Category: National Institutes of Health

It was a late evening in January 1969, and I was about to join Karen, who had gone to bed earlier, when I heard the newscast. With its opening words I realized something terrible had happened; the woman who had been murdered was a friend, Cathy Kalberer. She had been married to Jack, a former Grants Associate and a close, personal friend. On several occasions we had eaten dinner with them in their apartment or at our own house. We were surprised when they had broken up last summer.

Cathy had moved to the Spring Lake Apartments on Democracy Blvd. and Jack remained in the one they had at the Grosvenor Apartments in Bethesda, near the NIH campus. Apparently, Cathy had been brutally stabbed. I noted in my journal at the time: “I had to tell Karen about it – needless to say she (nor I) could sleep the rest of the night. Statistically I suppose everyone will come in contact with a violent death – but you never really believe that.” I certainly didn’t.

The next day, I spoke with Palmer Saunders, Jack’s boss, whom I knew. He had gone with Jack to identify the body. On the way there, they were concerned Cathy had committed suicide. Instead, they found she had been repeatedly stabbed and her body covered with knife marks. Although killed in her apartment, her body had been found in a car outside her building. It was thought that some assailant had followed behind her as she returned to her apartment from grocery shopping.

Several days later I met with Jack in his office. Even after their breakup, he still was deeply in love with Cathy, and remained horror-struck with the development of the reports about the incident. We spoke of our times together; nostalgia was only a partial remedy for the hurt. I was pleased I could provide a sounding board for his reflections.

The NIH and the surrounding Montgomery County were shaken by the event. Evidently, Cathy’s murder was only one in a series. About two weeks before her murder, a 14-year-old girl who had been visiting the Spring Lake Apartments had been killed in a similar manner, by stabbing. Shortly after Cathy’s death, a young FBI secretary in nearby Virginia had also been stabbed in her apartment building. The newspapers pointed out that all three were blonds. Everyone was now making certain to lock their doors and cars. Women were staying away from Montgomery Mall, which was near the Spring Lake buildings. The GA monthly gathering, previously scheduled for the social lounge in Jack’s apartment building, was, of course, cancelled. The deaths were general topics of conversation by NIH members for several weeks afterwards. The cases remained unsolved. The news-coverage was finally concluded because of another death.

On July 18, Mary Jo Kopechne died in a car accident near a bridge at Chappaquidick. The driver was Sen. Ted Kennedy. Again, Karen’s concerns became more personal than what we might have expected them to be. Mary Jo had been a close friend of Francie Callan, Karen’s sorority sister, who having recovered from her broken leg, returned to work at the Library of Congress, where she wrote the one-sentence summary for children’s books processed by the Library. Francie spoke to us of her own views about Mary Jo and the Senator.

But few stories, even those about murders and accidents, have long lives in Washington, D.C. Within days, on July 25, 1969, Neil A. Armstrong walked on the moon. That night, or 2:54 a.m. to be more exact, we had encouraged Deb and Ken to join us around the television in our downstairs family room to watch the dim outlines of human legs and feet as they touched a surface other than one found on our earth. It has become a more significant memory than those of deaths in Washington.

Our three kids seemed to enjoy living in the Washington area, even if there were limited opportunities in the immediate neighborhood. Our next-door neighbors in Rockville, the Ditchey’s, had children about their same age, but I don’t recall how much they might have played together. Then, again, I did not have a lot to do about their day-to-day lives at the time. I was there for emergencies.

In January 1969, Karen had gone to the grocery store when Kip came running upstairs, crying loudly. While playing with Ken in the rec-room, he had been crawling under the coffee table and rammed his head into its edge. A four-by-ten-millimeter hole resulted. While I attempted to stop the flow with direct pressure, I sent Deb over to the Thybergs to ask for a ride to the hospital. I had no idea when Karen would get back or how serious the break was. I did manage to stop the profuse bleeding and saw that the cut was too wide to leave open. So, Bob and I took him to the Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, while Sally stayed with Deb and Ken (and cleaned up the mess, I might add.)

