Author: patcamerino

My letter to Karen in which I commented on my first days at Cornell was unique in that I usually wrote “romantic” letters to her, with a focus on my feelings for her and our future, rather than comments about what was routinely going on in my life in graduate school. There were, however, a few snippets which allude to that life and serve as stimuli for recollections of those days, some six decades later.

Originally Karen was to visit Cornell for “Fall Weekend,” but the event was cancelled. My letter of September 25 to her indicates the reason. “Due to the death of a student last year during Spring Weekend, the admin. is against a Fall Weekend until a new social code is drawn up limiting parties. (They want them over before 4:00 a.m.! Also, they want chaperones. Imagine, chaperones!) This is quite a place. The “Weekends” usually are a series of parties for the entire 72-hour period. Maybe it would be best for you to come some other weekend.” Needless to say, the undergraduates were very disturbed with this change in the freedom once afforded them.

A major rite-of-passage for every graduate student is the passing of the foreign language exam, held at the beginning of each semester. My letter to Karen, written in late September, had an interesting set of comments: “This evening I took the German qualifying. Although I was very anxious about the exam, it really wasn’t as hard as I expected. I may have passed it. Word is that only a few pass it the first time. Some have tried for four terms! Afterwards, I went to the grad open house at The Straight. There I heard three excellent campus singing groups: two male, the “Sherwoods” and the “Cayuga’s Waiters,” and the female “Notables.” The songs were really cute. I’ll try to buy one of the “Waiters’” records for you. The AX’s would like it.”

I later learned I did pass the German qualifying examination and would not need to take a language class until I did pass it. Furthermore, it was not uncommon for The Straight to be the venue for campus song-gatherings. One undergraduate student at the time was Peter Yarrow who performed his folk songs in the Ivy Room and, after graduation, joined with two others, Paul and Mary, to continue a singing career!

I had conflicting self-views about my academic work at Cornell. In an early letter I wrote: “I had my first lectures today – biochem, bacteriology, and advanced organic. The first two weren’t bad but the last one assumed either I am already an organic chemist or a genius at learning. Anyway, I’m getting use to the system. The lectures are amazing in their size. The classes are about 50 to 100. It’s straight lecture rather than the lecture-recitation classes we have at Kent.”

At the beginning of October, I wrote: “I’ve developed, or perhaps reacquire, a passion for studying. I had it once and then lost it. But I enjoy studying here – even if I have to do so much of it. Perhaps I enjoy it because it is the only avenue open to me to prove myself. And yet I tell myself I want to learn more – that there is so much to learn and so little time to do it. I’m not sure why I feel the later. Perhaps, it is because I want to understand what’s going on around here. When my biochem colleagues begin talking shop, I feel like screaming, “Have you seen Hamlet?!” The cream of high school goes to college. And the cream of college goes to graduate school. Yet at times, I’m only a part of the milk that didn’t get homogenized the right way. I realize I have the potential, but I didn’t realize I’d have to work so hard to develop it.”

In addition to courses in biochemistry, bacteriology, and advanced organic chemistry, I was enrolled in another “undergraduate” course: comparative anatomy. At the time, I did enjoy all of them, perhaps because they were “undergraduate” classes. I had not taken certain subjects at Kent and, being deficient in these areas had to study them for my major in biochemistry and minor fields of endocrinology and organic chemistry.

As it turned out, I did so well in the advanced organic chemistry class that the professor thought I should change to this field as my major. It’s well I did not. Although I was adept at the three-dimensional visualization needed for stereochemistry, a significant part of the organic chemistry emphasized in this course, I was not able to recall all of the multiple conditions needed to synthesize every type of organic compound from “ethanol,” which seemed to be the requirement to be a major in the field.

It was also, during this course in organic chemistry that I learned how to decipher English terms related to American ones. My distinguished British professor preferred “e-thile” and “me-thile” in his lectures; my own ears kept expecting “ethyl” and “methyl.” The following semester, I had a similar problem with my professor in endocrinology, who, later, became a member of my doctoral committee. I finally learned to translate his mumbled “hypa” into either “hypo” or “hyper” in order to follow his lectures meaningfully in a discipline where “low” and “high” do have significant differences for how the body reacts to various hormone levels.

I also recall the many hours I spent with “Beilstein,” a multi-volume database (written in German!) for every organic molecule discovered before 1957. At the same time, I vividly remember that the only way I passed qualitative analysis, in which a student needed to identify an “unknown” molecular product by its physical properties, was due to my landlady, at the time. Mrs. O’Mara allowed me to smell all of her spices. I knew my “unknown” smelled “spicy,” but did not know which one it might be until I knowingly inhaled cinnamon!

