Ting and I
A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion
By Douglas Winslow Cooper
DEDICATION
Offered with love to Tina Su Cooper, the light of my life
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
–Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
All that we love deeply becomes part of us.
–Helen Keller
PREVIEW DRAFT
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
PREFACE
7
8
10
PART I. NARRATIVE
HOME OR HOSPICE?
12
APART TO START: 7883 MILES APART
BEGINNINGS: TINA
Kunming, China; G. J. (Gouq-Jen) Su;
S. T. C. Su (Shou-Tsung Chiao) Su
TO AMERICA
Tina Han Su
TINA’S HIGH SCHOOL DAYS
OUTSIDE AND ABOVE
ETHNOCENTRISM
15
21
BEGINNINGS: DOUG
NEAR DEATH
HUNTER COLLEGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, 1949-54
RIVERSIDE DRIVE, MANHATTAN, 1942-53
Fights, Girls, Underdogs. Smart and Cheap
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 152, 1954-55
MINNIE S. GRAHAM JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, 1955-56
WALDEN HIGH SCHOOL, 1956-60
Fights, Girls, Money, Pals, Family Complete, College Applications
MY FRESHMAN YEAR AT CORNELL, 1960-61
MY SOPHOMORE YEAR AT CORNELL, 1961-62
TOGETHER
TINA’S FRESHMAN YEAR, MY JUNIOR YEAR, 1962-63
Chinese 102, Destinations in Flux, Summer Vacation 1963,
TINA’S SOPHOMORE YEAR, MY SENIOR YEAR, 1963-64
Forbidding Mourning, Phi Epsilon Pi, Why Not Marry?
Tina’s Diary, June 1964
37
APART
OLIVE DRAB FOR ME, 1964-66
Basic Training, Ft. Detrick, Chairborne Rangers
Brief Reunion, November 1966
47
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1966-69
“Fame,“ Love?
2
MY NEXT STOP, HARVARD, 1969###73
In DEAP at Harvard, Harvard YAF, Radio Days
MY FIRST MARRIAGE, 1972###82
HARVARD PROFESSOR, 1976###83
Boston’s Back Bay, More Radio, David Brudnoy,
MY SEPARATION AND DIVORCE, 1980###82
55
TINA IN CHICAGO, 1967-83
TOGETHER FOREVER
UNFORGOTTEN
THE PHONE CALL, February 1983
SEPARATION AND DIVORCE, 1983-84
69
ROSENDALE, NY, 1983
OUR WEDDING, 1984
BEDFORD HILLS, NY, 1984-86
MILLWOOD, NY, 1986-93
TED
ANOTHER CHILD?
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
STEROID PSYCHOSIS
NEAR DEATH IN TUCSON
BEING DAD
TINA’S CRASH
73
RAMSEY, NJ, 1993-2000
TEXWIPE
PHIL
SMITH MIDDLE SCHOOL
TINA’S CANCER, SPRING 1994
CANCER AND MS AND PARAPLEGIA
PHIL AT RAMSEY HIGH SCHOOL
WHICH COLLEGE FOR PHIL?
BOSTON COLLEGE
AMIGOS
MAY CORPORATION
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
80
LAKE OSIRIS, WALDEN, NY, 2000-THE PRESENT
METAMORPHOSIS, MARCH 2004
88
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COMING HOME AGAIN
THE TINGDOM, TINA’S WORLD
HORTON
IATROGENIC ILLNESSES
WILL TO LIVE
COGNITIVE LOSSES
TWO SONGS
TINA’S SELFLESSNESS, A SMALL EXAMPLE
TINA’S COURAGE
TINA’S MEGAWATT SMILE
TINA’S MODESTY
TINA’S PATRIOTISM
GIFTS
BIRTHDAY GIRL
CHARM BRACELET
OUR LOVE OF PETS
OUR FRIENDS
IN-LAWS
OUR NEW YEAR’S EVES
OUR LOVE OF MUSIC
LISTENING BETWEEN THE LINES
LITERALLY TINA
OUR FATE
WHY?
A PERFECT WORLD?
FAITH
KARMA: WHAT GOES AROUND
RATIONAL OPTIMISM
FINDING TIME
OUR PROSPECTS
OUR LOVE
MY DREAMS OF TINA
GRATITUDE
OUR DESTINY
PART II. REFLECTIONS: HOME CARE
MEDICAL INSURANCE
HANCOCK LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE, 1995###2009
EMPIRE BLUE CROSS / BLUE SHIELD, 1983###2004
INSURANCE BLUES: MVP, 2005
THANKS TO IBM
HOME CARE
PREVENTING INFECTIONS: FLU SHOTS
PREVENTING INFECTIONS: BEDSORES
4
97
107
119
121
MANAGING NURSES
Monitoring, Agency Woes, Hiring Our Own,
Interviewing, Barbara George, Verleen Lewis,
Diane Beggin, Home Atmosphere, Scheduling,
Privacy, Why Dontcha? How Many Nurses?
How Old? Male Nurse? TLC
PROBLEMS
Language Barriers, H1N1 Flu Shots, Ms. Take,
Live-In’s Relatives, Theft
EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES
Redundancy, Computer, Hospital Bed,
Hoyer Hydraulic Lift, Pulse Oximeter,
Ventilator, Washer-Dryer
MEDICATIONS AND NUTRITION
SIDE EFFECTS
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
PAIN MANAGEMENT
DOCTOR TRIPS
DOCTOR TRIP FROM HECK
HOSPITALIZATIONS
PART III. RELECTIONS: PERSONAL
ADDICTION
BEAUTY
BRAINS
MENSA MEETING
LOVE VERSUS NEED
TRUST
ENVY
THE HARVARD BRAND
RELATIVITY
BEING UXORIOUS
BRAIN SURGERY
MADNESS
SLEEP
TALK
MIRRORS
EARLY RETIREMENT
NUCLEAR FAMILIES
MARRIAGE: THE MATING GAME
PRE-NUPTUAL AGREEMENTS AND TRUSTS
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129
143
155
MARRIAGE: POTHOLES AND PITFALLS
DEAFNESS AND LOSS OF VISION
INTERNET
Computer Glitches, Technical Formats, Pornography
MONEY
INFLATION HEDGE---YOURSELF
OUTSIDE SUPPORT
QUALITY-OF-LIFE RATIONING
IN GRATITUDE: TO OUR DOCTORS
IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT F. STARBUCK
PART IV. TRIBUTES
MY TRIBUTE TO TINA
PHIL CHIANG
TED CHIANG
NANCY MEISENZAHL
MARY KAY SOLERA
GENE SU
CHRIS COOPER
DIANA COOPER
CLIFF COOPER
DEANNE GEBELL GITNER
JUDY JAYSON SONFIELD
ELAINE TASHIRO GERBERT
WENDY GARFEIN
RUTH GOLDBERG
BARBARA GEORGE
TERRY BUSH
DIANE BEGGIN
MARY WILKINSON
AUDREY POTTINGER
DORI OSKAM
KATHY KARPIAK
KATE MURPHY
ANGELA MULLINGS
MICHELE SHEHATA
MARIA SCHMICK
PHIL NODHTURFT, JR.
