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[[Newspaper article left]]
Tom, 12, Turtle Collector, Once Nearly Collected by Python
^[[JUN 23]]
Son of American Official Aids D. C. Scientists With Finds

By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr.
Star Staff Correspondent.
BUENOS AIRES.- A collector of turtles and snakes like Tom Davis is not to be daunted by the thought that he might have been collected himself.
[[image-inset, young teenage boy in suit, "TOM DAVIS"]]
That was two years ago, back in Sumatra. Tom was only 10 then, much smaller and less experienced, but still able to be a rescuer, instead of the rescued, when a big python broke free.
Tom with his father, Monnett B. Davis, now American Consul General to Argentina, were visiting Washington Zoo Director William M. Mann in his collecting camp in the East Indies. Tom, the budding young naturalist, slipped away to investigate the mysterious crates, cages and boxes arranged about the compound. He disappeared from the view of his elders just before a Malay servant came running to cry:
"Doktur, snake eat boy!"
Tom Held On.
Dr. Mann and Mr. Davis raced for the sound of a struggle. They found a 20-foot python trying to swallon the arm of a native hunter while its body threshed in the grasp of five or six men-Tom had hold of a section, and clung on until the battle ended with the python back in its crate. The native hunter went to a hospital.
Tom was a house guest of Dr. Mann's last summer while his mother and father were in Washington pending their transfer to Buenos Aires from Sumatra.
The young naturalist spent most of his waking hours in the zoo. Dr. Mann gave him a fresh-water turtle which he named "Speedy," and brought South with him. Tom's parents, after sharing a bathroom with a turtle for three weeks on the ocean, were happy that their son only started his collection in North America with a single specimen.
Tom has room to branch out in the Davis' apartment here. He's been saving his allowance to buy snakes, frogs, turtles, etc., for the Washington Zoo. The young collector refuses to pay tourist prices. He goes down to the water front to [[next column]] haggle in Spanish with the fishermen, and organizes collecting expeditions among his schoolmates.
May Aid Dr. Steineger.
Tom's collection of fresh-water turtles, Dr. Mann hopes, will aid the investigations of Dr. Leonard Steineger, dean of Washington scientists, who is completing a monograph on turtles, and wants to observe at first hand some four rare species found only in Southern South America.
Dr. Mann says that if Tom's con[[next column]]tribution comes up to expectations, he will use his influence to have the young naturalist put on the United States Government pay roll at a dollar a year.
"That will lscarcely pay expenses," Tom said, "but I appreciate the honor!"
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[[Newspaper article right]]
Argentine Artist Teaches Poor The Color of Their Daily Lives
[[blue stamp]] JUN 8 1939 [[/blue stamp]]
Born of Laboring Class, Painter Backs School On Water Front

By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.
BUENOS AIRES.-The painter, Benito Quinquela Martin, believes the laboring class from which he came should find more beauty and dignity and less discontent in hard work.
[[image-inset, thin man in tie, "BENITO QUINQUELA MARTIN."]]
He practices what he preaches with his brushes so vigorously that, well past middle-age, he is still wiry, muscular and agile- able, it seems apparent, to  earn a living with the stevedores who load ships of all nations on the docks under his studio.
Senor Martin is as much a part of water front life as the freighters, tramps and fishing vessels tied up almost at his front door- more, in fact, for he was born to the community that services the transient ships. He grew up among the poor and refused to leave them when success beckoned him to other surroundings.
When fame came to the painter, he turned it to his own use by persuading the authorities to build a model school on his water front property for underprivileged children whose lot he know so well. Six hundred children now study in the bright, airy class rooms that Senor martin decorates with his own brushes after his own social ideas.
The class-room murals show such scenes as laborers moving up a gangway, giant bodies bent under baskets of coal; fishermen landing their catch and drying their nets; shipbuilders outfitting a vessel for sea; stevedores about huge cranes unloading freighters; wives and children of sailors waving good-by to a departing schooner.
Color of Daily Lives.
The artist wants the children to recognize in his pictures the figures of their mothers and father, to appreciate the usefulness of their work and to sense the drama, color, vigor and motion of their daily lives.
After work comes relaxation and gaiety. There are carnival and fiesta scenes. An impromptu celebration starts on a sailing vessel at the wharf. The crews of neighboring vessels join in. A sailor band plays dance music with harmonica, guitar, violin and accordion. On still another boat jars of wine and baskets of fruit and bread are being brought up from the cabin.
A circus parade, complete with elephants, clowns, monkeys and a brass band, is the theme for a mural done in tile in an assembly hall. Senor Martin laid out the mural, the children themselves colored the tiles, and they were glazed nearby. Even the school's basketball court and open air gymnasium has two walls of mosaics done in colored cement.
Senor Martin's studio is a great, glassed-in room on the fourth floor, overlooking the busy harbor scene. In three directions one sees color, action and the ships from many ports, arriving, discharging, loading and departing. The studio seems to belong as much to the public as Senor Martin. Sight-seers, students and school children have the run of the place. Senor Martin's friends among the struggling young artists of the city use his studio, his time and materials. He appears to give them all with a lavish hand, yet he accomplishes a great amount of [[new column]] creative work of his own. How he does it, nobody knows.
Wants Similar Schools.
Senor Martin hopes that similar schools will be built throughout the Argentine. He feels that the tenders of vineyards, the herders of sheep and cattle, the growers of fruit and the harvesters of grain are as picturesque as water front dwellers. He is not the man to be content with hoping alone.
His idea, I gathered, is that educated, hard-working, self-respecting young people will better their community, or their nation, for that matter, without the necessity of a social revolution.
All of which sounds like the moral at the end of a sermon- but not Senor Martin's. He could tell me nothing, as he understood no English and I almost no Spanish. He was happy, however, to show me his school and his paintings.
They spoke for themselves, even to one who is neither a linguist, educator, reformer nor artist!
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