May 1996
Cape Canaveral

Autobiography
   of
Richard S. Young

Introduction:

  The hardest part of writing anything, is getting started. It has always been that
way for me and I've been a fairly prolific writer. Once you get started it gets easier
because presumably you have put in the time to have organized your thoughts as to
why you are writing it, what is important (at least to you), and who might be interested
in reading it. My principal reason for writing it is because I believe my life has been
very interesting, (certainly to me),and reasonably productive. I was born before the
"great depression", grew up during the depression, lived through World War II, and
subsequent wars, (eg. the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, etc.).1 have the good fortune
to have been born into a family,who although not highly educated themselves,
believed in education, and helped me to the extent they could. In addition, I have
been fortunate in the timing of my entry into this world, which has allowed me to
experience a wide variety of major changes in the world and the way people live and
think, and to participate in a formative way in, from the very beginning, in the process
of space exploration, which I will discuss later. Another reason for writing this is that I
have a strong sense of history, especially since I am now engrossed in the geneology
of my family, which I have found especially fascinating. Both my mothers' family and
my fathers' family, came to this country before its establishment, and were true
pioneers. Both families came from England, in my mothers' case as pilgrims to the
Massachusets Colony in the early 1600% and in my fathers' case to the Rhode Island
and Connecticut Colonies in the early 1700's. Again I am fortunate in that family
records are to an extent available (especially in the Young family), which I have been
able to supplement through library research and personal interactions. My final
reason for this activity is that I find that family members are interested in their own
origins once they have been made aware that there is data out there.

  In any case, that is what this is all about. I have chosen to start with myself,
leading to as comprehensive a history of the family as I can produce in whatever time
is left to me. I have the fond hope that one of the younger members of the family may
choose to pursue this further in the future. My job as a geneologist is far from
complete, since the age of the computer has made information infinitely more     .
accessible. While it is a time consuming and sometimes difficult enterprise, it is
nonetheless fascinating and rewarding once one gets into it.


Early Years: (1927-l 939)

   I was born on March 6, 1927, in Southampton, New York, on the southeastern
coast of Long Island. My father worked for the Long Island Railroad, as did his father
and two of his brothers. My father was a telegrapher, and therefore worked in the
station - in Southampton, and we lived in Hampton Bays. Southampton is now and
has been the home of the wealthy. We were not in that category!

   I have no memory of this period. Photographs of our house show it to be a new
small bungalow. There are also photographs of me in a large field of daisys. During
this period of time (probably not much more than a year) my mother entered my
photograph in a beauty contest in the Brooklyn Journal newspaper. There is a
certificate indicating that I received honorable mention. My mother always said that I
won first prize. My father had worked in other railroad stations on Long Island
including Port Jefferson and Kings Park. His father Ray P. Young had been station
master at the Stony Brook Station since 1912, when they moved to Long Island.  He
held that position until the mid495O's when he retired. There will be more about my
grandfather in the family genealogical material, but suffice it to say that the Young
family came to Long Island in 1912. They had for several generations lived in
Rathbone,New York, a tiny town in south central New York State (still there, but
virtually a ghost town), on the Canisteo river, a few miles from Addison,N.Y.and before
moving to Long Island, they spent a year on a small farm in Mobile, Alabama.
apparently something my grandfather had always wanted to do. They had migrated to
New York from Connecticut-Rhode Island after the Revolution (in the early 1800's).  It
was here that my grandfather began a lifetime of association with railroads.

Kings Park and surroundings:

   My earliest childhood memories begin in Kings Park, on the north shore of Long
Island, not far from Long island Sound. The town was made noteworthy by the
presence of a large state mental instution (large enough to have its own railroad spur,
so that family and friends of patients could visit easily from New York - 60 miles west).
I had relatives, also from upstate New York, who had migrated there because of the
job opportunities provided by the hospital. There was a large immigrant population,
also attracted by jobs. The largest of these immigrant groups was probably from
Ireland, where the disasterous potato famine had wreaked havoc. These people lived
in town and were the people I grew up with. They were hard working, often hard
drinking and very Catholic. The local Catholic Church was very influential in defining
the social mores of the town. The Protestants and Jews were the town minorities, and
endured the prejudices usually encountered by minorities. On the other hand, these
minorities (particularly the protestants) provided the town with older established
families, who became the merchants, bankers and other professionals of the town.  It
wae this opportunity that brought my father and his brother from the railroad to the
world of small business. In 1927 they established "Young Brothers", a shop selling
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and repairing electrical appliances on Main Street, Of course, the depression began
almost immediately, which did not help the two young entrepreneurs. On the other
hand, the state hospital provided a degree of job stability, so that things were not quite
as bad as they might have been People could stifl buy, and pay most of their debts,
which required both husband and wife to work, one on the night shift and the other on
the day shift. 42hiWm,we often !eft to their own devices with the expected
consequences in terms of delinquency. Things were not easy in the depression years.

   The other distinctive feature of the time was the fact that Long Island was
primarily farm country - Potatos, other vegetables (carrots, peas, cabbage, beans,
cauliflower, defy, tmips, etc.) , as well as fruits and berries (apples, pears, peaches,
and strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, mullberries, cherries, etc) The
major crop was potato, Long Island then being the third largest producer in the United
States, behind only Maine and Idaho. As a youngster, I worked on one of those farms,
belonging to the family of a schoolmate of mine (Walter Nowick). We were picked up
in town around dawn and taken by truck to whatever potato acreage was being dug on
that day. We thought we were in heaven, being paid for picking potatos. On the other
hand, it was long and hard work - dawn to dusk. We picked with the old women - large
strong ladies who had spent a lifetime, first in Poland and then on Long Island, doing
this kind of Jabor- They were wonderful people and very nice to us, although there was
a language problem. The way it worked was we would move down the rows picking
potatos into a large wicker basket, designed to hold one bushel. Then the basket had
to be picked up and dumped into a bushel bag, which was left in the row to be
counted and in the late afternoon loaded onto a flatbed truck for transport back to the
sorting shed. This was fine except that for most of us, the baskets were too heavy, and
the ladies had to help us - very embarassing. Later, loading the truck was equally
embarassing. The 60 year and older women thought this very amusing, since most of
them could pick up the sack of potatos and load it with two fingers. If we cheated, and
put rocks in with the potatos Mr. Nowick made us stay late and pick out the rocks as
they went by on the sorting machine. We learned. We were paid a penny a bushel for
picking potatos, and were very happy to get it - at that rate we could make $1 .OO a day
for a hundred bushels. That was great for a kid during the depression. The old ladies
could pick 200 bushels and I think they were paid more than us. By the time of WWII
we were paid two cents per bushel. During these years milk (unpasturized) was still
delivered to the house every morning by Mr. Pfeffer in his horse and buggy. In the
winter, you had to bring it into the house early or the cream would separate, and push
the paper cap off the bottle. Pasturized and homogenized milk was not yet around.

   A word about Walter Nowick, the farmers' son and my friend. He was a genius
of sorts - with the distinction of graduating from High School on one day and the
famous Julliard School of Music in New York City the next. He was a wonderful
pianist. During World War II, he played for the troops in Japan. During that time he
became a devoted Buddist, and gave up the piano. The world is indeed a strange
place. There was also at that time a rather large and profiible duck industry on
eastern Long Island. In other words, up until World War II, Long Island was "country
                         3


and a very pleasant place to live, certainly for a child. I loved it. It wasn't crowded, had
a moderate climate, beautiful beaches, a very good education system, low crime rate,
friendly people, etc. As anyone who lives there today knows, that is not the way it is
now, although, as public edusation goes today, New York is pretty good.

School - Depression Years

   My mother used to read to me and by the time I was five I discovered that I
could recognize many of the words she was reading. This was a wonderful discovery -
I could read! I quickly became an avid reader, and am to this day.  I actually started
school (Kindergarten) when I was fii, and when they discovered that I could read
they sent me to the first grade. That meant that I was now in the same class as my
cousin and best buddy Larry, who was a year older than me. I thought I was "hot stuff".
School was easy for me, although I wasn't a particularly outstanding student. The
Principal (Mr. Mack) was an alcoholic and a bit sadistic. The classrooms had small
windows in the doors, through which he would periodically peek as he wandered up
and down the hall. If he felt he saw any misbehavior or inattention in the classroom,
he would come in and take take the culprits down to "The Cffice"). There he applied
one or the other of two forms of punishment - the whipping of the open palms of the
hands with a heavily applied yardstick, or the use of a two foot section of rubber hose
on the rump. Either was cruel and unusual punishment, and was considered so by the
school board when they learned of it and fired Mr. Mack. In general, teachers were
well respected and well treated by the public. Corporal punishment was used ,
sparingly, but it was used. We got free milk delivered to the classroom every morning,
and we brought our own lunch to school, until the school cafeteria was built. We went
to school from labor day almost to the end of June. We got 2 weeks off at Christmas,
and the major holidays. That was it - no spring break. Nobody had any money to do
anything on a spring break and most of us worked at least part time in the summer.
The only problem I recall was that my age was one or two years younger than my
classmatesso that I was socially immature through high school and into college. My
school was a "Central" school which meant that we had students from the surrounding
farms and smaller communities, who were bussed in. Bussing didn't begin in the 60's
with the Civil Rights Act. Even so, we were a small school, probably not more than 25
or 30 students per classroom. There were few school activities, but plenty of sports at
the high school level. We had baseball and basketball teams ( I played both) , and
we had intramural track and wrestling competition. We were not big enough to have a
football team. After school, we played sandlot baseball or football, and a multitude of
childhood games - "Cowboys and Indians" , "Kick the Can", "Horseshoes", etc. There
were plenty of open spaces, empty lots and woods surrounding us, and we knew how
to improvise for any shortages of equipment.

Families

4


   I had relatives on both sides of the family, within 20 miles, my mothers' family
lived mostly in Port Jefferson and environs, and my fathers' family in Stony Brook -
both towns predating the Revolution. My mothers' family (see genology) had seven
children, Hazel, Ernest, Myrtle (mother), Ethel, Albert, Donald, and Lorraine (who was,
and is only a year or so older than me). We visited the Grandma and Grandpa Terre11
in Port Jefferson. This included the whole family, usually on Sunday for dinner (the
main meal in those days was around noon, with a light meal in the evening). Since
Stony Brook is on the way to Port Jefferson, we sometimes stopped off to visit my
Grandma and Grandpa Young, and My Aunt Frances and Uncle Gus (and Gus'
daughter Lillian), or at the home of my grandfathers' sisters (Aunt Anna and Aunt Katie,
both unmarried at the time, although Katie had been married in upstate New York
(Rathbone) to a man named Miller, who disappeared. Katie had a son, my cousin
Charles, who we saw on occasion. They owned and operated a "Cottage",named
"Wopowog" actually an Inn, which took in guests in the summer.There were five
children in my fathers' family - Laurence, Frances, Halsey, Theodore, and Stuart (my
father). None of them lived at home, although Theodore and Frances lived nearby,
(see geneology) .

  In Kings Park, (population between 3,000 and 4,000) my father and his brother
Halsey, opened an electrical appliance store in 1927 just before the depression. We
lived within a block of each other and less than a mile from the village and the store.
As I recall, my mother and I didn't move to Kings Park immediately, and when we did,
we lived in rented quarters in private residences for a short time until we were able to
build the house I grew up in on Dawson St. I lived in this house until I was 16 and left
home for Gettysbung College. It was a small bungalow, with a kitchen, dining
room,living room, two bedrooms and a bath. All the rooms were very small by todays
standards. The house had a full basement used primarily for storage and a coal
furnace with coal bin. The furnace was eventually converted to oil and the space
occupied by the coal bin was turned over to me as a play/workshop area. Ten years
later (1937) when my sister was born, a tiny bedroom was added to the rear. My sister
got my bedroom and I was relegated to Siberia (at least that was the way I saw it).
Actually it was a pleasant enough room with a window on two sides into the back and
side yards and in the summer, smelling of lilac, (my favorite to this day), Hydrangea,
and whatever else was blooming in the flower garden. There was a detached garage
in the back yard, a pretty maple tree, forsythia, and across the rear fence line, our
vegetable garden. We could grow just about anything on Long Island, but in the
limited space we had , we focused on beans (green, waxed,and pole beans) , corn,
radishes, and carrots, and some years we would try things like brussel sprouts, (which
I hated). We had rhubarb along the fence and in one corner a large and productive
patch of wonderful raspberries. We also had an apple tree, usually infested with "tent
catepillars" which would denude the tree and ruin the crop if unchecked. The principal
defense, (this was before the day of really effective pesticides), was to light a torch
soaked in kerosene, and burn out the nests. Although this did little damage to the tree,
                         5


it also failed to eradicate the worms. It seemed to me that we always lost about 20% to
worms and fungus and I remember spending endless valuable (for play)hours picking
bugs off the beans.

  The street we lived on had many children mostly my age so that, although I was
an only child for the first ten years of my life, I had plenty of playmates including my
cousin Larry (who was like a brother to me). We played throughout the neighborhood
and beyond - almost no one had fenced yards. Our neighbor across the street
(McDowell), had a yard we loved because it had a big sprawling apple tree - great for
climbing, and playing Tarzan, swinging from limb to limb. I had the distinction of
breaking both arms falling out of that tree - one one summer and the other the
following summer. You would think I would learn but apparently not.  My sister Janet
was born in 1937 so we really didn't grow up together. All through the depression
years, we all had very little in terms of money, possessions, and facilities, but we were
wealthy in terms of friendships, solid families, and a willingness to help one another.  I
can remember being hungry on rare occasions but not in any serious way. We had
very few toys by todays standards. Christmas presents were usually necktiessocks,
handkerchiefs, underwear, etc. I wore neckties virtually everyday to school and
elsewhere. While we had little, we didn't know we had little and were quite content.  I
think there was much less real poverty then than now in our affluent society. Our
clothing was inexpensive and durable. Small children wore shorts but only for a few
years. Once we started school we graduated to "knickers" but our goal was long
pants which most of us didn't get until high school. Knickers were usually made of
heavy corduroy which went "zip", "zip",when we walked. They went to below the knee,
where they had either elastic or a buckle. Sneakers were worn a lot, but they were not
like todays sneakers - they were ankle high and they were all the same - for sports or
outside wear. Bathing suits were wool, one piece, and had shoulder straps. Girls
wore dresses, or skirts and blouses. Soys all wanted the shoe-boots that went from
foot to knee, laced all the way, and required endless waterproofing so they could be
worn in the snow. We didn't have to wear galoshes, or even rubbers. Our coats were
"Macintoshes", heavy and made of wool and usually plaid. Girls wouldn't be caught
dead in any of this. Woolen pull on hats were the rule until high school when "fedoras"
(felt hats with brims which looked like adult mens hats) were given to us for wear to
church or more formal occasions. We hated fedoras.

