who overheard one of Sofia's friends speaking French in a supermarket during the Iraq war said that "all French people deserve to die," she said. 

"I think most people in Westchester are open-minded," said Ms. Cavallo, who has no French background, yet speaks the language fluently. "That was a rare, extreme case of ignorance."

Early in the Iraq invasion, presumably because of bad feelings over the war, the Armonk importer and distributor Cheezwhse.com reported a drop in sales of French products. But since then, there has been something of a rebound, said Rich Rosenberg, vice president of sales and purchasing for the company. "It's not back 100 percent, but we are still selling plenty of French cheese," he said. 

Perhaps partly because the French presence in the county predates the Revolutionary War, Westchester offers fertile fields for détente. In 1688, persecuted Protestant Huguenots who left their homeland from the port of La Rochelle bought 6,000 acres from a landholder named Thomas Pell and founded New Rochelle. Some Huguenots settled in Staten Island, others in New Paltz, but most clustered in southeastern Westchester, working tidal mills and farms, said Barbara Davis, acting New Rochelle city historian. 

Reminders of the city's founders - besides the city's name itself - are dozens of street and place names, several welcome signs at the city's border depicting real and imagined scenes from colonial history, a few statues, a handful of farmhouses and a federal Works Progress Administration mural in the main post office entitled "City of the Huguenots." 

"We used to have Huguenot families that were here for generations, but few remain," Ms. Davis said. "Most died out or intermarried. I remember reading obituaries, one after the other, saying the deceased was the last remaining survivor of such and such Huguenot family."

Rapid growth after World War II obliterated remnants of their presence long before the rise of the historic preservation movement in the 1970's, said Ms. Davis. In 1955, when Interstate 95 was laid through town, advocates lay in front of bulldozers to stop the destruction of two cemeteries that held the bodies of the city's most prominent Huguenot families, to no avail. Later, the New Rochelle Mall, built in the 1960's on the former site of St. John's Methodist Church, also displaced a burial ground with Huguenot graves. 

Prominent anniversaries have bolstered relations with New Rochelle's sister city - La Rochelle, of course. In 1988, the 300th anniversary of the city's founding, about 100 local residents went to France, then entertained a contingent from La Rochelle. 

"We had about 100 people staying in people's homes," said Ms. Davis. "So we arranged bus trips each day to Manhattan, to West Point, and after the third day, they started asking us, 'Why aren't you showing us New Rochelle?'"

FRANCE'S decision to support the colonists instead of the English was probably motivated more by a desire to thwart the English and by feelings of revenge for losing the French-American War than they were by a commitment to the colonists' cause, said Larry Gall, a regional director for the National Park Service in Boston. 

Among the most famous French generals in the Revolution was the Marquis de Lafayette, who left a life of luxury in France to command American troops against the British. He became a favorite of Washington's, Mr. Gall said, and overshadowed Rochambeau. 

"Rochambeau was more modest; he realized that if the alliance with the colonies were to succeed in casting off the British, he had to play second fiddle by putting his forces under Washington's command. It was a winning strategy, but it allowed Americans to take all the glory. That's one reason why it's easy for Americans to overlook the French influence."

Soldiers of the French Army landed at Newport, R.I. ,in July 1780, staying put for almost a year. Washington and Rochambeau met in Weathersfield, Conn., in May 1781 to discuss plans to attack New York City, the main British stronghold in the colonies. 

French troops marched south in June 1781, to rendezvous with the Continental Army, under Washington's command, in Westchester. When the two armies met in Greenburgh, Washington and Rochambeau debated their next move. From July 6 to Aug. 19, 5,000 French troops and 4,000 Continental Army soldiers occupied the surrounding hills, conducting drills and reconnaissance missions on British positions in New York City; the line of soldiers stretched from the hills to the river at Dobbs Ferry, said Robert A. Selig, who completed a 750-page study of the route in New York State and is an historical consultant on the project for the National Park Service. 