My major problem in the undergraduate science classes I was required to take was due to the competitive nature of fellow students. It was not uncommon for one of them to bump a microscope “accidently” so that the marker, pointing toward a particular sub-cellular structure, would be moved slightly. The result would be that the next student, undertaking the exam to identify the chosen structure, would be misled. Exams in comparative anatomy were easier than those in microbiology. It was more difficult to mess up a bone concealed in a bag, for identification in the test, than it was to jiggle a microscope. Most of the accidents were caused by pre-med students who wanted to score higher in order to be assured entrance into the professional schools they wanted!

Graduate level seminars and lectures were easier. There, the students collaborated more than at the undergraduate level. I enjoyed those classes, except when the lights were dimmed for viewing slide-projections; that’s when my eyelids tended to close down. Although I made passing grades at Cornell, my averages had been much higher at Kent State. I was never sure if the cause was related to a difference in the academic acuteness of the two institutions or to my being more “average” than I once thought.

Snippets on academic life at Cornell would not be complete without a comment about the life of academicians, per se. In January 1958, I wrote the following summary for Karen: “I just came back from a cocktail party – OK, if you prefer the truth – a graduate beer party. And actually, it wasn’t that either. It was a qualifying party. And that doesn’t sound right. Let me put it this way – Evelyn Havir, Louise Anderson, and Paul Kindle – 3 biochem grad students just passed their qualifying exams and had a party at the girls’ apartment. There were faculty, married grads, and stags there. I had an enjoyable time talking – and I didn’t have that much to drink.

The conversations covered all shades of small talk and included the academics of legumes with Nona, from the Philippines via Ohio State; induced trauma in the uterine tissue of pseudo-pregnant rats with Mrs. Hess – she’s getting a PhD in endo from Harvard, her husband is a biochem prof here; ruminants with Dallas Boggs from W. Virginia; nose bleeds with Trygve Tuve – his father is a nuclear physicist at Colorado and “Trig” himself is an expert on selenium as a trace element; speech pathology with Alice (something-or-other) – her husband was entertaining – a quasi-intellectual from Purdue with whom I traded comments on music, philosophy, and literature. I knew as much as he did, which isn’t saying much.” This could also summarize many true cocktail parties I endured as a faculty member throughout the rest of my academic-research-administration career!

Karen was supposed to visit me during my first “Fall Weekend” at Cornell but did not because of the changes in the campus policies for the weekend. We planned that she would visit at the beginning of the year, with the unstated expectation that she would be presented with an engagement ring during our time together. The planning, however, included a little collegiate subterfuge.

She was living in her sorority house at the time. Kent State had restrictive policies regarding any absence during this era of well-controlled student life. She would not be able to “sign-out” for a weekend at Cornell. However, she could stay with a friend living in Kent before boarding the train for Ithaca. The plan would have worked. I already had purchased the ring. But a slight problem occurred.

Late on the afternoon she was to leave Kent, I became increasingly concerned about a rash I had been noticing over the past few days. At the time, Cornellians were being diagnosed with cases of German Measles. To be on the safe side, I thought I might make a quick visit to the University Infirmity to confirm that my concerns held no weight; I was being my usual hypochondriac self. Instead, my self-diagnosis was confirmed: I did have German Measles! I was allowed one telephone call before being consigned to a bed in the facility.

I called the AXO House in Kent, but Karen had already signed out for her overnight stay with her local friend. I had to leave a message that I was confined to the Infirmary with measles and her trip would need to be postponed. I hoped she would believe the message and not think she was being “pranked.” She believed; I scratched.

Several weeks later, I managed to schedule a visit to Kent for a weekend. It was then that I formally proposed, and she accepted me and the engagement ring as we sat on our favorite bench on the front campus.

There were two minor problems we encountered during this otherwise, joyous time. As usual, I was late in meeting with her. She never was able to understand how I could drive for more than eight hours and arrive “on time,” but could not meet her when we had scheduled a specific time, once I was in town. Actually, the problem has remained for the last six decades! I still have difficulty being present (or being able to leave) when she is ready to go. Karen is consistently early and on-time; I now tend to be consistently present “exactly” on-time, but never early. It took me years to be able to adapt to this “compromise.”

The second problem was one of communication. I waited until the following week, when I made my semi-routine call to my mother, to inform her that Karen and I were formally engaged. In the meantime, Karen’s mother had called my mother to ask for the addresses of those who should receive wedding invitations. I’m not sure Karen and I had discussed the date for this event, but Mrs. Swank wanted to be prepared!

I do not recall how the final date was finally agreed upon. Karen’s sister, Tami, had also become engaged to Ken Crain. Mr. Swank indicated he was prepared for only one wedding per year. If Karen and Tami were to be married in the same year, there must be a double wedding. This became the final result. G.J. walked down the aisle twice on the same day: June 22, 1958.