  People had their disagreements, some serious and some not, but they were
usually resolved. I don't remember lawyers in town, although there must have been
one or two. The town had one main commercial street. At one end was a bar and the
firehouse, then the bank, a hotel (I'm not sure anyone ever stayed there) but it had a
busy bar. There were two clothing stores (Goldbergs', and Patickys'), an insurance
office (Flynn's), two drug stores (Klein's, where I worked as the soda jerk for a couple
of summers, and Cermack's), a United Cigar Store (Okst's, where the son Sherman
and I produced a local gossip column for the newspaper in the next town - Smithtown).
There were two barber shops (Savatt, and O'lita), another bar - very popular, a
delicatessin (Klepper), a grocery store-butcher store, (Bohack's); a garage with gas

6


pumps (Dowling's), an Electrical Appliance store (Young Bros.), a Diner
(MacWilliams), a hardware store (Paticky) with gas pumps.There was also a movie
theater (which might seat a hundred screaming kids for a Saturday afternoon matinee,
to see the double feature, serial, cartoon, and coming attractions, all for a dime in the
`30s'. Popcorn or candy was $.05 and the candy bars were at least three times as
large as today. The pet dogs, including mine, waited patiently outside on the sidewalk
for the duration of the show. Larger towns, with larger theaters, in addition to the
above would also have a full vaudville (live stage performance), usually including
music, a commedian, juggler, magician, singer, dancer, etc, They might charge as
much as $.25. Kings Park also had a Railroad Station, part of the North Shore branch
of the Long Island Railroad, a Post Cffice, two funeral homes and I'm sure, a few shops
which elude my memory. There were two churches - Roman Catholic (by far the
largest), and Methodist Episcopal. There may have been a Synogogue, but not that I
can remember as a separate building.
  One of the more notorious features of Kings Park was the fact that it was written
in "Believe it or not - Ripley" we were cited for having the greatest number of bars per
capita of any town in the United States and the highest consumption of alcohol of any
town in the United States. I believe itl There were several bars on the outskirts of town
which would serve anyone tall enough to get his head over the top of the bar. Draft
beer was $. 10 a 10 ounce glass and every 3rd or 4th glass on the house. All the bars
served some kind of food - and very cheap. Whisky was also cheap ($.25 an ounce).
Drunkeness, at least among the younger people, was not a serious problem, although
we had our share of older "town drunks" some of whom lived in cardboard boxes or
wooden crates in vacant fields or woods.
   We also lived within a few miles of Long Island Sound which in those days was
clean and lovely. We had a town beach (Callahans) , and a beautiful State Park, built
by Robert Moses who built a number of State Parks throughout the state during the
depression years. It was at this time that the great system of Parkways were also built.
There were good beaches all over Long Island, and we used them, particularily
Sunken Meadow State Park, the one nearest to us. It had a beautiful beach, dressing
facilities, showers, and all kinds of recreational facilities. If we had to we could walk to
it, although we usually got a ride with someone from town or rode our bicycles. The
beach had parking for hundreds of cars, mostly people out from New York City. It had
an extensive system of boardwalks and a large concession stand which served food,
ice cream, sodacandy, etc. As young kids we would crawl under the boardwalk and
search for coins people had dropped through the cracks. We usually found enough to
buy food and drink. Later, in our high school years, many of us worked at the
concession stand (it was air conditioned), or as Life Guards on the beach. The
beaches were covered with wild Beach Plum, which ripened in the late summer-fall.
We used to pick them for making jam, just as we had picked wild blueberries in the
spring.
  We usually had a vacation in the summer which consisted of renting a cottage
at West Meadow beach, a lovely stretch of beach near Stony Brook harbour where
local people had built cottages (shacks), which they rented for all or part of the
                          7


summer. These places had been there for many years and were crude to say the
least. Most had no electricity, or water - just a shack with 3 or 4 tiny rooms and a
kitchen. Cooking was done on a kerosene stove but that wasn't unusual since many
homes were still cooking on kerosene stoves, including us.  I remember the traditional
remedy for what was called %roup" (probably any respiratory infection with chest
congestion), was a teaspoon of kerosene with sugar in it. I don't know how any of us
survived. The kerosene came right out of the stove, tasted horrible, and was terribly
toxic. It certainly would not be used today. We also had mustard plasters (a cloth
saturated with a hot mustard paste placed on the chest to treat chest congestion
(bronchitis). This was murderous stuff, and if left on too long, would burn the skin.
   We kids thought this was a wonderful vacation spot. I doubt that my father did,
since he and my uncle didn't take vacations. They worked in the store for 6 or even
seven days a week, 12 to 14 hour days. That's how you made a living in those days.
My father would take weekends off 3 or 4 times a year, at which time we would pile into
the car and go "upstate" or to New England for a couple of days and every few years
we would drive upstate to Addison and Rathbone. On one such occasion I remember
Grandpa Young and Aunt Katie and Aunt Anna going with us. I remember visiting
Aunt Mate in Addison where she and Uncle Frank (Crawford) lived. They had some
cows and made their own butter and buttermilk. My father loved buttermilk which I
thought was poisonous. The butter was always rancid(no refrigeration). On such trips
we stayed in "tourist homes" where people rented whatever spare rooms they had to
people traveling through on a short term basis. This was long before motels and we
always enjoyed it. They were always were clean, quiet and comfortable as well as
affordable. While we were at the beach my father would usually spend one weekend
with us. In addition, he would come over most evenings, eat with us and spend the
night, since we weren't more than 12-l 4 miles from the store.  Often, if the cottages
had enough room, we would share it with one of my mothers sisters (Ethel) and her
family. The kids slept on cots wherever there was room, including the porch. The
windows all had heavy wooden shutters held open with wooden poles.  If it rained at
night everyone had to get up and let the shutters down - then it became stiffling. We
had ice boxes and the iceman came daily. We were very careful with water since we
had to walk about a mile to the only fresh water in the entire area - a spring down the
road - and carry it back to the cottage - hard work for us kids. This was our only
drinking water. There was an outside brackish water shower, and that water, could
also be used for dish washing. Baths for most people then were a Saturday night
exercise. a We spent most of the time in our itchy woolen bathing suits, covered with
sand and salt - who cared! The water of Long Island Sound was clear and clean. At
low tide, we could walk out 100 yards or more on the sand flats and dig as many clams
as we want@& the day. Most were used for chowder (which I hated) . There were .
also many crabs which we considered a nuisence since we didn't eat many of them.
The fishing was good. We spent hours in the water and on the beach and loved every
minute of it.
  Young Brothers, during this time was doing O.K., considering these were
depression years. Although there was never any pressure, I'm sure that my father and
                         8


uncle had always hoped and perhaps assumed that one or more of the sons (Russell,
Larry, or I would eventually take over the business. The oldest son, (brother of Russ
and Larry), Donald, had been born a "blue baby" and was severely retarded. He lived
with his mother for his entire life - a very tough proposition for her. His mother, my Aunt
Edna was one of the nicest people I have known. I took piano lessons from her and
after about 3 years I could play "Old Black Joe" and "Juanita". We decided that I was
talent free as an instrumentalist, so I stopped. I cound sing however, and was in great
demand in school for school plays, speaking contests, etc. I had a more or less
photographic memory which came in handy in the classroom as well as preparing for
exams. New York State had, and I think still has, a system whereby every student in
the state takes the same exam in every academic subject, every year in the spring -
according to grade. Except for Math I usually did well on these Exams, sometimes
scoring the highest in the State in subjects like spelling and geography, (where
memorization can help a lot). Today, I have trouble remembering my name, so it didn't
last forever. I could learn my lines for a school play in a couple of hours and I could
memorize a short story for a speaking contest after a couple of readings.
  To come back to Young Brothers, my cousins and I, having seen the problems
of the business world and the verbal abuse our parents had to endure from an
unthinking public, decided very early that we wanted nothing to do with the business
world as we knew it. I was surprised when years later Larry, with my mothers brother
Donald, decided to take over the business when my Uncle Halsey died (heart attack)
and my father retired. My mothers' oldest brother, Ernest, who had earlier delivered
ice in the area, including the Gary estate in Westbury, had met Martha, the upstairs
maid, and they married and were living with his parents, Grandma and Grandpa
Terre11 in Port Jefferson. Ernest, as a young man had once gotten on a freighter in
New York, I believe as a stoker (coal shoveler and furnace tender). He used to tell me
about his travels to Europe and the Mediteranian. He was an adventurous soul.
When refrigerators became more common (during the 30's) he was essentially out of
the ice business. He and Aunt Martha (who was Swedish) moved to Kings Park,
where I believe Lynn was born. Ernie worked for Young Brothers for many years and
in summers I often worked with him, doing whatever jobs the store needed done.We
dug huge holes for 500 gallon oil tanks, which in those days were buried
underground. We did old coal furnace conversions and turned them into oil burning
furnaces by lining them with fire brick. We then pounded, by hand, holes through solid
concrete cellar walls and a trench across the cellar floor to the oil burner, also by hand,
with a star drill and sledge, so that we could run a line from the oil tank to the oil burner
inside. We installed everything, television (which then required huge antenna), since
the only transmission stations were in New York, New Jersey, or Hartford, ConnWe
had television, of poor quality and on tiny screens, as early as 1939, years ahead of
most of the country. We installed refrigerators, stoves, anything. Everything was
carried by hand. Sometimes we carried refrigerators up three or four flights of stairs
(no elevators). Ernest or my father would carry it on their back, holding it in place with
a strap around the forhead, and start up the stairs. I would follow, lifting from
underneath to take as much weight off of them as possible. Ernest was small and wiry
                         9


and very strong and well coordinated. He could easily work rings around me but I got
better as I got older and stronger. He taught me to bowl although I'm afraid I didn't
enjoy it as much as he did, but would go occasionally. He also took me golfing once
in a while - he was quite good although he only had 3 or 4 clubs. He drove a 1927
Plymouth coupe with a rumble seat which we kids loved and he seldom drove it more
than 30mph. It lasted for many years. At work, the store had a pick up truck which we
used. You had to watch out for Ernie though because he had the habit of stopping
along the road (he always had his axe with him), to cut down and chop up for firewood
any tree he thought needed it - even if it was still alive or in somebodys' yard. No tree
was safe. Ernie sounded like a bit. He was critical of all ethnic groups - some more
than others. At the same time, some of his good friends were from ethnic minorities
and he would do anything for them. He was a strange and wonderful person to me.
Ernie had the distinction of being in the army during WWI, stationed at Camp Upton on
Long Island. I'm sure he enlisted. He was aiso drafted and sent to Camp Upton at the
beginning of WWII - a ridiculous mistake since he was in his 40's with a wife and child.
He was soon released from the military. During the depression he was in the CCC
(Civilian Conservation Corps), which was one of the many work projects started by the
Roosevelt administration to help with the unemployment problem. I'm sure thats
where he learned to love cutting down trees. Another of my mothers' brothers, Albert
(O&y), atso worked for Young Brothers and lived with us for a short time. I liked all my
mothers' brothers but I got to know Ernie best of ail.

  I was a Boy Scout, although, not a very dediited one. I went because my
friends went. One summer our troop leader (Dr. Campbell from the State Hospital),
arranged for us to go to to Camp Baiting Hollow - the only time I ever remember going
to camp. It must have been very inexpensive or even free, because there were a
number of us who got to go from Kings Park. It was a beautiful place, out in the woods
on the north shore of eastern Long Island. We lived in small log cabins or tents. There
were all kinds of activities, swimming (in a lake), canoeing, arts and crafts, campfires,
etc. We had a wonderful time, never to be forgotten.

Money:

Money was a scarce item for everyone in those days, especially for us kids. At
some point in time my father started to give me an allowance of fifteen cents a week.
Even then, $15 didn't go very far. Clothes and shoes had to last a long time and
undergo much repair. Socks were routinely darned, over and over - everything was
repeatedly mended. We didn't care, it was cash in the pocket we wanted. There were
a number of things we did to take care of this problem. I have already mentioned
picking potatos for a penny a bushel. That, however was very seasonal. I also worked
as a soda jerk, when such work was available. In addition, I mowed lawns (with a
hand pushed reel mower), for anybody who wanted me. Generally I was paid fii to
seventy five cents, depending on the size of the lawn, and the generosity of the
customer. I shoveled snow in the winter, but the competition was great - everybody
had a shovel. This was worth twenty five to fii cents depending on the depth of the
                         10


snow and the length of the driveway. Larry and I used to circulate handbills door to
door for Young Brothers every now and then. They didn't pay much either. Larry and I
used to take my wagon and scour the neighborhood and the town dump for deposit
bottles - small bottles worth one or two cents, and some quart bottles as much as five
cents - not bad. I had a regular newspaper route, delivering the Brooklyn Eagle. I also
had a magazine route - delivering such magazines as Liberty, Ladies Home Journal,
Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, and others. The hard part was collecting the money.
People knew when I was coming to collect, and as far as I could tell, they disappeared
from the face of the Earth at about that time. This, however, was year around money,
and I stayed with it for years. These kinds of jobs got us an occasional ice cream cone,
coke, or root beer, movie, candy, etc.

High School, World War II, College (1940-l 949)

  Each grade in the first eight (seven for me) was held in the same room with the
same teacher with a few exceptions (music, art, shop, home econonics and gym)
where we had different teachers and we went to the teachers home room. In High
School it was different. We had a homeroom where the day started and ended but
went to the teachers room for classes. There was a large room called "Study Hall
where we were expected to go for study and homework if we did not have a scheduled
class. School was highly organized, structured and disciplined - totally unlike today.
Of course students did not have cars and many did not even have bicycles- I was able
to walk to school, weather permitting - if not, my father gave me a ride. Some had to
walk several miles to and from school, and thought nothing of it. There were no buses
for `local" students. In general, there were two curricula depending on whether or not
you planned to go to college. The college entrance curriculum was designed to be
preparatory for college and provided the extra courses required by most colleges. The
academic curriculum was intended to prepare one for the work world. In those days,
very few parents had ever gone to college (in fact, many had not finished high school -
including my parents). People had to work at an early age. Education was still
considered a luxury, especially for women. My parents had decided earfy on that they
would find a way to send me to college. I was young enough that I really didn't care - I
wasn't interested in anything in particular and didn't know anyone who had ever gone
to college. I was only 12 years old when I started High School, and very unfocused.  I
was just 16 in 1943 when I graduated and had not thought much about where I was
going and further education. The war had begun and we were in it in two oceans.  For
my generation that was very exciting and even glamorous. A number of my older
classmates were already in the military or were about to go in. Most of us assumed
that is where we would all be if the war lasted long enough. We were pretty naive
about the war, what it meant, and how long it might last. Since I was only sixteen after
graduation I couldn't even enlist. I could, however, begin to think about what I might
do in the military. I became aware of the college ROTC Program, and figured that if I
had to go to college, I would go to one with an active ROTC Program, and began to
laok into college catalogs with that in mind, At that time,(1942), there weren't that
                         77


many. There was also the question of cost. My parents had saved enough for my first
year, but after that things got pretty vague. I also had big ideas about where I might go.
I learned that the Military Academies were free. What an incentive that was. All you
had to do was take a test for an appointment by your local congressman - easy. At the
age of fifteen I took the test in a huge school in New York City - that is, me and about
1,000 others. It took about 5 hours, and was the most difficult and comprehensive I
had ever seen, by far. This was going on all over the country. Months later they
actually sent the graded test back, much to my embarassment and humiliation.
Actually, in retrospect, that was one of the best things that could have happened to me
at the time. I certainly needed the humility. Things had gone pretty easily for me up to
then and in addition I think I would have had a horrible time at West Point. Discipline
was not my strong point.

Gettysburg College

  The following Winter/Spring (1943) I was accepted at Gettysburg College,
Gettysburg, Pa., for the Fall Freshmen Class and they had an ROTC Program. I still
was not particularly motivated but I was at least curious about this college stuff. I was
to be the first male on either side of the family to go to college. My fathers' sister
Frances had gone to Elmira College in Elmira in the early 1900s' to become a teacher,
and her daughter Lillian had gone to Skidmore in the late 30s' or early 40s'.  I find it
intere$ting to note that in my fathers family of four boys and one girl, the girl was the
only one to go to college. That must have been extremely unusual in that day.
Although I was the first, my two cousins, (Halseys boys), Russell and Larry went to
college after the war. In the early 50s' my sister went to college, but did not stay.
  For me, at that time, Gettysburg was perfect. It was one of a number of small
Liberal Arts Colleges in and around Pennsylvania. It opened a whole new world to
me, one which I appreceate to this day. The student body was a little peculiar, in that
it was rather heavily weighted on the male side with Pre-Ministerial students. This was
because of close proximity the Get@sburg Lutheran Theological Seminary and
because pre-ministerial students were draft exempt. The College was also close to
the Lutheran Church which had founded it in the middle eighteen hundreds. The ties
were still close and all students had to go to Chapel every morning (attendance was
taken, and too many cuts produced hours added to graduation), so we attended. My
Freshmen year was one of pure enlightment. The school was then and still is
academically excellent, with first rate faculty and very good facilities for a college of
under 2000 students. Since males were relatively scarce it was difficult for the
fraternity houses to stay open, so that they were largely taken over by the sororities
(most of them did not have houses of their own) - a good deal for both - and it stayed
that way until 1946, after the war, when we came back and disposessed them. I lived
in a rooming house on Water St., owned by a widow, Mrs. Dixon. She was a very
pleasant lady who rented out the rooms (small bedrooms) on the second floor of the
house to Freshmen. I believe there were three rooms and a bath up there, so there
were six of us. I roomed with Paul H. McFarland, Jr., from Hagerstown, Md. not too far
                        12


from Gettysburg. We soon became fast friends and have remained so to this day - 53
years later, keeping in touch over the years. The house was half a block from the
campus and the chapel, which was great for us. I have no record of the rent, but I'm
sure it was very reasonable. Also, we were only 3 or 4 blocks from the center of town.
Gettysburg was a pleasant town then and I don't think it has changed that much.
There were two movie theaters, one showing only showing "B" horse operas
(Westerns) and the other first line movies. The local hangout was Fabers' Drug Store,
for sodas, ice cream, etc. Outside of town on the Lincoln Highway was Lincoln Logs, a
bar and college watering spot for many years - maybe even today. The Gettysburg
Battlefield was a major resource for us - especially since it was free. Many square
miles of well kept land surrounding the town. We all became expert on at least that
aspect of the Civil War, either through hiking, picnicing, or beer parties.
   It turned out my college courses were not difficult for me and while I was not a
standout academically, I did reasonably well. College life agreed with me so I was
quite satisfied with the whole arrangement. In the Fall of 1943 Paul and I were invited
by the Sigma Chi Fraternity to join. This was very enticing to me but I didn't have any
money. I managed to convince my parents that this was a good deal economically
since once I moved into the fraternity house I could live more cheaply than I could at
Mrs. Dixon's, eating out. I think that was close to being true. Paul and I had similar
backgrounds in terms of family and home life. He didn't have any money either so we
scrounged together and both pledged Sigma Chi. We were duly initiated, but we
couldn't move into the Sigma Chi house since it was occupied by the Chi Omega
Sorority. As part of the initiation ceremony, I was instructed to go to an address
nearby, knock on the door and ask whoever came to the door for a brassiere. In those
days I was quite shy, especially with people I didn't know. I found the house and there
were clearly people home, however, I just couldn't make myself go to the front door
and ask for a brassiere from perfect strangers. I didn't know that everything had been
prearranged by the fraternity brothers - the people in the house knew I was coming,
knew I was shy, and planned to give me a hard time for a few minutes, then give me
the brassiere. I not only didn`t go the the door, I lied about it when I got back and said
there was nobody home. Of course, they knew I was lying, etc., etc. I was elected to
the fraternity anyway but I always felt badly about the lying.
  The war, of course, was still very much under way and most of us wanted to get
involved. I was still 16 and too young to enlist. Then I heard about the Navy V-l 2
program! By 1943 the military had enlarged enormously, and was experiencing a
shortage of officers. I had been in ROTC since entering Gettysburg and liked it. V-12
was a program whereby, if you did well on an entrance exam they would send you to
college at government expense. Upon graduation, you would be sent to Midshipman
School at another University to learn something about the military and then given a
commission. Of special interest to me was a particular part of the program aimed at
filling a shortage of doctors in the military. By that time I had developed an interest in
Biology and was thinking about majoring in Biology and going on to Medical School.
Here was a way to do it free. Wow!. In the spring of 1944 just after my 17th birthday a
couple of friends and I hitch-hiked to Harrisburg, the nearest place to take the exam.
                        13


