Category: National Institutes of Health

Cedar Lane was one of the major streets in Bethesda, Maryland. Our rental house was less than a mile from the main campus of the NIH and would have been an ideal location for getting to work, except the Grants Associates Program was in the Westwood Office Building on the far side of Bethesda. My daily commute was longer than I thought it would be when I first rented the house. However, the Westwood neighborhood was lined with as many cherry trees as there were around the Tidal Basin downtown. In springtime I had a magnificent drive through a variegated-pink tunnel which quickly gained a carpet of petals swirled by the passing of commuter cars.

My destination was not the Emerald City of Oz, although at times there was a mystical similarity. The Westwood Office Building housing many of the extramural programs of the NIH was the typical, privately built, elongated structure with pale-green offices leased to the federal government. No one knows the origin of that shade of civil-service green found in each two-room work site, public service areas, all hallways, and a basement cafeteria. The entrance space for each office was designed for a secretary and the adjoining private section for the level GS-10-or-above federal agent.

The major traffic problem associated with my drive to work was due to the location of Cedar lanes, itself. Since it was, indeed, one of the major streets leading into the NIH, the morning traffic was heavy. Every evening, I would enter our driveway in the usual manner, and every weeknight, I would back the car out of the driveway and reposition it so I would have a head-start in the morning. There was no way I could have backed out of the drive during the morning rush-hour, unless Karen stood in the middle of the street to stop the traffic, a “solution” neither of us desired.

Another interesting observation about our house was our backyard which was planted with bamboo. I soon learned how rapidly this alien plant grew and spread, unless I whacked it down as often as I could. We had a bed of strawberries which was much easier to maintain. My pile of grass clippings was not. I thought the mulch mixture would decompose over time. It did not. The smelly remains had to be bagged and carted off before the owner returned at the end of our rental year.

Our neighborhood was not far from a small park to which Karen could take the kids. There was not much else for them to do. During our year there, we met no one residing near us. Deb did begin her first grade at Holy Redeemer elementary school, which was in walking distance. Nevertheless, we did enjoy our first year of living in a non-academic town. Bethesda, itself, did not have much to offer, except for a restaurant which served an incredible version of mock-turtle soup. (Yes, it is strange what continues to be recalled from a half-century ago!)

Another event of that year in a new environment concerned my first hospitalization as an adult. It occurred during the Christmas season and has led me, ever since, to associate this holiday with hospitals. For some unknown reason, I fainted on Christmas morning. Karen and I decided I should check myself into the local Bethesda Suburban Hospital to see if a cause could be found. After several days of examinations, nothing definitive was diagnosed, even here in the center of health care for the nation. My physician, Dr. Herman, said I was a “normal, overweight, early-middle-aged executive” who should lose 40 – 50 pounds. It would also be best for me to give up smoking. He prescribed Valium, the current pill-of-choice for anxiety attacks, for the next few months. He also warned me I was “pre-diabetic,” which was a relatively new concept fifty years ago.

Whether it was stress or merely hypochondria resulting from my reading a Christmas present book which included descriptions of brain tumors, I never did discover. But I did learn I preferred to be engaged in becoming a biological science administrator and not a brain surgeon.

My change of career from working in university research, writing for publication in scientific journals, and teaching biochemistry students about lipids to becoming a scientist-administrator on a national level was not as difficult as I had expected it might be. I enjoyed becoming an administrator while avoiding the usual result of becoming a bureaucrat. The difference between the two is that a bureaucrat learns the ways to say “no,” whereas an administrator, with the same information, knows how to say: “yes, it will work if you do it this way.” The other rule I tried to follow was: can I justify why I’ve chosen this administrative action if I had to explain it to Karen’s Ohio-Republican father?

The procedure I followed for learning how to become a scientist-administrator was through an internship program, the Grants Associate Program (GAP) of the NIH. The GAP had been initiated only two years previously (1963) with ten recruits. Although we did not comprise a formal class, most of the current dozen “GA’s” entered the program at the start of the federal fiscal year, which began, back then, on July 1. Over the years, the members of my class became close friends and colleagues. The NIH had hoped that this would be one of the results of this experience, since it was anticipated we would spread throughout the NIH and related agencies of the federal government. A successful program, ultimately, would be responsible for increased cooperation among all of the science-related components of the federal government.