The generals' strategy discussion was made moot on Aug. 14, when a horseback messenger delivered to Odell House a letter from Admiral de Grasse saying the French West Indian fleet would meet with Rochambeau's troops in Virginia.

The generals led some of their forces across the Hudson River at Dobbs Ferry and Kings' Ferry (now Verplanck Point), to Yorktown, Va., for the war's decisive showdown with Lord Cornwallis's army. 

In 1976, Congress passed a resolution honoring what it called the Washington-Rochambeau Historic Route, according to the Web site of the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Trail Association, based in Greenwich, Conn. 

In 2000, Congress passed the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Heritage Act, authorizing the National Park Service to do a $400,000 study on the significance and preservation of the route, said Mr. Gall. 

THE interest has caused local historical societies along the route to promote the effort. James M. Johnson, military history consultant to the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area and executive director of the trail association, actively promotes the trail. In May, for instance, he spoke at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society's annual gala, and then a petition supporting the trail's designation circulated around town; a copy sits at the library's checkout desk. 

Another focal point of local efforts to celebrate France's help putting the United States on the map is the plan to transform the Odell House on Ridge Road in Hartsdale into a museum by 2006, when 225 years will have elapsed since Rochambeau slept there. 

At Odell House, the French tricolor once flew next to the Stars and Stripes, said Robert J. Stackpole, president of the New York Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, which owns the house, but thieves stole the flags and the flagpoles a few years ago. The house is named for John Odell, a lieutenant-colonel in the Westchester County Militia, whose descendants lived there until 1965.

The Greenburgh Greenway Committee, headed by Frank Jazzo, the town historian, and by Mr. Stackpole, received a $10,000 state grant from the Hudson River Greenway, which will be used to help establish a network of hiking and biking trails linking the town's cultural, historical and recreational resources and to conduct archaeological studies, said Mr. Jazzo. 

The Ardsley Greenway Committee, of which Mr. Jazzo is also co-chairman, received a separate state grant from Heritage New York, administered by the State Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation, for $12,600 to erect markers along routes taken by the French and American troops as they left for Yorktown.

Heritage New York also awarded the Sons of the American Revolution $72,000 to spruce up Odell House's exterior. The group received $65,000 from the Florence Gould Foundation to promote the study of French-American history, said Mr. Stackpole, which also financed Mr. Selig's New York State study. 

"We have started preliminary architectural work on the house and want to do more intense archaeological investigation of other places where we know the French were located, like Sunningdale Golf Club and Hart's Brook Nature Preserve," said Mr. Stackpole. "We have found ovens around the golf course that the French used to bake bread, and there are some cellar holes and stone fences behind the W.F.A.S. building on Secor Road that are probably from the Appleby Farm," he said, referring to Washington's headquarters during the encampment, which burned down years ago.

After Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, the French passed through Westchester again in the fall of 1782. Crossing the Hudson and landing at Verplanck, they traveled mostly along what is now Route 202 and on to Boston. Rochambeau's army camped for two days in the fields behind the North Salem Academy, now Town Hall. Two years ago, an archaeological dig in Yorktown Heights unearthed accouterments carried by French forces, including belt buckles, bullets and other artifacts, said Mr. Selig. 

Re-enactors like Mr. Jones, 20, are also a force in promoting interest in French influence here. Mr. Jones has recruited four other re-enactors to form a French regiment representing soldiers who fought in the southern states, not Rochambeau's troops. Members of the squad are from Virginia, Montreal, North Carolina and Texas. 

To serious practitioners of living history like Mr. Jones, who has scoured archives of the Musée de L'Armée in Paris to authenticate every detail of his presentation, down to the buttons on his uniform, distance is a minor inconvenience.

The shortage of French re-enactors is easy to explain, said Mr. Jones, a history major at Duke University. In addition to any anti-French feelings, he said, people who choose to fill the ranks of American and British re-enactors find that role easier and less expensive than a French one. 