We took the exam and hitch-hiked back. We got a ride for the first few miles, but then
our benefactor turned off the highway to Gettysburg, and dropped us off. It
immediately began to rain, and we were stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with no
money (our perpetual condition). To make a long story short, since we were soaking
wet, no one was about to pick us up, so we plodded and splashed all the way to
Gettysburg in a cold rain - I estimate about 15 miles. It was awful. However, I did well
enough on the test to be accepted into the V-12 program, starting in the summer of
1944, at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y. I was ecstatic. My parents were luke
warm, since it meant that I would be in the military - during war time. I finished my
freshman year at Gettysburg, went home, and soon thereafter was delivered by my
parents to Grand Central Station in New York City for the trip to Schenectady. I found
the campus and reported in as directed - a whole new phase of my life.

U. S. Navy - WWII

   Union was on old campus, in what was then a residential section of the city.  I
was assigned to a dormitory on the northern edge or the campus, across from what
had been a railroad locomotive works, now being used to produce tanks for the army.
We were registered and were allowed to declare majors and sign up for courses.
There were civilian students there but I don't think there were many, and although we
shared classes, we saw little of them. Our day was highly regimented - up before
dawn, bathing trunks on and out in the field doing rigorous calisthenics for 45 minutes
or so. This was 0. K. in the summer, but in winter, dressed only in bathing suits in the
snow, it was murder.

  During the winter of 194445, the pre-meds were called in and told that the
Navy had caught up on the shortage of doctors, but if we wanted, they would switch us
to Line Officer candidates where we could finish the program. All we had to do was
sign up for three years duty after the war. Most of us felt this was grossly unfair and
wanted out. For reasons I have never understood, the Navy was reluctant to let us
drop out of the program, even threatening to courtmartial those who deliberately tried
to flunk out. Since they wouldn't let us leave voluntarily, most of us started cutting
classes and getting poor grades. Eventually (spring of 1945) they let us choose a
service training program and transfer out to "Boot Camp", in my case the Naval
Training Center, at Great Lakes, ILL. Thus, on my 18th birthday I was on a packed
train headed to Great Lakes, my dreams of a commission, gone. I had applied for and
been accepted into Hospital Corps School, the nearest thing I could find to Biology
and Medicine. As I recall, I was there for about three months while the Navy tried to
teach us something about being a sailor. It was interesting but incredibly out of date.
We were issued clothing and shoes, pretty standard stuff. We were also issued Sea
Bags, into which everything had to fit - all dothes, sheets, pillow cases, shoes, toilet
articles, etc. They taught us how to do it (primarily by rolling everything into as
compact a roll as possible). Incredibly, if you did it just right it worked. The sea bag
itself was made out of heavy canvas which had to be scrubbed and scrubbed in order
to make the canvas pliable enough to use. The crowning blow, however, was the
                         14


hammock (clearly a holdover from the days of the sailing ships - the last time they were
probably used). The hammock was made of even heavier canvas than the sea bag. It
was supposed to be folded (ii you could ever get it soft enough), and then wrapped in
a specific way, with its ropes, around the sea bag. This was clearly designed so that
all sailors, would fit on board ship, and could carry everything they owned on their
shoulder. Eventually everybody sent the hammock home where they got years of
good use after the war. We certainly never used them in the Navy. The sea bag
turned out to be very useful, once you mastered the art of packing them. In boot camp
we slept in triple decker bunks - I had never seen one before. A routine was
established of marching, target practice (the only time I ever saw a rifle or marched
while in the Navy), airplane and ship silhoutte identification, knot tying, and many other
archaic practices - and this was in early 1945. It was interesting to see the variety of
young men being brought into the service at that time. Some had no difficulty making
the transition from civilian to military but a few had a terrible time. I remember a very
pleasant young man (around my age), who had the bunk next to mine, sitting with all
his white uniforms (we had been issued both blues and whites), and his skiwies (navy
for underwear) spread out on his bunk. He had a pair of scissors and was in the
process of cutting everything into approximately 8 inch squares. I thought this a little
unusual and asked him what he was doing. He said only that he needed more
handkerchiefs. He was soon picked up by the medics and we never saw him again.
Occasionally we would hear of a youngster hanging himself over a rafter in the
barracks. Later when I was a Hospital Corpsman myself, working in Naval Hospitals, I
saw equally distressing things - usually among youngsters unable to cope with the
abrupt and stressful changes in their lives. It's too bad there wasn't some way to
evaluate these people, or at least prepare them for what was coming. During war, I
suppose this was impossible and as far as I know the numbers were low.
  After the prescribed number of weeks of training, we were given leave to go
home before being shipped out to our training school of choice. After being home for a
few days I got sick with an inner ear infection (Otitis Media), following measles, not
easily treated before antibiotics. I had to notify the Navy of my problem since I was not
going to be back to Great Lakes on time, and certainly dii not want to be considered
AWOL. I was promptly ordered to St. Albans Naval Hospital, on Long Island (the
facility nearest to my home). The next afternoon, a Navy ambulance appeared at my
house to haul me off to the hospital - hardly necessary, I felt. There were two
corpsmen in it and they took me out on a stretcher, entertaining the entire
neighborhood in the process. On the way to the hospital, they decided they needed a
beer and asked me if I minded if they stopped at a bar for a beer and if I would like for
them to bring me one. I wasn't feeling all that bad, so I told them to go ahead but that I
didn't want one. They stopped, went in, and I stayed on the stretcher in the
ambulance. They stayed for about a half hour and we were on our way. The next day
the doctor examined me and decided that the infection was being caused by a sinus
infection brought on by the measels. He felt he had to drain my frontal sinuses, and
puncture and drain behind my right eardrum. Draining the sinuses was an interesting
procedure which consisted of the doctor taking a large spike and pushing it up both my
                         15


nostrils, then pushing and banging on it until it punctured the bone and the sinuses
could drain. All they gave me was some codeine, so it smarted a bit. The next step
was to puncture the ear drum, which he did, so it could drain. Then I was miserable for
a couple of weeksdeaf in one ear, while things healed, which they did, including my
ear drum so I could hear again. The nice older man in the bed next to mine, borrowed
$10.00. He was released that night and I never saw him again. Was this part of my
training?

  My stay at St. Albans and subsequent delay in getting back to Great Lakes
meant that I had missed my draft to San Diego for Corps School. This probably saved
my life, since most of my classmates who had opted for Hospital Corps School and
subsequent duty with the fleet marines (the Marine Corps had no medics and used
Navy medics, with special Marine training), had ended up in the Pacific island
invasions where the casualty rates were very high. Many, perhaps most of my friends
never came back. I have said many times that the measels saved my lie. It is of
interest, at least to me that mea&s was the only one of the childhood diseases that I
ever had, although I had it 3 or 4 times as a young man.

  By May or June I was on a troop train to Bainbridge, MD and Hospital Corps
School - my first choice for servlce school. That was an experience! A troop train at
that time could be almost anything. The nation was hard pressed to move the millions
now in the services around the country. This troop train was enormous, at least when
we started. It was composed mostly of cattle cars (literally open slat sided cars with a
single pot bellied stove in the center), packed almost solid with sailors. Normally,
everything in the Navy was done alphabetically, A-Z. This was no exception - I
watched my friends being loaded into these unbelievabie cattle cars. However, they
ran out of cattle cars before we were all loaded and I ended up in a lovely drawing
room with a roommate, two bunks and a toilet. One of the nicest train rides I've ever
had. I remenber before dawn the next morning, we stopped briefly in Cumberland,
Md. I looked out the window and it seemed like half the town must have been out
there p&sing out coffee and doughnuts to as many of us as they could. I thought that
was wonderful at the time and still do. Other than that, I do not remember being fed on
that train (about 24hours). Eventually we reached Perryville, MD the nearest train stop
to Bainbridge (which was on the Susquehana River). 1 was assigned to a barracks,
and settled in, since classes in Corps School began in a couple of days. Bainbridge
also had a large Naval Hospital, and although I didn't think I wanted to stay there to
work (I still wanted the Fleet Marines), it was a distinct possibility. The nearest city was
Baltimore, and then Washington - the base was pretty isolated. We could hitch-hike to
Baltimore and back just about any time of day or night - people were pretty good about
picking up uniformed G.l.`s. East Baltimore St. was great fun for us since in those days
it was lined with bars and strip shows, long since gone. Once I finished Corps School,
(about 6 weeks), I was assigned to the Naval Hospital there. Things were beginning
to wind down in the Pacific, and the Marines didn't need any more medics. What did
happen, however, was that the stateside military hospitals were being inundated with
casulties from the Pacific - thousands of them. These were the severely wounded with
                         16


long term hospitalization needs, This was a real eye opener for most of us who had
never seen serious combat casulties before, It certainly brought the war home but it
made us feel useful. I also spent quite a bit of time working on an "Upper Respiratory
ward. This was mostly asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and occasionally T.B., although
we didn't keep them long. We seemed to have a lot of pneumonia, which was diiicult
to treat. Before penicillin, which we had by late 1944, our most potent drugs for most
infections were the sulfa drugs; sulfanilamide, sulfafdiazine, sulfathiozole, etc. These
were effective but toxic and had a tendency to crystallize in the kidneys so that
sometimes the treatment was worse than the disease. When penicillin became
available we really didnY know what it was good for. Early penicillin came in vials in
crystalline form and had to be injected with alcohol and water to get it into solutiion.  It
came without instructions as to use. I recall that we were told to try it against athletes
foot. We would dump vial after vial of the precious stuff into basins and have people
soak their feet in it. What a waste! Eventually, of course, the quality quantity and
solubility of the penicillin improved. Originally it had to be injected every three hours,
day and night, but that improved. The important thing was that it was a major life
saver. Unfortunately, we have abused it over the years by overusing it, and by people
not taking prescribed doses, so that many disease producing organisms are now
resistant to penicillin and many other newer antibiotics. In WWII, however, it was the
greatest thing that had happened in medicine, and thousands of lives were saved.
   During this time, I had a friend (Jack Parlin), also a corpsman. One day he
showed me a small black mole on his buttock, which he said had begun to hurt. I told
him to go to sick bay and show it to the doctor, which he did. As I suspected, it turned
out to be a melanoma, which by that time had invaded the entire buttock, which would
have had to be removed entirely. That was an operation the Navy was not prepared to
do, at least at Bainbridge, and he was either sent to another hospital, or home - I never
knew which. 1 never heard from Jack again and believe he died from the melanoma,
an exceptionally lethal tumor. We had another young fellow (marine), who had
recently recovered from rheumatic fever, during which he had lost all his hair. Of
course he was kidded about being hairless, and he was convinced it was forever,
(which it wasn`t). Soon after being sent back to his barracks he hung himself from a
rafter. Emotional stress does strange things to us all. I recall a youngster on my
respiratory ward, who had come into Bainbridge as a recruit just out of high school.
He had been drafted and had no desire whatsoever to be there. He wanted out of the
Navy, and he spent most of his time trying to get out. During war time that was just not
going to happen. Then he learned that a punctured ear drum was cause for discharge
and that was all he needed to know. One day, when I was on penicillin rounds, I
happened to look down to the nurses station in the center of the ward. I saw him
standing there with a pair of forceps in his hand, which as I yelled, he inserted into his
ear and quickly reamed out his ear drum. He got out, but what a price. These kinds of
things happened all the time. We frequently heard stories about soldiers, shooting
themselves in the foot or whatever, in order to get sent to the hospital, or discharged.  I
believe these stories were mostly true.
   A Naval Hospital ward was a busy place - each ward specializing in a particular
                         17


disease, or set of related disases - respiratory, V.D., surgical, wounds, skin,.
contagious,. etc. The wards were all basically all the same - two or three semi-private
rooms and linen room at one end, then a long narrow open ward lined on both sides
with beds and an aisle down the center. If things got very busy we could squeeze a
row of beds down the aisle in the middle but then things got very crowded+ In the
center of the open ward was the nurses station, instrument cleaning area (everything
was used over and over including syringes and needles). There was a sterilizer there
to resterilize everything before use. It would never be acceptable practice today, but
our record of contamination was very low, and disposal of waste was handled very
mush more simply than today. Most wards had a nurse in charge, who were highly
dedicated and mostly competent women. Some were easy to work with and some
were not. In addition to the nurse there were 3 or 4 tirpsmen depending on the
workload. A respiratoryward was especially busy because just about e.veryone. was
on penicillin, which required injection every 3 or later 4 hours. Since we usually had
60 or 70 patients on a ward this became a major chore in addition to our other duties.
We had devised a system for giving so many shots, Patients had to roll over on their
stomachs and pull down their pajama bottoms. Two corpsmen would then proceed
down the row,. the first swabing the injection site with alcohol and inserting the needle
(which we had to continually sharpen), the second would insert the syringe into the
needle, administer the required dose and remove the needle. This cut our time down
considerably. Generally speaking things went pretty smoothly on the wards. There
were three 8 hour shifts. The doctors made their rounds with the nurse and one of us
every day. I had been promoted to Pharmacists Mate 3rd Class by then, which was
the equivalent of sergeant in the army.
   While on the respiratory ward I came down with pneumonia myself and became
a patient on my own ward - very embarrassing. I was pretty sick and was vary gra?@ul
for penicillin and made a fairly quick recovery. My uncle Donald, who was in the Air
Force in Texas, stopped by to visit me on his way home on leave. I was on my feet by
that time so we were,able to walk around, and visit. I was glad he had come.
   It began to look as though the war would end before too much longer and as
soon as it did (1946) the Navy geared up as quickly as possible to get people
discharged and sent home. This was done on the basis of point&which were
calculated on the basis of time in the service, I was relieved of ward duty and since I
could type I, was put to work with many others, typing up discharge pawrs. Since l
had only been in the service for a little over 2 years it took a while to get to me on the
discharge list. In July 1946 I was sent to St. Albans Naval Hospital on Long Island
where I had been a patient a year or so earlier. After a couple of weeks my paperwork
was completed and I was disoharged and went home to Kings Park. My plan was to
go back to Gettysburg in the fall and complete my degree. I relaxed and worked at the
store that summer.
  As mentioned earlier, life changed dramatically after the war. Some changes
had a direct effect on Young Brothers. During the war virtually evmhing was geared
in one way or another to support the war effort. As a result, although people had
money to spend, there was virtually nothing available for sale in the public sector.
                        18


Most industries had been converted to war production. Food and gasoline were tightly
rationed and generally in tight supply. This meant that they had little merchandise but
they certainly didn't want to close the store. There was still a demand for repair work,
which they felt they owed their customers, and of course they planned to open as
usual as soon as the war ended and the economy normalized. My Uncle Halsey had
been in the army briefly toward the end of WWI but was now too old for the military, as
was my father. They both had to do something during the war years to keep the
families solvent. For my father this was not difficult. Long Island was heavily involved
in the aircraft industry (both Republic and Grumman were there). My father was an
experienced electrician and was quickly employed at Republic Aviation wiring
Thunderbirds for Republic for the duration of the war. Halsey did not have that kind of
background and he chose to run for public office. He ran for Town Clerk of Smithtown
and was elected. Both of them, in addition, managed to keep the store open, at least
in the evenings and often on weekends, doing repairs and selling whatever
merchandise they could obtain. After the war, when most industries converted back to
civilian production and the aircraft and other industries began to cut back on their
production lines, things began to "normalize". However, within a year or two another
change took place which had much more negative consequences on the small
businessman - the advent of the discount house. People were hungry for all the things
they couldn't get during the war. The huge discount stores had it all - electrical
appliances, clothing, food, pharmaceuticals, and cheap prices since they sold in
enormous volume as comapared to the small retailer. People leaped at the
opportunity, particularly the cheap prices - they forgot about delivery and installation
costs included at Young Brothers, but not included at the discount houses. They forgot
about service and the willingness to come out 7days a week if necessary at Young
Brothers but not the discount stores. In any case, it quickly put many small retailers out
of business and damaged the businesses of many others. This is still going on today,
where huge stores (like Wal-Mart) are destroying small town family businesses by
discounting in their huge stores just outside of town. That of tiurse, is the name of the
game in the free enterprise system. The public is interested in getting the cheapest
price and will ignore the hidden costs. Young Brothers was not immune to this price
cutting and over the next few years business began to fall off. They had to learn how
to compete under these conditions but over the long haul, they couldn't. Larry and
Donald tried later but also failed. Young Brothers was defunct before too much longer.

