Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Today we look at two extraordinary people, both born in Switzerland who ended up in the United States: one survived the Titanic and went on to become a tennis champion, the other is a world-renowned cancer expert who was herself diagnosed with cancer.
In the news: Swiss property prices, consumption of painkillers, UNRWA scandal, and dangerous speeds on the piste.
- Buyers of residential property had to dig deeper into their pockets also last year. Average prices continued to rise in almost all regions of German-speaking Switzerland and in Ticino. Of the six regions analysed, a detached house in Central Switzerland is the most expensive. On average, CHF1.64 million ($1.9 million) had to be paid for it last year.
- In 2022, 55% of the Swiss population had taken a medication seven days before the survey. The consumption of painkillers in particular showed an upward trend: while 12% used painkillers in 1992, this figure had risen to 26% by 2022.
- Several countries have paused funding for the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), following allegations that some of its staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Switzerland is awaiting the results of an investigation before deciding on its future funding of UNRWA.
- Three out of four Swiss skiers travel at over 50km/h, and one in five even tops out at over 70km/h, according to a study by the Swiss Accident Insurance Fund (SUVA). Speed on the slopes has increased in recent years.
Richard “Dick” Norris Williams was born on this day in Geneva in 1891. While not a household name, his life was packed with extraordinary events and achievements.
Williams’s father was a lawyer from Pennsylvania who had relocated to Europe for his health and was the driving force behind the creation of the International Tennis Federation. Young Dick was tutored at a Swiss boarding school, spoke French and German, and under his father’s guidance won the Swiss Junior title at the age of 12. Eight years later he won the Swiss International Championships, held that year in Lucerne.
The plan now was for Williams, having spent his entire life in Switzerland, to play in a few tennis tournaments in the US and then attend Harvard. So on April 10, 1912, he and his father boarded the brand-new, “unsinkable” Titanic at Cherbourg as first-class passengers.
Well, you’ve seen the film and you probably know that of the 2,200 or so passengers and crew, almost three-quarters didn’t make it after the ship hit an iceberg on April 14. Williams reportedly freed a panicking passengerExternal link trapped in a cabin by using his shoulder to barge the door open (a steward who saw this apparently threatened to report him for damaging company property).
Not much later, as the ship began its final plunge, Williams and his father jumped into the freezing water, where Williams found himself face to face with a prize bulldog (another passenger had earlier released the dogs from the kennels below deck). While Williams was able to save himself, his father was killed by the first funnel. “I saw one of the four great funnels come crashing down on top of him,” Williams said. “Just for one instant I stood there transfixed – not because it had only missed me by a few feet […] but there I was transfixed wondering at the enormous size of this funnel, still belching smoke. It seemed to me that two cars could have been driven through it side by side.”
The resulting wave washed Williams towards Collapsible A, and after clinging to it for a while he was hauled aboard; he and the other occupants were later transferred to lifeboat 14 and were then rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Williams’s legs were frostbitten from being submerged in the icy ocean for hours. When a doctor aboard the Carpathia suggested amputating both legs, Williams disagreed in no uncertain terms. “I’m going to need these legs,” he reportedly saidExternal link, and walked the deck until sensation returned.
It was a good call: four months later he won his first US National Championship trophy, in mixed doubles, and went on to win many more including the Davis Cup with fellow Titanic survivor Karl Behr, two US Open singles titles (in 1914 and 1916, pictured) and gold at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris in the mixed doubles.
Williams also served with distinction in the US Army in the First World War and was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre.
In later life he was a successful investment banker in Philadelphia and was president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Dick Williams died on June 2, 1968, aged 77. He is buried at St David’s Churchyard, Devon, Pennsylvania.
In the latest in our series on Switzerland and Silicon Valley, we speak to oncologist Pamela Munster, who has been working in San Francisco for 15 years and who recounts her own battle against cancer.
“I didn’t choose California, California chose me,” Munster tells my colleague Marc-André Miserez. When she was appointed by the University of San Francisco, she already had an impressive career as an oncologist behind her. She trained in medicine in Bern, and had been practising for several years in Florida, having previously spent time in Indiana and Manhattan.
In San Francisco, she discovered that fate had a stroke of bad luck in store for her. In 2012, at the age of 48, Munster was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. Her response was swift and professional: a preventive double mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery, then removal of the ovaries – also as a preventive measure.
“It shattered my sense of immortality,” she says. “Not that I believe myself to be immortal, but in general, we don’t think about death every day, do we?” In the article Munster explains how the experience has also changed her relationship with her patients.
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