Sixty years may destroy more synapses than they retain. Memories without written notes tend toward being nonexistent. Thus, it is for my wedding in Sandusky, Ohio on Sunday, June 22, 1958.

I know I did not stay in the Swank house on Erie Blvd. I probably appeared at some out-of-the-way hotel or motel on Friday, at the height of the tourist season for Cedar Point. My parents would not arrive for the big day until Sunday morning, along with my uncle and aunt, Bill and Ada Moransky, the only relatives who would attend. My Aunt Rose had convinced all of the others that they would surely go to hell, or at the very least be ex-communicated, if they dared to attend my wedding in the First Congregational Church. Since my Uncle Bill had been tossed out of the Church many years ago when he married Ada, their non-Catholic presence was both “allowable” and a very welcomed sight.

I did not anticipate that any friends from either Niles or Kent would be in attendance. The wedding invitations had been limited to family, family acquaintances, and a very few of Karen’s and my personal friends. Ken Kalish, my best man and fraternity brother, who risked his own excommunication on my behalf, was there for the bachelor’s party on Saturday evening at some unremembered suite in the location where we were staying. Actually, a more grammatically correct reference might be bachelors’ party, since there were two bachelors: me and Ken Crain, who would be marrying Karen’s sister, Tami, at the same ceremony, on the following afternoon, to be presided over by Rev. Peters.

I do remember that there was, indeed, a party – but none of the details about it. I do recall that brother Kalish did get me more inebriated than I had ever been either before or after that particular celebration. I have never felt more hung-over than I did on that Sunday morning. I believe I was sober by the time I said my vows in the afternoon.

Reverend Peters had never performed a double wedding, but everyone there believed I did marry Karen and that Ken Crain married Tami. At least their father, G.J. Swank, had escorted each of his daughters down the aisle separately and placed each beside the appropriate, waiting groom. Libby and Ken, our witnesses, stood next to where Karen and I would be placed. The other maid-of-honor and best-man attended Tami and my brother-in-law-to-be. In sequence, we repeated the words offered by Rev. Peters for our vows. The ceremony was brief; we adjourned to the basement in the church for our mutual reception with punch and cake.

Given the photographs that appear in our joint wedding album, I know I was introduced to Karen’s grandfather and several aunts and uncles from out-of-town. The brides were photographed in their identical wedding gowns. Each couple cut a slice from their individual, but identical, wedding cakes and fed one another a bite.

I had a serious “talking-to” from Karen’s father; at least that’s how the informal picture of the three of us is usually interpreted. Finally, Karen changed into a pink traveling suit, and we left the church for my gift-packed Ford. With waves of many kinds, we drove off towards Ashtabula and our overnight honeymoon before heading back to Ithaca, New York and the beginning of the next six decades of our life together.

Most couples head off to an island for their honeymoon. Our romantic stop was not on an island but, rather, at the “Knoll,” a well-worn motel outside of Ashtabula, Ohio. That was all we could afford and had time for. I had to be back at graduate school by Tuesday morning. That Sunday evening was very pleasant, but not overly exciting. The complete honeymoon awaited us in Ithaca, New York, where it lasted for several months. The initial phase, however, did include an unplanned overnight visit at a somewhat better motel outside of Brecksville, near Cleveland, on our first Thanksgiving, together.

After our June wedding, the first break I had in classes was the long Thanksgiving weekend in late November. We were obligated to visit both sets of parents in Ohio. We drove first to Sandusky to see Karen’s mother and father, as well as her sister and brother. Of course, we had to squeeze my parents into the journey, as well.

Early on Thursday afternoon, after the usual holiday dinner, we began our drive on the Ohio Turnpike toward Niles, some 120 miles to the East. After a two-hour drive, we had finally reached the outskirts of Cleveland. A not unusual lakefront snowstorm had accompanied us along the way. The usual preceding ice-storm had made the toll-way impossible to travel without chains on the tires. We left the Turnpike to find a set to purchase and put on the Ford; we would need them for the rest of the winter in the Finger Lakes region of New York, anyway.

Once we had stopped, we decided to stay. We found a large, very acceptable motel near Brecksville and agreed that here we should take the fancy honeymoon we had never had. Being snowed-in can be very romantic. The dinner, wine, and room were more exotic than anything Ashtabula could ever have to offer. Late the next day, we arrived in Niles for a second Thanksgiving dinner, a more enjoyable one than we would have had a day earlier.

To a great extent, we had continued to be on our honeymoon from June through the end of that year in our first apartment in Cayuga Heights, on the outskirts of Ithaca. The basement apartment had a combined living room and kitchen, divided by a counter, and a large bedroom. Although it was technically a “basement,” the large window for this ground-floor retreat allowed a view of a picturesque yard with fall foliage. It was here we took on the role of newlyweds, learning their joys and skills.