Gettysburg - Post War

  In September I went back to Gettysburg along with hundreds of newly
discharged G. 1.~`. The campus changed dramatically with the sudden influx of G.1.s.
All over the country colleges were being flooded with new students who were both
older and "wiser" than the usual freshman and the colleges were not prepared. The
biggest problem was probably housing - it just wasn't there. The newcomers were
mostly highly motivated and their lifeline was the G. I. Bill, passed by congress, as a
way to repay veterans and broaden the base of educated people in the country.
                        79


Without the G.I. Bill thousands of young Americans (probably including me) would not
have received a college education. It was a wonderful program, and I believe, worth
every penny of the considerable cost. Tuition was paid and there was an allowance
for books and supplies plus $75.00 a month for living expenses, as I recall. We got the
fraternity house back and most of us could survive on the G. LBilI, with a part time job
on the side. Paul and I got a job making cardboard egg crates at the Adams County
Egg Coop in Gettysburg. It got us through.

  The Gettysburg campus population doubled after the war.  In some areas whole
new campuses were built, some of which became permanent. Virtually all campuses
had to at least put up temporary living facilities but there was plenty of surplus military
equipment, such as easity installed Quonset Huts. Intended for a few years use, some
were still being used after 20 or 30 years.

  We were all in a hurry to graduate and get to work on a career. Many were 4 or
5 years behind where they might have been had there been no war. It put me
approximately where I should be in terms of age. Since the duration of the G.l.Bill was
determined by how long you had been in the service, one could calculate how long
you might be able to stay in school. I was still interested in going to Medlcal School,
which cost far more than the G.l.Bill would cover. I had no idea how I might pay for
that. On the other hand I had begun to think about the possibility of graduate school as
an option and working on a PhD with the idea of university teaching and research. It
was in the 40s' and 50s' that the Federal Government began to put serious money into
the nations' research establishment, particularly in the Bio-Medical and Physical
Sciences. I calculated that the G.l.Bill would carry me into graduate school for about a
year or so - not bad. I had decided to major in Biology with a minor in Chemistry.  I
also minored in German and Spanish. By taking full loads in the summers, Paul and I
both finished our undergraduate programs in 3 years instead of the traditional 4, which
saved us both some money.

  1946 to 1943 at Gettysburg were great fun - meeting new people and making
new friends (many of whom are friends to this day). I feel that the education I received
was as good or better than any I might have gotten at a larger university. We dated,
although there were limitations since this was still the day when men paid dating
expenses for both. Most girls would help out, however, particularly if you were going
"steady", which we were for the most part. Again I was not an outstanding student - I
suppose I was having too much fun to be a really serious student. In retrospect, it
seems to have been a normal undergraduate experience for the time. I was not being
successful in getting into Medical School for two reasons l- there was a huge backlog
of applicants among the returning G.l.s, and 2- I really didn't have the grades
necessary to compete. I went to discuss my problem with my major professor, Dr.
Bowen. He was not terribly sympathetic - I'm sure he felt it was mostly my own fault.
We began to discuss alternative options, and I said that I suppose if I couldn't get into
medical school, I'd settle for graduate school and a PhD. As soon as I'd said it I
realized what a stupid remark it was, especially to my major professor, a PhD in
Biology from Harvard University. He was furious and let me know it. I don't blame him.
                        20


In one respect, it didn't matter since I did not have the resources for medical school.  I
had to get a job and save some money to continue in any school. I still had a little time
left on the G.I. Bill which would get me started in graduate school, but probably not
beyond the first year.

  My parents picked me up at graduation and we took a brief trip North, up to New
York State. We stopped for lunch one day in Ithaca after visiting the Cornell campus.
While in the restaurant eating I was approached by a young man who I recognized as
a fraternity brother from Gettysburg who had graduated the year before - Roger Pierre.
He was of French decent, very handsome, and a great guy. He came over to the table
and gave me a big kiss on both cheeks. It took my mother a while to understand that
one. I think Roger went to work for the C.I.A. He had been in that line of work in me
Army during the war. That trip gave me some quiet time to think about what I was
going to do with my life. I clearly had to go to work, at least for a while, and then plan
seriously for graduate school. How much would it cost? Where should I go? Could I
get in? What did I want to study? What kind of research was I interested in? Could I
earn money while in school - teaching undergraduates or doing research? I wasn't
prepared to answer any of those questions, and it required some time. When we got
home I started looking for a job, hopefully in my field. I had seen an advertisement in
to newspaper announcing openings in the Cancer Research Division, of Lederle
Laboratories, Pearl River, New York. They were looking for laboratory technicians,
and I figured I was qualified. I made an appointment for an interview and drove up
there, where I was interviewed by the well known cancer researcher Dr. Y Subarrow,
who was then Director of the Cancer Research Division. He hired me on the spot,
much to my surprise, and I was to report for work in a week. I would be paid $52.00 a
week, a fortune to me at the time.

Lederle Labs 19491950

  I went to work in November of 1948 as Research Biologist in the Cancer
Research Division. My supervisor was to have been Dr. Subarrow but as fate would
have it he had died in the interval between my interview and my arrival for work.  His
successor was Doris McKenzie, a Psychologist and Subarrows' girl friend. She was
not qualified for the job but she was the only one who had any idea what the long term
research plan was since Subarrow apparently kept very poor notes. It has always
amazed me how even large companies can allow themselves to get into such a
situation but it happens. In general our job was to screen new drugs (particularly new
antibiotics) for anti-cancer activity. Lederle, at that time had a noteworthy scientist,
expert at producing and isolating new antibiotics from thousands of molds he had
cultivated over the years. The company had had some sucess in isolating, testing, and
marketing new drugs from this source in recent years (eg. aminopterin). The
procedure was to test each new drug for effectiveness against an array of tumors
carried in our labs, primarily in mice, but also in rats, rabbits, dogs, and others. We
used genetically pure strains of animals bred commercially for the purpose. While
these tests in animals were not exactly the same as they might have been in humans,

21


experience told us they were close enough to establish toxicity and anti-carcinogenic
activity. In those days the laws on animal testing and subsequent clinical tests on
humans were not as restrictive as today. In fact, at Lederle there was a sense of
urgency about our work. Lederle had a fairly close working relationship with Dr:
Sidney Farber of Childrens Hospital in Boston, Dr. Farbers own daughter (we were
told) had cancer. In any case, once we were reasonably sure of the toxicity levels, at
least in animals, and the drug showed some anti-tumor activity, it was shipped off to
Boston for human tests. It wouk14 never be done that quickly today -- the process would
take years, and cost millions!
  Each laboratory in the division had responsibility for a specific tumor for testing.
I had the Bittner Mouse Mammary Tumor. This meant that I had a specific tumor,
discovered by Dr. Bittner (I believe at the University of Wisconsin many years before). I
had to continually transplant that tumor into certain mice, so that I always had enough
mice on hand to set up the necessary tests when required. A single test could use
hundreds of mice since I had to use several levels of the drug in order to find a level
that was not toxic. Also, I could be testing several drugs at the same time. It took a
week or so to induce tumor growth from the small implant I had placed in each mouse.
The drug was then injected into the abdomen of each mouse once or twice each day.
The mice were fed, watered, and weighed each day. Tests ran for a week or two, at
which time the mice were sacrificed by breaking the neck (a rapid and painless
procedure). I then surgically removed the tumors, placed them in individual containers
of preservatives (formaldehyde), weighed them (I knew the weight of the original
implant) first, and made written observations on the tumor itself (what did it look like?).
It was then sent to pathology microscopic study. We were doing in two or three weeks
what now takes years.
   When I first went to Lederle I rented a room in the home of a young couple - (the
Bolanders and their young baby). Th4y had a lovely, small house in residential Pearl
River, N. Y. and they couldn't have been nicer to me. I didn't stay there long, however,
since I had a co-worker (John Yelnosky) I enjoyed and had a lot in common with and
we soon decided to room together. After a search, we found a large basement
apartment in what was then South Nyack. This area of Nyack disappeared when the
Tappan Zee bridge was built and obliterated it. In those days you crossed the Hudson
River by going north to the Bear Mountain Bridge, south to the George Washington
Bridge or by taking the ferry across the river to Yonkers. Our apartment was in the
cellar of an apartment house. It had one bedroom, bath, a huge living room, and
outside entrance. I was always nervous about that place because the hot water heater
had a non-functional, safety valve, so that we had to remember to turn it off when we
left or risk blowing the place up.
   I had bought a 1946 Ford so I could get back and forth to work and out to Long
Island occasionally on week-ends, where I pitched in a softball league. It also got
John and me around town. Unfortunately, I got careless in that car and destroyed it
and almost me in the process. I was headed south on route 9W one Friday night,
headed home for the weekend. It was raining lightly and unnotk~~! by me it was
freezing on the bridges - a very dangerous situation. I was thinking about the coming
                        22


weekend and not paying adequate attention to driving conditions and as I crossed a
bridge, I lost control of the car, which spun and crashed into a stone wall, There were
no seat belts in those days so I crashed into the steering wheel, breaking it with my
nose, and hi the hand brake with my knee, gashing it badly. I had broken my nose
and opened a deep cut over my eye. While I didn't realize it at the time, the car was a
total wreck - I ultimately got a few hundred dollars for the junk. Once again, I had no
car.
  John and I had spent many hours contemplating our futures. It was clear that
while we liked what we were doing, and liked making enough money to at least live on
for the first time in our lives, there was little future in it. We were both ambitious and
saw that we needed to go back to graduate school and work toward a PhD. Again
money became a problem, and once I had made up my mind to return to school I
began the serious business of saving money. I had another friend at Lederle in similar
circumstances and similar goals - George Gass. George was married (Dottie) which
was both an advantage and disadvantage. Dottie was very bright , employable, and
supportive, etc., which was, of course, a plus. On the other hand it meant two mouths
to feed and the potential for more since they wanted children. I had bought the car in
the belief that this would be my last chance to get one for years - this proved to be
correct. I started to buy clothes since I had practically nothing. I had always bought
books since I was an avid reader and felt then as now, that books were an integral part
of my life. Other than that my needs were very simple, food and a place to sleep. I
started to write to graduate schools. In each application, I asked about possible
employment, teaching, either in the classroom or the laboratory. The University of
New Mexico, in Albuquerque, sounded best to me when they accepted me as a
graduate student and offered me a teaching fellowship - just what I wanted.  I decided
to go there. Neither John nor George were able to go then and both had to wait
another year or two. Eventually, John went to the Univ. of Indiana, where he got a
PhD, and George followed me to the Univ. of New Mexico where he also eventually
got a PhD.
   I was scheduled to start in the summer session of 1950. I had never been west
of the Mississippi river, so again this was a whole new experience for me. I was quite
excited. I resigned from Lederle in early June in order to get myself organized to move
to Albuquerque in time for the summer session. With no car I planned to take a train or
bus. First, however, I had to move my belongings from Nyack to Kings Park. I enlisted
the aid of my cousin Larry to help me move. I think he was going to New York
University at the time and was off for the summer. We were both avid New York Giant
baseball fans, and planned to stop off at the old Polo Grounds in upper Manhatten to
see a Giants game, (the place has long since disappeared, since the Giants moved to
San Francisco). The Dodgers were still in Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn, (we hated the
Dodgers), and the Yankees were across the river in the Bronx exactly where they are
today. I borrowed my fathers' car and Larry and I drove up to Nyack, loaded the car
with all my worldly possessions and headed back to the Polo Grounds. We were in
luck and found a parking place on the street right outside the stadium. We left the
stadium right after the game and went to the car. Of course, disaster had struck.
                        23


Someone had broken into the car and stolen everything I owned except my books
which we had loaded into the trunk. All my clothes (mostly new), radio, etc. had been
loaded into the back seat, were GONE. I went to the police station and reported it. All
they seemed interested in was the distinction between a robbery and a burglary. I had
said I had been robbed, and they insisted I had been burgled, since no one had held
me up with a gun. They were no help at all and nothing was ever recovered as far as I
know. This left me in a mess since I had to leave in about a week. My loss was not
covered by insurance and I had no benefactors offering to replace my wardrobe. I had
saved a little money but I was going to have to use that for a bus ticket and living
expenses, until I got started working.