The nurse in the emergency room took Kip off immediately, while I filled out some forms. When, after forty-five minutes, they brought Kip out, I learned he had required five stitches – received, I heard, without any crying, complaints, or other events. He had spent the time talking to the staff. I felt that, at three-and-one-half, he had more guts than I did, being thirty years older.

The next day he was fine, except for a band-aid on his forehead. We took him to get a “Billy Blast Off” in payment for his cooperation. With it went a “warning” to him, Ken and Deb that there would be no more “rewards” for getting hurt. There were no other significant accidents, although a year or so later, Ken suffered rug-burns administered, so they claimed, by accident, while Deb and he had been doing some roughhousing. We were fortunate; none of the kids ever broke a bone.

Disciplinary problems were other matters. Parent-teacher conferences went well for Deb who seemed to enjoy school. With Ken, they said he goofed off as often as he could. He seemed to learn rapidly enough, perhaps, too readily, and boredom often overcame him, leading to his mischief in the classroom. He was able to sing the alphabet song before Deb started first grade and was the one who “shamed” her into learning it. He was not challenged, even mathematically, since he could readily do simple multiplication and division in his head while in the first grade. His concept of fractions was better at that time than mine was years later.

On a recurring basis, the three of them presented minimal problems for me; I was the typical, mid-1960s father who went to the office every day. Consequently, Karen became the family nurturer and problem-solver. My responsibility was to see that they went to Mass on Sunday, an occasion which always ended with either donuts or bagels. However, most of the time we tried to promote a joint-front and consistency. On the other hand, at an early age they had learned, especially the boys, that the easiest way to escape any punishment for wrongdoing was to create a disagreement between Karen and me about the potential outcome we might be planning toward them. If we disagreed, they could get away with almost anything.

The major times we spent together were on brief trips to the museums downtown and our extended summer vacations. All three of them enjoyed a long visit to Annapolis with its bright sun, military cannons and boats. The same was true for Monticello and Williamsburg and their early exposure to American history. It was on one of these trips that the boys bought their one and only guns: replicas of colonial pistols which fired caps. Otherwise, games of war had to be fought with fingertips and imagination.

Our favorite site for a summer vacation was Kitty Hawk. The long drive there and back had one “interesting” recurring event: a rest-stop every few hours. Ken said he got to know just about every gas-station between Rockville and North Carolina. Everyone enjoyed the beach and the wind. The only problem was Karen’s fear of heights. She climbed the Lighthouse at Kitty Hawk but refused to step onto the open balcony. The enclosed summit of the Washington Monument was more acceptable. Her phobia of open-air heights lasted until years later, when she finally rode sky-lifts to the tops of several Alpine mountains where we looked down upon air-gliders who ran over the edge of cliffs and sailed to the valleys below. I wonder: did the Wright brothers ever visit Switzerland?

Classically, early mid-life is the time for self-improvements. Once a man has reached fifty, the years ahead must be statistically less than the ones which went before. During the fourth decade, i.e., while still in his thirties, he continues to have the time available to make changes. In the mid-to-late 1960s, my years numbered in the thirties. I attempted my own self-improvements.

I had never been athletic. Realistically, post-age-35 did not mean I could suddenly take on a new body-form, even with diet and weight-loss, both of which I did attempt. Among the federal employees of the NIH, I knew no one who played flag-football or pick-up basketball. Even jogging and golf were not reasonable activities for me. The first was too time-intensive and the second, too expensive to begin. But I did want to learn how to swim.

Swimming was claimed to be a fun-activity. Although at Kent State I had taken a brief PE course in swimming, I really never was able to do it in reality. All I did was “pass the course.” Now in my thirties, I thought learning how to swim would not take too much effort, and only minimal equipment! The local YMCA offered courses. I enrolled and spent a few hours on weekends and evenings trying to learn how to float. I had to start somewhere, and this was surely how to begin. I quickly learned how to sink. Since it was in the shallow end of the pool, I could stand up and sputter before trying to drown again. After what seemed like many months, I was able to move my legs in what could be called a frog-kick. Ultimately, my arms produced a breaststroke. At last, I was able to enjoy floating and gliding in the pool when we went on that summer vacation to Kitty Hawk. I even had enough courage and confidence to dip into the Atlantic coastal waters. Karen, who had grown up on Lake Erie, had taught our kids the rudiments long ago. They took great delight in getting me to sputter as often as possible.

