Category: Cornell Universtiy

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.

I’ve mentioned aspects of the University and the Town where I spent four intensive years of academic study, three years of a wonderful beginning with Karen, and the first two years of Deb’s life with us. We have returned only once during the following six decades. The five of us, Ken and Chris were added in the meantime, spent an enjoyable two-week vacation on Lake Cayuga in the summer of 1976, the last one before we moved from Amherst to Houston.

Cornell, itself, is a picturesque, ivy-league university, although some wags refer to it as the “poison ivy” of the ivy-league. That put-down is undeserved. Cornell is a mixture of the many forms a university may take. The institution was founded, in 1865, as both a private university and the public Agriculture and Mechanical (A&M) school for the State of New York. The Biochemistry department was part of the College of Agriculture; its fees were in line with those of other state universities. However, most of the formal classes I took were in the private College of Arts and Sciences. So, I received the best of both worlds, financially and academically.

The architecture of the college was, also, an amalgamation of Gothic collegiate, Victorian, neoclassic and modern styles. The view from “Libe Slope,” between The Straight and the Library, overlooking the dormitories on the brow of the hill and Lake Cayuga at its foot, was magnificent in every season. In winter, it was the perfect site for undergraduate sledding on trays swiped from the on-campus dining halls. The surrounding quads were guarded by the usual ivy-covered buildings for the sciences, humanities and engineering. Much of my academic class-time was spent there. However, most of my daytime and nighttime hours were taken up by my research in Savage Hall, which housed both Biochemistry and Nutrition.

The graduate student office for budding biochemists was a large room lined with desks and bookshelves for each one of us. Given the communal nature of this office, I seldom remained there to study. As a graduate student, I was able to have a carrel assigned to me in the Mann Library which served the College of Agriculture. It’s there. I found the peace and quiet to study and to read the journals published in the field of biochemistry. Computer searches and the Internet were in the far distant future. Back in Savage Hall, the lab I shared with Howie had a workbench on each side of an aisle wide enough to accommodate one-and-one-half investigators. We usually worked there on different schedules. It was not the place to study, but only to inject and incubate eggs and dissolve products in ether or acetone.

Much of my leisure time, especially during my first year before Karen joined me, was filled by reading science fiction in a comfortable, wing-backed chair in the library of The Straight, which could have been used for an English collegiate setting.

During my first months at Cornell, I made a daily hike from my room in College Town and across Cascadilla Gorge to Savage. The bridge over the gorge afforded another panoramic view, straight down as well as across. Winter snows made the journey difficult but wonderful for sightseeing, if only I had the time to stop and look. After I had moved from an apartment in College Town to one in the Heights, I crossed the other gorge bordering the north edge of the campus. I often stopped at a small coffee shop there, with a view of Beebe Lake and its falls. The coffee shop’s free match books carried the motto: “best by a dam site.” This was a great place for a cup of coffee and a cigarette on my walk from the lab to my car, parked on one of the winding neighborhood streets.

I had the daily challenge of trying to remember exactly where I had parked, since I had to find a different location each day. I was tempted to put a pin in a campus map to remind me on which street I might find the snow drift under which my car would be hidden each evening. It would have been much easier, memory-wise, to use Kite Hill, the only on-campus parking lot for non-faculty cars. This location required a longer journey. It was not uncommon for me, in midwinter, to take a shortcut through one of the buildings on the way in order to thaw out a bit before getting into a car that never seemed to warm up.

Unfortunately, I seldom strolled the campus for leisure. The quads were worthy of such action, but time was not available for a scurrying grad student to slow down, unless there was an opportunity to eat ice cream, in the summertime. The Dairy department in the College of Agriculture constantly tried to formulate new mixtures and offered free cones to those willing to take part in a taste comparison. The investigators were especially interested in an apple-flavored variety, since this combination was extremely difficult to create as a unique flavor resembling what was consumed as classical apple-pie-alamode.

Another major contribution of the Dairy department was the development, in conjunction with a Swedish company, of the “tetra pac” for milk or cream poured into my cup of coffee. The trick was trying to open the appropriate corner of the tetrahedron without popping milk (or cream) all over your hands and everything within a three-foot radius.

The town of Ithaca was a typical upstate, small town, where Karen and I seldom shopped. Almost all of what we needed could be found in College Town, even groceries purchased on our trips between Floral Avenue on the Inlet and the campus on the top of the hill. The purchase of furniture waited until we had our first real apartment in Hanover, New Hampshire. Graduate students made do with what could be found in the usual furnished apartment. A crib, a playpen, a toddler’s eating table and a swivel, and a red-padded rocker were the only items of note we purchased. They lasted throughout several moves, even cross-country.

Although I enjoyed the ambience of the town and the university, along with the Finger Lakes we sometimes visited, I was anxious to graduate and continue my academic life elsewhere. I admit I did have a faint hope of returning someday as a member of the faculty. Later, when my interests became more in tune with academic administration, I did apply for a position as the Dean of Research there and visited the campus for interviews. They chose a woman administrator, instead.