My first intern-assignment was with the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR). Its extramural grant program was located in a separate office building in downtown Bethesda. I remember riding up in the elevator, on my first morning of federal employment, with a black gentleman dapperly dressed in a dark suit and vest and carrying what looked like a neatly furled English bowler umbrella. We left the elevator at the same time and chatted as we walked down the corridor to the NIDR offices. When I asked where I might find Dr. Tom Malone, the Director of the extramural programs, he introduced himself as the person to whom I had been assigned. Tom was not quite the Irishman I had been expecting to meet. He would be my mentor for the next month. Over the following years, we became close friends and colleagues. He remained as one of my mentors as he, himself, advanced within the NIH.

I should mention, for the sake of clarity, that the NIH consists of multiple, independent Institutes, each of which may have intramural as well as extramural programs. The intramural programs, housed on the main campus of the NIH, employ their own scientists engaged directly in basic or clinical research focused on specific diseases or body organs, e.g., the National Cancer Institute or the National Heart Institute. Their extramural programs support biomedical research on a nationwide basis for studies conducted at universities, medical schools, hospitals and other off-campus sites through grants funded by each Institute. The GAPS was, organizationally, part of the extramural program of the Division of Research Grants (DRG) which served the entire NIH in the review of grants funded by the individual Institutes.

During my internship with the NIDR, I was assigned a project in which I was to identify the research topics the Institute supported in basic biochemistry. In 1965, computers and the data they held were in their infancy; in fact, they were neonates rather than toddlers. The National Library of Medicine, another part of the NIH, had large (room-sized!) computers which could be accessed only by their own experts. I made a request to the NLM to obtain the titles of all scientific articles having specific search-terms associated with dentistry or the mouth that had been funded by the NIH, according to the article’s self-reported source of support. (Each article published in a scientific journal was required to identify the federal agency which had supported the research.) One of the search terms I thought would be logical was “saliva.” Certainly, the NIH must have supported research involving this biological fluid bathing the mouth and the dentistry associated with it.

A week after I had made the inquiry, the NLM sent me a lengthy computer listing of the published articles containing any of the search terms I had included. Unfortunately, I had not specified that the articles should be limited to human beings. I quickly learned that the NIH and the NIDR had supported a significant amount of research associated with mosquito saliva! After all, malaria and yellow fever were the results of bites by these infected critters!

So it was, at an early stage in the retrieval of computerized data, that I learned the significance of inclusionary and exclusionary terms. A computer coughs out only what you ask for; so, the user must be very cautious in raising the right questions and using appropriate boundaries. Nevertheless, Tom Malone did like the final report I wrote for him and the National Institute of Dental Research.

Assignments following my original NIDR experience were equally informative and fun for me as I continued to tour the NIH and other federal agencies. One effort was with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) which provided extramural funds for basic biological and biochemical studies fundamental for all living conditions. Here my focus was on the method of support for the training of pre- and postdoctoral students through fellowships and training grants. The NIGMS also awarded grants for research, per se.

My research grant management exposure was obtained through an experience with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HICHD), an agency resulting from an interest by the family of John F. Kennedy. New Institutes were constantly being formed or renamed depending upon current political conditions. Some referred to these changes being the result of the “disease-of-the-month club.” However, the re-designation of an Institute, or an increase in the funding for an existing one, normally required that the “fad” exist through a federal budget cycle or two before the result to become final.

In addition to exposures within the Institutes, I also had an assignment with the Division of Research Grants. The DRG interacted with all of the Institutes, since it was the centralized organization for the peer review of all requests for funding by the NIH. Here were the “study sections” headed by chiefs who were administratively in charge of each review group, composed of outside consultants from academic and research centers throughout the nation. Three or four times a year, each group, consisting of ten to twenty members, gathered in Bethesda to review all applications coming from those seeking support through research grants, fellowships, training grant programs or large “program projects,” which incorporated funds for both research and training in a specified area.