NORMAN WASSERMAN
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176
187
200
209
COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY D.W. COOPER
douglas@tingandi.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Tina and I thank the professionals at the Orange Regional Medical Center,
Middletown, NY (Horton Campus), who have several times saved Tina’s life.
We thank Drs. A. Baradaran, P. Chidyllo, A. Fruchter, F. Guneratne, S. Koyfman,
and R. F. Walker for their skilled assistance in preserving Tina’s life, as noted
more fully in this book, during the post-hospitalization period. Dr. M. Kaplitt of
N.Y. Presbyterian Hospital we thank for his brain-saving operation on me.
We also thank the nurses who have cared for Tina in our home, highly capable
and caring women who have been committed to Tina’s good health and morale.
We have been fortunate to have IBM’s generous retiree medical benefits, which
we appreciate. I had chosen to go to work for IBM partly for that reason.
Three of the four insurance companies who have been IBM’s agents in
supporting Tina’s medical care, and my own, deserve our praise: John Hancock,
Empire Blue Cross / Blue Shield, and United Healthcare.
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For their contributions to the book, and their contributions to our lives, we thank
the following specifically, and many others who have helped and encouraged us:
Family: Phil Chiang, Ted Chiang, Eugene Su, Priscilla Cooper, Diana
Cooper, Cliff Cooper, and Chris Cooper.
Friends: Nancy Meisenzahl, Mary Kay Solera, Deanne Gebell Gitner, Judy
Jayson Sonfield, Elaine Tashiro Gerbert, Wendy Loveless Garfein, Ruth
Goldberg, Phil Nodhturft, Norman Wasserman, John Skoufis, Kathy Miscioscio.
Staff: Barbara George, Diane Beggin, Terry Bush, Kathy Karpiak, Angela
Mullings, Kate Murphy, Dori Oskam, Audrey Pottinger, Maria Schmick, Michele
Shehata, and Mary Wilkinson.
For permission to use their portrait of Tina from May 1967, we thank Bachrach
Studios of Boston. For the excellent black-and-white portrait inspired by that
photograph, we thank Mike Jaroszko of the Wallkill River School of Art.
Finally, the author is pleased to thank our friend and editor, Ellen Goldensohn, for
her careful and intelligent editing of this work, a gift to both Tina and me.
FOREWORD
Doug Cooper’s homage to his wife, presented as a 67th birthday gift, is a story
about the power of love to overcome cultural taboos through persistence and
patience, and to triumph over a near-fatal illness and daunting physical disability.
It is also a celebration of optimism over despair by two people passionately
committed to each other “for better or worse, in good times and bad, in sickness
and in health.”
This tribute from husband to wife will remind those who read it of the “better
angels of our nature,” as it inspired this physician, who was fortunate to have
shared a brief moment of their lives.
Tina entered the critical care unit of Orange Regional Medical Center because of
a catastrophic illness. I was part of the intensivist team providing her care
through her 100-day hospital ordeal. Probably because Tina, Doug and I grew up
in New York, shared common experiences and social values, are of the same
age, and went to rival colleges in the same years, we developed a natural
rapport. As I have been accorded in the book a disproportionate credit for Tina’s
survival, I must state that our ultimate success resulted from the efforts of the
entire health-care team and, in no small measure, the efforts of Doug and Tina
themselves.
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Intensive care specialists learn to cope with the possibility of bad outcomes, in
part, by de-personalizing the patient into a series of physiologic challenges, much
as the combat soldier might resist making very close friends when the chance of
death is ever-present. The battle for life, then, consists of attempts by the
medical staff to raise blood oxygen, combat infection, preserve nutrition and
urinary output and avoid hospital-acquired infection.
The physician thus runs the risk of partially replacing the patient as the object of
care by worrying about the frequency of reportable iatrogenic complications,
medico-legal risks and reimbursement considerations.
Dr. Jerome Groopman in his excellent book How Doctors Think describes the
biases and decision-making consequences of such distractions, as well as the
dangers of projecting one’s own concept of meaningful existence onto others. He
specifically singles out the important role of the patient or patient-advocate in
refocusing the physician on what is objectively possible and beneficial.
Such a bias crept into my own thinking as my mounting feelings of hopelessness
at returning Tina to a level of function worthy of the effort were rejected by Doug.
His exhortations for better care were often viewed by me as selfishly motivated
and without sufficient regard for the burden and suffering the illness was creating
for Tina. My attempts to gauge her feelings during Doug’s infrequent absences
from her bedside revealed that her goals mirrored his. I attributed her attitude to
a desire not to hurt or disappoint him, or to stereotypical Asian stoicism.
Doug tirelessly directed the attention of the health care team to seemingly trivial
aspects of her care, asking detailed questions and demanding satisfactory
answers, even occasionally suggesting changes in her care plan. My periodic
annoyance, hopefully not always apparent, served to refocus my attention away
from the pathophysiology and back to Tina. What I did not initially realize was
that Doug’s persistence was improving his wife’s care. I began to marvel at the
tenderness he lavished on Tina, which both sustained her morale and dispelled
all lesser explanations I might have conjured up to explain the dynamics of their
relationship.
Eventually, Tina left the hospital and went home to a cocoon of nurses,
catheters, and ventilators; and I saw her several times a year in my office. Doug’s
and Tina’s mutual affection seemed to grow stronger with time and was uplifting
to watch, given the relentless burdens Tina’s illness imposed on both of them.
Doug dedicates this book to Tina, his “good soldier”; but in a larger sense, the
story is also a tribute to his powerful advocacy for her survival. I believe their love
saved them both.
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My participation in Tina’s care made me a better physician and provided me with
one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional career.
I want to thank you both, Tina and Doug, and wish you continued years of
happiness and joy together.
Richard F. Walker, MD, FCCP
April 26, 2011
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PREFACE
Be here now.
–Ram Dass
The unexamined life is not worth living.
–attributed to Socrates
Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.
–Satchel Paige
But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
–Andrew Marvell
Why am I writing this memoir? The simplest answer is that Tina asked me to,
many times, and it is hard to deny such a “brave soldier,” such a beloved person,
what she would like. A preview draft was a present for her 67th birthday, 3 April,
2011.
