My Parents

They were married in August and my mother carried an elegant bouquet of gladiolas.  She was 21 and he was 26.  He was working on a Phd at the University of Missouri at the time.  When she got pregnant, they moved to New York City and he worked for the Borden Company for a while since they needed the money.  I was born at the Cornell Medical Center in New York City and then after a couple of years we returned to Columbia, Missouri where my Dad finished his degree in physiology and pharmacology.  While in Columbia, he made a breakthrough in the lab.  He synthesized thyroprotein. He came home late at night all smiles and said, “I did it.”  This was important since many people needed this as a medicine and up until then it was very expensive since it had to be taken out of an animal.

Then he had many offers from various universities and he chose Michigan State University.  Missouri was just too hot for all of us. By then I was eight years old and it was the end of World War II as we drove from Columbia Missouri to East Lansing Michigan in our old Plymouth we wondered why all the people were honking their horns.  We soon found they were celebrating the end of the War.

I sat in the back seat with my cocker spaniel Penny.  We were on route 66. We read Burma Shave signs and passed many barns that said Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco.  It took us two days to reach East Lansing, Michigan.