It was also here that we had our first real argument – with harsh words and tears. Our landlady had allowed us to store our suitcases and a few other items in a common, basement storage area, adjoining our apartment. Our possessions were located directly beneath her bathroom. One morning, when I happened to look for something I thought might have been stored with our suitcases, I opened the door into the storage room and observed a brown sludge dripping onto our Samsonite. I immediately erupted with a litany of cusswords that surprised Karen to no end. She bawled me out for using them. I maintained I had been forced into the display and had reacted as I had always done, even though never before in her presence.

One statement led to another and there we were, arguing not over spilled milk but some unknown substance that neither one of wanted to know, but recognized had to be cleaned up. No doubt, that’s when the next stage of being newlyweds on their honeymoon began.

Ithaca, New York, probably had more than three areas: College Town and the University, Downtown Ithaca, and Cayuga Heights, but these were our three places for new adventures. Without a formal honeymoon we had to make do with what we had.

Most of my life, in my first year at Cornell, had been centered on the University and its nearby College Town. I had examined every shop and eating place in the half dozen square blocks at the edge of the campus and reexamined them when Karen finally joined my life there.

We did expand our restaurants to include Downtown places, from dives to the Victoria, an Italian restaurant where fancy meals were planned for special occasions. When we moved from the Heights to West Shore Drive, we found Obie’s Diner near the Inlet to Lake Cayuga, in the folds of Ithaca’s underbelly. (We later moved only a few blocks away, on Floral Avenue.) Obie’s was famous for its hamburger with a fried egg and melted cheese on top.

Our stop for a late-night drive was the Ithaca Bakery, which, at that time, sold only bread, with a fragrance that could seduce any student within a mile’s radius. We usually carried a loaf home and consumed a smaller, freshly baked one on the way back to our apartment.

Inexpensive, newlywed entertainment routinely consisted of a movie at one the four theaters in Ithaca: the “Near-Near,” the “Near-Far,” the “Far-Near” and the “Far-Far” – named as a result of their distances from the University. After a movie, we might stop at Willard Straight Hall, the student union building, for coffee and late-night, student-originated entertainment. At the time, we did not appreciate that two or three years later, Pete Yarrow would become one-third of the “Peter, Paul and Mary” folk group, but we did enjoy listening to his personal gig there in the Ivy Room, the place for eating and for drinking gallons of coffee.

The Straight was also the place where Karen worked – upstairs, in the Student Affairs Office, as a secretary. Given the supply of potential teachers among faculty wives, it was impossible for student wives to be hired in the local high school. Her hours there each day, until our daughter was born, brought in the extra money for our honeymoon luxuries. My $300/month pay as a teaching assistant in biochemistry went toward our daily living expenses.

Although it was convenient living in Cayuga Heights and its nearby cluster of shops and groceries, we began looking for a “quaint” apartment. In the fall of 1958, Karen and I moved from our small apartment in the Heights to another one on West Shore Drive along the Lake. We now resided in a very romantic spot overlooking the water that lapped at the dock twenty feet below the edge of the property owned by the Ripley’s, who managed the local VW dealership. At the time, I even enjoyed the long climb up the stairs between the lake and our wooded landscape. It had been a magnificent autumn for our honeymoon year. We had a fireplace in our ground-floor apartment. Winter, however, was settling in; the fireplace burned every evening.

We may not have had a week-long honeymoon on an Island in the Pacific or in the Carribean, but we finally had our own romantic hideout, and for a longer time than many couples could take for a formal honeymoon.

I had “left-the-Church,” doctrinally in June of 1958. The event occurred when Karen and I married in the First Congregational Church of Sandusky. On the other hand, I had become a “lapsed Catholic” several years before, while I was a student at Kent State University. The process had begun during my Freshman year. It was not a problem during the time Karen and I dated, at least not for us. Her parents were concerned I might, somehow, be a crypto-Catholic. That was not really the case. Yes, on occasion, I did attend Mass with college friends and may have considered myself to be a “cultural” Catholic, but not really a “believer.”

After our marriage, we continued to attend a Catholic Mass in the Sage Chapel of the Anabel Taylor Hall at Cornell. At the time, I thought it was interesting that the Anabel Taylor Hall housed the department of religion and the adjoining Myron Taylor Hall, the Law School.

The Chapel in Anabel Taylor was truly interdenominational. The “stage” area of the Chapel consisted of a turntable that could be rotated to reveal a Catholic altar, a Jewish bema, or a Protestant worship space depending upon the day and time of a service. I preferred observing the Mass, and Karen was willing to accompany me, since we both still believed in a Trinitarian God. It was also beneficial to both of us that the Director for the Newman Club was Fr. Donald Cleary, an ex-military chaplain and magnificent homilist. Even though I could not receive Communion, I enjoyed the weekend service we attended.