The University of New Mexico (1950-1951)

  I traveled to Albuquerque on a Greyhound bus - non-stop, sitting up for 3 days
and 2 nights. My luggage consisted of an old laundry container, which I had used
when I first went to Gettysburg to mail my laundry home. Laundry mailers were
commonly used in those days to save a little money on commercial laundry. About all I
had was a change of underwear, extra shirt, socks, an extra pair of trousers and
toiletries, plus what I had on my back. I led a spartan life for quite a while.
  The trip was exhausting, primarily because there was no opportunity to lie down

and actually sleep. Although the seats reclined a little, you really couldn't really stretch
out, so that you were always in an upright position. The bus stopped ar regular
intervals to let passengers on and off, also so we could get something to eat, and to
use the rest rooms. It was a long, long trip. On the other hand bus travel is different
than any other kind of travel. You get to see more of the countryside, towns and
villages, and it is cheap. We finally reached Albuquerque and my first experience with
the desert. I got off the bus but my ankles were so swollen I could hardly walk. I had
no idea where the University was and I was in the middle of the city. Before I could do
much of anything, I had to get to where I could at least walk. There was a barber shop
across the street and I figured that if I could get my feet elevated for a while, things
would get better. I didn't need a hair cut but I sure needed a shave, so I went in and
got the barber to recline the chair and give me a slow shave. It was wonderful, and by
the time he was through I was feeling much better and the swelling had gone down
considerably. The main east-west highway through Albuquerque was Route #66 and
the barber told me the University was on Route #66, which was only a couple of blocks
south of us. I walked over to this famous highway, and asked a passerby where the
University was. He pointed east, and said "up yonder". "Up yonder" didn't sound too
bad so I started out, up the long slope east. It took me about an hour to an hour and a
half to walk up to the university in the hot desert sun, eventually finding the
administration building. I liked the campus at first sight All the buildings were
Mexican style abobe, thick walled and handsome. I was assigned to the new
Graduate Dormitory, which was on the eastern edge of the campus and backed onto
the university golf course. The university itself was within a few blocks of the desert
and high mesa which led to the 11,000 ft. Sandia Mountains, a few miles east of the

24


city. It was very picturesque and pleasant. I found my room, unpacked, took a shower,
and lay down on one of the two beds in the room. Heavenf A few hours later, my
roommate showed up, with trunks, suitcases, etc. He was young, from New York City
where his father was a judge, and his name was Jim Hearn. Within a very short time I
was green with envy - he had one of the most extensive wardrobes I had ever seen. It
quickly filled the closet and the dresser allotted to him, and obviously needed more
space if he was to get unpacked. I gave him three of the four drawers in my dresser
which he quickly filled. He must have had 40 starched and ironed all white shirts,
along with everything else. As it turned out, he needed them since he changed shirts
4 or 5 times a day. I didn't see much of Jim and I never did find out why he was there
in the first place. I never saw him study and it was plain that he had no particular
interest except buying white shirts. He was quite personable and friendly but I soon
began to look for another roommate with interests and background more in line with
my own. I was among the first occupants of the new graduate dorm which was not yet
full, so I had the time and opportunity to move.
  I found the Biology building and checked in there since I more or less planned
to do my graduate program in Biology I met Dr. Edward Castetter, the department
chairman, and one or two faculty members. I was not at all sure what specific field of
Biology I was going to focus on so I needed to look around. I had heard of a program
in Developmental Biology and wanted to find out more about that. Later, back at the
dorm, I met Marty Roeder, a New Yorker, who was also a Biology major.  He had been
there for a semester or so and knew quite a bit about the department and its programs.
He invited me to go out to the golf course just outside and play a round with him and
another fellow. I had played a very few times with my Uncle Ernest years before but
was far from being a golfer. Then he told me that he was meeting Doug Humm on the
course and was going to finish a round with. It turned out the Doug Humm was just the
person I needed to meet. He was a new professor at New Mexico, having just come
from Stanford Univ. and was starting up the program in Developmental Biology, which
in those days was also known as Experimental Embryology. He even had a grant from
the Damon Runyon Fund, and might hire me as a lab assistant. Of course, I went out
on the golf course with Marty, to find Doug Humm. It turned out that Doug was a
personable, if somewhat hyper person. I liked him and I guess he liked me because
he did offer me a job which I quickly accepted. Humm had been trained at Yale and
was a very knowledgable Developmental Biologist,- just what I was looking for. As it
turned out I had talents in the laboratory that he needed.
   Meanwhile, I had run into a most interesting fellow named John Jewel1 from
Antigo, Wisconsin. John was not in good physical shape but there were good reasons
for it. John had been in the infantry during the war, and starting early in the Pacific
campaign, on Guadalcanal, he had gone through many of the pacific island invasions.
He had been wounded in the jungle so many times, the army finally had to send him
back home to the hospital, where they tried to patch him up. He had been bayonetted,
shot, had his head bashed in with a riile butt, and left for dead. He had survived but
had paid a terrible price. I liked John a lot, especially after f got to know him. He was
small and wiry, with a great sense of humor and we quickly decided to room together.
                        25


In addition, he was a Biology major although it didn't take long to figure out that he was
not a dedicated student. He was there because the Veterans Administration advised
him to move to a desert environment for his health, and since he had years of G. I.Bill
elegibility - why not. John loved beer (like me) but was not supposed to drink any
alcohol. What an irritation.
  There was a group of us graduate students who used to enjoy going out in the
desert west of Albuquerque and climb around in the lava in the ancient volcanic plugs,
looking for turquoise. It may have been a good source of turquoise for the Navaho
Indians, but it wasn't for us - we enjoyed it anyway. John, however, got interested in
gold in the mountains to the east and started going out to pan gold. He met an old
sourdough out there somewhere, and start spending more and more time hunting gold
with the old timer. He couldn't have been happier, and soon started camping out.  It
wasn't too long before John dropped out of school and disappeared.  I have no idea
what happened to him - he simply never came back. I hope he struck it rich but
somehow I doubt it.
   Another "character" in our group was Dexter Perkins Ill, from Rochester, N. Y.,
where his father was chairman of the History department of the Univ. of Rochester.
One of Dexters' claims to fame was his aunt "Fannie Farmer", of Fannie Farmer candy
and cooking fame. Dexter was the typical "absent minded professor" type, and an
Anthropology major. We all liked Dexter, at least in part because he was the only one
of us who had a car and in Albuquerque and the surrounding desert and mountains,
you certainly needed a car. Dexter was full of stories about himself and his relatives.
He told of Aunt Fannie pulling up to the durb in Rochester and hitting a pedestrian
stepping off the curb. She stopped and backed up to see if she had hurt him badly
and proceeded to hit him again - oh well! As an Anthropology student Dexter spent a
good deal of time out on the reservafjons in the area, working with the indians. He told
of one day going out to the Navajo reservation outside of Gallup, N.M. You couldn't
drive on the reservation, you had to take a bus from Gallup, which he did. When he
got back to Gallup that afternoon, he found that he had locked himself out of his car.
He walked to a nearby gas station and got somebody to come over and open the car
for him, then went back to the station to pay his bill. Going back to the oar a second
time he found again that he had locked himself out and had to repeat the whole
performance. We all learned that if we were going out with Dexter in his car, we first
had to find it in the Dorm parking lot - he never knew where it was. The last I heard of
Dexter, he had become the curator of the Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum. I don't know
if that museum is still there or has been lost.
  At the lab I was learning a lot about technique, and found that I had a good,
steady hand for microsurgery. This was in the days before decent micromanipulators
were available so it was a very handy attribute for us at that time. The Damon Runyon
Fund was primarily supporting cancer research since that was what Damon Runyon
died of. We were interested in a specific line of hybrid fish in which platyfish and
swordtails were interbred in the laboratory and the offspring were then interbred with
either one or the other of the original platyfish or swordtail lines. The offspring of that
mating were 100?~ melanotic - that is they all developed melanomas - a deadly tumor
                       26


in humans.  Our interest was primarily in determining where in the developing
embryo did the oeiis capable of producing these tumor's come from.  We began to
devise experiments, using these very special fish, to answer that question. We made
fair progress that year (1950-l 951) but by the spring of 1951, Doug Humm had
decided to move to the University of North Carolina. This decision created a problem
for Marty Roeder and me, Humm's two graduate students. if we wanted to continue the
work we had started we would have to transfer with him. if we preferred to start over
on our graduate research programs we could stay where were. I had an offer to stay
and work with C. Clayton Hoff, who was an Entomologist with broad experience in the
budding new science of Ecology. This was tempting but both Marty and I opted to
transfer and continue what we were doing with Doug Humm.  in June we ail headed
east to the University of North Carolina. Carolina was one of the better universities in
the South and it had close ties to the Woods Hole, Marine Biological Laboratory,
probably the best facility for a young developmental biologist in the country, if not in
the world. it was and is located on the southwest corner of Cape Cod, and students
from member universities usually went there for summer work and study. During that
year, George Gass and wife Oottie, showed up, having left Lederie and entered
graduate school. I was surprised he elected to come to New Mexico. We had not
corresponded much at ail. He eventually got his PhO there, in physiology, and went to
work at the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, in the Pharmacology
Division. A few years later, he suggested that I come to Washington and work in the
same place, but I'll come to that later. When George left Washington he went to
Southern Illinois University, as professor of Physiology and spent the bulk of his career
there.

The University of North Carolina (1951-1953)

  Chapel Hiii,was one of the prettiest college towns I had ever seen.  I had made
a visit home before going there and had bought a car - a 1949 Ford coupe. it turned
out to be a great car and inexpensive to operate. I had reached a point of needing a
car - the Univ. of North Carolina was rather isolated in the woods of central North
Carolina, one of its charms, but making it rather difficult to get too. There was no public
transportation but I suppose the most compelling reason was that I was dying to own a
car - even if it took my last cent, which it did. Actually, I never regretted it and kept that
car for many years.

   When I knew I was actually going to go there I already had a teaching
assistantship, teaching undergraduate laboratories in the Biology Department, and
Doug Humm and I had been able to renew the Damon Runyon Grant, so essential to
our research. in addition, I had applied for and been awarded a position as Dorm
Counselor at one of the oldest of the University dormitories (Old South), at the
University. When I arrived and registered I checked into my room at Old South. I had
expected it to be close to the front door. Wrong - it was on the top (4th) floor. These
old dormitories were not air conditioned and there were no elevators and although I

27


had the room to myself it was pretty miserable. in addition, I really didn't have the time
to deal adequately with over 150 undergraduates and after about a month I resigned.
This meant that I had to find another place to live. Marty had moved into the graduate
dorm - a relatively new building with both air conditioning and an elevator.  Much
nicer. in the graduate dorm my next door neighbor was an English major named Tom
Noble, from Taliassee, Alabama, who was working on a masters degree on Thomas
Donne, an early English poet. Tom was very different than the science majors I was
used to and I liked him a lot. He taught me how to play the old English woodwind, the
recorder. I eventually got proficient enough that he and I could play duets. I really
enjoyed that and thought the sound beautiful. Not everybody in the dorm fett the same
way. Tom finished his masters degree and went down to Aiken, South Carolina, to
teach at Aiken Prep. This was a school where many of the nations ultra-wealthy sent
their young children to be properly educated and prepared for the lives they would
lead when they inherited their parents great wealth - a very unusual, but not unique
place. Their parents usually had homes in Palm Beach, Newport, Southampton,
Saratoga, and other such places. I found it fascinating and used to visit Tom
whenever I had the chance. Tom went on to Yale, where he got his PhD, and where
he stayed on and taught and eventually retired in New Haven.
   in order to make up for the loss of income from my dorm counceiors' job, I
looked for and found another job. I had heard of a very good restaurant a few miles
east of Chapel Hill. A fellow graduate student in the Botany Department (Bob Johns
from Texas) where I was taking some courses, had the need of a job for the same
reasons as I, suggested that we go out and see the place. It was called the "Ranch
House" and it was owned by a German, Teddy Danziger, who also owned the
"Rathskeller", a small (by German standards) beer hail in town right across from the
campus - a gold mine. The Ranch House was a very good restaurant and a novel
one- I had never seen anything like it before or since. Although it was owned by
Teddy Oanziger it was managed and run by "Pokey" Anderson. Pokey was a local
"good old boy", who knew everybody. He was incidentiy a good manager and Bob
and I used to go to his house once in a while after closing and listen to his jazz
collection - one of the best I have ever heard.
   The "Ranch House" was a one story building, more or less surrounded by
unplanted tobacco fields and woods. it had a modest sized kitchen in the back. At the
entrance was a display case with samples of the meats served on display. Pokey
greeted guests and seated them. The main restaurant was one fairly large `I" shaped
room. At the base of the "L" and occupying a Iarge area was a huge old iron bedstead,
with bare bed springs on it and a huge tray under the springs. The "Ranch House" was
famous for miles around for cooking everything on a bed of coals. The tray held the
charcoal and the springs were the cooking surface. if it couldn't be cooked there we
didn't serve it. The mainstays, which were excellent, included steaks, chops, kebabs,
corn on the cob, baked potato, garlic bread, chicken, etc.  A huge, very pleasant black
man was the chef. He had been doing it for years and put on a great show - people
loved it.
   When Bob and I were hired, we were the first and only white waiters in the place
                        28


other than the wine steward who was a Belgian passing himself off as a Frenchman.
This was O.K. because he was quite knowiedgable about wines (we had a good cellar
for North Carolina) and he had the right accent. The chef, kitchen staff, and the rest of
the waiters, were ail black and paid $.SO per hour. The waiters did better, of course,
because of tips. Two white waiters created a problem because they couldn't, by local
convention pay a white waiter the same as a black waiter - so they paid Bob and me
$.51 per hour. We certainly didn't care since it was the tips we were interested in. The
restaurant was also known for its coffee and its salad dressing. These were made
back in the kitchen by a secret process. Just before the restaurant opened, the black
staff would come in through the back door. They were always in a good mood and it
was some time before Bob and I figured out why. it turned out that they had a still out
in the woods in back of the place and they were selling and especially drinking
moonshine. I tasted it once c totally poisonous. The kitchen was not air conditioned so
it was hot and humid except in the winter. The first job the kitchen staff had on coming
in was to make the salad, salad dressing and the coffee - ail the pride and joy of the
restaurant. To start, they took a 30 gallon garbage can and put it in the center of the
floor. Two of them would then stand over it and with their hands tear whole heads of
lettuce, or whatever they were making salad from that day, to shreds into the can.
They sweated profusely into the can at the same time, which may have been one of
the secret ingredients. The salad dressing, turned out to come from gallon jugs of
French's salad dressing which was stored on a shelf until the oil had separated from
the rest of the dressing. Then about half the oil was poured off and what remained
was our secret formula dressing. The coffee was the A&P 8 O'clock brand, which we
bought in bulk. Again, a garbage can was used by placing it up on the huge stove and
half filling it with water. Several pounds of the coffee were put in a flour sack and
thrown into the boiling water. it boiled ail evening - ail we did was add water, if
necessary. To serve the coffee we had miniature (2 or 4 cup) percolators which we
dipped into the G.I. can to fill. The response to the salad and coffee was awsome.
People couldn't get enough and we were in hysterics most of the time.
  I got to meet a lot of famous people in that restaurant. Actors, politicians,
various dignitaries were always brought there when visiting the campus by locals
including faculty, because it was the best restaurant in the area.  I remember one
evening when "John Browns Body" was on tour with Charles Laughton, Judith
Anderson, Tyrone Power, and Raymond Massey came in with separate parties. These
were certain to be good tips, and I got three of the four tables. Charles Laughton
ordered the kebab, and I foolishly offered to take it off of the skewer for him. it was
stuck pretty firmly on the skewer, and the whole thing slipped and took off, headed for
his lap. I barely caught it, but he was very nice about it and gave me a generous tip for
that time - $4.00 for a table of four. We had great fun at the "Ranch House" and made
a little money at the same time.
  The University of North Carolina had a beautiful golf course a couple of miles
east of town, and students could play for $50. There was an apartment complex
across the street from the front nine. Tom, Marty and I figured if we lived out there we
could sneak across the street and play for nothing, which tells you something about
                        29


the value of $50 at that time. We did move out there into a two bedroom apartment,
plus kitchen, living room, and bath. The only problem it created was it made me the
chauffeur since I had the only car until Tom bought a new Pontiac later in the year.

  Meanwhile, we were trying to get sufficiently organized in the lab to get started
on research. Part of our plan was to have me do single ceil transplants, taking neural
crest ceils from hybrid embryos which were destined to produce melanomas and
transplant them into embryos which were not destined to produce melanomas and see
if those ceils would then induce tumors. This was delicate work, and it was clear that I
was going to need large numbers of embryos. The Biology Dept. had made a fairly
large, "temporary" building left over from the World War era. We outfitted a small
portion of the space as a sterile surgery for me, office and laboratory space for Doug
Humm. Marty Roeder was not involved in this work since he was basically a
Biochemist and was working on another project. The rest of the space was to be
devoted to the breeding of fish. I calculated I would need about 200 aquaria to raise
enough piatyfish-swordtail hybrids to provide me with a continual source of embryos.
To do that I had to build sturdy (10 gallon aquaria are heavy) racks out of two by fours,
to hold twelve tanks in three tiers of four tanks each. This took a week or more. I took
my lumber out to the department parking lot (where I was subject to a fair amount of
ridicule from my friends in the department). I have to admit that building racks seemed
like a strange thing for a graduate Biology major to be doing in the parking lot.
Eventually, I got the job done and the racks moved into the lab, along with the aquaria,
which were filled with conditioned (chlorine free) water, ready for fish. I wanted to
avoid the complication of having to set up filters, and aerators for 200 aquaria, so I
decided to try to "balance" them. This meant that each aquaria would have plants to
remove carbon dioxide and add oxygen, and excess organic matter would be
removed by snails and catfish. if an aquarium is properly balanced, it can reduce
maintenance almost to zero, which I found very desirable. Ultimately, I succeded.  I
was able to do the necessary single ceil transplants, and we were able to prove the
neural crest origin of the meianophores which later gave rise to melanomas. Later, I
developed a technique for the freehand technique of transplanting the nucleus from
one ceil to another. A few years later good micromanipulators were developed and
such work became much easier - but I had ail the fun. These results were duly
published in the scientific literature - my first publication.

