AROUND CRANBURY By Lorraine Sedor: Jack and Helene Hughes visit South Africa for business and pleasure
Couple has an African adventure
Jack and Helene Hughes had a marvelous trip to South Africa in early November.
The primary reason for the trip was to attend the inauguration of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). SALT is the largest single optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and Rutgers University is a founding partner of the consortium that built it.
Jack, who is a Rutgers astronomy professor, points out that any interested researcher at Rutgers from faculty member to undergraduate student will be able to use this powerful new instrument. Rutgers’ share of observing time amounts to approximately 36 nights per year.
The inauguration was attended by numerous dignitaries and politicians, including the current president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.
Although Jack was comfortable with the idea of traveling such a long distance purely for science, once Helene decided to come along too, it seemed like a good idea to broaden the scope of the trip. So they spent three days on safari in Kruger National Park and returned with hundreds of photographs, but no trophies! They explored the area around Cape Town, which Helene said, "is renowned for being one of the six floral kingdoms of the world." They also saw southern right whales and African penguins while on a tour to the Cape of Good Hope.
While in Cape Town Jack and Helene visited a number of museums and historical sites related to the apartheid era and the struggle against it. The District Six Museum chronicles the forced relocation in 1965 of the people in this Cape Town district to make way for a "whites-only" community. The museum focuses on the human cost of this policy by telling the personal stories of the people involved. Much of district six remains underdeveloped to this day, however, new homes are being built and the original inhabitants are slowing returning.
Jack and Helene also toured Robben Island, the notorious prison where Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners spent long years of confinement under brutal conditions. The tour guides on Robben Island are all former political prisoners whose stories of how they came to be imprisoned and what life was like for them on Robben Island made a memorable impact. Now more than 10 years after the end of apartheid, without rancor or bitterness, South Africa is working hard to bring peace and prosperity to all of its people.
What began as a small Veterans’ Day project for the fourth-graders of Cranbury School has turned into a great opportunity for the children to form a friendship with a soldier in Iraq, and to learn about the needs of their peers in Iraqi schools.
The students in Carol Lindenfeld, Donna Tarantino and Lisa Csatari’s classes decided to "adopt" to a soldier. They wrote to Sgt. Steve Dykovitz, whose mother is a teacher’s aide at Cranbury School. On his second deployment in Iraq, Sgt. Dykovitz was happy to receive the letters, but will no doubt be overwhelmed by the 12 boxes of magazine, toiletries and treats the children collected and sent to him and his fellow soldiers! The extremely successful treat drive left the children with the dilemma of how to pay for the postage. These generous boys and girls decided to forego their own holiday gift exchange, donating the usual $3 per child to pay for shipping. And that’s when the project "took on a life of its own," according to Mrs. Lindenfeld.
The children had more than enough money to ship the packages and now had the problem of what to do with the leftover funds. The students were put in touch with an organization headed by the families of servicemen. The group purchases and sends basic school supplies to Iraqi children. The fourth-graders sent a donation to the group, knowing that their generosity not only brightened the day of Sgt. Dykovitz, but will help children their own age in Iraq.
All are invited to a holiday band concert tomorrow, at 2 p.m. in the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury Fellowship Hall. "76 Trombones Minus a Few" consists of young Cranbury trombone players lead by their trombone teacher Terry Chesnovitz. Free admission and great music are guaranteed. Stop in!
Also, tickets to Saturday evening’s 7:30 p.m. performance by the Men of Harmony at the United Methodist Church will be available at the door for $7 per person. The program is sponsored by the Cranbury Lioness club.
Residents can reach Ms. Sedor by phone at (609) 655-3386, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at 32 Evans Drive, Cranbury, N.J. 08512.