Staying in the here-and-now is a good way to keep from sadness or worry.
Happier previous times can be a source of joy or remorse, taken by themselves
or compared with the present. Satchel Paige, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers,
warned us that too much attention to what is behind us can slow us down. True
enough.
Re-examining one’s life can bring greater insight, though still rather limited, being
wholly subjective. The ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself” was cited by Plato
and attributed to Socrates. Robert Burns recognized the problem: “O would some
power the giftie gie us,/To see ourselves as others see us.” Introspection gets us
only so far.
Why should anyone read this? Family, friends, and acquaintances may find it
interesting because they know the two people involved, were involved
themselves, or know others who intersected our lives. Others may find the story
of our enduring love of value, too–a story rarer these days than before, we think.
Those who care for paraplegic or quadriplegic patients, including those with
multiple sclerosis, may find it informative and encouraging. It tells of a life well
worth living.
This story starts with Tina’s determination to live on, despite great handicaps,
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then explores our pasts to understand our present and perhaps predict our
future. The narrative is followed by my reflections on various topics. We finish
with recollections and tributes from friends, family, and nursing staff members
who have chosen to contribute, to honor this warrior or to provide illuminating
information.
Writing a book is a scary task. My first book, The Variable-Slit Impactor and
Aerosol Size Distribution Analysis, my 320-page doctoral dissertation, was
published in 1974 in about a dozen bound copies, which more than satisfied the
public demand for it.
I have read that hundreds of thousands of new titles are published yearly (in the
U.S.), only 2 percent of which sell more than 500 copies. I am not envisioning
commercial success. This book is a gift to Tina, to me, to friends, family, staff,
others who have helped us, and those unknown to us who come to profit from it.
Getting underway, I have lots of adages to encourage me:
“Do it now.”
“Work is love made real.”
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
“Make hay while the sun shines.”
“He who hesitates is lost.”
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
“Eat the elephant one bite at a time.”
focus [a book by Leo Babauta]
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
So, let’s get going.
P.S. Writing this book-to-be has turned out more pleasurable than I anticipated,
like writing a very long letter to a friend.
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PART I. NARRATIVE
HOME OR HOSPICE?
Home or hospice? Fight to live or try to accept death gracefully?
That was the choice the doctors gave my wife, Tina, as they prepared to
discharge her from the Critical Care Unit (CCU) of the local hospital. She had
nearly died of aspiration pneumonia, the result of an exacerbation of her multiple
sclerosis (MS). Her hundred-day battle had ended in a partial victory: she was
alive, but now quadriplegic, ventilator-dependent, fed through a tube penetrating
her stomach. The hospital that had saved her life was now a threat, as she
started to pick up infections from the other patients.
When she had been brought by the emergency crew to the hospital in late
February 2004, Tina had told them she did not want invasive treatments. She
was scared and disoriented. I got there within a half hour and countermanded her
instructions. I had her power of attorney; multiple sclerosis had made her unclear
of mind at times, though often she showed the intellect that had propelled her
through Cornell and Harvard and onto the editorial staff of the Encyclopedia
Britannica. This was a dangerous time for fuzzy thinking.
After she spent a week in an induced coma and another week or two of intensive
care, she and I talked about whether I had been right to insist that she receive
heroic efforts to save her life. She was glad I did. Tina’s choice was to live,
especially for her sons, for me, for others she cared about, and for herself.
A very frustrating period during her hospitalization was when Tina could not
speak because she was intubated—a breathing tube had been inserted into her
mouth and down her throat. She could not move much more than her eyelids. To
communicate, we used a whiteboard to write a list of the most important queries
we had and pointed to them sequentially, asking yes-or-no questions. If that did
not work, we pointed out letters in the alphabet. One blink meant “yes.” Two
blinks were “no.” Very slow going. If she was in pain, she was to make a clicking
sound with her tongue. Fortunately, she could hear our reassuring words,
especially, “I love you.” She had retained the sense of touch throughout her
body. She could see and think. Later, she regained her speech with a
tracheostomy and some training.
Our first nurse, Terry Bush, who spent mornings with Tina in the hospital as our
watchful eye and liaison, writes
Tina was lying in a hospital bed with pneumonia. Doug spent day and
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night by her bedside, hoping the doctors’ predictions were incorrect. Not
wanting to leave Tina alone, but needing his own rest, Doug asked if I
minded changing my position as home health aide to Tina’s private
assistant in her hospital room. Although this was closer to nursing than I
had been wanting, I already cared too deeply for this special lady to walk
away.
I don’t recall the medical details, but I do remember the tears in our eyes
as Doug and I watched Tina’s health worsen day by day. She was not
expected to live through the night several times. But God had other plans.
Several times the doctors approached me about signing a Do Not Resuscitate
(DNR) order. I refused. Tina had already been bedridden with MS for nearly a
decade; we knew that she felt her life was valuable to herself and others, even
though her “quality of life” was not optimal.
During her long stay in the hospital, she won the friendship and admiration of
many of her nurses, who appreciated her cheerful nature and her fighting spirit.
Many years before, in other contexts, her loving father had encouraged her to “be
a brave soldier,” and indeed she was. Her attitude in the CCU went from “Why
me?” to “Why not me?” to “I am going to survive.”
Terry Bush continues:
After weeks of hopes and disappointments, Tina returned home,
dependent on her ventilator for every breath of life. More nurses were
hired, and round-the-clock care had begun. Doug was not a nurse, by
license, but he was honored and respected as head nurse by all of us.
Tina was very fragile when she first came home. Her needs were many –
ventilator-dependent, unable to speak, tube-fed, unable to eat or drink by
mouth; needing physical therapy to keep her joints pliable, causing pain
no matter how gently it was done and medication being given on schedule
day and night, interrupting the little sleep she was able to find amidst all
the new noises and activity in her room.
While her body remained fragile, Tina’s spirit grew strong. (Her
complaining consisted of a frown on her face.) She withstood the changes
in her health condition with the attention she received from the nurses,
each one caring for her as a friend as well as a patient.
She’s been home for seven years since then. Through my IBM retirees’ medical
benefits, we have had round-the-clock nursing, first through an agency and then
from nurses we have obtained on our own. Most have been with us for years, as
Tina is a cooperative and cheerful patient, always appreciative of the care she
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receives. Here, “TLC” is “Tina-Loving Care.”
There have been some scary times, including several bouts of pneumonia, and
many trips to the doctor in our specially equipped van. There have also been
lovely times. We say “Every day is a blessing.” Every day is Valentine’s Day.
Each morning we sing together a little song, which–on a Wednesday–would go,
Happy Wednesday to you,
Happy Wednesday to you,
Happy Wednesday, dear (Doug or Tina),
Happy Wednesday to you.