Florida State Univ. (1953 -1955)

  During that year Charles Metz, an invertebrate developmental biologist arrived
as a visiting professor. Sea Urchin embryology was something I had grown quite
interested in and had been introduced to in Woods Hole. So far I had worked only with
fish. There was little opportunity at North Carolina to work with marine invertebrates,
since they had no marine lab and the coast was 100 or so miles away. Also, North
Carolina empasized `Classical" Biology in its graduate curriculum - something I was
not greatly interested in - so when Charlie Metz moved on to Florida State Univ. the
next year I asked if I could transfer with him. He said O.K. so I tried to finish up my work
                        30


with Doug Humm, spent the summer in Woods Hole and moved to Tallahassee in the
fail to work with Charlie Metz, both at the Marine Lab at Alligator Harbor (about 20
miles from the campus) and the campus itself. I remember that trip to Florida, driving
by myself, non-stop from New York. it was a miserable trip because the weather was
so bad - it rained the whole way. Then, as I crossed the border from Georgia to
Florida, the clouds suddenly opened up to a beautiful sunshiny day, from the border to
Tallahassee. What a lift that gave me - I thought I'd reached paradise.
   Florida State University, had, since its' opening years ago, been a girls school.
A few years before I got there, it had been converted to a co-ed University trying to go
"big time". The student composition when I arrived in 1953 stiti had more women than
men but the gap was closing rapidly. I moved into a new dormitory on campus, which
was expanding rapidly. I had a teaching assistantship and I was helping Charlie Metz
to set up his laboratory, so I was very busy. My teaching chores were on the main
campus but our laboratory was in one of the expansion areas of the university which it
had inherited after the war, when the post war expansion began. There was an old
municipal airport several miles west of the city. This had been added to by the military,
who had enlarged the airstrip and built quonset style barracks for the troops. These
barracks, were in the woods (beautiful huge old live oaks, draped with Spanish moss),
and quite serviceable. A lot of these buildings had been turned over to the University,
for overflow housing, and administrative office space. Charlie got a portion of one for
conversion to laboratory space. it was quite spacious and we could do virtually
anything we wanted with it. We even inherited a janitor, an old black man who turned
out to be very helpful since he knew everything about the place. At lunch time we
would go out under one of the magnificent oaks and relax while watching the janitor
"hunt? He hunted with a sling shot, and was deadly with it. His targets were squirrels
and he seldom missed. The oaks were full of squirrels and he would sit there and
watch until he had picked out the one he wanted for lunch. He would aim carefully,
shoot, then walk over pick up the squirrel and take it inside the lab. There in a matter
of minutes, he would skin it, cut it into pieces, and have it frying in its' own fat. He did
that almost every day and never made a dent in the local squirrel population.
  Charlie had three graduate students at first - me (his first graduate student),
Mike Greenberg (a recent Cornei graduate from Brookiyn)who was living in the same
dorm I was and Don Menzies from Hickory, N. C.,(Oon didn't last very long - he came
from a long line of physicians and was hoping to get into Medical School). He was a
very nice fellow and soon got accepted into Medical School and became a physician
like everyone else in his family for generations. Mike and I decided we would prefer to
live in a room in a private residence we had seen advertised. it turned out to be in the
cellar of the house of a man who seemed very suspicious - even afraid - of us.  I never
figured him out but we stayed there until summer (it was very close to the Biology
Dept.). When Mike went to New York to get married to Rima - I went to the wedding
which was great fun. Rima was great fun also; Mike couldn't have made a better
choice I believe. Mike and Rima moved out to West Campus into of the apartments
created in the old W.W.ii buildings, not far from the Lab. This, of course, meant that I
had to find another place to live. it didn't take long to enlist Joe Lang, a graduate
                        31


student in the Chemistry Dept. who had been there for years, and seemed to be in no
hurry to graduate, and Bernie Benstock, a frustrated actor whose claim to fame was
that he had gone to high school with Bernie Schwartz (actor Tony Curtis), in New York.
We found an apartment on sorority row, on the main campus up over a three car
garage. it was cheap and filthy. it had two bedrooms, a large living room with an old
oil stove which was supposed to heat the place, a dining room, and a kitchen.  it was
not something to brag @bout but it served our needs very nicely. We got to know many
of the girls in the neighboring sorority house and had many a great party there. Across
the street, was the Tri Delta sorority house, teeming with beautiful girls. I occasionally
double dated with Don Menzies, who introduced me to a lovely young education major
from Pensacola, Nancy Mayer. We started dating (mostly movies) and enjoying each
others company,Nancy and I fell in love and got engaged later that year. Nancy had
to do a term of practice teaching before graduating so she went back to Pensacola to
do her teaching - I became a comuter for a while. We got married in early June, 1955
in Pensacola. We found a place to live in the same complex the Greenbergs lived in,
out on West Campus in a one room apartment in one of the old World War ii barracks,
not too far from the lab. By that time I was essentially finished with my PhD work but
still had to finish writing and typing my dissertation. I had been approached by the
President of Athens College, a small antebellum college in Athens (north Alabama).
Dr. Perry, the president, was trying to get this small college accrediied and to do it he
had to have a certain number of PhOs on the faculty, which he didn't have. The school
had no money and a small local student body; perhaps a few hundred.  it had been
able to hire a few PhDs who had retired from northern univergities, and were willing to
relocate to north Alabama for very little money. Now they were looking for younger
people, like me, to further bolster the faculty. The area seemed to have some potential
to me. This was just before "Sputnik" but there was already an activity going on in
Huntsville, Ala., about 10 miles east of Athens, where the Army Ballistic Missile Agency
had moved a key group of German engineers under Werner von Braun, who had been
brought from Germany to Texas after WWII, and recently to Alabama to begin work on
the development of rockets and space vehicles. it ail sounded pretty far out but
interesting nevertheless. The other attraction for me was the fact that I was now
married and needed a job especially since Nancy was pregnant. I figured I could
finish my dissertation as easily in Athens as in Tallahassee and graduate with my PhD
in January of 1956. Nancy got pregnant within a few months of the wedding, which
was great as far as I was concerned but it did seem to be rushing things a bit. As
usual, a major problem for me was the incredibly low salary scale offered by the
college. They offered me less than $4,000 a year, which was very low. it turned out
that in order to pay me the minimum salary I was willing to accept ($4,200), they had to
make me the Head of the Biology Dept., (in fact I was the whole Biology Dept.),and
give me an Associate Professorship - unheard of for someone just out of school.
  Nancy and I moved to Athens in time for the fall term, and rented an apartment
in town. I could get to the campus in 5 minutes and the hospital (Nancy was due in
April) in less. It was a pleasant, typical small southern town of 2 or 3 thousand people,
isolated in the northern part of the state, a couple of miles north of the Tennessee
                        32


River, and a few miles south of the Tennessee border. it turned out that I had to teach
ail the Biology courses offered at the college, since I was the only Biologist. I had to
teach both lecture and laboratory. We were on the quarter system and I ended up
teaching nine courses that year, some of which I had never taught before, and some of
which I had never even taken myself. At the same time, I was finishing my dissertation,
which occasionally required a trip to Tallahassee. Of course, it was an impossible
year during which I developed the symptoms of an ulcer. Nancy did some substitute
teaching, but when the son of the President of Athens College (10 to 12 years old)
started delivering her paychecks, she gave it up. in order to offer a reasonable
curriculum for potential Biology majors, I had to teach ail day and into the night. The
day classes were primarily for the local, full time students, and the night classes were
for the engineers and other employees from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in
Huntsville. I was busy! There was another young PhD at Athens College - Chuck
Lundquist, a PhD from M.I.T. who had been drafted and was stationed as private at the
A.B.M. A., working with the Germans to develop our first satellite. Chuck actually lived
on campus so we saw a lot of him and his wife Pat, who was an accomplished cellist.
We enjoyed them both a lot. Chuck was a one of the launch officials on our first
satellite. Chuck was also an experienced and avid spieiunker, and he and I spent as
much time as possible climbing around the many extensive limestone (this was
Limestone county) cave systems in the hills surrounding the Tennessee River - a
fascinating if somewhat dangerous hobby. Once you are isolated, far back in a large
cave complex, you might as well be on another planet.

  Chuck used to talk to me about going to the moon and the planets, saying that
we had the ability to do it before too long and I knew that was one of the primary
motivations of von Braun. However, I found to hard to believe that we could actually
do it. Pretty exciting stuff.

   My classroom and laboratory were the same room, in the basement of the
Presidents' house. in other words, there were no real facilities for Biology, although
they kept promising them to me. Part of the floor was dirt, having never been intended
for such use. it was an unforgivable situation on the part of the college but I had to
make the best of it.  I was in a haze ail year that year - trying to keep with two sets of
students - the locals and the far more movitated and intelligent students from the Army
Ballistic Missile Agency. I had decided to offer three courses each quarter, realizing
that I would never be able to it for more than a year. However, it was the only way I
could offer enough courses to give my two different kinds of students a chance to
major in Biology. Meanwhile, the accreditation board had awarded the college
accreditation in the southeastern region.
  I soon discovered that I really was dealing with two very different student

bodies, the younger locals and the older and wiser ones from Huntsville - one group,
day students, and the other, night students. I recall a student newly graduated from the
local high school, who was having a hard time with introductory Biology.
She had a malformed back and was physically handicapped. Also, although she was
                       33


a pleasant young lady, she didn't seem too bright. She couldn't spell (bean for bone),
and I suspected she couldn't read (later confirmed). I finally decided to talk to the
registrar about it, wondering how she ever got out of highschool. He said that the local
high school had the practice of allowing students like her to go through the graduation
ceremony and receive a fake diploma. I assume she never knew she hadn't actually
graduated, and no one had told her. I asked the registrar, who had lived in town and
been registrar at the college for many years, why the college compounded the
problem by admitting her to freshman status at the college. I never did get a straight
answer to that one. I told him that it was my intention to give her a failing grade. He
tried to talk me out of it, but in good conscience, I had no choice. I spoke to the Dean
about it (he had just come that year too), and he was as shocked as I was. The poor
girl dropped out of school.

  I finished my dissertation and graduated from Florida State Univer$ity with my
PhO in January as planned - a great relief. I don't remember much about it, except that
the graduation speaker was Philip Wylie, one of my favorite authors at the time,
primarily because of his book "Generation of Vipers", among others.

Food and Drug Administration (Washington 1956-l 958)

   At the time I was debating my future. I had decided that full time teaching, at
least the kind I was doing, was not something I wanted to continue. That spring the
Dean announced that there would be no raises - the college didn't have the money. At
that point I decided that I really should leave. We had a new baby (born 2 April, 1956)
named Dee Ann, who to this day doesn't like to admit she was born in ALABAMA! At
about the same time I had a phone call from George Gass who had graduated (PhO)
from the University of New Mexico and was now working at the Pharmacology Division
of the Food and Drug Administration in Washington D. C. He said they were looking
for PhDs, and that l should apply. They were paylng $5400 per year, so of course I
applied. I got the job and we were in an apartment in Arlington, Va. by the end of
June. I started work at the Food and Drug Adm. doing research in the Pharmacology
Div. on the biochemical effects of select anti-cancer agents on cellular metabolism.  1
was also asked to read and evaluate new drug applications, continually coming in
from industry - a task I was in no way qualified for, but I learned my way through it.
This led to my being occasionally being assigned to go out with an inspector, to look at
laboratories which did most of the animal toxicity testing for the large companies who
ultimately developed and marketed the drugs. This was interesting, frustrating and
educational - to see how major drug companies avoided their primary responsibility for
providing honest data in support of their new drug applications. This way they could
say that they weren't responsible for the test data, but company "X" was.  I remember
visiting one such lab in Philadelphia. The inspector and I finally found the place in a
seedy warehouse district in the city. We knocked on the door several times but no one
ever came and we went in. in a large open room (no lights), we found a table with an
ancient microscope, balance, and some other apparatus (most of which belonged in a
museum), and no evidence that any of it had been used in many years. Since much of

34


the data sent in to us referred to a fairly comprehensive animal test program, we were
primarily interested in their animal holding and test facilities. There were certainly
none where we were. We noticed a stairway to the second floor, where a faint light
could be seen. We went up, and found an office and a man who claimed to be
president of the company. We began to question him about their data and how they
acquired it. He was very vague and evasive - in fact he was clearly lying. I asked to
see their animal facilities, particularly dogs. He said they kept those facilities and the
dogs in his basement at home, but he didn't have any there now. I asked to see his
animal purchase invoices. He didn't have any, and said that he didn't purchase
animals from commercial sources. I asked how he did get his dogs. He said that he
had kids pick strays up on the streets and bring them in to him. if true, this was illegal,
and would invalidate any data he might get, since he knew nothing about the animals,
and they most likely would have been sick to start with making any interpretation of the
data impossible. I asked how he disposed of the animals when finished with them,
and he said they were released back to the streets. Ail in ail, the data were 100%
fraudulent and yet had been used by a major drug company (who I won't name) in
support of a new drug application. I don't know what the final disposition of the case
was since the legal side of things was handled by government lawyers, who I almost
never saw. I would assume that in a case like this the penalty would have been
severe, but you never know. This wasn't a unique case! The laws and inspection
procedures today are much more rigorous but I'm sure there are still abuses.
   Two doors down the hail from my laboratory was a room about the size of my
lab, occupied by a huge, fat, old, chimpanzee. He had a big tire to swing on, a place to
sleep, and ail the food he could eat. He had been there since the Roosevelt
administration - the chimp had the distinction of being the president's food taster back
in the 1940s and nobody had the heart to put him down in spite of what must have
been a substantial sum to support him in the manner to which he had become
accustomed.
   My lab and the animal facilities and many other labs were in the sub-basement
of the South Agriculture BuNding, at the corner of 14th St. and independence Av. it was
a very large building and was occupied by around 10,000 federal workers.  it was a
good location for commuting from Virginia because it was only a few blocks from the
14th St. bridge, crossing the Potomac. in the winter, I would get to the lab before
dawn, go down to the lab, go up one floor for lunch in the basement cafeteria, and go
home as the sun was setting. Thus, in the winter, for two or three months, I would only
see the sun on weekends and holidays. Depressing.
   Much has been said in recent years about the use of animals for drug and
cosmetic testing. There was a day (years ago) when animals were undoubtedly
abused in this context. I find today most of the arguments of the animal rightists today
to be ridiculous. While it is true that the response of many animals to specific drugs
may differ from the response of humans, these animal tests are far from useless. They
give us a reasonable and sometimes accurate measure of both the toxicity and
efficacy of the drug. We know perfectly well where animal testing makes sense and
where it doesn't. Some people seem to think that scientists hang around on street
                        35


corners waiting to steal pets to torture in the laboratory and that there are countless
numbers of animals killed uselessly in the name of science. Nothing could be further
from the truth - first, healthy, genetically controlled animals are expensive. if they are
not healthy, they are useless for testing purposes. in addition to drug testing there is
the very important use of animals in the training of physicians - for example, would you
want your heart surgeon to have been trained on an animal heart or a tomato? Then
there is the fallacious argument about the numbers of animals used in laboratory work.
White there are many thousands used, quite humanely, in the laboratory, the number
is a small fraction of the numbers destroyed annually in pounds and by humane
societies, (in the millions), and ail because we abandon them. in any case, we used
the smallest number of animals (mostly mice and rats) that was statistically significant,
and treated them as humanely as possible.

  in January, 1958, our second daughter was born - Sandra Lee Young. We had
bought a house in Rockviiie, Md. and Sandy was born in Suburban Hospital in
Bethesda, Md.