"You have to get the uniforms from Europe," he said. "If you want to do it right, all the research has to be done in French, so you have to be able to read the language, and all on-field commands and orders are in French, so you have to be able to speak it, too."

Mr. Jones's passion for the French is matched by others, and the importance of the French in the colonies' war for independence is one reason.

"We're all American history folks, but when this French thing came up, we kind of found a new direction," said Ms. Keating, the Cortlandt town historian who is helping research the identities of the bodies that are thought by some to lie in the old church graveyard. "They were an invaluable ally and fought shoulder to shoulder with us at a time when we needed them the most."

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MONTGERON, France, June 28 — The steak at the Réveil Matin in the Paris suburb of Montgeron is tender, the house wine thin but acceptable, the service no worse than the usual inattentive, the bill a bit less than it would be in a more chic and higher-rent restaurant in the capital.

Montgeron, a town of 21,000, is hard to find in the southeastern suburban sprawl, and the Réveil Matin (Alarm Clock) lies at the northern end of town, a 35-minute slog, much of it uphill, from the train station.

Is it worth the trip, as the Michelin guide would put it? Not at all for the food, but absolutely for the occasion. The Réveil Matin is a shrine.

At 3:16 p.m. on July 1, 1903, a crowd in the dozens outside the inn watched 60 bicycle riders set off in the first Tour de France. It finished July 19 in another suburb, Ville d'Avray, because police officials ruled that a bicycle race in Paris would interfere with daily life.

French officials changed their minds. In a few days and on July 27, a Sunday, the Tour de France will rule Paris.

The prologue to the three-week race will start Saturday at the Eiffel Tower, with all nearby streets blocked to traffic and the usual throngs of tourists. When the Tour ends, it will monopolize, as it has since 1975, the broad Champs-Élysées in the heart of the capital.

For this centennial Tour — actually the 90th edition of the race, which was not held during both world wars — the organizers have scheduled a series of celebratory events in and around Paris, including parades, concerts, fireworks, exhibitions and mass bicycle rides open to the public. The aim, in the words of Jean-Marie Leblanc, the Tour's chief director, is to affirm the race's role as a "sporting, social, historic and festive" event.

That it is. What started 100 years ago as a gimmick to boost circulation for the newspaper L'Auto has grown into the world's third-largest sporting event as measured by spectator interest, after the Olympic Games and the World Cup.

Since neither of those competitions is scheduled this summer, more than the usual 15 million French should flock to the sides of the Tour's roads, and more than the usual 160 million viewers around the world should be watching on television. The number at the finale along the Champs-Élysées, however, should remain constant; because nobody counts, it is always estimated at 250,000.

The crowd in Montgeron alone should reach into the tens of thousands and include spectators, the 198 riders divided into 22 teams of 9 men each, their automobile armada of officials, coaches, mechanics and masseurs, and several hundred journalists — a permanent supporting cast of more than 3,500 people.

What a change those 22 teams will be from a century before, when just a few riders signed up early. Almost nobody, it seemed, was ready for a 2,428-kilometer (1,117-mile) race in six daily — and sometimes nightly — stages, with between one and four rest days between each stage. The distance was twice that of the longest race until then, the Paris-Brest-Paris event, and the purse was 20,000 francs, then $4,000.

The organizer, the newspaper L'Auto and its editor, Henri Desgrange, fighting a circulation war with the newspaper Le Velo, proclaimed it: "The greatest bicycling test in the world. A monthlong race — Paris-Lyon-Marseille-Toulouse-Bordeaux-Nantes."

After the race's duration was reduced to three weeks, the entry fee cut to 10 francs from 20 and the overall eligibility rules relaxed, 78 men signed up and 60 set off for the first Tour.

Watching over the crowd at the Réveil Matin were a few policemen on horseback. Their successors will be back for the first stage on July 6 in a parade of mounted members of the Garde Républicaine.

Otherwise, and not unexpectedly, much has changed.