This was before the “left turn” in our lives.

In late summer, Karen and I had gone on a drive in the surrounding countryside. We always enjoyed the views of the hills of the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York and any opportunity to spend a few hours sightseeing the lakes and waterfalls of the region. One weekend, we were not too far from our new apartment on West Shore Drive when a car with an elderly diver approached us. He was returning home after a long trip and attempting his final turn into his driveway. However, being momentarily distracted, he turned directly into the front of our Ford which was about to pass him in the opposite direction.

Karen recalled the damage as being slight. I remembered an insurance reimbursement of about a thousand dollars. Fortunately, we agreed that neither of us suffered any significant physical harm. However, the incident did lead to a question and response that completely changed our lives over the next sixty years.

Karen wanted to know if I believed that, if I had died in the accident, would I go to heaven or to hell. Being raised by first-generation American parents who grew up in the traditional European cultures of Catholicism, I responded that, yes, I believed I would probably go to hell. Several years later, following what came to be known as the Second Vatican Council, my response might have been different. But the past is the past, and the future was not yet the present. Karen said she could not accept this negative result. She said we should be “remarried” in the Catholic Church. She did not want my belief to stand in the way of our union.

Technically we did not need to be “remarried,” rather, our marriage required that it be “convalidated” within the Church. We met with Fr. Cleary. Karen agreed to become a Catholic. We exchanged our vows taken in the presence of Fr. Cleary and two witnesses, Josie and Mario Marini, who had become close friends. Mario held a postdoctoral position in the Biochemistry Department. The event took place on September 26, 1958; our daughter was born exactly one year later. We continued to celebrate our marriage on June 22, but Deborah’s birthday has retained a double meaning for us to this day.

A car turns at the wrong moment and two lives turn at the right time.

Late in the early winter of our first year as newlyweds, we bought a used Volkswagen bug from our landlord, who owned the local dealership, to replace the Ford which had been repaired a short time before. Although we were able to drive the rehabilitated vehicle, the Fairlane, from its first days, had major electrical problems. It, also, had limited gasoline milage and unlimited ongoing costs that grew rapidly. Mr. Ripley offered us a good exchange for turning the old black-and-white-four-door into a small, gray bug.

It was a real challenge learning how to drive a manual-shift car on the hills of Ithaca. On the way back from the dealer, a fellow graduate student sitting next to me, worked the handbrake while I managed the clutch and footbrake. It took several hours of gear-stripping before I could manage most of the streets in College Town. It was much easier along West Shore Drive.

Then came January 2 of 1959. The bug, we called “Fritz,” was located in a one-car garage at the bottom of a long driveway leading up a hill to the main highway. The garage was perpendicular to the driveway. The driveway was coated with thick ice, not uncommon in Ithaca for much of the year. We needed a running start to get up the hill to the road. We believed the only way to get the car into position would be to push it out, by hand, from the garage to the bottom of the driveway. After all, the bug did not weigh very much and would be easy to push and maneuver into a position for that running start.

This procedure worked for the first three feet or so. However, when the tires came in contact with the ice outside of the garage, the vehicle continued to move backwards. We had forgot about momentum.

Somehow, I was behind “Fritz” as his slightly turned steering wheel caused him to head rapidly toward an eight-foot drop-off beside the garage. I have never known how I jumped down that cliff to the ground below. Or how the steering wheel had been turned to exactly the right position to allow “Fritz” to be caught by his rear fender on the garage’s foundation and become suspended above me, instead of falling on top of me. There he remained, until a tow-truck hauled him back onto the driveway, and we made the needed running start to get to the main road. The adventure cost only $6.00 for the tow and the repair to the fender – much cheaper than would have been the payment for broken bones or worse!

A short time later, Karen and I were driving “Fritz” back to Ohio for a visit. We pulled into a rest-stop, along the New York Thruway, for a lunch break. Afterwards, as we were leaving, we noticed that the bug had a flat tire for the wheel which had been trapped by the concrete that had supported the corresponding fender in January. We managed to drive the vehicle into the service section of the rest-stop. A few moments later, a well-dressed gentleman with a thick German accent came up to us. He said: “I am from Volkswagen. Can I help you?” We explained the tire needed to be replaced and what we thought had been the cause for its collapse. He responded: “Och, the company does not replace tires. That is up to you. Auf Wiedersehen!” A VW engineer may be everywhere, but not necessarily with a free tire.

Sooner or later every young couple has to realize that their economic honeymoon must end. Our realization came about six months after we were married; it arrived in January of 1959. We recognized we were going broke, or at least, rapidly heading in that direction. We considered our options.