So much for physical improvements.

Artistic ones had to be tried, as well. For many years I had envied Karen’s vocal ability and the enjoyment she had by participating in college musicals during our academic years and in madrigal groups in the first years following our marriage. She continued to find and join singing groups in the Bethesda-Rockville area. She sang; I thought I might be able to draw. In elementary and middle school, I had greatly enjoyed drawing, usually based on pictures or photos. It was now time for me to take formal classes.

Once again, the local YMCA was the source for change. I went to evening classes for charcoal figure drawing offered at a very low cost. I learned how to use Conté sticks on newsprint and how to shade charcoal with my fingers or with a chamois cloth. It was great fun to move the crayon on the paper while looking at the edges of a human model sitting in front of us. There was a marvelous fantasy relationship between the speed of the crayon’s movement on the paper and that of my eye following the figure’s contour. By the time the classes concluded with sketching a male nude, my coordination had greatly improved. I never did well with my attempts at watercolors; oils were easier to use. I set up an easel and working space in one of our two storage rooms on the lower level of our house and had a relaxing time, when I was freed from thoughts about federal budgets and science policy questions.

Karen and I also found time for mutual improvements as well as our separate endeavors relating to music or art. We joined a small gathering who was interested in the Great Books – a project based on the academic process used at the University of Chicago. We would read from a set of green paperbacks published by the University and then gather every other week to discuss our views on the subject matter. Several of our assignments covered Greek playwrights. I was reminded of the joy I once had in taking courses in college that included plays from the Greek classics to modern American and European theater.

Although live theater was available in the District and in surrounding areas, such as the Olney Theater north of Rockville, we seldom made the trip to attend any productions. We had been spoiled by the ready availability of cultural events found in the college towns in which we once resided. It was not until we moved to Amherst, Mass. that we once more had such opportunities. Although its construction had begun in 1964 along Rock Creek Parkway, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts did not open until 1971, after we had returned to our life in New England. It was there that we, once more, had even greater opportunities for self-improvement. Meanwhile, I was content with my efforts in swimming, charcoal drawing and the discussion of the Great Books.

When I was an undergraduate at Kent State, I never expected the University would someday be a national reference. Then came Monday, May 4, 1970, and the days afterwards. At the time, the Vietnamese war was not on my mind, although it was a preoccupation of many other people, particularly those who maintained we should not be involved in what many saw as a civil war in Southeast Asia. The then-current undergraduates at KSU, as well as those attending other colleges throughout the country, were greatly disturbed by the recent US military incursion into neighboring Cambodia. They began their antiwar protests.

The bars in downtown Kent were packed with students on the evening of the first weekend in May. Some maintained a riot was beginning to start, an event that would not have been possible fifteen years ago, when I went to those same bars.

The beer-soaked revelers arrived back on campus. Somehow, the white, wooden huts housing the ROTC behind the power plant were set on fire and burned to the ground. Governor Rhodes sent the Ohio National Guard, a thousand strong, to prevent further action against the school’s property and personnel. They were present on Monday when many students gathered on the Commons near the Victory Bell, once a favorite location for taking photos of a girlfriend. Even I had one of Karen sitting demurely there.

For some reason that was never known or agreed to, the Guard fired on the students. Within thirteen seconds, four were killed; nine were wounded. The terror of a war in Vietnam became, for the first time, a part of the terror of a war among U.S. citizens on American soil. A photo of a teenaged, runaway girl, Mary Veccio, kneeling over a dying student, Jeffrey Miller, became the image for the new horror. It has become the background photograph for all those who have asked me, upon learning that I graduated from the University: “Where you there before or after Kent State?” They usually omit the word “Massacre.” In some unknown manner, the riot, the shooting, and the devastation have all been encompassed by the name: “Kent State.”

