Category: Cornell Universtiy

During the summer between my graduation from Kent State and my move to Cornell, my cousin Rosemary and I drove my new car there to find a place for me to live the following September. It was a vacation-adventure for the two of us – the only one we ever had.

I had lived in dorms and off-campus at Kent. After an earlier visit, before I was formally accepted into Cornell, I had not been impressed with the University’s housing for graduate students. The setting for the grad-student apartments near Cascadilla Gorge was extremely impressive, as were most sights around the campus, but rather old and run-down. I was not as interested in dormitory living as a graduate student as I had been as an undergraduate. So, Rosemary and I began our search.

The first off-campus apartment building had a dingy, red-tiled hall and eighteen residents. The landlady was a talkative one. In the single she showed me, was a rocker tied together with rope because, as she said, “Well, it was falling apart.” I declined her generous hospitality for next year on the grounds that it would be too noisy with eighteen residents, even though she protested that if anyone got noisy, she tossed them out.
The next places were much better. I finally settled on a boarding house at 107 Harvard Place. The owners were a young couple by the name of O’Mara. He was a law student. There were six men living in the house. I felt that six were not too many and gave me better odds to find a friend for next school year. Besides, the closet was large, and the bath had a shower. The rent was $7.00 per week, which was average for Ithaca. (Kent’s average had been $5.00 per week.) The house was located about two blocks from College Town, a commercial district about three blocks from campus. I would be living only five blocks from the campus.

At the time I really did not know just how large the campus, itself, was. Savage Hall, where the Department of Biochemistry was housed, was located in the center of the agricultural campus which was surrounded by the arts and sciences campus, the engineering campus and the veterinary medicine campus. I had classes on all of them. It was not uncommon for me to leave a class five minutes before it was to end and arrive at the next class five minutes after it had begun – even with a ten-minute break between classes. Lectures were constructed to accommodate both late arrivals and early exits.

College Town was the site for shopping and hanging out, other than on the campus itself. The Big Red, the main campus shop, was the place to buy everything needed for existence in the university. I learned to shop there and avoid the places located in downtown Ithaca, an area which was as “down” as anyone could want. Cornell was situated on top of the hill, and the town at its bottom. The roads, either straight or winding up its sides, were real challenges, whether on foot or in a car, during a frozen winter in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Walking from Harvard Street to Savage Hall was not much different from a journey through the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno – which, it should be recalled, had Satan sealed eternally in ice!

Two other events might be noted as part of my adventure. While on campus, I had checked on my German exam for next Fall. I purchased a copy of last year’s exam to study and a scientific German dictionary. The fellow at the information desk in the Union warned me the exam was rough, as did the Secretary in the Graduate Office. She said some German exchange students failed it. They knew what it said in German, but not in English!

The second event involved my new car. That model-year, Ford had changed out its electric system – but not completely. The first night, when Rosemary and I were driving back to the motel after a pleasant dinner, the entire electrical system burned out! We had to be towed to the motel. The car was in the local Ford repair shop for the next two days. However, Ithaca and Cornell were not bad places in which to be stranded. Walking up and down the hills, across the gorges, and over the campus did help strengthen our legs. This was an excellent introduction for the exercises I would endure for the next four years.

In mid-September 1957, I began my four years at Cornell University. I had driven to Ithaca with both of my parents. They left in mid-afternoon on the train for their immediate return to Ohio – a not uncommon event. They never wanted to stay overnight anywhere away from home. When they left, I had a feeling I’d never experienced before. I felt homesick. For the first time in my life, I would be alone for an extended period. I knew no one in Ithaca. I’d always had acquaintances, if not friends, wherever I had lived for the twenty-two years of my life. Now there was no one. The homesickness had to be overcome.

That first evening I stood on the Hill near Willard Straight Hall, the student union building, and looked out over the valley and the Lake. The library chimes were playing. The scene was not unlike one from a Hollywood collegiate romance. If only Karen were with me. I thought about why I was standing there.

I had chosen Cornell for its beauty and for its academic renown. I had to focus on these elements and not on my feelings of desertion. Some of the Cornelians I had met briefly at The Straight and in Savage Hall, where the Biochemistry Department was located and where I would spend my years at Cornell, had seemed friendly. I revived the expectation I once held. I trusted that not everyone would be like a few examples I had also met – those who were concerned only with their own firmly established niches. The world might be an oyster, for some, but oysters also had closed shells isolating them from their surroundings. Yet, oysters also had pearls formed from buried irritants. I’d see what might develop.

I quickly learned that almost anything could develop in Ithaca. The adage for the location was true: if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute, it will change. My notes for Sunday, September 22 are to the effect: “The morning was sparkling; the early afternoon, hot and humid; late afternoon, showering; early evening, pouring rain; and late evening, cold and windy. There are still a few hours for it to snow.”