The members of each review group (study section) would have read the applications prior to attendance at their meeting, where they would, after further discussions, vote a “priority score” as an assessment of the merit of the request being made. Applications with voted scores between 100 and 200 – with 500 being the poorest, yet approved, score – might be funded by one of the Institutes for which the reviews were made. The final decision to support an approved application depended upon the budget for each Institute, to which the grant proposal had been assigned by the DRG. During the period of tight budgets allocated to the NIH by Congress, awards might be limited to those with scores between 100 and 150. Only those requests with the very best priority scores were ever funded.

In addition to internship assignments with the Institutes and the DRG, I also had an opportunity to observe events involving overall policies of the NIH. At that time, Dr. John Sherman, who was a legendary director for the NIH extramural programs, requested that I draft serval documents for his consideration while I was assigned to “Building One” of the NIH.

My month-long assignment to the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offered me a different kind of opportunity. Since the DHEW was in downtown Washington, D.C. I had time, during my lunch periods, to visit sites of interest around The Mall. This was an era when the Capitol was open to all citizens. If a person looked like he belonged, it was possible to roam the halls of Congress without any security badge or other approval. I had learned the technique of walking-rapidly-with-purpose and saw a lot of new territory that now would be completely “off-limits” due to new terrorists. What a difference can be made by the exchange of a few letters like “– itory” and “– orist!” when appended to the basic: terri/terro!

Besides observing the management processes in particular Institutes of the NIH or other components of the science-supporting agencies at the federal level, such as the National Science Foundation, I also participated in weekly seminars directed toward business management with an emphasis on the administration of federal programs. These GAP workshops included discussions of typical case studies used for advanced training in business schools.

I began to think like a scientist-administrator, who had been well-versed both in a particular basic science and in business administration. Other GAP members came from microbiology, physiology, chemistry and biophysics. Our discussions were freewheeling; they allowed us to become non-parochial when it came to scientific specialties. They also increased loyalty and association with the federal government, in general, rather than with a specific agency – a limited view held by many civil service employees who had been directly hired by a particular federal agency.

A favorite location for extended seminars was Airlie House in nearby Warrenton, Virginia. It was at this idyllic site in the country that I shared, for the first time, a bedroom with a black colleague. It was also here that I learned of the culinary delights of a Smithfield ham and true “southern cooking.”

After twelve months of my internship with the NIH, it was time for me to seek permanent employment within the agency, itself, or with another science-related office in the federal government. I was extremely surprised when I was offered more than thirty different positions within the NIH. Following an intensive comparison of the possibilities for my career development, I chose one, offered by the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD), as co-director of its Endocrinology Program.

The NIAMD was an Institute for the significant support of basic and clinical funding for a spectrum of biomedical efforts within the United States. Although its designated “disease” was “arthritis” its organizational sub-components addressed all of the medical specialties of internal medicine. At that time, the NIAMD had programs for a dozen medical specialties ranging from Dermatology thorough Hematology to Urology. Each program included all of the support mechanisms offered by the NIH – research grants, fellowships, training grants, career development grants, and program projects.

I shared the administration of the Institute’s Endocrinology Program with a co-director, Dr. Roman Kulwick. At Cornell I had “majored” in biochemistry with a “minor” in endocrinology. With a desire to learn more about both this discipline and grant-support, in general, this position seemed like the most logical of the choices being offered. I did not regret it. Roman and I divided our work according to specific universities and medical schools. My only problem was that every morning, when I entered our office, he met me at the door with today’s problems. I felt like a husband who is greeted daily by his wife who has suffered all day long with the kids while he was peacefully at work.

I met a large number of endocrinologists over the next year and learned of the latest developments in this field. The experience also gave me an intimate understanding of all of the ways in which the federal government supported scientific advances.

A year later, I was appointed as Chief of the Analysis and Evaluation Branch of the NIAMD. The branch was in charge of all of the data for the Institute as it related to its multibillion-dollar budget and thousands of grants. Computers were becoming the new technology. I had programmers and technicians working for me. Although I could not hard-wire the machines used for the sorting of punch-card data, I managed those who did have these abilities. I also supervised those who reviewed the Institute’s awards and inputted the data gathered from them.

In this way, I became part of the foundation of the information technology that is so important for today’s world. At the time, however, the best social use for IBM punch cards was their foundation for the construction of three-dimensional, gold-sprayed wreaths for Christmas decorations!

