The Right Place at the Right Time
September 27,1978 – Knoxville, Tennessee
Decker Hawthorne
He typed out the letters of his name and his hands paused on the keys. Quickly his eyes scanned the editorial for one last reassurance that he hadn't misspelled something, or that he couldn't say something just a little more convincingly, or perhaps improve the sentence structure. Finally he decided it would have to do. The deadline had passed, the newspaper was waiting to be put to bed, and Decker had a plane to catch.
As he left the offices of the Knoxville Enterprise, he stopped to straighten the hand-lettered placard that hung outside the door. It was a weekly paper, small by most standards, but it was growing. Decker had started the paper with a short supply of money and an abundance of naiveté, and it was still a struggle to survive financially. The upside was that with Decker's aggressive style, the Enterprise frequently scooped the two local dailys, including once with a story of national significance. Decker had always been an overachiever who wasn't afraid to take chances, and while he lost more often than he won, he liked to believe he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Right now he was supposed to be at the airport, but he wasn't.
"You're going to miss your plane," called Elizabeth, Decker's wife.
"I'm coming," he called back. "Start the car."
"It's already running. I know you too well."
They made it to the gate with three minutes to spare but Decker didn't want to waste one second sitting on the plane when he could spend it with Elizabeth. After only three months of marriage, he wasn't looking forward to being away from his bride for two weeks, but finally he had to board the plane or be left behind.
As the plane left the runway, Decker looked out over the city of Alcoa on the southern outskirts of Knoxville. Below, he could pick out his small house on the edge of one of Alcoa's parks. The steadily receding sight recalled disquieting emotions. Decker had spent most of his life traveling. As a boy it was with his family, moving from one army post to another. After that he had spent a year and a half hitch-hiking across the United States and Canada; then four years in the army, two in Vietnam. Partly he felt cheated: he had never really had a home. But partly he felt blessed. Decker hated leaving, but he loved going.
Decker's flight arrived late into New York and he had to run to make his connecting flight to Milan, Italy. Nearing the gate he looked for a familiar face but saw none. In fact, at first glance, there was no one at the gate at all. Decker looked out the window. There was the plane, but at that instant he heard the jet engines begin to whine. Thundering down the red carpeted incline of the jetway, he almost collided with a ticket agent.
"I've got to get on that plane!" he told the woman, as he put on the sweetest 'help me' look he could muster.
"You have your passport?" she asked.
"Right here," Decker answered, handing it to her along with his ticket.
"What about your luggage?"
"This is it," he answered, holding up an overstaffed and somewhat oversized carry-on bag.
The plane had not actually moved yet, so after notifying the pilot, it was an easy task to move the jetway back into place. After a quick but heartfelt 'thank you,' Decker boarded the plane and headed to his seat. Now he saw a sea of friendly and familiar faces. On his right was John Jackson, the team's leader. A few seats back was Eric Jumper. Both were from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Jackson had his Ph.D. in physics and had worked extensively on lasers and particle beams. Jumper, also a Ph.D., was an engineer specializing in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and heat exchange. In fact, almost everyone in this sea effaces had a Ph.D. of one sort or another. Altogether there were over forty scientists, technicians and support people. Though he knew most only by sight, many paused long enough from their conversations to offer a smile of welcome or to say they were glad he had not missed the flight.
Decker found his seat and sat down. There to greet him was Professor Harry Goodman, a sloppily dressed, short man with gray hair, reading glasses half-way down his nose, and thick bushy eyebrows that blazed helter-skelter across his brow and up onto his forehead like a brush fire. "I was beginning to think you'd stood me up," Professor Goodman said.
"I wouldn't have missed this for the world," Decker answered. "I just wanted to make a big entrance."
Professor Goodman was Decker's link to the rest of the team. Goodman had taught biochemistry at the University of Tennessee when Decker was in pre-med. During his sophomore year Decker had worked as Goodman's research assistant. They had many conversations, and though Goodman was not the type to get very close to anyone, Decker felt they were friends. Later that same year, though, Goodman had grown very depressed about something which he refused to discuss. Through the rumor mill Decker discovered that Goodman was going to be refused tenure. Primarily this could be traced to his policy of 'do now, ask permission later,' which had gotten him into hot water with the dean on more than one occasion. The next semester Goodman took a position at U.C.L.A. and Decker had not seen him since.
Decker, for unrelated reasons, had changed his major from pre-med to journalism. He was still an avid reader of some of the better science journals, however. So it was that in July of 1978 Decker read an article in Science Magazine1 about a team of American scientists going to examine the Shroud of Turin, a religious relic believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. He had heard of the Shroud but had always dismissed it as just another example of religious fraud designed to pick the pockets of gullible worshipers. But here was an article in one of the most widely read science journals reporting that credible American scientists were actually taking their time to examine this thing.