The original first stage, from Montgeron to Lyon, lasted an overwhelming 467 kilometers. Lyon is on the schedule again this year, as are the five other original cities, but it will not be reached until the seventh stage, 226.5 kilometers from Nevers.

Instead of 6 stages, there will be 20. Instead of 2,428 kilometers, there will be 3,427. Instead of the 6,075 francs carried home by the first winner, Maurice Garin, there will be 335,000 euros ($350,000).

This Tour will also pass through the mountains, not added until 1905 with the Vosges, including the Pyrenees (1910) and the Alps (1911). The leader will wear the distinctive yellow jersey, introduced in 1919 and the same color as the newspaper L'Auto, now the daily sports newspaper L'Equipe.

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Men compete harder than women. That is why they do better at work

HOW to get more women to the corporate summit? After years of equal opportunity, female bosses such as Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina and Xerox's Anne Mulcahy remain rarities. Women, according to a survey by Catalyst, a lobbying group, now hold nearly twice as many senior management positions in big American firms as they did in 1995—but the percentage is still only 15.7%. 

In Britain, things are no better. A recent report by Laura Tyson, head of the London Business School and a former chairman of America's Council of Economic Advisers, notes that 30% of British managers are female. But many are in the “marzipan” layer just below the top-executive icing, from which non-executive directors are rarely picked; or else in such unfashionable areas as human resources. Women account for only 11% of non-executive directors of the largest, FTSE 100, firms; 8% at FTSE 250 firms; and fewer than 4% at small quoted firms. 

Ms Tyson suggests casting the recruitment net wider, and also drawing more non-executives from professional services, where women do better than in corporate management. But why do women so rarely reach the boardroom? The Catalyst survey, published in the latest Harvard Business Review, finds that senior managers agree that the big problem is women's lack of line-management experience. In Fortune 500 companies, 90% of senior line managers are men. 

Why don't women get such jobs? One reason may be that they view work differently to men. New research* by Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics finds that men are three times as likely as women to regard themselves as “work-centred”. Women want opportunities, but not a life dominated by work.

But research by economists at two American universities suggests that, even in the job market, women behave in ways that disadvantage them. At the University of Chicago's business school, Uri Gneezy and a group of colleagues have used novel techniques to show that women and men have different attitudes to competing. In one study that is about to appear in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, groups of students were paid to solve simple maze problems on a computer. In some groups, everybody was paid 50 cents per problem solved; in others, a payment of $3 per problem went only to the individual who solved most mazes. Female performance was much the same in both groups; but in the second lot, the average man did about 50% better than in the first. 

A second study, of physical tasks, showed similar results. When nine- and ten-year-old children ran a race alone, boys and girls clocked similar speeds. When children raced in pairs, girls' speed hardly altered. But boys ran faster when paired with a boy, and faster still when racing against a girl. Mr Gneezy points out that, if men try harder when competing, they will disproportionately win the top jobs, even when to do the job well does not require an ability to compete. Job selection is itself highly competitive.

Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University finds that women may do worse than men even when they win a job, because they take a different approach to negotiation. Ms Babcock, who recounts her studies in a forthcoming book†, noticed that male graduates with a master's degree from her university earned starting salaries almost $4,000, or 7.6%, higher than female students. But when she asked who had simply accepted the initial pay offer and who had asked for more, only 7% of women, compared with 57% of men, turned out to have negotiated. On average, those who negotiated raised the initial offer by $4,053—almost exactly the difference between men's and women's starting pay. Ms Babcock felt some exasperation because, “I teach negotiation here, and I'm always telling students to negotiate.”

A laboratory study confirmed her findings. With her colleagues Michele Gelfand and Deborah Small, she advertised a payment of between $3 and $10 for students who would play four rounds of Boggle, a parlour game. At the end, hired actors posing as experimenters said to each student, “Here's $3. Is that okay?” Astonishingly, nine times as many men as women tried to negotiate for more.