A mentor is defined as a person, usually a business colleague, who takes an interest in helping a younger employee in career development. The mentor serves not only as role model but also counsels the younger person over a spectrum of interests. A mentor may also tout the younger one among other colleagues in order to “smooth the way” for him. I have been fortunate in having one such person in my life: Dr. Ronald Lamont-Havers.

Ron was a half-generation ahead of me, being born fifteen years before I was. Our first interaction came in 1966, after my year-long administrative internship with the National Institutes of Health. He was the Associate Director for the extramural programs of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases and the major reason why I joined that particular Institute. He convinced me that the position he offered as Associate Endocrinology Program Director would give me, in the shortest possible time, an excellent background for all of the grant-funding activities of the NIH. He was right. I quickly learned about all of the NIH grant-making programs and interacted with many other staff members throughout the NIH. A year later he appointed me as the chief of the Analysis and Evaluation Branch where, with an ancient IBM system, I was part of the newly developing area of computer analysis. It was because of Ron’s interest in my career that I was introduced to the computer age.

Lamont-Havers was himself, an interesting person. He was born in England in 1920 and moved to Canada when he was seven. His undergraduate work was at the University of British Columbia and his MD was from the University of Toronto. He maintained his Canadian accent when he came to the NIH. I found this personally amusing for a strange reason. Later, as I advanced through the agency and did a lot of telephone interactions with upper-level administrators, my voice was often mistaken for his. At that time, he, himself, had been promoted to the position of Deputy Director of the entire NIH. Jokingly, it was said I could have taken over the agency, through telephone calls, if I had tried.

Ron and his wife, Hale, often invited Karen and me to their townhouse for an evening. Their gatherings included members from the Institute and friends from other federal agencies. Sometime between 10:00 p.m. and midnight, Hale would begin to prepare dinner. They preferred engaging conversations to eating! An event with them would last far into the night. Hale was also an interesting lady in another strange way. Her hobby was reading about “real crime.” When Ron would travel to London for scientific meetings, Hale would spend her time at Scotland Yard. I also recall that her favorite cat was named “Dr. Crippen,” after an infamous American physician who killed his wife in London, was tried for the crime, and hanged in the Tower.

Meetings with L-H were also fascinating. Our dialogs focused, of course, on the business at hand, but he would cover a range, from politics to religion. He seemed to have a particular interest in the “Medes and the Persians,” since he was always quoting something about them. Our conversations always occurred while he sat with one leg bent under him. I’ve never known any other man who consistently sat so comfortably curled up in his chair.

Ron was very adept not only in instructing me about the specifics of administration but also about the culture of the Institutes. He demonstrated what stewardship in government actually meant: how bureaucrats learned the rules in order to say “no” and administrators learned the same ones in order to say “yes.” Accepting new ideas, when needed, and making changes, when appropriate, are essential for federal agencies. He was an international expert on arthritis and gave me a consultation on my own shoulder problem.

L-H seemed to take a personal interest in me. Even after I left his Institute to become Assistant Director in another component of the NIH, we maintained contact. When I would visit the agency after joining the University of Massachusetts, he always found time to chat with me, even though he had moved to “Building One” as Deputy Director of the NIH. I lost contact with him once he became Vice President for Research and Technology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He died in 2019, at age 99.

Shortly after I had arrived at Baylor College of Medicine, I received a telephone call from Dr. Tom Malone, a personal friend and colleague who had replaced Lamont-Havers as Associate Director for the extramural programs of the NIH. Tom said that he and Ron had not realized I would be “movable” from UMA and wondered if I would be interested in returning to the NIH for a position in his office instead of living in Texas. However, having made this recent commitment, I replied that I thought I should stay with BCM. I have often wondered what my life would have been like had I returned, some forty years ago, to the NIH and life under Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama. Fortunately, I would probably have retired before being Trumped! There is a difference between being mentored and be apprenticed.

Life in Washington, D.C. did give me a dose of “Potomac Fever.” The condition was not fatal, but it did have long-lasting effects. One of the symptoms was my feeling as if I were living in the center of all that was happening in the world. Every national event seemed to be local. For several years after we had moved to Amherst, Mass., I still subscribed to the Washington Post, until the Boston Globe took its place, but not quite.