At first the article had aroused only amused disbelief, but among the list of the scientists involved, Decker found the name Dr. Harold Goodman. This made no sense at all. Goodman, as Decker knew from his frequent pronouncements, was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist. Goodman liked to talk about the uncertainty of everything. In his office at the university were two posters. The first was crudely hand-printed and stated: "Goodman's First Law of Achievement: The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules" (a philosophy which obviously had not set well with the dean). The second poster was done in a late 1960s-style psychedelic print and said: "I think, therefore, I'am. I think." Mixing the uncertainty of his own existence with his disbelief in God, Goodman had settled on referring to himself as "an atheist by inclination but an agnostic by practice." So why was a man like Goodman going off on some ridiculous expedition to study the Shroud of Turin?
Decker filed the information away in his memory and probably would have left it there had it not been for a phone call from an old friend, Tom Donafin. Tom was a reporter for the Courier in Waltham, Massachusetts, and had called about a story he was working on about corruption in banking – something which Knoxville had plenty of in 1978. After discussing the banking story Tom asked Decker if he had seen the article in Science.
"Yeah, I saw it," Decker answered. "Why?"
"I just thought you'd be interested in what old 'bushy brows' was up to," Tom laughed.
"Are you sure it's him? I didn't see him in any of the pictures."
"At first I didn't think it was possible, but I did a little checking, and it's him."
1 J. Culliton, "Mystery of the Shroud of Turin Challenges 20th Century Science." Science, July 21, 1978. 201:235-239.
"You know," Decker said, thinking out loud, "There might be a story here. Religion sells."
"If you mean covering the expedition, I think you're right, but security is really tight. I tried to dig into the particulars a little but hit a brick wall. They're limiting coverage of the expedition to one reporter: a guy from the National Geographic" 2
"That sounds like a challenge to me," Decker said.
"Oh, I'm not saying it can't be done, but it won't be easy."
Decker began to muse how he might, if he wanted to, go about getting the story. He could take the direct approach of trying to reason with whoever was making the rules. After all, why should they have only one journalist? On the other hand, what possible reason could he give to convince them to take someone from a tiny unknown weekly in Knoxville, Tennessee? Clearly, his best bet was to work through Goodman.
Over the next three weeks Decker made several attempts to reach his old professor, but without success. Goodman was doing research somewhere in Japan and even his wife, Martha, wasn't sure exactly where he was. With little to depend on beyond luck and determination, Decker arranged to fly to Norwich, Connecticut, and booked a room in the hotel where the Shroud team was scheduled to meet over the Labor Day weekend. He arrived the day before to look things over.
The next morning Decker found that a private dining room in the hotel had been prepared for about fifty people. Checking with one of the waiters, he quickly confirmed that this was where the Shroud team was meeting. A few minutes later the first of the team members walked into the room. The eyebrows were unmistakable. "Professor Goodman," Decker said, as he approached Goodman and extended his right hand. Goodman looked puzzled. "It's Hawthorne," Decker offered. It was obvious that Goodman was struggling to place the face. "From the University of Tennessee," he added.
A gleam of recognition began to show in the pale green eyes beneath the massive clumps of hair. "Oh, yes, Hawthorne! Well, how the hell are you? What are you doing here in Connecticut?"
Before Decker could answer, another person entered the room and called out, "Harry Goodman!" and came over to where they were standing. "So, where were you last night? I called your room, hoping to have dinner with you."
2 For the resulting article see K. F. Weaver, "Mystery of the Shroud." National Geographic, June 1980, 157:729-753.
Goodman did not respond but proceeded instead to formal introductions. "Professor Don Stanley, allow me to introduce Decker Hawthorne, a former student and research assistant of mine from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville."
Professor Stanley shook Decker's hand, gave him a quick onceover, and then looked back at Goodman. "So Hawthorne here must be the research assistant that I heard you'd suckered into helping out. What a shame," Stanley added, pausing and looking back at Decker, "I'd have thought you looked too intelligent for that."
"He is," responded Goodman, "and, unfortunately, so is the young man you're referring to."
"Oh, so he jumped ship on you, did he?" responded Stanley with a chuckle.
"Well, after all," Goodman shrugged, "it is quite a lot to expect a young man to pay the cost of an airline ticket to Turin, Italy, just to go on a wild goose chase."
Decker let none of this escape his attention. The possibility of replacing the missing research assistant provided a much better chance of getting onto the team than did the direct approach of getting the team to accept a second reporter. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the right opening.
"If you're so sure it's a 'goose chase,' why do you insist on going along?" Stanley asked.
"Somebody's got to keep the rest of you honest," Goodman said, with a grin.
By now several other members of the team had filed into the dining room and were gathering in small groups for conversation. One of the men caught Professor Stanley's attention and Stanley walked over to greet the new arrival. Decker seized the opportunity to question Professor Goodman further about the missing assistant.