The next afternoon, I made my way to the Cornell Chapter of Delta Upsilon. The House was physically striking, with another cinematic view of the Lake. I met a few of the brothers, but neither they nor I seemed to be impressed with one another. Over the next few weeks, I often went there for dinner. However, since I did not know how to play bridge, there was little to do afterwards. Few wanted to engage in conversations, per se. Within a few months, I finally gave up and never went back to the House. What had once been the center of my social life was now null and void.

My room at 107 Harvard Place was equally joyless. It was merely a site for sleeping and for studying. Most of my time would be spent either in the communal office area at Savage Hall assigned to graduate students for study, or in the library on the nearby Agriculture campus. I also found comfortable, wing-back chairs in the library and lounges of The Straight for reading fiction, especially old sci-fi.

At the time, Biochemistry was part of the state-controlled campus of Cornell, rather than being part of its private campus, where I did take most of my basic science courses in biology and chemistry. In later years, when I did not have a fellowship but was paid through an assistantship, it was advantageous to be part of the public college of Cornell instead of its more expensive, private component.

Once again, my journal entries were extremely limited, even more so than in previous years. In fact, there are only two notations for all of 1957. Most of my non-study time was devoted to correspondence with Karen. Although I tried to write daily, I failed in this intent, much to her discomfort from time to time. These letters, nevertheless, serve as a partial source for any details of my early recollections of Cornell University.

In lieu of diary entries for my days at Cornell, I wrote Karen about what was going on in my new life. In a letter of September 24, 1957, I included a description, albeit a somewhat exaggerated one, of my first days during which I attempted to become a graduate student.

My existence here at Cornell has been a series of frustrations and gropings . I have more questions than a freshman. I’m used to having the answers, but here I don’t, and have problems finding them. For one thing, there are classes. Or rather the lack of them that worries me.

At 3:30 Monday, I entered Barton Hall, a gym slightly larger than the entire Men’s Physical Education building at Kent. I lined up at a desk where they took away all my pre-registration IBM cards, except three. There were about a dozen I had received in the mail. I was directed to another line where a cop looked at one and pointed to the back of the room, a mile away, where I was to present one of the three remaining cards. He had just checked to see if I had it.

Then came a graduate line, which took some hunting to find. I was given more cards to fill out while waiting in a second graduate line where I left these cards and got some more! I then had my picture taken – they didn’t tell me why – gave up my cop-inspected card, signed up for an X-ray, and bought a year’s book of athletic tickets! Throughly confused, I hobbled to the information desk where a smiling undergraduate coed sat. I asked her: “What do I do now?” I don’t think she appreciated the question. After a few of her own, she said that was all. “But I don’t have any classes yet!” I wailed. She dried my tears and said, since I was a grad student, I didn’t get any. Here they have a liberal education!

So, I grabbed hold of the ivy hanging from her ponytail, swung up to the rafters with the cry of a wounded Kent Stater and watched. I conferred with a few other strange, misplaced grad students and we concluded we actually don’t have any classes assigned at registration. We have two weeks to sit in on any course and decide whether we want to accept that professor for a term or go somewhere else. After two weeks, we turn in to the Graduate School a list of the courses we’ve decided are worthwhile for the term. Occasionally (ha) your special committee will recommend courses – especially the ones they teach. However, at the moment, I don’t know the members of my special committee, since I haven’t chosen them yet! But never fear, I have two weeks to shop for them. And six weeks before they are nonreturnable.

So, learning all these bits of information the catalog neglected to mention, I climb down from the rafters and race to the exit to buy a committee. Instead, a hulking brute sticks out his white-bucked shoe, trips me, plants his khaki knee on my chest and murmurs: “Have you bought your calendar yet?” I slip him a bill and he rolls me out the door. I have registered.

Now comes the process of shopping for classes throughout the campus. As a searching grad student, I spoke with a series of departmental representatives about the offerings currently available. Originally, I planned for a schedule of 18 hours.

The Biochem man says take the departmental Seminar. I plan for 19 hours. The Biology man says 19 hours is too much. I talk the Bacteriology man into taking only the lecture and not the lab. It was in trying to find this one that I wandered into the agriculture school’s campus. It took me 30 minutes to find the building. The aggies only grunted answers, of a sort, on what directions to take.

I now have 16 hours and ask the Organic man if classes start on time. The Bacteriology class lets out at 11:50 and the organic begins at 12:00. I timed myself between the two buildings. It takes me 12 minutes – if I steal a horse from the stables. The organic man says he doesn’t know, since this is his first term here.

Then there are books. You can buy them at the Cornell Campus Store, a departmental madhouse in the center of the campus. The store advertizes five checkouts, each having an un-advertised line twenty feet or more long. The place puts a rush-hour at the KSU Campus Supply to shame.

I bought $34 of books and a $10 dissecting kit – used for emerging from the store (and later in a zoological course I plan on attending – it’s a bad hour for coffee so what the heck. I might as well get educated.) But really, I get $4.40 back. You save your receipts and get a 10% discount. They’re better than green stamps.