The event and its multiple interpretations appeared on the news reports and in the Washington Post. Books have been written, with varying degrees of accuracy, about the tragedy. The conclusions vary with the writer. Even James A. Michener’s Kent State: What Happened and Why has errors, according to the University, itself. Carl Oglesby wrote his version of the events, based upon the eyewitness accounts of those who suffered there.

I tried to follow some of the published accounts, especially those appearing at the time, but found them troublesome. I preferred my own recollections of those days “before Kent State” when I walked the Hill and passed through its structures which were so important to my own life.

The major post-Kent State event for Karen and me was an invitation to a gathering of alumni hosted by Sen. Ted Kennedy at his home in McLean, Virginia. It was the only time when we entered the grounds of a “celebrity.” We were impressed. We had never been completely engaged with the Senator, especially after the Kopechne incident, but it was in McLean that we gained an appreciation of what charisma the Kennedy’s possessed.

We felt Ted Kennedy’s aura as he walked by us on his rounds and greeted the visitors who had come to reflect on the May 4th tragedy and to honor those whose young lives had been forfeited on behalf of a thankless cause.

It has been a challenge to try to understand the contrast between how the American public reacted to veterans returning from Vietnam and those who served in the Gulf Wars and current conflicts abroad. Thoughts and perceptions vary greatly for those who fought and returned from Vietnam and those who left and never returned from Canada. We rightfully salute those who have had multiple deployments to the Middle East and Afghanistan. Yet those who were drafted to fight in the jungles of Vietnam still bear different scars of war.

Somehow, the images of the massacre at Kent State have become intermingled with those from the Mekong Delta. It has remained difficult to separate the facts and the fiction of the terrors of life.

Change has always been a part of my professional life. It was not that I became bored with my job, but rather, once I had completed an activity to my satisfaction, I wanted to try something else. And so it was that in December 1969. I moved from the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases of the NIH to become Assistant Director of the Division of Research Resources. There was little distinction between an Institute and a Division within the NIH. The current Director of the DRR, Tom Bowery, had finally convinced me I should make the change. My office was now much larger than any I had previously occupied. There was even room for couches, coffee tables and a standard, governmental credenza!

The Division supported large, institution-wide programs involved with multi-disciplinary approaches that cost more money than would be provided by a normal research grant with a highly limited purpose. There were four Branches within the Division.

The Animal Resources Branch funded facilities for animals serving as test subjects. This was a decade before organizations such as “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” (PETA) were formed. The expanded resources needed by university researchers who could not obtain funds for the upkeep of individual colonies of animals did follow humane procedures from their inceptions, even though action groups coming later never seemed to accept this premise. The nonhuman primates housed at such sites were very well cared for. I enjoyed visiting the center at the Davis campus of the University of California and the one housed in Seattle for the University of Washington. At the time, there were other centers located in Beaverton, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Covington, Louisiana. The most famous, perhaps, was the Yerkes Center affiliated with Emory University.

A counterpart to the nonhuman Animal Resources Branch was the General Clinical Research Centers Branch. It offered institution-wide support to medical schools and hospitals throughout the country so that clinical studies could be undertaken with human subjects having different medical conditions. While the various Institutes of the NIH awarded grants for clinical trials relating to specific diseases of interest to them, this Branch of the DRR funded multi-disciplinary units dedicated to medical studies without being restricted to a particular disease. My discussions with the staff in this branch included problems concerning policy questions and procedural implementation of hospitalization and fee-for service questions for both in-patient and ambulatory studies. These meetings were far different from those focused on the biochemical concepts I had once discussed with colleagues.

A more scientific content was part of my discussions with those in the Special Research Resources Branch, the administrative group supporting the purchase of large equipment that was, for the first time, being used for medical studies. These were the days when not every laboratory could have its own electron-microscope or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine. This was the initiation of “big science” which was “big” primarily because of the expensive, newly developed equipment, now found within every hospital and medical school, that demanded multiple users to justify the cost of doing research with it.