On the first available weekend, once we were settled in our home on Cedar Lane in Bethesda, we drove around the District. On a Sunday, the traffic was more reasonable than during a weekday. The Mall and the Smithsonian museums became our magnet: on the north – American History, Natural History, and the Art Gallery; on the south – Freer Gallery, Smithsonian Castle, Hirshorn, Air and Space, and the Botanical Gardens. Changes occurred over the following decades, but these were the places for us to see again and again in the mid-1960’s. When friends came to visit, we would take them to sites everyone expected to see (the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument) and then to places for us to investigate for the first time. Strangely, perhaps, we never did get to see the inside of the White House. I went to some of the other major federal buildings on my own during those lunch hours I had when I was assigned to the DHEW.

On the other hand, our favorite locations included the National Zoo and the National Cathedral, even if it was high Episcopalian. Both were very peaceful venues to stroll as a couple, although the kids, of course, preferred the zoo. A short time before our arrival in Washington, the Catholic Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception had been completed. Around the main sanctuary, there were magnificent chapels dedicated to the Virgin Mary as she had appeared to various nations. However, we preferred the elegant Gothic setting of the Cathedral to the Byzantine style of the Basilica.

Following our arrival in the area, one of our first events was experiencing the Fourth of July fireworks on the grounds of the Mall. It was a grand exposure to what was potentially available in our Capital. Even the traffic jam was worth it.

The construction of the Metro subway system did not begin until the final year we lived in the D.C. area, so I learned to get around the District by car. After many attempts, I finally discovered how to navigate the Circle around the Lincoln Memorial and actually drive north on Rock Creek Parkway, instead of always landing in Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. Karen began to drive our car when we moved from Bethesda to Rockville during our second year in Washington. She had taken driving lessons during high school, but refused to drive when her father attempted to continue her lessons in drivers’ ed. She did her driving, now, in suburban Washington and allowed me to take the wheel for downtown excursions.

I, personally, had two destinations when I thought I needed to escape from the house by myself. During the day, one of them was Georgetown. The streets, with cobblestone or brick pavements lined by gas-converted lamps, were picturesque during the day or evening. I stayed in a townhouse there with young, single, physician friends from the NIH for a week while Karen was out of town with the kids. Georgetown would have been a great place to live, but my salary limited my desire. My second, favorite location was the Lincoln Memorial at dusk, when the fog began to rise from the Potomac. The sharp edges of the temple became concealed by the mists as my own thoughts of any leftover annoyances faded away. Perhaps, these river-mists were the real causes for my Potomac Fever.

There are years which recede into half-forgotten memories. Those from 1966 until 1968 fit into this category. On the positive side, I found my daily administrative work to be enjoyable; I became good at it, too. By attending study section reviews of grant applications, I met some of the leading investigators in the country in biochemistry and endocrinology. I did not miss the laboratory and doing my own research, since I was learning about the cutting edge of these scientific disciplines. My role as an administrator, who helped others, was an acceptable replacement for what I had desired, but not found, in academic education. There were times when I missed classroom teaching, but my day-to-day work compensated for what I thought I had given up in direct interactions with students and professorial colleagues. It was the beginning of a productive career in science administration.

At the completion of my year in the GA Program and the beginning of my career with the NIAMD, we moved from our rental house in Bethesda to another rental in Wheaton, Maryland, the “next town” adjoining Bethesda and the District. There was little to distinguish this residence from any other suburban home: a typical, split-level, white structure with black shutters.

While we were living in our new residence, Deb made her First Communion at St Edward’s, our new parish, although she now attended the local public elementary school. My parents came for their obligatory 48-hour visit for this celebration.

Once again, Karen and I had few neighborhood friends. Most friends were those from work, rather than those who cut the grass in the next-door yards. The closest colleague-friends I had were two members from my “class” of the Grants Associates: Al Heim and Al Broseghini. Karen and I learned how to play bridge and often met with an NIH colleague, Kent Smith and his wife, Nancy, for weekend card playing.

Although she never mentioned it, Karen may have been bored being a housewife who had limited access to a car for getting away on her own. We accomplished the common events of family life together: the usual trips to the grocery stores, weekend ventures to the nearby suburban mall and its department stores, and visits to downtown tourist sites.