"What is it exactly that your research assistant was going to do on this trip?" Decker asked.
"Oh, everything from collection of data to general 'gofer' work. We've got hundreds of different experiments planned and we may have as little as twelve hours to do them all. It's the kind of environment where an extra pair of trained hands can be very helpful."
"I don't suppose you'd be interested in a substitute?" Decker asked. He was counting on the fact that Goodman didn't know that he had switched his major from pre-med to journalism after Goodman left the University of Tennessee. Decker felt a twinge of guilt, but this certainly wasn't the biggest omission of fact he had ever used to get a story. Besides, he was pretty sure he remembered enough to get by. And he could certainly qualify as a gofer.
"What!" Goodman responded. "After I just told Professor Stanley you were too smart for such a thing?"
"Really, I'd like to go," Decker insisted. "Actually, that's why I came here. I may be a little rusty, but I read the article in Science and I've got experience with most of the equipment you'll be using."
"What you read was just the beginning." Goodman paused long enough to frown and then continued, "Well, I'm not going to refuse help, but you know that you have to pay your own way: air fare, hotel, food, transportation?"
"Yeah, I know," Decker answered.
"But why?" asked Goodman. "You haven't gone and gotten religion, have you?"
"No, nothing like that. It just sounds like an interesting project." Decker realized it wasn't a very convincing answer, so he turned the question around. "Why are you going?" he asked. "You don't believe in any of this stuff."
"Hell, no! I just want a chance to debunk this whole thing."
Decker refocused the conversation. "So, can I come along or not?"
"Yeah, well, I guess so; if you're sure about it. I'll just need to talk to Eric," he said, referring to one of the team's de facto leaders, Eric Jumper. "We'll have to get your name added to the list of team members. The security on this thing is really tight."
So, just that quickly, Decker was in. "The right place at the right time," he whispered to himself. It would take 38 years for him to realize it had been far more than that.
After breakfast the team moved to a conference room. Decker stayed close to Goodman so that as they passed through the security check, Goodman could make sure Decker's name was added to the list of those allowed in.
Inside, team leader John Jackson called the meeting to order. "In order to get approval to work on the Shroud," Jackson began, "we've had to promise the authorities in Turin that we would maintain the strictest security. Obviously, our biggest problem is going to be the press." Decker struggled not to smile. "The best approach is simply not to even talk about the Shroud to anyone who's not on the team. As far as anyone outside of this room is concerned, we're still waiting for permission to do the testing."3
Eric Jumper took the floor when Jackson finished. "Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming. It's really a thrill to have a chance to be associated with such a distinguished group of scientists. Now, we've gotten most of the protocols for the proposed experiments, but those we haven't received need to be in by the end of this coming weekend." Jumper turned on a slide projector in the middle of the room. The first slide was of a full-scale mock-up of the Shroud that had been manufactured by Tom D'Muhala, one of the scientists. Superimposed over this 'pseudo' Shroud was a grid. "Each of you will be given a copy of this," Jumper said. "The purpose of the grid is to help organize the experiments we'll be doing. Because of the time limitations, we'll want to do as much work simultaneously as possible. What we have attempted to do is to lay out the work to take the best advantage of the Shroud within the environmental, time, and space parameters required for each experiment."4
The slides that followed detailed the experiments that would be conducted. Most were designed to determine whether the Shroud was a forgery or possibly the result of some natural phenomenon. Every type of nondestructive test that Decker could imagine was included. One experiment that had been rejected was carbon 14 dating, because the then-current method would have required that a large piece of the Shroud be destroyed to yield an accurate measurement.
When Jumper was finished, he introduced Father Peter Rinaldi who had just returned from Turin. Rinaldi, Jumper said, had come to explain the 'polities' involved in Shroud research. Decker wasn't sure hat this meant, but it soon became clear that many fingers were wrapped very tightly around the ancient cloth.
3 John Jackson's comments paraphrased. For actual words as recorded by Dr. John H. Heller, see Report on the Shroud of Turin, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983), p. 76.
4 Eric Jumper's comments paraphrased. For actual words as recorded by Dr. John H. Heller, see ibid., p. 77.
Rinaldi was part of something called the Holy Shroud Guild, which had been formed in 1959 for the purpose of propagating knowledge about the Shroud and supporting learned investigation. He began with a brief history. The first verifiable ownership of the Shroud, Rinaldi said, was to a French knight named Geoffrey de Charney some time prior to 1356. For reasons which have never been explained, the de Charney family gave the Shroud to the House of Savoy, in whose possession it remained for the next four hundred years. In the late sixteenth century the House of Savoy became the ruling family of Italy and in 1578 the Shroud was moved to Turin, where it has remained ever since in the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista.