And many more!
Tina still cares about her friends, her family, her nurses; she keeps up with the
news, and relishes the documentary and music channels on TV. She chats on
the phone, spends an hour or two out of bed in her wheelchair daily, and
provides an inspiration to those who know her. She is our heroine.
Recently, I returned to the Protestant faith of my youth. No longer an agnostic, I
believe in the miracle of creation and in Christ’s resurrection and in His message.
Now that Tina and I both are Christians, we believe death need not separate us.
The bracelet charm I bought her for our 25th wedding anniversary reads,
“Together Forever.”
Home or hospice? Home!
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APART TO START: 7883 MILES APART
BEGINNINGS: TINA
Although I was born first, fourteen months earlier, as I like to remind her, I’ll start
with Tina’s entry into the world. She would insist that I go first, but I often tell her,
“We can’t both go last.”
Her nurses and I have marveled at Tina’s inner strength, her tenacity and her
good cheer despite her paralysis and dependence on a ventilator and gastric
tube feeding. Her early childhood provides some clues to that strength,
suggesting cultural, familial, and genetic contributions.
Kunming, China
Su Ting-Ting was born April 3, 1944, in Kunming, a medium-sized city in
southwestern China. The second child and second daughter of Mrs. S. T. C. and
Dr. G. J. Su, she began life during the Second World War. Her father, having
earned a Sc.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was running a factory that manufactured gasohol motor fuel. Her
mother had trained as a chemist, but was concentrating on raising her elder
daughter, Irene, who was then recovering from typhoid fever, and caring for her
newborn little girl, Ting-Ting. Times were difficult in that overcrowded city during
the war. “May you live in interesting times” is said to be a Chinese curse. These
were interesting times. This family was equal to the challenge.
G. J. (Gouq-Jen) Su
Tina’s father had earned his M.I.T. doctorate by working feverishly during the few
years initially thought sufficient only for obtaining his master’s degree there. He
had won a national scholarship for studying in the U.S. that was awarded to a
select few. He was eager to finish up, not only because of his limited finances,
but also because his wife-to-be, S.T. Chiao (now more commonly spelled Qiao),
awaited his return.
Once Dr. Su returned from America, the two were married. Mrs. Su left the
security of her wealthy family for a life of considerably less luxury and, as it would
turn out, less security as well. During the Kunming years, her younger daughter
Irene was told, Mrs. Su would commandeer her husband’s pay, saving some of it
in gold bullion, a prudent policy that shielded the family from the terrible inflation
(roughly 200 percent per year) of Chinese currency in this period. Luckily, some
of Dr. Su’s wages were being set aside for him in America, as he was assisting
China’s U.S. allies.
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S. T. C. Su
Mrs. Su, born Chiao Shou-Tsung, was the third of six children born into the highly
successful, very wealthy Chiao merchant family. The family compound,
expropriated by the Communists after their 1949 victory over the Nationalists, is
now a national museum known as the Qiao Family Compound, with some 300plus rooms, 14 courtyards and the lavishly decorative architecture that such
wealth can provide. Chiao Shou-Tsung was highly intelligent and highly
independent, with a practical side and an artistic talent evident from the elegant
watercolors that now grace the homes of her descendants. She had met her
future husband when she was a student—and he an instructor—at Tsing Hua,
China’s pre-eminent university, analogous to America’s M.I.T.
Mrs. Su showed an independence of mind at a very early age. About five, she
tested the superstition that it was unlucky to wash one’s feet on New Year’s Eve
by deliberately washing her feet that evening, then waiting on the front steps to
see if anything bad happened. From then on, we are told, she had a healthy
skepticism about much that was being instilled in her by the culture in which she
was immersed. Certainly leaving her wealthy family to marry “beneath her
station” and then moving to America shortly after the war showed that
independent streak. On the other hand, in Rochester she was the one to mow
the lawn, while Dr. Su sipped tea in their kitchen. Independence went only so far.
TO AMERICA
In the autumn of 1946, the family flew into Calcutta, there to board a ship for a
vacation, and perhaps relocation, in America. Tina—then the year-and-a-half-old
“Ting-Ting”—reports that she “learned to walk on the ship.” Irene, four years
older, found her own diversions. The family visited Washington, DC, and then
moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where Dr. Su worked briefly for Seagram
distilleries. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester, teaching
chemical engineering. Eugene Su, third child, first son, and five years younger
than Tina, was born in Rochester. Over the years, Dr. Su rose through the
academic ranks, becoming a full professor, and retiring in 1974 as a professor
emeritus, having supervised 33 masters and 14 doctoral students. A Su
Scholarship Fund and Su Distinguished Lectureship series have been
established in his honor.
Tina Han Su
A few years after their arrival in Rochester, the Su family became naturalized
U.S. citizens. The name on Tina’s certificate reads “Tina Han Su,” as it does on
her Cornell A.B. and her Harvard M.A. diplomas, both obtained with distinction.
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“Han”? The name means “reserved,” in the sense of quiet and contemplative.
She was not given that name at birth, being simply “Ting-Ting.” It was chosen
much later, to convey a truth about her. She was—and remains—thoughtful,
considerate, deliberate, taking her words and yours quite literally. When she
knows you are joking, she laughs easily and enthusiastically, but it is not her first
inclination.
“Han” (not meaning “reserved”) is also the name given to China’s dominant
ethnic group, formerly heavily represented among the country’s elite. Mrs. Su
was from that stock. Dr. Su less clearly so. Those of Han ancestry have a barely
concealed pride in it.
At home, she was “Ting.” I use this name when I want to emphasize my love for
her, as in “my dearest Ting.” She signed many letters to me with it. She’s an
American woman with a Chinese flavor. A touch of ginger perhaps?
TINA’S HIGH SCHOOL DAYS
In one of the tributes at the end of this book, Nancy Meisenzahl sheds light on
the Tina of their high school years, as well as on the period following their
graduation. Here is an excerpt:
Tina excelled in all classes, and I did not—so we saw less of each other
during our high school years. Fortunately, we have kept our contact with
each other. We wrote many letters, and heard each other’s ‘news’ of our
lives. Tina went on to college at Cornell University ... I went to work at
Rochester Gas and Electric.
While Tina was at Cornell, she mentioned a wonderful friend she had. This
young man’s name was Doug Cooper. Tina had expressed concern
because he was not of Chinese descent and her parents probably would
not approve of her choice.... I cannot remember all the particulars
surrounding this relationship, but I do remember Tina’s being horribly
saddened to have to leave Doug and continue on with her life.