I did find an NIH colleague, Tom MacIntosh, who lived near us; we alternated weeks as drivers for our daily commute, so that Karen finally had some means of escape. Tom became a very close buddy, as it can happen when, every day, two guys must invest time together. Two hours of one-on-one conversations, five days a week, resulted in our getting to know one another. A close call or two on an express highway also resulted in an even closer friendship. Our relationship ended in the usual way when Tom and his wife, Roma, returned to Iowa and his private practice following his year as a Public Health Service physician on temporary assignment to the NIH.

I then discovered that Will Nusser, another NIH-er lived in Wheaton and a new, but less talkative commuting, came about. On the other hand, when Will bought my old Chevy wagon for his son, he knew what he was getting, including the small hole in the floorboard that allowed ready access to roadway slush.

The best part of our living on May Street in Wheaton was that it was close to the area in Rockville, Maryland, where we built our first home. We were able to oversee its construction and learn about a new way to have fun, providing we had the money and time for it.

Having a new home being built for us was very exciting. It also required patience, a difficult quality for us with our immediate expectations of completion. Fortunately, we bought a site in Rockville, Maryland not far from where we were renting, and so, we could visit the reality of our dream while it was being constructed. We had, indeed, dreamed of our own home for several years before we were able to construct one. Karen and I had enjoyed pouring over home-design magazines for the first five years of our marriage and had decided on what we liked and did not like. We had even tried to design our own floorplans, knowing that we would end up with one originated by a developer. But we had fun with our daydreams.

The house we decided to have built for us was of a multi-level design. The main floor had a large living room, dining room and kitchen. The upper level had three bedrooms, one for us, one for Deb and one shared by Ken and Kip. The lower level, below the main floor, had two more bedrooms, which were dedicated for my study and for storage, as well as what many would call a den or family room. That’s where we relaxed and watched television in the evening. Below the lower level was a full basement, a space we did not realize, at the time, was unique to northern dwellings. The laundry, furnace, water heater and out-of-season stuff could be found there. Years later when we moved to Houston, Texas, we were startled to learn that these utilities, except for the laundry, were relegated to the attic. We former Yankees could not abide the idea of a water heater above our heads and had our future builders make room for similar equipment being lodged in the garage! At the time we purchased the property in Maryland, we paid about $27,000, and sold it for only a modest increase, five years later. Today, it would take us more than $500,000 to buy it back!

There was only a modest yard associated with our suburban home, perched on a low hill. Grass cutting was a challenge for the front lawn. The backyard was overgrown with shrubs and trees. Over the years, we slowly converted this area into a rock garden, a small site surrounded by nature. Shortly after we moved into our new home, a large tree was uprooted by a windstorm and many weeks were devoted to cutting up the remaining roots and enlarging the opened area. Fortunately, the tree missed the surrounding houses, and ours, as it toppled over.

There was a real advantage in living close to our new house as it was being constructed. We had ordered that the exterior, wood panels be painted a light green to offset the red bricks of the foundation walls. We were amazed when we first saw the glossy finish illuminating our part of the cul-de-sac of our truly outstanding home. The builder repainted with an appropriate outdoor product to give a result that would be less offensive to all of the neighbors.

We actually had known neighbors living around us. They became close friends over the years, and we shared meals and parties with them. On one side were Bernie and Pat O’Donnell; on the other were Joe and Angela Ditchey and their many kids. Our best friends, Bob and Sally Thyberg, lived across the street from our cul-de-sac. We spent many evenings together watching the newly created “Star Trek” and “Mission Impossible.” Bob and Sally also played bridge and liked the same summertime gin-and-tonics and wintertime scotch-and-sodas that we consumed with them. Bob, who worked for the Department of the Navy, drove a motorcycle, which Karen dared to ride with him; I declined.

Stores, school, and church, now St Patrick’s, were within the normal fifteen-minute suburban drive. I continued to commute with Will Nusser to the Westwood building while I remained with the NIAMD.

We led a pleasant and typical suburban life on Flint Rock Road, a place which was much more modern than the home where Fred and Wilma once resided along with their neighbors, the Rubbles. The Thybergs were as much fun as Barnie and Bette and our fireplaces were reserved for making popcorn rather than roasting haunches of a mastodon.