I held a teaching assistantship which paid me a token amount for instructing students in their biochemistry laboratory classes. Karen earned a pittance as a secretary at The Straight. Having examined our budget, we considered moving to a less expensive apartment. Our current rental on West Shore Drive was a very extravagant $100 per month.

We even discussed the possibility of my taking a leave-of-absence for a year so that we could both move back to Ohio and get full-time teaching positions as we had once prepared to do. I was positive I would return a year later and continue seeking a Ph.D., although we knew of situations where the time-to-return to graduate school never arrived.

We thought we needed a more immediate solution, pending any major decisions about my career alternatives. We had to move, preferably into town; the 5.6-mile commute to the campus was becoming a real hardship, especially with the oncoming return of a typical Ithaca winter of ice, snow and slush. Given the low temperatures, I was never positive Fritz would turn over each morning and whether I would be forced to get to the lab on foot.

Classes resumed as did our routine, to which we now added searches in the town and collegiate newspapers of ads for rentals. We thought we might have found one for an apartment near the campus, until we discovered the cost to be $105 per month; this would be a 3 percent jump from the frying pan into the fire. Then we answered an ad for a basement rental on Floral Avenue at a cost of $15 per week, a savings of $400 per year in our current budget.

The rooms were small (as usual). They included a separate bedroom, living room and kitchen. The bathroom was located in a different part of the basement so that, in order to use the facility, we would need to pass through the landlord’s space where he had a pool-table. We also acknowledged the house, owned by a local cab driver, was on the Inlet into the Lake and in the middle of what amounted to be the slum area of Ithaca. There were three other student couples residing in the same house. We decided to take it. Karen became an expert in shooting pool.

We lived in that house for the remainder of our life in Ithaca, although, later, we moved into a second-floor apartment. We gave up the shared poolroom for a shared bathroom and a shared hallway connecting our new apartment with that of another couple.

Now that the decision had been made to move into town and to delay any leave-of-absence, we had the opportunity for another financial disagreement. The midterm break was rapidly approaching. Karen wanted to use the time in order to visit her sister, Tami, who was living with her husband, Ken, in Rome, New York. Karen proposed we might also spend a day in nearby Syracuse. I wanted to devote the free time to a catch up for the study-time I had missed during the Christmas holiday. Karen felt this would not be a vacation for her, and we both really needed one. With the move to Floral Avenue coming up, we finally decided we could use this time to settle into our new apartment, as well as save a few dollars.

While we were discussing how we might spend the upcoming break, I had to pay for the first quarter of our hospitalization insurance. That additional expenditure confirmed our need to eliminate our travel to upstate New York. I never did get to visit either Rome or Syracuse while living in Ithaca. Moreover, neither did we get to use the maternity benefits of our hospitalization policy; our daughter, Debbie, was born within the next nine months, days before this part of the insurance became effective.

Instead of travel to either the modern or ancient cities of Rome and Syracuse, we settled on dinner at the Victoria Restaurant and a movie with Ros Russell as “Auntie Mame.” As a result, our personal motto became: “How bleak is our puberty!”

Our daughter, Deborah Lynne, was born on September 26, 1959, in Tompkins County Hospital in Ithaca, New York. I fell in love with her, immediately. But several adjustments were needed along the way.

The first adjustment occurred on her arrival at our Floral Avenue apartment. Growing up as an only child, I had never held a newborn in my arms. Suddenly, as we were driving home in Fritz, I realized I would have to hold our child, while Karen maneuvered herself out of the bug. There was no alternative to the anticipated action. Somehow, I did it. I held my daughter for the very first time. Back then, fathers were excluded from the birthing process; they looked through the glass but had a very limited opportunity for any direct handling. It was, obviously, not the last time I held her.

All parents in the fifties relied upon Dr. Spock and his Baby and Child Care, the Bible consulted every day, during the months following the birth of a first child. Parents required at least two kids in order to confirm that almost everything they experienced was normal: including crying. Crying every night. Crying for no observable reason. Crying that could not be stopped. Crying that might be alleviated, slightly, with movement. Movement. Carrying an infant for hours every evening, while pacing from the tiny bedroom through the tiny living room, with its lime-green walls, into the tiny kitchen with whitewashed drainage pipes crossing the ceiling – and back again – and again. Dr. Spock called it “Periodic Irritable Crying.” Karen and I called it the hellish walk of new parents. Dr. Spock claimed the condition would self-correct at about three months of age. It did!