I go over to The Straight to drown my sorrows in coke. I find an Activities Fair. Somehow, I subscribe to the “Cornell Daily Sun,” “The Cornell Writer,” – it looks and feels like the “Kent Writer” – and “The Widow” yearbook. In backing away, I stumble into the music room. Fortunately, they sense my monotone qualities and usher me to the general exhibits. I pass Pershing Rifles, Farm clubs, Religious Clubs, Theater Clubs, and just plain clubs. I almost signed up for rushing, but the guy was an SAE and he didn’t know Dean Nygreen, so I passed it up.

I then decide to go to the Ivy Room – a Cornellian Hub with long benches attached to tables without writing tops. Still, it doesn’t have that old atmosphere. Its inhabitants are bushy and tweedy.

So as the sun collapses into Lake Cayuga and the chimes burst forth in melodious disharmony, I slink off in my non-ivy trousers and jacket and journey home, ending my first two days at Cornell.

In 1958, I did slightly better in my intention of maintaining a diary of my days at Cornell. In January, I made it through two weeks, a great improvement over the two days of 1957.

Once again, I had driven back to Ithaca with my father, who insisted that he accompany me. I was never sure why he demanded this. He left on a train within a few hours of our arrival in town. The weather for the first half of the trip had been accommodating. We had left Niles at 11:00 a.m. and arrived in Ithaca at 7:00 p.m. The New York Thruway was now open all the way and we were able to cover the Erie to Buffalo section without incident, other than being delayed in Hamburg, New York for speeding. Since I had heard a snowstorm was, as usual, moving into central New York, I was determined to beat its arrival.

My feelings upon my own arrival in town were, again, not what they had been upon returning to Kent after a holiday visit. Without the collegiate social atmosphere I once loved so much, it now took time to readjust. I did not like the loneliness that settled in almost immediately. Since I had given up going to the DU House at Cornell, a brotherhood was no longer available to sustain me.

I had begun to bond with the graduate students in my Department, but I had problems. For the first time in my life, I did not feel up to them academically. I had always been among the brightest in my classes. This was no longer the case. I was disturbed whether I would be able to keep up with the other grad-students who had started with me a few months ago. I assumed it would depend on how my qualifying exams would turn out. One of the new students, Evelyn Havir, whom I thought was much brighter than I, claimed to be worried about passing her exams. She did, but my own worries were no less troublesome. I did not like being “merely average.”

I met with Dr. Williams, the head of the Biochemistry Department, who was also my academic advisor, until I chose a topic for my doctoral thesis and would gain a personal mentor for the remainder of my time in graduate school. He seemed to believe I was doing well and would continue to do so; he even thought I’d be ready for my qualifying exams next fall. If I did not pass them, I would end up with a Master’s degree, the consolation prize for not being able to pursue a doctorate.

I did enjoy the social gatherings with Evelyn and her roommate, Louise Anderson, and with the other first-year grad-students: John Wooten, Bob Wilhelm and Paul Kindle. All of us became close friends over the next four years. The Smalltalk we had while drinking beer and consuming snacks in one of their apartments was usually entertaining. The picnics we had at Taughannock Falls Park were even better.

Being outdoors added to my desire to be a first-rate biochemist, and really understand the life around me be it plant, animal or fungal. Besides, the golds and reds of the Finger Lake region in autumn, along with the multiple waterfalls of the creeks entering Cayuga Lake, could not be more fantastic. It was a miraculous place to be one-with-nature. There were spectacular sites and sights all around-me. I became transfixed by merely standing near a small wet spot on the flat rocks near the falls and pondering the mysteries of the life residing there, unnoticed by most hikers walking past it.

And then came the snow. One evening in early January, the forecast had said the rain would turn into freezing rain. When I awoke in the morning, the radio declared that fourteen inches of snow had fallen over night. At first, I thought I had accidently tuned into a broadcast from New Hampshire, but the news had come from the local station. Shoveling out the car was a real challenge, one which remained so, on a daily basis, for the rest of that month and those which followed.

After the preliminary ice storm, there was no traction for a car without chains and I walked to the campus from my new apartment in Cayuga Heights, to which I had recently moved in anticipation of Karen joining me in the coming months, and my desire to have more than the space afforded by a single room. A combined living room and kitchen adjoining a large bedroom and a private bathroom were more than sufficient. I also got along well with Mrs. Bemont, my new landlady.

If it weren’t for the daily, physical headaches I began to develop, my life could have been even pleasant, although I missed Karen tremendously and daily letters did not relieve that pain. The Cornell clinic was not able to diagnose the reason for my new affliction and so I decided I might need a new prescription for my eyeglasses. When the new ones yielded no positive results, I began to accept that the stress of the life of a graduate student was compatible with my physical problems. This was the way it was going to be for the coming months. I hoped the Ph.D. would be worth it.

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.