We had moved from Ithaca to Hanover in the summer of 1961 and enjoyed living in our duplex on Lyme Rd for almost a full year. But with spring, there came the time for us to move once more. Although I still technically remained a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Noda, chairman of the Biochemistry department, thought I might be offered the title of Instructor. It would look good on my resume, even if I were not a full-time member of the faculty. Like others in the department, I taught part of the general biochemistry lectures given to all medical students. As a result of my doctoral work at Cornell, I had been assigned to cover the topic of “lipids.” Cholesterol was only one form of a lipid; but I managed to include all of the regular fats and fatty acids as well as fat-soluble vitamins and phospholipids needed for cellular structures!
In April 1962 we moved to a new apartment building at 10 North Park, a ten-minute walk from the medical school. We now began to develop a life with friends, especially couples residing in our building, as well as several living along the near-by lane where other junior faculty were housed.
Chuck and Jackie Mayer were Canadians who lived in the apartment on the first floor. We lived on the second, along with the Moores. Chuck was in the Business School and Ken Moore was in Pharmacology in the Medical School.
Interestingly, Dartmouth College took great pride in being a College with its Schools, rather than a University composed of Colleges. In 1819, Daniel Webster had defended the independent College concept when the state of New Hampshire had tried to make Dartmouth into a state university.
Other junior faculty from the Biochemistry department lived down the lane from us. Our best friends were Ed and Shirley Westhead; their daughter, Vickie, was our daughter’s best playmate. They would meet on our porch for hours, quite often engaged in a game of argument. One would repeatedly shout “no” in response to the other one shouting “yes.” Then one would say, “Now it’s your turn” and they would reverse who said “yes” and who said “no.”
The Wishnia children were equally interesting, but more provoking. Arnold, their father, spoke to them only in German; their mother only in French. Their parenting concept was that their children would learn English by playing with their peers. The problem came, however, when no other parent could chastise them in English, if discipline were needed because of a childhood confrontation. English, it seems, was the language for play and not for instruction on how to behave. They could be reprimanded only in German or French!
Arnold also had two related foibles his friends tried to appreciate. If he became bored in a conversation at a party in someone’s apartment, he would find a book and curl up in an armchair to pass the time. His reading extended to several languages in books checked out of the college library. When he left Dartmouth, the legend goes, he was requested not to return all of his borrowed books at one time. Meanwhile, potential readers were instructed to contact him directly if they needed something originally checked out to him.
Living in our apartment on North Park was a pleasant experience for me. Although we had a second floor apartment, an external door in my study (I now had a real one!) opened directly onto the adjoining hill. I often escaped for a short walk to the Bema, a student gathering place in the woods surrounding our building. In warm weather, faculty couples living around us would gather for picnics on the lawn around our apartment building. Shared dinners were not uncommon. A communal life was once again being established as it had been done among young families no matter where they lived or how they were employed.
As with almost all couples who comprise early friendships, we never saw them again once we left Hanover, although Ed Westhead was, later, a member of the Biochemistry department at the University of Massachusetts when we lived in Amherst. At one time, I considered him my closest friend and colleague in Hanover. Time, itself, can wear away relationships, unless we make a special effort to preserve them. Weathering can cause mountains to turn into plains. Human decades act in the same way as eons do for stone.