Our life became more manageable after those first three months. It was about then that we moved from our basement apartment to one on an upper floor. Our new bedroom was large enough to accommodate Debbie’s crib and the living room had space for her playpen. The disadvantage was that, to get from one to the other, we had to pass through a hallway we shared with Peter and Linda Jackson. They used the same common space to get from their living room to their own kitchen. At least our kitchen joined our living room. We shared a common bathroom. Somehow, Karen was the one who cleaned it. Linda never had the time, and, of course, neither Peter nor I had ever been trained to do anything like that. During the next two years, Karen, for a small stipend, also tended Michelle, the Jackson’s daughter, while Linda worked somewhere outside the apartment. Peter was also a student, an undergraduate.

Judy and Larry Lazarevitch moved into our old apartment. Larry later changed his name to “Hudson,” in honor of the car he loved. Another student couple had a first-floor apartment. The eight of us would gather together at least once a week for an exciting evening of Monopoly and popcorn. If anything was left from our student budgets, we might also drink a beer or two. Entertainment was merry and cheap for Cornellians in the nineteen-fifties.

Our hobbies were few. We did manage to buy a semi-dilapidated, black coffee table onto which we glued white, red, and yellow tiles in a modernistic pattern. It occupied our time. So did reading: biochemistry for me; mysteries for Karen. We constructed bookshelves from red bricks and pine boards.

Other brief recollections I have of our hours together were also about periods that were free-of-charge. For example, our bedroom was in the front of the house, overlooking the major street leading out from Ithaca towards the north. It was located at the exact spot where every passing truck shifted into the next gear either entering or exiting the town. I spent many evening hours counting trucks rather than sheep.

We were allowed to use the landlord’s front foyer for mail delivery but were not permitted to mount the inside stairs to the upper floors, since they passed through the domain of the landlord and landlady. Those student couples who lived in the house used the back doors and a semi-covered, outdoor staircase with its own challenges created by Ithaca’s changing weather patterns. However, this external passageway did give us access to the Inlet, frozen in winter, where late-residing geese would march up and down with their own frozen tail feathers clinking on the ice they transversed. During the unfrozen time of the year, our landlord might take us on his motorboat, usually docked on the Inlet, for a fast ride across the Lake.

Viewing Lake Cayuga was among the pleasant, inexpensive ways to pass the free time occasionally available to a young couple with a young child. The town park at the southern edge of the Lake had a favorite place for Debbie to play on swings and red-wooden horses, and to view animals in a small, domestic zoo. However, her favorite animal was “Meow,” a white, stuffed toy kitten with real-life fur which wore off to yield a bald critter she carried by its tail until she was given a very small suitcase for this purpose. On the other hand, “Meow” did have less hair than its owner possessed. For her early years, Deb wore headbands and flower-clips to reinforce that the cute, round face did belong to an adorable little girl. A series of Christmas card photos, and others now stored in an electronic achieves, confirms this non-biased viewpoint.

The time of our days in Ithaca passed neither too slowly nor too rapidly. We enjoyed our leisure where and when it could be found. Debbie learned to crawl, stand and walk. We did the same.

After two years of academic studies in classrooms and lecture halls, the time arrived for the initiation of my research toward a doctoral dissertation. Without any significant problems I had managed to pass the German exam for the first of the two language requirements for Graduate School. To the discomfort of the French department, I had audited a course in Scientific French and passed my examination in that Romance language, which was so similar to the Latin I had studied for four years in high school. I could not pronounce any words in French, but all a graduate student had to do was to be able to translate a passage into understandable, written English.

I also passed my qualifying examination, although my three faculty advisors did allow me to get off to a terrible start by refusing to accept my structure for benzene until I had its resonance bonds to their liking. There may be similarities in qualifying for an advanced degree and pledging a fraternity!

During those academic years, I completed the required biology classes I had missed as an undergraduate. Radiation biology, offered by the College of Veterinary Medicine located on the outer edge of the campus, provided me with useful technology for my research and a chance, on a daily schedule, to run the mile to it from a biology class on the Arts and Sciences campus.

Several new faculty members were added to the department during my early years at Cornell. They were Martin Gibbs, a plant biochemist working on photosynthesis, George Hess in protein structure, and Lemuel Wright who had discovered (and patented) mevalonic acid, even though it was a natural molecule needed in the biosynthesis of lipids, especially cholesterol and related steroids.

A fourth biochemist was also newly affiliated with the department and the Federal Nutrition Laboratory associated with the College of Agriculture. His name was Dr. Robert Holley. I had the opportunity to work as a research assistant in his Fed-Nut lab for a summer and earn some spare money ($375.00!) for the effort. His research involved transfer-RNA, which he showed was part of the biosynthesis of proteins that used DNA as their templates. (In 1968, he was co-awarded a Noble Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work in the area.)