Memories of family life in 1968 have been limited, but the same has not been true for events impacting upon our own lives and those of others in this fate-filled year. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Jones at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. Within the week, we saw from our backyard in Maryland the smoke of the fires destroying 14th Street in downtown Washington, D.C. Dark clouds rising over the nation’s Capital were not an experience anyone might expect, unless you had lived there in 1812 – 1814. What would come next?

I did not venture very much to that northwest section of the District, even though it was not far from the federal buildings where I had worked and visited during the last three years. We had a close friend, Francie Callan, Karen’s sorority sister, living in an apartment building on East Capital. She was recovering from a broken leg and unable to escape from her third-floor apartment, if the need should arise. No part of the District seemed to be safe if the rioters left their neighborhoods around 14th and U streets. We worried about her and others we knew who lived downtown. We expected Maryland would be safe. Our concerns lasted for more than the four days that the Capital was under attack.

Within a few weeks, the riots evolved into a more settled stage for the siege. A “March on Washington” resulted in the construction of “Resurrection City” located on the Mall around the Reflection Pool, near the Lincoln Memorial. The encampment lasted from Mothers’ Day in mid-May through the last days of June. Many of my physician friends from the PHS and the NIH provided health care to its residents, who, nevertheless, held them under suspicion, since they thought that really good doctors would have had nothing to do with such rabbles.

On the other hand, those six weeks in the early summer of 1968 had one advantage for us and other residents. Because of the previous riots and the resulting tent-city of displaced inhabitants, there were few tourists. This was the only time during our years in Washington that there were no parking problems around the Mall and its museums. Life continued in its usual, routine manner. It lasted until early June.

On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The Capital, once more, entered a period of shock and mourning, which lasted until late August. I vividly recall, from this period, an incident when I was severely criticized by friends, because I made use of “Sirhan Sirhan” as the topic for a charade game in which we were involved!

The meeting of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago changed the nature of the discussions of my friends and colleagues. But, interestingly, the nominations of Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie as well as those of Nixon and Agnew did not result in the bitterness which developed later in national politics.

In the 1960s it was my observation that civil politicians and civil servants remained civilized. During the day, policy issues would be discussed with great fervor, even with anger. But the political “stupidity” of opponents was not held as a personal demonization, lacking any empathy for the dignity of the human person. As federal employees we never really knew much about the personal politics of those with whom we labored for the good of the nation.

In my later years as a bureaucrat, I had no problems drafting an official response that would be signed by a congressman to an inquiry from a constituent about the NIH. It was a spellbinding time to be a real civil servant and accomplish the mutual goals mandated by the Congressional and Executive branches of the federal government. The real challenge each fiscal year was to help in the construction of three budgetary requests: one for a reduced appropriation, one for a realistic allotment and one if there might be a blue-sky expansion, a seldom occurring event. The only blue skies were the ones brought by the Washington weather and not by federal funds.

During the previous and current administrations in Washington, the nature of Congress and the entire federal government has changed dramatically. If someone does not completely agree with your own position, that individual is now beyond redemption. All negative adjectives can currently be applied to these former-humans. I cannot see myself existing in such a climate of stupid calumny. I’m pleased that I was able to experience being a federal civil servant when they were, indeed, civil both at work, and at leisure.

I have commented in other reflections on the insurrection of January 6, 2021. The insurrections of the summer of 1968 provide me with sufficient memories of Washington on fire.

Once again, being busy and fully engaged in living my life, I had little time to devote to writing about it, although I have found a diary entry about a lunch with Peyton Stapp at the Cosmos Club for Thursday, January 9, 1969.

Peyton, a senior advisor for those in “Building 1,” invited me for our monthly conversation about my career development. That day’s enticement was to assess my interest as director of the Statistics and Analysis Branch of the DRG. The additional carrot was a GS-15 level appointment. I was currently the Chief of the Analysis and Evaluation Branch of the NIAMD, an advancement I had taken two years ago within the Institute. At present I had control of all of the Institute’s data for all of the grants we made. Peyton was proposing a similar role for the entire NIH.