Classmate Mary Kay Solera offers this portrait of Tina in high school:
Entering in January was very difficult [for me], as students had their
“clicks” and groups and had been together since grade school. I have to
say that Tina was the first person to actually talk with me….she was
friendly, beautiful, smart, well rounded, and she made me feel welcome.
As the semester continued, we had a few classes together where we got
to know each other better. She was so interesting, and we found we had
many things in common. Tina had a depth and value to the discussions
18
we had and the way she did things. She wasn’t your typical teen talking
about frivolous, trivial things, but rather a strong, cultured individual. She
was much wiser and more mature than the majority of the class. I truly
enjoy and appreciate this about her. We enjoyed some serious debates
over a variety of topics. I knew Tina was going to succeed in whatever
she decided to do.
Tina was school newspaper editor, National Honor Society member,
valedictorian, class president, accomplished pianist, a lovely, quiet, kind,
thoughtful young woman.
OUTSIDE AND ABOVE
Tina and Irene, and possibly Eugene, often felt like outsiders, coming from one of
the very few Chinese American families in the Rochester, NY, area at that time.
But in contrast to some members of other minority groups, they did not feel
themselves to be in any way inferior to the Caucasian majority. If anything, there
was a sense of innate superiority that softened the impact of any slights done to
them because of their Asian ancestry.
In reading Elaine Tashiro Gerbert’s recollections of Tina (see “Tributes,” at the
end of the book), I’m struck by the difference in their experience or in their
responses to their experience. Elaine was highly aware of anti-Japanese or antiAsian feeling around her. Tina was not. Some people may have distinguished
between Elaine’s Japanese and Tina’s Chinese ancestry, leading to some
disparity in treatment. Both women were very smart and very pretty. That’s not
the difference. Tina had been high school valedictorian, something she earned,
and high school president, something her peers bestowed on her. At Cornell, she
was invited to join all of the sororities she had “rushed” (visited), another
indication of the favorable response she received from non-Asians at school. As
a pair, she and I received some stares, but no hostile act ever, and we were
accorded genuine hospitality at “our” fraternity, Phi Epsilon Pi. Some of the credit
for differences in treatment and for differences in perception about that treatment
must go to Tina’s personality. She radiated a quiet, good-natured confidence in
herself and in others.
The year I graduated from high school, 1960, the student in New York State with
the highest New York Regents Scholarship test results was Steven Chinn of
Middletown, almost certainly Asian American. When he decided to go to college
outside of New York State, I became eligible for the Regents scholarship to
Cornell University that he had forfeited. Such scholarships were awarded to New
York State students who scored exceptionally well on special exams given to all
high school seniors, but the funds had to be used in-state. I note that today, in a
competitive exam recently given in New York City, Asian Americans still excel.
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Half the Asian American students reached the highest level, a quarter of the
whites, and roughly an eighth of the blacks and Hispanics.
I recall results of intelligence testing done in Japan: their student population was
roughly a standard deviation above a European student population on a
corresponding test. This means that 84 percent of them were at or above the
50th percentile for those of European ancestry. Nature or nurture? Probably
some of both.
Until the post-World War II era, the Chinese most Americans came in contact
with, if any, were generally from the laboring classes, often poorly educated and
from the southern provinces. Unless they were well-spoken, they were likely
assumed to be relatively unintelligent. These days, as more than one Chinese
American I know has noted, the assumption is that if you are Asian, you are
probably smarter than average.
It is no surprise that the Su children—having highly educated parents, and being
themselves smart, attractive, talented—handled what discrimination they
experienced as though they were above it.
Irene was admitted to all five top-caliber colleges to which she applied, choosing
to go to Cornell to help save family funds for the subsequent schooling of Tina
and Gene. (The Cornell option was less expensive because Irene received a
New York State Regents Scholarship, applicable only to in-state schools, as well
as a tuition waiver through an exchange program with the University of
Rochester, where Dr. Su was on the faculty.)
Eventually, Irene became a dentist and, after that, an orthodontist.
Tina was accepted at almost every one of the top schools to which she applied,
choosing Cornell partly on financial grounds, too. She had been class president
her senior year, indicating that any negative feelings about her race that may
have existed were overwhelmed by general approval of her personal
characteristics and her achievements.
Eugene attended a private high school and went on to Brown University and
medical school. He eventually became a rheumatologist.
Talent, parental example and encouragement, personal strength –all played roles
in the Su children’s successful transitions to adulthood.
ETHNOCENTRISM
“Pride precedes the fall,” the Bible warns us.
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And pride in one’s ancestry can slide into ethnocentrism, especially among new
arrivals to this country.
To be politically correct, we are very careful not to imply that one group is better
or worse than another. The groups themselves are often allowed or encouraged
to exhibit pride—be it black pride, Chicano pride, or gay pride. Don’t try to exhibit
WASP pride, however. Pride can become a problem, despite its utility in
preserving self-esteem. Tina’s family’s pride in being of Chinese ancestry
insulated them from accusations of inferiority, but it obviously prevented them
from welcoming her marriage to me when we were of college age.
In the spring of 1964, Tina’s parents visited my family in Rosendale, New York.
Everyone was cordial, proper, nice. But both sets of parents were not eager for
this relationship to progress to marriage. My parents emphasized to me the
added problems for any children we might have, and thus also for the parents, of
an interracial union. Tina’s parents indicated that she would be better off finding a
nice Chinese boy. Both sets of parents held views that were not quite racist, yet
both sets frowned on the pairing.
No doubt, similarity in background helps marriages succeed. Opposites may
attract, but misunderstandings may more easily arise. “Stick to your own kind”
has its rationale. But “kind” is hard to define. I jokingly say that a “mixed
marriage” is one between a man and a woman, given the different ways each
gender tends to approach life.
Recent statistics show that today about half of Asian Americans marry
Caucasians. Tina’s second marriage was to one (me). Gene’s marriage was to
one (Christy). Irene’s second marriage was to one (Bob). Irene’s elder daughter,
Stephanie, married one (John). Irene’s ex-husband (Hing) married one
(Therese). There’s a pattern there, although some of it may be simple statistics:
with a few As and a lot of Cs you’ll get, if picking pairs merely at random, very
few AA pairs, more AC pairs and mostly CCs. Minority parents (such as Asians
or Jews in America) often fear that the AC pairs will no longer carry on the virtues
and traditions that their parents prize.
The results of parental pressure? Limiting the options available to their children,
or potential estrangement when children choose to go against parental advice.
BEGINNINGS: DOUG
NEAR DEATH
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Born December 21, 1942, in Manhattan, I got off to a rocky start. Within a month
or so, I was near death from the swelling of my brain due to hydrocephalus,
“water on the brain.” My mother says the doctors advised her to kiss me
goodbye. Instead, she came daily to comfort her tiny first child, praying I might be
spared, promising God I would be a good person. According to my mother, one
doctor said that my brain was being so overstimulated that I would either die or
become a genius.