Army Ballistic Missile Agency (Huntsville 1958-l 960)

  While I was at Food and Drug, one of the most momentous events in my lifetime
took place - the launching of the Soviet "Sputnik". This event not only changed my life,
it changed the world, and opened the exploration of the universe to mankind. Soon
after the launch of Sputnik, the United States called a large meeting in Washington to
discuss what we, as a nation, should do. Many of my friends from Huntsville were
there along with scientists from Universities and industry - virtually anyone who was
interested in the potential of space research. There was no NASA yet, but the military
(particularly the Army Ballistic Missile Agency) was interested and well represented.  in
the beginning, the potential for space research was not obvious except for making
physical measurement, such as radiation measurements, and possibly for the
deployment of weapons - a prospect that most of us found repugnant. At that meeting I
met Werner von Braun and his deputy for research Ernst Stuhilinger. Von Braun was
an extremely dynamic and impressive person. His people were mostly the Germans
who came to this country with him after the war. They were highly motivated and
extremely respectful toward him. Stuhiinger was quite different; quiet and low key, and
a very pleasent man. it was at the Washington meeting where Stuhiinger took me
aside and asked me if I would be interested in coming to Huntsville and flying
biological experiments in recoverable nose cones since I was a Biologist. At the time I
hadn't thought about it much and said I didn't think so, but I'd think about it. Stuhlinger
was a Physicist - a student of Geiger of the Geiger radiation counter fame. What I
didn't know until then was that Stuhiinger had an undergraduate degree in Biology,
and was actually quite interested in possible biological studies in space. Over thenext
week or two I thought about what kind of significant basic science might be done in
space craft. There were really only two unique features in space that could not be
duplicated on Earth. l- Very high energy radiation, such as cosmic primaries. This
was of considerable importance to humans, particularly in flight, since they cannot be

36


shielded out. This was of little interest to me - it was more of a biomedical problem. 2-
Microgravity. Once I started thinking about it, it got more and more interesting. Here
was a phenomenon that could not be duplicated on the Earth, and it seemed to me
that it could have an effect on biok@cai systems. All life on Earth has evolved in a
constant 1G environment. One would think that this fact would have some
consequences on the processes of evolution. in microgravity, which in theory can
approach zero-gravity, but in the spacecraft, probably it is in the neighborhood of an
average of one one thousandth G, we could hope at least to study the problem and
perhaps find out what the minimum gravitational field detectable by a living ceil is, and
what the gravity sensor is at the s&cellular level. It would take some pretty
sophisticated experiments to unravel such problems. Another limitation was the fact
that we didn't have satellites which would allow days, weeks, and months, in which to
do experimental work. We had rockets which could give us about 30 seconds of
microgravity - virtually useless for experimental purposes, but gave us the opportunity
to learn how to design such experiments for the future and more importantly, how to
build the hardware and environmental control systems (temperature, atmosphere,
water handling, pressure), necessary to maintain any living system in such a hostile
environment. This really was a new frontier - no one had ever had the ability to study
the effects of less than 1G on living systems before. The advent of the space craft
made it possible. I happened to be there at the right time and trained as a
developmental biologist. Suppose an egg was fertilized in .OOlor .OQOl G, and
allowed to develop. What would happen? Some predicted that the answer would be -
nothing. Others, including me, predicted that the answer would be much more
interesting, but only if the gravitational field could be gotten down closer to zero than
we were currently able to do in a spacecraft. This is extremely difficult to do. There are
always things going on on a space craft that impart very small accelerations (G) to the
vehicle - eg. motors starting and stopping, positioning rockets to keep the vehicle
stable and not tumbling, valves opening and dosing, etc. While we don't know what
the threshold of sensitivity of living plant and animal cells actually is, we do know that
both plant and animal ceils do have gravity sensors, and do respond to gravity. What
we want to know is what are those sensors, how sensitive are they to the amount and
duration of G input, and how important are these inputs to the functionability and
evolution of the organisms? From the point of view of the basic biologist these are
fundamental and important questions. I spent a significant part of the next ten years
trying to answer those questions along with colleagues with similar interests.  it is now
about 35 years later, and we still don't have a complete answer.

Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Huntsville-(1 956-l 960)

  Ernst Stuhiinger was also interested, which meant a lot to me in making my
decision to move to Huntsville for a year or two and do some experiments in
recoverable nose cones, in spite of the limitations imposed by such primitive vehicles.
l accepted the job with some misgivings and we moved to Huntsville. We had had a
second child (Sandra Lee by that time), so we decided to buy a house in Decatur, not
                        37


too far from Redstone Arsenal (now named the Marshall Space Center). I was the only
Biologist among a horde of engineers, but I got good support from von Braun on down.
They had created a special Branch for the old German rocket pioneer Herman Oberth,
who was retiring, and since there was nowhere else to put me they made me the Chief
of the Special Fields Branch of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. It was a one man
branch, plus my secretary. it was a great place to be at the time, because that was
where the action was and I was surrounded by people who enthusiastically believed
that this was the future! We were on the frontier of everything having to do with space.
I had decided to fly sea urchin eggs first. I could get then from the gulf and I could get
Charlie Metz, my professor from Florida State to help me. Here is an example of Ernst
Stuhiingers' enthusiasm - a poem he wrote to von Braun in 1959...
         "I doubt that you remember me -
           I am an urchin from the sea.

Where once my unlaid eggs did swell
is nothing but an empty shell.
These eggs though, and God bless your heart,
in Jupiter they had a part,
Where in their own peculiar ways
They registered some cosmic rays
And had, while on a weightless ride,
Their tiny little ceils divide.
They cut, though modest still and frail,
For living man an open trail
To space. This trail, we hope, will grow
And help man's daring goal: to go
Perhaps in ten years or eleven
Directly to the Gates of Heaven!"

Ernst Stuhiinger to Werner von Braun
Huntsville, Ala., 1959

   Huntsville was hardly the place to try to do research on marine life forms but I
was able to set up a laboratory and bring up sea urchins from the guif - Pensacola or
Tallahassee and design and test hardware and in general get ready for whatever flight
opportunity came along. In the beginning, this was restricted to nose cones launched
by Redstone Rockets. When there was a flight opportunity I would fly to Cape
Canaveral where I had to set up another lab, with the appropriate hardware and fresh
sea urchins, and prepare the experiment for flight. Charlie Metz helped me with these
chores. Then, I would fly, before launch, to wherever the recovers ship was sailing
from (in the early days, San Juan , Puerto Rico), and if i could l would set up a
rudimentary laboratory on the recovery ship as well in order to deal with any live
material recovered - in this case, fertilized eggs. Obviously, with 20-30 seconds of
microgravity, l wasn't going to learn much more than how to handle live material under
such adverse conditions and how to build hardware that would work in flight and keep
the living material alive and well. This proved to be no easy task. Embryonic material
                       38


is very sensitive to any toxic material and any environmental extremes such as
temperature, acidity, etc. These flights were really test flights for the engineers to
check out their rockets, not for me to do experiments. I was essentially a hitch-hiker.

NASA Headquarters Washington, D. C.
       1960 - 1961

   During the time I was at Huntsville, NASA was created, with headquarters in
Washington, D. C., and within a year or so an offi= of Life Science Programs was
opened, headed by Dr. Clark Randt , an M. D., indicating that the new agency would
have manned space flight effort with high priority. Randt requested me to return to
Washington as Chief of the new Space Biiiogy Program. I would have preferred to
remain in Huntsville and fly experiments but that was not in the cards. I went back with
the understanding that I would be allowed to build a N.A.S.A. Lie Science Program at
one of the N.A.S.A. Field Centers. I was also able to develop a modest Biology Flight
Program, using an unmanned, solid- propelled rocket to be launched from a military
facility at Point Arguello, near Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. I had pulled
together a group of scientists, from universities and other laboratories, and we were
designing experiments to fit into a basketball sized space craft, designed and flown to
detect and measure cosmic rays. I had enough money to involve the Goddard Space
Center and the Space Science Division of the General Electric Company in this effort.
We had selected the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Caiif., as the home
of the Life Science Laboratory Facility for the agency. I moved to Ames as the Chief of
the Biochemical Evolution Branch and an O.K. to begin the establishment of a NASA
Life Science Laboratory.

  We had lived in Bethesda, Md. during this stay in Washington, not far from the
National institutes of Health. Our son Mark was born here on Sept. 1960, also in
Bethesda, at suburban Hospital. We were getting ready to move to California early the
following year, which in fact we did in late January, right after the Kennedy
inauguration and the blizzard which immediately followed. We headed south to avoid
the snow - Mark, (5 months old) was sick so, of course each of the children took turns
being sick. it was a miserable trip, but we felt better when we reached California and
found the orchards in the Santa Clara Valley, in bloom - the fruit trees were still there
then.

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
   1961 - 1967

  Ames was one of the old NACA (aeronautics) laboratories which had been
assembled to create NASA the year before. Historically, it had nothing to do with
science, it was one of the countries' original wind tunnel test laboratories, where new
                        39


airplane designs could be tested in high and low velocity wind tunnels - there were
only two or three in the country. lt had been started in 1939 by Smith J. C&France one
of the country's first Aeronautical Engineers it was staffed with about 1,000 engineers,
ail having to do with aeronautics, and "Smitty" knew them all by name. Now he was
suddenly taking on something brand new. I knew he must have misgivings - I certainly
did. He had been Director for 20 years and continued in that capacity for another 20 or
so. Once NASA was created ail the old NACA centers had to grow in order to
accomodate the new space related activities and maintain leadership in their more
traditional areas. Smitty was a "character". He came across as gruff and tough but he
was an intelligent and fair minded person when you got to know him. I grew to like him
a lot as I got to know him better and he always treated me well. Smitty had been a
pilot in World War I, had lost an eye and wore a black eye patch. He had promised his
wife he would never fly again and as far as I know, he didn't. The director of a NASA
Field Center and he wouldn't use airplanes. When he had to go back to Washington,
he took the train. Ames had been operating in exactly the same way for 30 years and
now suddenly they had the alien Biologists to cope with. Being an engineering center
all those years had led to the establishment of certain work habits and patterns that
worked well for them but as l quickly learned, didn't work for us. I had set up a
laboratory on the roof of the instrument Research Building, primarily to prepare for the
life science flight program I had started when I was in headquarters, now called "Bias".
in addition, I was beginning to outline a program of research in Gravitational Biology
for the agency. I had hired a scientist (Jiro Oyama) - who had worked next door to me
at the Food and Drug Administration a few years back - as well as several laboratory
technicians. We were underway with science at the Ames Research Center.
Laboratory researchers doing experiments that require frequent or continuous
attention are used to working at odd hours - set by the requiremants of the
experiments. They had never worked that way at Ames. You started work at 8am, and
went home at 5pm with few exceptions. What I didn't know was that the power was
shut off at 5pm and back on at 8am. Without power in the laboratory, we couldn't
function, especially dealing with live material requiring rigorous environmental control.
For example, the refrigerators went off every night often destroying our experiments.  I
had to go to Smitty, to get this and other disturbing customs changed. At first , Smitty
resisted - he didn't understand why we couldn't be like everyone else.  it was also
required that every publication from the center be published in a government (NASA)
publication, and with the center director's name on it. This made no sense at all to me
and is totally unacceptable to a scientist. The purpose of such publications is to
establish a reputation as a scientist through providing ones data to the scientific
community in such publications. Obviously the data can't be signed by an
administrator, who knows nothing about it, and published in a government document
that no scientist reads or even knows about. To Smittys' credit, he listened and
eventually understood. The objectionable rules were changed.
  Bios I was now being built and launch time was approaching. The scientific
team I had assembled was getting excited about the upcoming opportunity and so was
I. This capsule was devoted to science. Once we started to fly astronauts in Mercury,
                        40


Gemini and Apollo vehicles, the men became the entire focus of the mission and
science was still out in the cold. in addition, most of the early astronauts had no
interest in science - they had ail been trained as military pilots and all they wanted to
do was fly a space craft with their own hands. Unfortunately, when flying in a manned
space craft I was told that ail my experiments had to be redesigned so that an
astronaut was involved in the activation of the experiment. Of course, up to this point I
had had to design ail hardware to function in the automated mode - so, back to the
drawing board. It was now necessary to include astronauts in everything we did
whether or not they had any interest or expertise and in spite of the fact that it added a
great deal to the expense of the entire mission. I redesiined the hardware so that
there was a small lever on the outside of the sperm and egg chamber which required
the astronaut to flip the lever at the appropriate time on his activity schedule, which
would activate the experiment. Gus Grissom was the astronaut in the Mercury flight
responsible for my experiment. For the entire year of preparation and training, I never
saw or heard from Gus. it was clear he couldn't care less about this responsibility,
even though it was being used by the agency to justify his presence on the spacecraft.
During the flight, when it came time for him to flip the lever, he turned it so hard he
broke it, destroying the experiment which would have worked very well in the
automated mode. I never heard a word of apology from him. This kind of disinterest
was prevalent among the early astronauts who were interested only in flying.  it was a
number of years later before the agency began to include scientist - astronauts in the
crews. in the early days, science didn't have a chance. During this period of time I
was abte to fly experiments on both Gemini and Apollo missions, but without much
scientific success. On one Gemini flight, I had some frog eggs on the spacecraft.
Things worked pretty well. The recovery ship was the aircraft carrier Wasp, and l had
set up a laboratory in the Dental Clinic. The crew had some "fun" with me. They had
assigned me a bunk which turned out to be right next to the steam driven catapult used
to launch aircraft from the deck above. During the night, they started launching planes,
and when the catapult went off, of course, it woke me up in terror. I sat up and bashed
my head on the overhead above. The crew, who had been waiting for this, thought it
was hilarious - I didn't.
   That summer, two Bios spacecraft were launched. I was on board the primary
recovery ship, the "Pine island", which ,saiied with two destroyers and a tracking ship to
the recovery area in the Pacific. I had designed a mobile laboratory, which was on
board the recovery ship, to handle the recovered biological specimins after recovery.
On the way to the recovery area we also launched two enormous high altitude
balloons which were intended to make high altitude cosmic ray measurements. Both
balloons were ruined - the first was torn open on one of the ship's gun mounts and the
second had an electronic failure and released the entire instrument payload shortly
after leaving the deck. it crashed into the deck and was destroyed. The two Bios
capsules were launched and both of them were lost from our radar screens,so that
nothing was recovered. I had to consider the whole mission a total failure, and so did
ail the scientists working with me, and the Captain of the ship ("Pine island"), who was
hoping for a promotion to Admiral. That's the way it was in the early days.
                         41


  Meanwhile, we were hiring scientists at Ames and setting up new laboratories
wherever space was available around the center. A few years later, we built a new
laboratory entirely for life science research at the center, and Ames became the
primary center for life science research in NASA and over the years developed a
reputation for excellence in several fields of research in the space life sciences.There
were the Space Biology Division, the Exobiology Division and the Biomedical
Division, with several Branches in each division. At any given time there were about
260 Civil Service scientists in the llife sciences. We had a visiting professorship
program where university scientists could come and work in our unique laboratories.
We also had a postdoctoral fellowship program administered by the National Academy
of Sciences, for us. I gradually evolved from a laboratory researcher into more and
more of an administrator. Somehow, this seemed inevitable since I enjoyed both. The
government had always treated me well with raises and promotions, so I felt I was
progressing satisfactorily, career-wise. I had always been put in positions with
sufficient authority and funding to do the job - especially in NASA. The Civil Service,
in spite of it's many shortcomings, was a system that worked pretty well for me. I had
been on the Civil Service rating board, so I knew how the system worked. I had
always been promoted as soon as I was eligible for promotion, and the pay, while
always lagging behind industry and often university pay, was O.K. The retirement and
medical plans were good. Other than the fact that the Civil Service tended to
overprotect the inefficient or poorly performing worker, the system worked reasonably
well. In addition, I was able to interact freely with scientists anywhere in the world, at
scientific meetings, and in my laboratories and theirs.
   I was a frequent lecturer to public and scientific audiences (20-4OIyear) in the
U.S. and abroad. I have wriien two books on space life science research and
contributed chapters to many other books, including textbooks and encyclopedias and
I have published about 45 papers in scientific journals.  I have been and in some
cases still am a member of such professional societies as, Sigma Xi, The American
Society for the Advancement of Science, Phi Sigma, The American Society of
Zoologists, The American Society for Cell Biology (Executive Director), Federation of
American Societies for Experimental Biology, and the International Society for the
Study of the Origin of Life, which I founded in 1969, and was for many years a member
of the Executive Council and for several years, Vice President. The ISSOL meets in a
diierent member country each year, which makes it especially interesting. I have
been on the editorial boards of several scientific journals - Origins of Life, The British
Interplanetary Journal, Biosystems, and Precambrian Research. Further details of
these activities can be found in my curriculum vita, (attached).
   Those were very busy days at Ames - hiring personnel, getting laboratories
organized and outfitted, getting our funding in order, etc. The first director of the whole
Life Science effort at Ames, from 1961 to1 963, was Dr. Webb Haymaker, who came to
us from the Walter Reed Hospital and Research Center in Washington, D. C. Webb
was a Pathologist with little or no background in administration - a pleasant
gentleman, but out of his element. Within a couple of years we had brought in Dr.
Harold P. Klein, Chairman of the Biology Dept. of Brandeis Univ. `Chuck", although
                        42