Counter to the “big science” supported by the Special Research Resources Branch were the institutional awards made by the Branch which managed the BRSG: Biomedical Research Support Grants. Depending upon how much funding a medical school or university received from the NIH, each school was awarded a grant it could use to initiate basic research before such studies led to sufficient results to request funds for an independent award made directly by one of the Institutes of the NIH. In my later professional life, when I was involved with research grants made to either the University of Massachusetts or Baylor College of Medicine, I was also the “Principle Investigator” who managed the school’s BRSG award. It was then that I convened groups of faculty who reviewed requests from other researchers who needed limited support to obtain preliminary data which would justify their approach when seeking additional funds for advanced research. In order to engage in research, a scientist needed to have done enough preliminary work to confirm that the work to be undertaken would be validly approached.

This may be the primary reason why I left the research lab. It was a difficult challenge to solicit funds to prove you can do something before you can do it! Put another way: you need to have changed before you are allowed to change. Once you’ve accomplished something, it’s now time to accomplish something even better.

By the end of 1970, I made another change in my professional life and in my lifestyle, in general. Although I had been content with my career as a civil servant with the NIH, I continued to dream about a return, someday, to the life of academe. It was now time to return to that dream. Once again, it was a matter of whom you know and what luck you have. Some may call it destiny.

Dick Louttit was a friend and a former Grants Associate. When he graduated from the GA program, he technically left the National Institutes of Health to become a program director with the National Institutes of Mental Health, a companion agency to the NIH, one with Institutes charged with studies of the brain and psychology rather than of the body and physiology. Over the last five years we had maintained a close relationship. In early 1970, Dick left the NIMH to become Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He replaced Dr. Mortimer Appley, who was appointed Dean of the Graduate School for UMA. Mort was now in search of an Associate Graduate Dean for Research. Dick recommended me for the position.

I visited the campus and fell in love with it and the small town of Amherst, which had three colleges and was part of the Five-College Consortium in Western Mass. The town’s population consisted primarily of faculty, staff and students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College and the newly formed, innovative Hampshire College.

My childhood dream had been to be the President of a small college. My mother and I had spent many evenings listening to a radio program, staring her favorite actor, Ronald Colman. He played this part, being in charge of The Halls of Ivy. The “Halls” lived a perfect life of action and tranquility on their small, ivy-covered college campus. This is what I wanted out of life. This dream had been an essential part of my educational pathway, especially through Cornell and Dartmouth. I envisioned that Amherst would provide an opportunity for continuing along this road. It did and it didn’t.

If I had remained with the NIH, I probably would have advanced through the existing civil service ranks. As an Associate Director of an institute-level component of the agency, I already held a GS-15 position, the highest level prior to a Congressional appointment. I was not sure I wanted to engage in the “politicking” needed to obtain a GS-16 appointment. Little did I realize, at the time, that academic “politicking” is much more difficult and ego-demanding!

In 1970, I saw only the potential benefits of being associated with one of the Five College institutions. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst was the largest of the five, being one of the major Land Grant schools of the United State, created by the Morrill Acts in the mid-to-late 1800’s, that initiated state agricultural and engineering schools. In Massachusetts, UMA was the “agricultural” school and MIT, the “engineering” institute. Cornell was another unique example with a combined campus for agriculture and engineering supported by state funds and a private college supported by donations. Texas A&M represents the organization of the usual land-grant university.

Amherst College, another member of the Five College Consortium, was a former male-only-college dating back to the 1820s. Hampshire College, with a non-traditional academic program, opened that year, 1970, on the south side of town. Hampshire, ultimately, was too non-traditional and announced its possible closure or merger with another institution in late January of 2019. However, it apparently is still hanging on as 2023 begins!

The other two members of the Five-College Consortium were originally places for women to obtain a private, higher education: Smith College in Northampton, eight miles to the west of Amherst, and Mount Holyoke College about twice as far to the south of town. A student enrolled in any of the Five-Colleges could attend classes at any of the other schools with no additional cost: a great advantage for young adults paying a state tuition at UMA.

When Mort Appley offered me a position as Associate Dean in the Graduate School of UMA, it did not take me long to agree to my return to New England. I eagerly looked forward to another change in my career pathway, one which could lead me toward that dream goal: the Halls of Ivy.