Two other close calls occurred before I was twelve. In both instances, I ran out
into the street, from between parked cars, obliviously caught up in playing tag the
first time and, the second time, playing stoop-ball. The first time, I was only
grazed by the passing car, struck by the door handle. In the second instance, the
driver saw the ball emerge ahead of me and put on his brakes, stopping only a
few feet ahead of me as I came out. Lucky? Fate? God? Safe driving habits?
HUNTER COLLEGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, 1949###54
I went to Hunter College Elementary School, HCES, admitted on the basis of an
IQ test score. Hunter was at 68th Street and Park Avenue, but I lived on 181st
Street and Riverside Drive, about five miles away. I made my way there by bus
or subway or a combination. I started Hunter at nearly seven years of age,
skipped second grade, and progressed apace thereafter.
It was an elite school, with pleasant and interested teachers, generally wellbehaved kids and an accelerated curriculum, plus quite a bit of testing to follow
the progress of the little “geniuses.” In an early grade I was photographed
explaining eclipses, with the picture carried as part of a story about the school in
a weekly magazine. With parental help, we staged the musical South Pacific.
There I was, third from the left in the sailor chorus.
I fell in love with my elementary school teacher, Miss Audain, who taught my
homeroom for three of those years. Edith V. Audain was black, beautiful, smart,
kind and my special friend. She seemed to know I came from a rougher
environment than most of the other kids. She did not marry me, however, but
chose a Mr. Alleyne, much to my disappointment.
Unlike some of the other HCES elite parents, mine (especially my mother) were
opposed to discrimination against blacks (“colored people” being the euphemism
of the time). Mom wrote a sympathetic fictional story decrying segregation,
published in Harlem’s Amsterdam News. My parents shaped my own views of
race relations. A neighbor of ours ten years later told my mother, “With your
attitude, one day one of your kids will marry a Negro.” Foreshadowing?
I remember several little girls from HCES, but I doubt they remember me. Joan?
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Abby? Wendy? Majda? Anyone?
Actually, I do have one sweet memory. Judy Copland may have been her name,
and she was a couple of years older than I. We both rode the Fifth Avenue
Coach Line to and from HCES, though her stop was much closer to school than
mine. Her parents once took me along on a family outing to the amusement park
at Coney Island—a nice, generous thing to do. I do like the music of Aaron
Copland (despite his politics). Maybe they were related.
I often took the subway train rather than the bus. The “A” train station was at
181st Street and Ft. Washington Avenue, half a dozen blocks from home. I would
stand at the very front window of the front car and watch the train zip along the
tracks, sometimes slowing or even stopping in response to yellow or red signal
lights.
RIVERSIDE DRIVE, MANHATTAN, 1942###53
My first eleven years were spent living with my mother, father, and siblings in a
two-bedroom apartment in a set of five-story buildings abutting the George
Washington Bridge on Riverside Drive, near the northern end of Manhattan
Island. By the time I was nine, three of my four younger siblings had come along:
Nick in 1948, Diana, in 1949, and Cliff in 1951. Chris was born much later, in
1959.
The neighborhood was almost exclusively Catholic, while I was Protestant, a
“left-footer,” out of step. Their school, All Hallows, was parochial; mine, Hunter
College Elementary School, was nondenominational.
Although I participated in all the kids’ games, I was viewed as different. “The way
he talks makes me feel funny” was how one contemporary explained this to my
mother. At age nine or ten I beat up one of my main antagonists and had much
less trouble thereafter. I was thin, wiry. The local tailor had been asked to take in
a hand-me-down jacket so it would fit me, and he replied that if he took it in any
more, there wouldn’t be a jacket.
It was around 1950. We played a lot of hide-and-seek, urban type. The buildings
were five stories high, without elevators. I liked to hide in the dumbwaiters, large,
open wooden boxes attached to a rope on pulleys at the top of the shaft. You
could bring your groceries upstairs or your trash downstairs with these devices.
Each apartment had a door that opened onto this shaft, so the residents could
put in or take out objects. I would get into the box at the cellar level, then pull on
the rope enough to pull myself above the lowest opening. Hard for kids to find
me, a good thing—but the smells were unpleasant.
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We played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, war, sword fights (sticks,
rolled-up newspapers). Advanced weaponry included linoleum guns, sticks with a
nail at the front end, a long rubber band, and small (one-inch) squares of cut-up
linoleum to put in the stretched rubber band before releasing it toward your foe.
Televisions were rare. We did have many radio programs that included my
favorite heroes: The Lone Ranger (cue up Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”); Tom
Mix; Roy Rogers, his horse, Trigger, and his significant other, Dale Evans; Gene
Autry; The Shadow (“Able to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him. Who
knows? The Shadow knows.”); the Green Lantern; Sgt. Preston of the Yukon; the
Green Hornet (cue up Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”) and his
trusty sidekick Kato (Japanese?); Detective Johnny Dollar (who organized his
story around his expense account vouchers). Babysitting my younger siblings—
at that point I had a sister and two brothers; went fine during the hours these
shows were on, but later in the evening radio became quite boring.
Much of my social life was with the Fort Washington Collegiate Church, one of
four Dutch Reformed churches in the city. Our minister, Rev. Daniel Poling, lost a
brother in World War II. The brother, Clarke, had given his lifejacket to another
soldier when their boat had been on the verge of sinking. Rev. Poling had a son
who was stricken with cerebral palsy—pitifully, severely. The father’s faith must
have been tested. He became a leading figure in the Dutch Reformed Church of
America. I collected a slew of perfect or near-perfect attendance pins for Sunday
school and can still quote Scripture, often on either side of an issue. Members of
scout troops associated with the church, we were theoretical wilderness experts
but went almost nowhere.
Whether it was with scouts or just as a small pack of urban urchins, we crossed
the George Washington Bridge one day to collect wildlife samples from the wilds
of New Jersey. I proudly brought back a jar of active tiny swimmers,
misidentifying them as tiny tadpoles. Mom had me flush them down the toilet:
they were mosquito larvae.
Hardly any girls to speak of at church. Certainly none we spoke to. I would have
made an exception for blond and lovely Pamela Knight. Alas.
Decades later, when I stopped by the Riverside Drive apartments, I was amazed
at how much smaller everything looked than I remembered it. Perhaps we
measure things in part by their ratios to our own dimensions, such as height.
