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Criminology was only a phase of Lawyer Bok's sociological pursuits. He is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of his father's American Foundation which awards the Bok Peace Prize, and is a confirmed World Courter. In 1927 he went to Geneva, first of the rich men's sons to work under Arthur Sweetser in the information section of the League. While there, he recruited a baseball team from League attendants, with himself as pitcher, played a Japanese team and was roundly trounced. One of his great good friends is Philadelphia's famed Baseball Manager Connie Mack, who was awarded the Bok prize for outstanding service to the city in 1929.
Last year, after motoring through Russia for two months with his wife, Curtis Bok decided he had not really seen the country. Sending his wife home he returned to Moscow, found lodgings with a Russian family in a tiny house, got a job tending a machine in a candy factory at 80 rubles per month. Thence he went to Leningrad, took another job as chauffeur for Intourist at 250 rubles. At the end of three months he returned to the U. S., second class, wearing a wrinkled brown suit, khaki shirt, flannel tie, battered cap, carrying two pieces of luggage and a cardboard box. He bubbled with enthusiasm over the Russians who, he felt, had "the answer to the future." Such is his practical background for the forthcoming investigation of U. S.-U. S. S. R. relations.
Grandfather Curtis had every reason to be proud of his two grandsons. But he was less diffident than their father about coaxing them into his business. Having given up hope for Curtis Bok, he enlisted the aid of his daughter in gaining the ear of her younger son, Gary William. Gary, who resembles his big brother in quiet charm, mild humor and Dutch stubbornness, has followed him to Williams, into Deke and Gargoyle. He shared his brother's fondness for beer & ale and baseball, and he pitched on the varsity.
Although Gary was on the staff of the Record, Williams undergraduate newspaper, he also was indifferent to the publishing business. Following graduation (1926) he went to Oxford for two years, cherished two ambitions: to teach school and to deal in rare books. (He has a remarkable library of earthy Americana.) Eventually he was persuaded to enter the Curtis company. He worked hard, without enthusiasm but without complaint. He peddled his grandfather's magazines from door to door, went to Manhattan and sold advertising, returned to Philadelphia to work in the circulation department at a desk among rows & rows of others. Enthusiasm and aptitude grew apace. Last week Gary Bok, 28, found himself occupying his late grandfather's office in the Curtis-Martin newspaper offices. It may have been mere coincidence that shortly after Gary Bok moved in, Harry Baxter Nason Jr., assistant editor of the Ledger, was sent to take charge of the New York Evening Post for six months over the shoulder of Editor Julian Mason. Then he will recommend whether or not that money-losing sheet should be continued. (Three bidders last week were trying to pick it up for a bargain.)