Education: Writer with a Talent

At Stanford University in 1958, one top applicant for a $2,500 Wallace E. Stegner creative writing fellowship was moody Mitchell J. Strucinski, 35, author of two poignant short stories in the Atlantic. Professor Stegner himself was much impressed. Only one thing gave him pause: Author Strucinski was in Washington State’s McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, finishing a five-year term for mail theft and forgery. Stilling its doubts, Stanford took Strucinski, who came highly recommended not only by an Atlantic editor but also by the warden at McNeil. Last week, when police arrested Strucinski for the tenth time in his life, Stanford realized that the opportunity it gave Student Strucinski had indeed broadened his talents—but not for writing.

Son of poor Polish immigrants, Strucinski quit high school to work for Chicago meat packers, at 17 was convicted of burglary in Wisconsin and later for larceny in North Carolina. During World War II, while serving in the merchant marine, he was befriended by a literary-minded ship’s officer who encouraged him to write. But when the war was over, Strucinski drifted back to crime, and for ten years was continually in trouble, for everything from mail theft to carrying a concealed weapon.

On Stanford’s prestigious premises, Strucinski put all that behind him. He affected a pipe and married a pretty English major. He worked hard, developed a particular interest in the Stanford library. Even after finishing his fellowship last year, with warm praise from Professor Stegner, Strucinski haunted the library.

Last month San Francisco’s former Mayor Elmer Robinson was idly thumbing through a catalogue of Manhattan’s Carnegie Book Shop. A noted bibliophile, Robinson was shocked to see on sale a 1916 letter from President Woodrow Wilson—a letter that Robinson last saw when he donated it to Stanford as part of an $8,000 collection of 43 historical documents. Robinson promptly called library officials. All the documents were gone, along with another batch of presidential autographs, from Washington to Hoover.

Questioned by FBI agents, Strucinski denied the theft and disappeared. A few days later, 47 library books turned up in a supermarket trash can and a county dump. Then Strucinski gave himself up at FBI headquarters, was arrested for interstate commerce in stolen documents. Last week, out on bail, he was arrested twice for burglary. Said Stanford’s crestfallen Professor Stegner: “He was a talented boy. He earned his fellowship honestly.” If convicted. Student Strucinski faces a fellowship of up to ten years in federal prison.