Fights
Not only did I occasionally fight in my neighborhood, I had a couple of fights at
24
HCES. Nicky R., much bigger than I was, was obnoxious to me once, while I was
hobbled with a very painful ingrown toenail. I challenged him to a fight to be held
when I recovered. We ended up with boxing gloves in Roger Sachs’s living room,
in a very nice West Side apartment; several other classmates were in
attendance. I bloodied Nicky’s face and was the undisputed winner. I forget the
reason for the other fight, but I won that one, too. I liked to watch boxing on TV
and would imitate the fighters’ moves. I doubt HCES had many other fans of
professional boxing among its students and faculty.
Lessons from this period were to continue to stand up for myself and not to be
impressed by people bigger or richer than I was.
Girls
I was in love with my mother, a blonde model. I liked girls. Of kindergarten age, I
was at summer camp (in return for a favor done by my father) and had a crush
on a little blonde named “Lorraine.” I thought it was fate: my home phone number
was LOrraine 8-9180. Nothing much came of that. At HCES, I liked several of the
girls, including one pretty brunette who eventually became a Fall or Spring
Weekend Queen at Cornell. When I called her during my first semester there, I
learned that her dance card was full.
Underdogs
Like most Americans, I had sympathy for the underdogs. Around ten years of
age, I befriended a boy who was an outcast, living a few blocks away from me. I
did not see why he did not have friends, and I tried to be a friend to him. It wasn’t
long before he did something, I forget what, that revealed why the others did not
like him. Perhaps “no good deed goes unpunished” or “the friendless earn their
status” were the lessons learned. Some of the underdogs are under there for a
reason. Some who have been under there a long time now hold a grudge.
Smart and Cheap
Young and smart and cheap: when buying some potatoes, I told the local grocer
to weigh the potatoes before, not after, he put them in a paper bag, “because we
want to pay for the potatoes, not the bag.”
Smart was discovering on my own that the sum of the numbers from 1 to N is
(1/2)(N)(N+1), so that if N=10, the sum is 55. I later found out that the great
mathematician/physicist C. F. Gauss had discovered this at a younger age
almost two hundred years before me. He went on to substantially greater
achievements and well-earned greater fame.
25
Smart? Cheap? Hard to classify was my propensity to look for coins on the
ground under the George Washington Bridge near the spot where a man had
recently jumped to his death. My parents called off that hunt.
During my elementary school years on Riverside Drive, we (the neighborhood
kids) looked for beer and soda deposit bottles in the trash, to return for five cents
apiece. Recycling–the early years. Some of that recycling loot I would spend at
what I thought was “the bean store,” a candy store that was in fact named after
its owner, Mr. Levine.
Sometimes we would take a bamboo pole (from rug deliveries?) and put chewing
gum at the end of it, poke it down through the sidewalk grates that helped
ventilate the subways, and pull up coins that had been dropped accidentally
through the grating.
Our expenditures would often be for ice cream or rubber balls (“spaldeens,”
actually Spaldings) or baseball trading cards. One could play the game of flipping
the cards from waist height to the ground, matching or failing to match the heads
or tails of one’s opponent’s card, winner take all. A variant of this was to skim
cards toward a wall with the flick of the wrist, the winner being the one closest to
the wall. Cards were a form of currency.
Outdoor sports were played mainly in the street: punch ball, stickball, hockey on
roller skates. Hand-ball was played against the building’s exterior walls. Games
included hide-and-seek, blind-man’s bluff, ring-a-levio, and tag. Life was hell in
the urban jungle.
My family had a dog named “Tony,” part Chow, part terrier. She was a lovely
light brown, a blond, and she was named for an Italian sweet, bisque tortoni,
which has a light-brown top. Like so many pet owners, we did not keep her from
getting fat. She waddled, huffed and puffed, trying to keep up with us, especially
Mom. She was very smart, too, perhaps from the Chow ancestors, perhaps from
the terrier side. She bit me only once, when I tried to move her food dish before
she was done. Once bitten, twice smart. It did smart.
At that time, the rent on my parents’ ground-floor two-bedroom apartment was
$40/month, and sometimes I would be delegated to carry that enormous sum
across the hall to the building manager/superintendent. Some months it was not
certain we would have the rent money. Milk sold for about a quarter a quart, and
bread was about a quarter a loaf, one-tenth today’s prices. We were allowed to
run a tab, have credit, at the little local grocery store.
Gold sold then for $35/ounce, not that we ever bought any. It’s forty times that
26
today. First-class postage stamps were three cents, more our speed. On
postage, we went first-class.
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 152, 1954###55
Not far from Riverside Drive, Junior High School 152 was my next rung on the
academic ladder.
Another year, another couple of fights, winning one and losing one.
Girls? I can’t recall. I do recall one teacher, Miss Kupersmith, however; she had a
set of low-cut dresses that made big impressions. I doubt she remained “Miss”
Kupersmith for long.
As I write, some incidents are coming back to me. We moved to Payson Avenue,
across the street from Inwood Park, near Dyckman Street, a mile north of the
Riverside Drive apartment. Mom’s friend let us rent her lovely apartment. It must
have had a third bedroom, because I got one of my own, instead of sharing with
the others.
I also got a dog, a Siberian Husky-Golden Retriever mix, about one year old..
Handsome, smart, brave, tough, that was Duke. That same friend of my mother
had him but couldn’t keep him. They had called him Pericles, after the Athenian
general of ancient Greece. This was too ritzy for us, so I changed his name to
Hercules, thinking it sounded close enough that he would respond. Then he
became Herky, and finally Duke. He took it in stride.
One evening early in our relationship, when Duke became thirsty while in my
bedroom, and seeing that I was not responding to his banging his aluminum dish
with his paw, he picked the dish up in his mouth, placed it on the pillow in front of
my face, and licked it to demonstrate it was empty. I told you he was smart.
Sometimes Duke was smarter than his master. I took him with me to the grocery
store one afternoon and tied him to a pole by the curb. I bought the groceries and
came home ... without him. He never said a word. Hours later, I scoured Inwood
Park trying to find him. “He came home, didn’t he?” I asked my puzzled parents.
Only then did I realize I had left him behind. I’d like to think I was just focused,
but those who thought me forgetful can be excused. My mother is now in her
mid-90s and an invalid. Just recently, I took great pains to attach her calling
button to her bed, to prevent its falling, as had happened several times before.
Having secured it, I forgot to plug it in to the wall outlet. Operator error.
A kid from Inwood Park demanded a quarter from me. I refused. A fight ensued.
He won. He demanded the quarter. I refused again. He moved on. With a
27
different kid, I won a one-punch fight: faked with my left, smashed with my right.
Done.
Yes, I had a crush on a lovely, tall, slender black-haired girl. Vivian. If she had
been interested, she would have gotten more space here. What does not go
around does not come around.