In the early 1960’s the recent elucidation of the spiral structure of DNA seemed overly complex for me to continue work with Dr. Holley. The biochemistry of lipids, especially of steroids, seemed more reasonablely aligned with my interests in endocrinology. I chose Dr. Wright as my mentor and began my research study toward a dissertation entitled: “The Biosynthesis of Cholesterol in the Developing Chick Embryo.” My research did not yield any world-shaking discoveries, but I did publish the results in the Journal of Lipid Research (October 1962; vol. 3, no. 4, pp 416-420.)

Egg yolk had large amounts of cholesterol (as known by anyone who consumed eggs). The view had been held that the developing chick embryo used this stored molecule rather than synthesizing it during its development; I found that this was not the case. Within a week of its fertilization, the embryo synthesized its own cholesterol from the carbon-14 labeled mevalonic acid I had injected into newly laid eggs. For several years after beginning my work, I was somewhat personally concerned about the potential incorporation of this radioactive molecule into my own steroids. Needless to say, I was very careful to follow the required protocols while exposed to any of the materials I handled.

Although the research, itself, was not earthshaking, it was enjoyable – most of the time. I even brought home a few of the non-injected control peeps that had hatched and raised them in our landlord’s garage. It was during this home experience that I really learned just how stupid chickens can be. Our landlord enjoyed receiving the grown birds for his own dinner preparation.

I also had to “candle” each egg to determine if it had been truly fertilized. To this day, I enjoy eating eggs but cannot abide any that have a blood spot. Fortunately, few modern-day eggs have that problem, one which did exist decades ago. When I began the study, I had not realized the additional effort that would be required of me to incubate fertilized eggs until the chick was born. Not being a farm-boy, I did not know that the sitting-hen kept moving her eggs beneath her so that the developing embryo would not adhere to the inside of the shell. Dr. Wright was unwilling to purchase an incubator capable of shifting the eggs automatically. Graduate student labor was much less expensive. On a recurring schedule, I had to turn the trays holding the eggs, if I wanted the embryos to live.

The action of substituting for a nesting hen occurred even at midnight (as well as in the morning and mid-afternoon, reasonable times when I would be working in the laboratory.) Meanwhile, I had instructed all of the biochemistry graduate students, who were close friends, on how to turn incubating eggs. I called the lab about midnight every day of the week to ask for help from any of them who might be working in their labs at that hour, a time not uncommon for graduate students to be engaged in their own research protocols. If no one answered the telephone, I made the drive up the hill to Savage Hall to do my own turning. Dr. Wright was not pleased when I gave my thanks to helpful graduate students in the dedication/appreciation segment of my formal dissertation. It was the least I could do. On a winter’s evening, there was little enjoyment in a thirty-minute-midnight-drive to the campus for a three-minute action of playing the role of a pseudo-hen.

I shared my laboratory space with Howard Elford, a young man from Chicago who had the appearance and voice of a Midwestern gangster. He was as interested in stocks and bonds as he was in biochemistry and could have been as successful in finance as in biochemistry. Recently, Howie had discovered a new industry in which to invest, and he did so, putting as much as he could into this company, he believed would provide a very worthwhile service and opportunity. The name of the company was Xerox.

Both Karen and I should have agreed with his viewpoint. I wrote my dissertation in longhand on yellow tablets from notes recorded in the usual, bound volumes demanded for all scientific data. Karen typed the pages on a primitive Royal typewriter – original and two carbon copies. Mis-typed products were retyped; “white out” was used judiciously. She claimed I ruined her spelling. I was never able to spell common words correctly. She could rely on my scientific vocabulary as being correct, but not on anything else. Thank God, as an English major, she was a great proofreader.

It was also during this period that I learned how to organize materials obtained from research journals. I faithfully used McBee cards, the manual technology preceding the use of computer cards for the storage of data. The system consisted of index-like cards with two rows of holes around their edges. With a special hand-tool for notching them, I devised a code to correspond to the bibliographical information for all of the scientific journal articles I had to read. A knitting-needle positioned through the holes or notches, allowed me to shake down or retain the cards I needed. In creating the code system of holes and notches, I learned the methodology later used for IBM computer cards and all that followed. This experience probably added more to my informational and organizational development than did all of the biochemical pathways I studied.

Following my defense of my dissertation, I deposited the original and a carbon-copy with the Graduate School and the Cornell Library. I accomplished this event a few days before my twenty-sixth birthday; I could claim I was twenty-five years old when I earned my Ph.D. The second carbon-copy exists somewhere in my closet.

In June 1961, I was formally awarded my Ph.D., dressed in my rented, doctoral gown with its blue trim. I wore the Cornellian Red and White hood Karen had bought for me for the occasion. I have worn it at other college commencements during my remaining, academic lifetime. It’s packed away in some dresser drawer, after its original use sixty years ago.