Most studies of negotiation, Ms Babcock points out, miss such findings because they do not consider why it is that people start to haggle. She suspects that women feel uncomfortable with negotiating because they think it inappropriate, or do not feel that they are entitled to ask for more money, or think it may damage a relationship with an employer. Instead, they feel unhappy and resentful when they see men ask for and receive better treatment. But “this is a lightbulb issue,” she says: when she tells women what men achieve by negotiating, they are more likely to ask too. 

*Published in “Choosing to be Different: Women, work and the family”, by Jill Kirby. Centre for Policy Studies.
† “Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide”, by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. Princeton University Press, October 2003.

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PARIS, June 30 — It is a time-honored summer ritual in France: a marathon of culture in cities and towns throughout the country. 

But this year's performing arts festivals are in jeopardy because of strikes by workers in the arts over tougher regulations for unemployment benefits.

Already the Montpellier Dance Festival, which was scheduled to run through this week in that southern French city, has been canceled. So have performances at the Comédie Française and several other Paris theaters.

At dawn today the police stormed a theater in Caen in Normandy and evacuated 100 strikers who had staged a sit-in since Friday. And in Marseille, organizers of the city's eighth annual arts festival called it off rather than risk the unpredictability of wildcat strikes by unhappy workers. The 18-day festival involved the production of 14 plays and expected 17,000 visitors.

"I don't want to take risks," Apolline Quintrand, the Marseille festival's director, said at a news conference. "It is out of the question for me to enter into a fratricidal war with the crews."

Summer festivals in France and throughout Europe have become big business. Last year about 900,000 spectators attended a staggering 650 music, dance and theater festivals across France. French tourism has already suffered this year from the sharp drop in the value of the dollar, the political fallout from the war with Iraq (which France opposed) and fears of the SARS virus.

In cities like Avignon and Aix-en-Provence festival organizers and local business rely heavily on the income from the summer festivals, and the cancellations could be financially disastrous. The city of Avignon, for example, earns about $17 million a year from its festival.

Singers, dancers, actors, choreographers, technicians, circus performers — all sorts of people with seasonal employment in the arts — have united in protest. The object of their wrath is a deal signed last week by three unions with the French employers' association that would reduce unemployment benefits to 8 months from 12 months a year for workers who do not have full-time work.

The agreement also requires workers in the arts to work 507 hours in 10 months rather than over the course of a year before they are eligible for the benefits.

A hundred arts workers, including prominent performers and directors, sent an open letter last week to the center-right government supporting the protests and objecting to the new regulations. 

"We are witnessing today a swift degradation of French political cultures, of which the change of compensation for seasonal workers is only one facet," the letter said. Calling the labor agreement an "unacceptable policy of the right," the letter demanded that the government reject it and called for a national and Europe-wide debate on the subject.

Jean Voirin, an official with the hard-line union C.G.T. (Conféderation Générale du Travail), one of the two main unions that did not sign the agreement, was quoted today in Le Parisien as saying, "This is a catastrophic agreement that will not resolve the true problems."

The "spectacle" or performance section of the union has called for a strike of its members, including workers in the theater, movies, radio and television, on July 8. That would coincide with the opening of the 57th annual Festival d'Avignon, one of Europe's most prestigious drama festivals, which attracted almost 100,000 visitors last year.

But Daniele Rived, an official with the union C.F.D.T. (Conféderation Française Démocratique du Travail), which was one of those that signed the accord, told Le Parisien, "By signing, we feel like we have saved a system that was in jeopardy." The unemployment system for these workers has suffered enormous losses in recent years.

Other commentaries predicted that the disruption of the festivals would damage France's cultural standing in the world.

"One of the best images of France's trademark — the liveliness of its culture, its creativity, its diversity — is seriously threatened," said an editorial in Tuesday's issue of Le Monde. "The craft of the artist has always been precarious because it's haphazard and uncertain." It praised France for "having invented a system of solidarity that has allowed thousands of artists to be better rather than worse off."