The Cosmos Club was a private social club founded in 1878. Originally it was where the cultural and professional elite men of Washington could gather for drinks, discussion and meals. It had the appearance of the venues seen in old movies. There were well-worn, deep-red carpets, leather reading chairs, dark portraits, male dining rooms, efficient service and the air of the “Establishment” for which it existed. In my notes I wrote that all of this interaction and its location were “… amusing and instructive to this little old 2nd generation WOP who finds himself with a case of Potomac fever.” I did not follow-up on Peyton’s offer, but I did enjoy the occasional lunch with him at the Cosmos Club.

My notes also indicate that two weeks later I happened to meet Dr. Tsoo King in the snack room at the Westwood Building. Dr. King was the person whose negative interactions with me had led directly to my current association with the NIH. He was in town for some meetings at the NSF and thought he should “make nice” with the science administrator in charge of his NIH grant funding. It was ironic, meeting with him in my current role with the Feds.

Interactions with my former colleagues were not uncommon. Two days after my chance meeting with Tsoo, I had a telephone call from Dr. Lucile Smith, my mentor at Dartmouth Med. She called about her own grant funding which had not been renewed during the latest round of competitive reviews. Given the cutbacks in the NIH budgets at that time, this was not an unusual occurrence.

Years ago, when Lucile had learned that I was interested in leaving “active” science to become an administrator, she felt I had “deserted” my destiny, a destiny which she had a part in forming, and I was now abandoning. The feeling was not uncommon for many with whom I had trained. To leave the academic life of research and teaching was a complete betrayal. Becoming a scientist-administrator in charge of the disbursement of funds in support of their efforts was only slightly more acceptable than becoming an investigator in a pharmaceutical house where you received a salary for your work.

My notes also show that the evening of the day Lucile called was when I attended a meeting of the informal Science and Public Policy discussion group of which I was a member. Although there were a half-dozen or so of us from different governmental agencies who met monthly, this evening only Dick Chapman, from the National Academy of Public Administration, Mel Bolster, from the Personnel Management Office, NIH, and Peter Rumsey, from the Research and Development desk of the Department of Defense, Bureau of the Budget came to my house on Flint Rock Road. (Karen spent the evening with Bob and Sally!) During the years, the discussion group dissolved as each of us became more involved with our actual work and had less time to discuss the theory of what we did. Not only journal writing is driven out by the mundane. Thoughtful discussion of what might be accomplished by your work can be outweighed by the act of doing the work, itself.

The last entry for 1969 was written on January 20. “No work today since it was Inauguration Day for Richard M. Nixon as 37th President of the U.S. Watched the ceremonies and parade on TV. Some year we might go Down Town for it. The day was cold & dreary – fitting for some moaners, I guess. I’m not really one of them. Although I voted for HHH – and why, I’m not sure, I have no animosity toward RMN. I guess last Nov. my feeling was I couldn’t with consistency vote for Nixon, since I once voted for Kennedy. How has Nixon changed in the last 8 years? He must have (or I must have), since 8 years ago I was very anti-Nixon. But why not give him a chance to see what he does or does not do?

“Today I did feel sorry for HHH – on TV he looked quite discouraged. Lb., on the other hand, seemed to really mean it when he answered a reporter’s question: “How can a President leaving office be happy?” with the response: “Well, I am!” My guess is that in the coming days, Johnson’s popularity as a former President will increase. He may be another Truman, vilified during his term and beloved afterwards.”

So much for my political observations!

Edit note: This recollection from 1969 was written on January 17, 2019, for the next meeting of our “Legacy in Words” group at Eagle’s Trace. The date of editing it for inclusion in “Cameos and Carousels” is January 8, 2021, two days after the “Four Hour Insurrections” of January 6 when the Trumperians marched on the Capitol, at the urging of the current-but-soon-to-be-former President Donald Trump, and, upon entering the chambers, engaged in acts of vandalism not seen since the British invasion of 1814. I believe there is (or should be) a greater concern about the “peaceful transition of power” two weeks from now, then there was five decades ago! That period saw the Impeachment of Nixon. Some would like to see Mr. Trump’s “Second Impeachment!” within the limited days he has left in this First Term. I’m happy that we, personally, do not have a current “Life in Washington.” All we need to worry about, directly, is the current COVID-19 pandemic! One virus is sufficient.