not an M. D. was an ideal Director of Life Sciences, and things went smoothly for many
years thereafter. I was Chief of the Biochemical Evolution Branch (1961-1963) From
(1963 - 1967) I was Chief of the Exobiology Divlsion, whii included three Branches
(Chemical Evolution, Biological Adaptation and Lie Detection). This included about
50 laboratory scientists and support personnel. I have often said that this was the best
job I ever had - I was able to do reasearch and to manage the Division and I loved
both. For the first couple of years my research had to do with simulating the Mars
Environment (as we knew it at that time), and exposing terrestrial life forms to that
environment to see if they were able to survive and/or grow. The work was important
to our understanding of the possibility of indiginous life on Mars and to the possibility
of contaminating Mars with terrestrial life forms and perhaps thereby destroying
evidence of indiginous life. There were perhaps 4 or five scientists around the world
doing such research at the time, all funded by me. As it tumed out, Mars had a much
more hostile and extreme environment than we suspected and most of these
experiments were essentially irrelevant. Terrestrial life forms (even the hardiest of
bacteria) were quickly killed by exposure to the Mars environment - no liquid water,
temperatures far below the freezing point of water, virtually no oxygen, the
atmospheric pressure equivalent to pressures far above the top of Mount Everest on
Earth, and unattenuated ultra violet capable of sterilizing the surface. I terminated this
program after a couple of years of very interesting research. This changed our
thinking to the possibility that while we no longer believed that liie exixts today on
Mars, further experiments must await the time when we could actually land on Mars,
and learn more about this extremely hostile environment. That turned out to be the
Viking landers, 10 years later.
   During the early `60s we were able to organize and fund two satellites for the
sole purpose of flying biological experiments. Compared to my earlier efforts, these
satellites (Biosatellites I and II) were pretty sophisticated. We had electrical power,
some temperature control, each experiment self contained and some with
photographic capability. We had plants, frog eggs, bacteria, amoebae, mice, and on
one of the satellites, a monkey. By this time the Soviets had already launched a dog
and a number of cellular experiments. While these were still primitive experiments,
they were a large step in the right direction. The Biosatellites were launched from
Cape Canaveral, Fla. and were to be recovered at sea in the Pacific. Unfortunately,
the orbital lifetime of the Biosatellites was limited to no more the 3 days - inadequate
for most experiments but still better than ever before.
   The switch to Exobiology research, turned out to be an important and productive
one. It was a new one initially stimulated by a paper written by Dr. Joshua Lederberg,
Nobel Laureate, at the time at Stanford University. His paper, written a couple of years
earlier, speculated on the possibility of actually exploring the planets, to search for life,
and to search for evidence of the origin of life. These were exciting ideas in exciting
times. I got to know Josh well, and was able to fund some laboratory work on his part,
in the Life Detection area. He had (and has) one of the best minds I had ever
encountered and I had the greatest admiration for his intellect. His paper along with
some laboratory work done by Stanley Miller, then a graduate student in the laboratory
                         43


of Harold Urey (Chicago Univ.), Nobel Laureate, suggested that ground based
research could provide us with solid clues to the chemical pathways by which life
arose on Earth. I brought in Cyril Ponnamperuma, a po&-doctoral fellow, when he
had finished his PhD in the Laboratory of Melvin Calvin, Nobel Laureate at the Univ. of
California at Berkeley. He had the training as a chemist and strong interest in the field.
I decided the time was ripe for NASA to Start a program, both at Universities and in
House at Ames, in the field of Exobiology. I obtained the money from NASA
Headquarters (from my friend Freeman Quimby), pulled together an advisory
committee, solicited proposals for competitive evaluation, t'eorganized my own
Laboratory at Ames, and began. Within a few months I was able to attract a sizeable
number of proposals from outstanding scientists from around the country, including 7
Nobel Laureates, for funding. The interest in the field was remarkable and
enthusiastic and led to one of the premier research programs in all of NASA,
recognized as such to this day. Through publications and lectures we quickly attracted
laboratories around the world to start up programs in this exciting field.  I established a
program in Exobiology (sometimes called Planetary Biology), in COSPAR, so that we
had an annual international forum for work in this area. Programs quickly sprang up in
many countries, most notably in France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland (where a new
Department of Exobiology was created at the Univ. of Nimjegen - the first in the world),
Japan, Spain, Sweden. the USSR, and others. There had already been two
international symposia on the Origin of Life; one in Moscow in 1957 and one in
Floriia, (at Waukula Springs, near Tallahassee), in 1963, which I had sponsored
through Sidney Fox of Florida State Univ. It was at the Waukula Springs meeting that
the two earlleSt scientific thinkers on the Origin of Life, met for the first time. Both had
written on the subject back in the 192Os, and they h&d never met or communicated.
These two were Dr. A. I. Oparin, of the USSR, and Dr.J.B.$.Haldane of Great Britain.
Haldane died a few months later of cancer. Oparin lived for a number of years more,
and I got to know he and his wife Nina quite well. Nina spoke good English, and in
fact taught English in Moscow - she also sometimes translated for Oparin when he
lectured to an English speaking audience, although she did not enjoy doing that.

  Things had been going well in the laboratory during the 6Os, but not so well in
Washington. I was under pressure to return to NASA Headquarters in Washington to
head up the National program in Exobiology. Freeman Quimby, who had been
running it was leaving to go to the Library of Congress, and I was really the only
person with the background to do the job. Orr Reynolds who was heading the NASA
Office of Life Sciences was quite persistent in asking me to come back and in 1967 we
soM our hous& in Sunnyvale and moved back to Washington. We bought a house in
McLean, Va., and stayed there until 1979.

Washington 1967-l 979

   Living in McLean was pleasant. It was a small town (then, not now), on the
Virginia side of the Potomac River, good schools, housing, and about 40 minutes from
down town Washington. The children received most of their primary and secondary
                          44


schooling there. It was a rather international community, which made it doubly
interesting. We enjoyed it a lot. We had a very nice house in a very nice
neighborhood, and I enjoyed my job a lot. I was now the Chief of the Exobiology
Program at NASA Headquarters, responsible for the national program in Exobiology
which included about 100-l 50 grants and contracts, mostly at Universities. We were
involved in basic research on the origin of life on earth and/or elsewhere in the
universe, including study of the planets and their evolution. In a couple of years I was
also given the responsibility for the Space Biology Program (the same program I had
started when I first went to headquarters, years before). In the late 60s I was
instrumental in getting the Agency to go to congress with a plan and request to go to
Mars with an automated probe to begin to do the necessary analyses to begin to
understand the Physics, Chemistry, and to begin the search for life (which many of us
thought was an unlikely prospect). In that capacity I was made the Chief Program
Scientist for the Viking Program (our first mars lander mission). Jerry Soffen and I
were co-chairmen of the Viking Science Steering Committee, responsible for the
development of an interdisciplinary team of about 70 scientists from the United States
and abroad, working on the instrumentation required to carry out those objectives.
The Viking Program was by far the largest unmanned program yet undertaken by
NASA - the ultimate cost reaching $1 ,OOO,OOO,OOO spread over 7+ years. Those were
exciting days, developing the experiments, assembling the spacecraft, launch from
Cape Kennedy, the nearly 1 year wait for the transit to Mars, the successful landing on
Mars, the first picture from Mars, the first sample of the Mars surface and then, the three
year operation of the 13 major experiments, studying the chemistry, potential biology,
weather, temperature, pressure, seismic activity, cameras (2) etc. All the experiments
operated perfectly, and since there were two spacecraft, this fact alone was a
remarkable achievement, and produced a great deal of data, some of which is still
being analyzed. The Viking sucess led to many scientific meetings held in the U.S.
and around the world, in order to communicate with other scientists and the public.
While these were preliminary results, there was enormous interest and Jerry Soffen
and I spent a great deal of time lecturing. Fortunately, we really enjoyed it. The
enormous excitment and sense of success generated by Viking left many of us,
including me, wondering how we could ever top this.
  During this period of time (the 1970s) our son Mark was having more and more
difficulty. His behavior changed drastically, he was in constant trouble both at school
and at home, he began running around with a very undesirable group of teenagers
and doing very poorly at school. We thought about moving to another community and
getting him a fresh start, but before that we decided that counsel@ might help,
especially since they had been indulging in drug and alcohol abuse. We sent him to a
Psychologist. After months of "treatment", we saw no improvement and got no
feedback from the Psychologist who considered his relationship with Mark
confidential. We decided to move to Annapolis, MD, where we were a block from a
school for Mark. Also we were able to buy a house on a creek where we could keep a
boat for cruising and water skiing, thinking that might help. It did not. Mark began to
get more and more paranoid, began haluclnatlng and in general to deteriorate
                        45


mentally. We sent him to a Psychiatrist for help, but after a year we seemed to be
getting nowhere, and eventually had to hospitalize him. He is diagnosed with
Schizophrenia. He is hospitalized to this day, and may remain so since he does not
respond to neuraleptic drugs. We hope for the best but Mark's future is bleak.

New York - Rockefeller Univ. (1979-1982)

  Short& after the Viking Mission, I was approached by my old friend Joshua
Lederberg who had recently left Stanford Univ. to assume the presidency of
Rockefeller Univ. in New York City. Rockefeller Is one of the two top biomedical
research instutions in the worki. The other is Harvard Univ. Rockefeller is unique in
that it offers no courses, it does biomedical research only, and students who are
among the best in the country are expected to be able to handle their routine learning
on their own. 100 graduate students are accep@d each year. It costs them nothing -
room and board are subsidized by the Unlverslty. They can work toward a PhD or
M.D. degree, and do so in some of the worlds' best taboratories under some of the
worlds best scientists, including a number of Nobel Laureates. It is a remarkable
institution, founded by John D. Rockefeller around 1900. Josh invited me to come to
Rockefeller as Vice President and help him get started. I was looking for something
that might provhje the stimulus, missing since the end of the Viking mission. I liked
New York and this sounded like a good opportunity. I accepted the position with the
intention of staying about 4-5 years and then perhaps returning to Washington, We
sold the Annapolis house and bought a house in the Mt. VernonBronxville area of
Westchester county, north of New York City. 1 became a commuter again, and Nancy
went into the real estate business. We ultimately moved Mark up to Rockland State
Psychiatric Hospital, one or the oldest and beat in the state, which is where he is at this
time.

  My responsibilities at Rockefeller included establishing a career development
program for young faculty. Working in the laboratory under a Nobel Laurate,
sometimes a young facu@y member could be relatively ignored by his mentor. Since
the competition for tenure is very acute at Rockefeller, these young peopie needed a
lot of help in preparing to look for permanent jobs. In addiion, I was to try to develop
new inter-laboratory research programs, where more than one laboratory, working in
complementary fields, would join in a research proposal for submission to the National
Institutes of Health for funding. Since most of the laboratory heads were very senior
scientists and fiercely independent, this was not easy. Lederberg and I were both
interested in the area of science and public policy. There has been an increasing tack
of understanding on the part of the public, about science, how it works, what it does for
people, and why a strong national effort in basic and applied research is crucial to me
national welfare. Without sol-k3 public support, the leadership of the United S&&es in
research is in jeopardy. I set up a series of public lectures to attempt to rectify this
problem.

All in all my tenure at Rockefeller was a very positive experience but I was never
                   46


quite comfortable with my role and interaction with some of the f'aculty. Nancy never
adapted to life in New York or to New Yorkers, so after 3 years I started to looklng to
return to Washington, where we were both more comfortable. While at Rockefeller I
had remained a NASA advisor, chairing a couple of advisory committees, organizing
symposia and playing an active role as a senior advisor to the agency. I enjoyed this
and even though I had retired from the government when I went to New York I had
remained dose to the agency.

Washington, D. C. (1982-1985)
American Society for Cell Biology

   In 1982 I was offered a position as the Executive officer of the American Society
for Cell Biology, with my headquarters in the National Headquarters in B&eada, MD,
a suburb of Washington. This was a major scientific society with more than 5,000
members. This appealed to me and my responsibilities were essentially managerial in
nature, including building membership, raising money, funning the business affairs of
the organization, staffing and preparing for the national meeting of the society, which
wasthemostlmportanteventattheyearforus. lhadastaffoffourinanofficesuite
near the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. This also allowed us to move back
to our house in McLean which we had rented to lraquis while we were gone. It also
allowed me to pursue my other interests with other government agencies, particularly
NASA. While I enjoyed the job for the first couple of years it became quite routine after
that. I was able to set up a stable budget for operations and in general put the society
on a sound fiscal basis. We had organized two annual meetings, but once you have
done mat, lt gets pretty boring to do it again year after year. One of my assistants
turned out to be quite good at it so I turned that responsibility to her. In the meantime
NASA was pushing me to do more and more work for them, which I began to do. They
wanted me to take on the management of a small General Electric Corp. subsidiary
(Management and Technical Services Co.).

Washington D. C. 1985-l 987
Management and Technical Services Co.

  E?y 1984 the government was cutting back on its civil service employes and lt
became obvious that many agencies were going to be understaffed and unabfe to
carry out their responsibilities. The public, unfortunately, seemed to feel that civil
servants didn't do any work anyway, so who needed them? This unfortunate attitude
is even stronger today, at least among conservatives, so the move to reduce the size of
the government continues. The NASA Llfe Division, along with other federal
organizations, were forced to seek help from contractors, and did so by setting up
corporate offices, such as MATSCO to supply them with the necessary skilled
personnel. I estimate this move ultimately cost the tax payer at least 50% more than it
would have had they continued to use oivil servants. All it did was to allow the
                        4f


politicians to brag about reducing the federal payroll. MATSCC was designed to
provide expert help to the Life Sclenoe OMsion. This included acient#ie, computer
and administrative services to NASA Life Sciences. To do this I had a staff of about
20PhDs and MSs, all with expertise in a specific area where NASA needed help. I
also set up a computer office and an ediirial offk~, since we did a great deal of report
writing and preparation of technical papers for the office. At the same time I was still
chairing several advisory committees, I was an official of COSPAR (Chairman of the
Life Science Commision), and the l&son person between the International Union of
Silogical Scientists and COSPAR. Another of my jobs during this period was to try to
establish a better working relationship between the NASA field centers working in the
Life Sciences.
   In the late 1970s before I retired from NASA I had tried to start up a new
program, whii involved the study of closed ecosystems. There were two reasons for
such a program. First of all, Ecology was becoming of major global importance
because of the impact man was hating on the Earth on a global scale. Th8 second
ream had to do with kMg term manned exploration of the solar system which most of
us felt was inevitable. If indeed man was to make long term (2 or more years) flights,
then maintenance of a stable environment either in the spacecraft or on the surface of
another planet, would be of paramount inportance. This meant creating a stable
ecosystem capable of producing food, air and water for the crew for an indefinite
period of time. On a long fright It woukI be impossible to carry suff@ent food air and
water to sustain a human crew for two or more years, and the distance and cost of
resupply would also be prohibitive. We clearly needed to study this problem and
devise a solution. I proposed this to NASA at the time, but at that time NASA had no
interest in getting into Ecology since they felt that was in the purview of other federal
agencies and NASA would help them if asked. As to long term manned flights, they
did not appear to be in the cards, in fact, NASA had been directed by congress not to
plan on manned planetary mission. I had to give up at the time, but now the situation
was different - NASA was interested and working in Ecokqy, and plans for long term
human space flight were being revived. As an official NASA advisor I was in a position
to make recommendations to NASA senior management and this time it did not fail on
deaf ears. We were able to start a new program - "Controlled Ecological Life Support
Systems" - funded by the Life Science Division. The goal was to build a sealed
chamber, large enough to hydroponically (without soil), grow enough plants to
produce suffiiient food and to recycie enough air and water to sustain 2 or 3 humans
indefinitely. Plants, of course do exactly that on Earth and thereby make life on Earth
possible. We are trying to create an earthlike environment in a chamber - a very
diiicult job. The Kennedy Space Center in Florida was the first to start on such a
program. I decided to move to Kennedy in order to be closer to the work, and help out
in an advisory capacity. I had been with NASA since the very beginning and was
Merally the "memory" of the Life Science Program. I knew what had been done before,
where our expertise was, who were the university scientists who could help, etc. So
far, we have been able to grow wheat (achieving better yields than in the field),
potato% tomatos, lettuce, peanuts, beans, peas, etc. under these conditions. Plants
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clean up water metabolically, making it quite potable and plants also automatically
take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and through the process of photosynthesis
convert it to carbohydrate, oxygen and water, which is exactly how life on Earth is
sustained. This is an extremely ambitious undertaking which will take a lot of time and
money, but it is of such fundamental importance to mankind that it seems very
important to continue it. Not only will we learn how to proceed with long term human
space flight, but we will learn how to cope with some of our environmental problems
here on Earth. Unfortunately, our recent frenzy to reduce budgets has already cut
programs like this back to almost nothing.

  At this point in time I have retired for good. As I said at the beginning, I feel that I
have had a career in science at a time when there has been great excitement and
progress - at least for me. I hope I have managed to pass on some of this with this
autobiography.

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