The culture minister, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, met today with festival directors. On Sunday he urged arts workers to go back to work and said the agreement offered "considerable advances." He called the strikes irresponsible.

But the director of the Montpellier festival for the last 20 years, Jean-Paul Montanari, said: "I support the workers. Otherwise why would I have canceled my festival?" 

Eighty percent of his dancers and 60 percent of the technical teams are freelance workers, he said, adding that support for these workers "is a pillar of culture in France." But he said that he would have to pay all the costs of the productions whether or not the shows went on, including everything from salaries to the rental of chairs and lighting fixtures.

The first three days of the July opera festival in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence have already been canceled, with a warning from Stéphane Lissner, its director, that the entire three-week program could be scrapped. It was supposed to open on July 4 with a performance of "Wozzeck." 

The festival in the medieval Provencal city of Avignon, which includes converted churches and a network of small theaters and is scheduled for 20 days, may not open at all, organizers said.

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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

A close friend of our 33-year-old son just completed testing to be a kidney donor for him. He is not a candidate for the gift.

Would it be proper, as parents, to show our gratitude for his ultimate gift offerby sending him and his wife a gift certificate for a dinner out, or is a note of thanks all that would be in order? My husband says a gift "cheapens" it.

A:
He offered your son a kidney, and you are debating whether to offer him a steak?

If you have a son in need of a kidney, you should not need Miss Manners to explain to you that this offer was priceless beyond compare. 

A "note," as opposed to an emotional letter pouring out your gratitude, and a restaurant gift certificate, as opposed to welcoming him to the bosom of your family, would both be ludicrously inadequate.

In regard to teaching children to offer thanks, Miss Manners has always argued that gratitude is not a natural reaction to generosity, so that the connection between the two -- and the forms for acknowledging indebtedness -- must be taught. 

But in your particular case, she really thought gratitude of a magnitude to match the generosity might have spontaneously overwhelmed you.

If not, you must show it anyway. As this gentlemen is not actually able to be the donor, you need not look after him in the hospital as well as you do your son, which is the way you should treat the person chosen. 

But in addition to displaying your thanks and offering your eternal friendship, you should be endeavoring to discover anything serious that you might do for him.
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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

A friend of mine just got an invitation to a fancy affair and the dress code was indicated as "fire and ice." We're not sure what he and his wife should plan to wear.

A:
Red and white? Blue-red and transparent? Heavy-duty raincoats? Miss Manners suggests your friend call his hosts and ask. If people insist on making up cute costume codes, she declines to act as their translators.
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Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

I really need to know what the proper etiquette is for mailing a particular wedding invitation. Here's the situation: My brother has a girlfriend and they live at separate addresses. I mailed one invitation to my brother's address but labeled it with both their full names on the envelope. According to his girlfriend, I should have mailed her a separate invitation to her address. I hope you can help me with this situation as I was married in 2000 and am still being harassed about this!

A:
The more urgent question is whether we can help your brother. He ought not to be sending out any wedding invitations until he finds a better-tempered prospect. True, you might have checked the complainant's address before sending out your invitations, but Miss Manners assures you that this slip pales beside that person's continuing rudeness.

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TOM: How DID they fake it?

RAY: Springs. Invisible wires. You've never seen Peter Pan? Anyway… for example, if you had a bathroom scale, and you put your 600-pound...

TOM: mother-in-law?

RAY: I knew you were going say that! If you put your 600-pound Bengal tiger on this bathroom scale, and then transport the tiger and the bathroom scale to the Moon, the Bengal tiger (or the mother-in-law), would weigh 100 pounds.
You with me?

TOM: I'm with you.

RAY: Here's the question. Is there anything you can think of that, if measured in the same way, would weigh more on the Moon than it does on the Earth? Now, I have an answer in mind, but there may be more than one right answer.
Do you have an answer in mind? 

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