Additionally, Rinaldi explained, there is a group called the Centro di Sindonologia, or the Center for Shroud Studies, which is itself part of another organization, the four-hundred-year-old Confraternity of the Holy Shroud. Neither of these groups has ever had any official standing in regard to the ownership of the Shroud, and neither of the groups really does anything. But after so many years, and with the names of so many bishops and priests attached to their rosters, no one dares question their right to exist. The point of Father Rinaldi's talk was that many personalities, most of whom were quite impressed with their own importance, would have to be taken into account and many egos would have to be stroked in order to gain access to the Shroud. When Rinaldi finished, Tom D'Muhala, the creator of the pseudo Shroud, went over the logistical details. Immediately following the gathering, a trial run of the planned experiments was to begin in a warehouse at D'Muhala's plant in the nearby town of Amston. The next two days would be spent choreographing the entire sequence of experiments. All of the team's equipment would be taken out, tested, and replaced in crates, ready for shipment to Italy. It would be a full-scale attempt to de-bug the scientific procedures prior to going to Turin.
As the team left the conference room they were swarmed by a dozen reporters. Ignoring shouted questions, the team members moved quickly to a bus waiting to take them to D'Muhala's plant. One reporter, a bearded man about 25 years old with a misshapen, protruding forehead moved along the side of the bus, trying to get a closer look at one of the passengers. Decker looked out at his fellow members of the press. As far as he knew, it was just dumb luck that he had gotten on the Shroud team. Still, he found it hard not to be a little smug. His eyes were drawn to the stare of the bearded man outside the bus, and as their eyes met, Decker recognized his friend, Tom Donafin from the Waltham Courier. Tom's lower jaw dropped in a brief gaping stare which changed quickly to a friendly and congratulatory smile. He shook his head in what was only slightly exaggerated disbelief. Decker smiled back like the proverbial cat that had just swallowed the canary.
Entering the warehouse at D'Muhala's plant where the team would work, Decker was impressed and a bit surprised at just how much time, planning, labor, and expense had gone into this effort. Around the room sat scores of wooden crates carefully packed with several million dollars' worth of cutting-edge scientific equipment on loan from research institutes from around the country. In the center of the room, the pseudo Shroud was spread out on a steel examination table which had been specially designed and constructed by D'Muhala's engineers to hold the Shroud firmly in place without damaging it. The surface of the table was constructed of more than a dozen removable panels to allow inspection of both sides of the Shroud at the same time. Each of the panels was covered with one-millimeter thick gold Mylar to prevent even the tiniest of particles from being transferred from the table to the Shroud.
For a moment no one spoke. All eyes scanned the equipment and the pseudo Shroud. Finally, Don Devan, a computer and image-enhancement scientist from Oceanographic Services, Inc., broke the silence, "Not bad!" he said. "This looks like real science!"5
The individual members of the team spread out to the crates and sought out equipment that each would be using in their experiments. Decker found ample opportunities to make himself useful. A few hours into their work, as he was helping to place a large microscope back into its crate, two scientists, Ray Rogers and John Heller, were standing by an adjacent crate, discussing their experiment. Their work would involve the only true sampling from the Shroud, which would be done by placing strips of tape onto the ancient cloth. When the tape was pulled up, small fibers would be removed with it. Decker listened as Ray Rogers explained the plan to Heller.
5 Don Devan's comments paraphrased. For actual words as recorded by Dr. John H. Heller, see ibid., p. 82.
"To obtain samples for the chemical investigation, including your blood work, we'll be using a special Mylar tape with a chemically inert adhesive developed by the 3M Corporation. We'll apply the tape to the Shroud using a known amount of force… "6
"How will you do that?" Heller asked.
"Well," Rogers said, as he reached into one of the packing crates, "our friends at Los Alamos have designed an ingenious little device that measures applied pressure." Rogers unpacked the device and demonstrated it to Heller.
"Nice, but how will you know how much pressure to apply?" Heller asked.
"Well," said Rogers, "that's why we're here."
Decker followed the two men as they squeezed in around the crowded table. After making the necessary preparations Rogers made some 'guesstimates.' "We know the Shroud is at least six hundred years old," he said, "so it's probably quite a bit more fragile than this. I'd guess to be safe we should probably use, oh, about ten percent of the pressure we're using here." The decision, Decker realized, was a SWAG (a scientific wild ass guess) but he wasn't about to utter a discouraging word at this point. "Next, I'll remove the tape from the Shroud," Rogers continued, "and mount each piece on a slide. Each slide will be numbered and photographed, and then it will be sealed in a plastic case to ensure it remains uncontaminated."
For the next two days the team continued to work, rehearsing their procedures. Decker tried to prove himself a useful member of the team, and at times he forgot all about being a reporter. He even began to wonder if choosing journalism over medicine hadn't been a mistake after all.
6 Conversation between John Heller and Ray Rogers is paraphrased. For actual words as recorded by Dr. John H. Heller, see ibid., pp. 86-87.