MINNIE S. GRAHAM JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, 1955###56
If you buy a second-hand iron, do not merely turn it off after use; be sure to pull
the plug from the wall socket, especially if you leave on an outing for the
afternoon. Having thus inadvertently burned the interior of the apartment that we
were renting in Inwood, we moved to Mt. Vernon, NY, the southern, not the
affluent, region of Westchester County.
At the Minnie S. Graham Junior High School, a rough, racially mixed institution,
my grades continued to be good and my fight record continued to be mixed.
We did have a champ in the family, however. Duke won best in show, mixedbreed category, at the local park. When the local paper referred to Duke as a
“Husky-Retriever,” a competitive young friend of mine felt slighted by the writeup: “My dog is husky, too,” he said about his Beagle. Sure.
My desk encyclopedia tells me Huskies are known for their intelligence and
gentle temperament. Duke was smart and gentle, but tough on other dogs. He
even chased down a milk tanker truck when we lived in the country; he was so
badly injured that the vet wanted him put down. My mother refused and nursed
Duke back to health. Duke learned to make do with three working legs rather
than four after that.
I played baseball for the “Tom Godfrey” team in Mt. Vernon’s PONY league that
summer. I did well in the try-out session and was very pleased to have been
picked. I still have a picture of myself dressed to play: the team had handsome
uniforms, and my fielder’s glove was carefully anointed with 3-in-1 oil, making it
very dark and very flexible. I was part-time second baseman and right fielder,
where I could do little harm. Batted a modest .246. Had three hits one game. In
another I caught a fly ball with my bare hand when it bounced off my glove. This
was before video cameras accompanied every parent to the games, so there are
no highlight clips available. Memories are made of these rare moments.
No memorable romances occurred for me in Mt. Vernon. I did have a good fight,
though: I heard him running up behind me, and I dropped down just before we
collided, sending him sprawling over my back. Then, I outran him.
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WALDEN HIGH SCHOOL, 1956###60
We moved outside of metropolitan Walden (pop. 5,000) in 1956, then moved
downtown in 1958. I went to Walden High for all four years. Walden is in the
north-central portion of Orange County, about 70 miles north of New York City.
My parents advised me that the stereotype of kids from “the City” was of being
brash and too mouthy—wiseguys. They recommended a long period of modest
silence, and I took their advice. It may have been for only a few months, but the
vow of silence seemed to have lasted interminably. After a while, I opened up,
often making jokes in class.
We lived about five miles from town at first, so my involvement in sports my
freshman and sophomore years (basketball, football, baseball) required either
hitchhiking home or riding my bike to and from school. No, it was not wholly uphill
in both directions. Just felt that way.
Getting a ride home was the source of another near-death experience. A football
teammate gave me ride a in his peppy Chevy: “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
It did 106 miles per hour. One such ride was enough.
World history class in my freshman year was taught by Mr. Decker, also the
driver’s education teacher. A Renaissance man of sorts, very nice. He once had
a student who got 100 percent on the Regents’ world history exam. He said he
hoped I would match that. I did.
Memorable was my sophomore year biology teacher, Mr. Ross, who shared –no,
exceeded –my fondness for puns. One of them involved “testes” for “test these,”
and there were many more of like character and quality. Biology puzzled some of
my classmates, one of whom asked about the nature of identical twins when one
was a male and the other a female. Will that be on the test?
Especially memorable was a compliment paid me in front of the rest of the
football team one practice. At 150 pounds, I was among the lightest on the
squad, and my position was defensive end, where my modest speed and modest
agility could be offset by my determination and wiry strength. “If the rest of you
played with the determination of Cooper, here, we’d never lose a game,” Coach
Marone told them.
My sophomore year we lost only one football game and lost that one by a single
point. Later that fall, Coach selected a few players to join him in attending the
Heisman Trophy presentation being made to Pete Dawkins at West Point. I was
one of those he chose, which came as a big surprise to me, as I was a substitute
who rarely got into our games. Thanks, Coach.
29
Basketball and baseball took more skill than I had, and I only participated my first
two years, mostly riding the bench. I scored a total of two points in Junior Varsity
basketball, bunching them together with a single shot my second year.
I did referee basketball games in the church league for younger players.
Someone criticized the refs in a letter to the editor of the Walden Citizen-Herald. I
replied in kind. I wrote that I did not give a “tinker’s dam” about the outcomes.
Junior and senior years, besides playing football, I ran the mile and pole-vaulted
in track and was near the middle among those against whom we competed. Oh,
well.
My grades were much better than my running or pole vaulting. Professional track
and field was not in my future.
I was in DeMolay, a junior affiliate of the Masons. I have a trophy for being
“Eastern Jurisdictional Council Order of DeMolay Oratorical Contest Winner,
1958-59.” While I do not remember the details, I fared better than Jacques
DeMolay himself, who had a bad Inquisition.
The high school chorus used my speaking abilities to read introductions to our
songs, sometimes, at school presentations. I read better than I sang.
Fights
The people of Walden, NY, were generally very nice to newcomers like me, and I
am grateful to them. Not all the people of Walden were delighted with me,
however. I did have a sharp tongue.
I recall two fights at Walden, and again I split. On a freshman class picnic, I got
into some argument with Tommy, a guy larger than I. As he rushed toward me, I
grabbed his shirt, rolled backward, threw him over me with my feet, put him in a
headlock, pressing my knuckle below his ear. He gave up. A dispute on the
school bus my sophomore year got me into a fight with Jack, a much bigger
senior, and he beat me easily; but at least I hadn’t backed down. Fortunately, I
do not remember the details.
Girls
Our church (First Reformed, Protestant) was less than a block away. As I did at
school, I participated in most of the church activities. I “dated” several of the girls
at one time or other and had a real crush on a tall, thin, lovely girl, Carol Ann.
30
One afternoon, parked in downtown Walden to pay the telephone company their
bill, her father was killed and her mother and sister injured in a car accident
caused by a drunk driver. Our romance became irrelevant. Even today I can’t
pass the location of the accident without thinking of her and her poor family. I
believe she married a relative not long afterward, perhaps a father figure, and
when that did not work out, a state trooper. Some traumas just shape the rest of
one’s life.
More foreshadowing: Our church group took a two-week vacation at a campuslike retreat area nearby. Several other church groups were there as well. I quickly
developed a crush, reciprocated, on a slender, pretty Eurasian teenager. Jean
was the product of an American soldier stationed in Japan and a Japanese
woman. Like many a summer romance, it faded with the coming of fall.
I was in the band, in the chorus, in the plays, was junior and senior class
president, yearbook editor, the whole nine yards. Kept me busy and felt like
success.
There was a monthly enrichment program for the top students in Orange County,
where I met Mary Lou, more accurately “Marie-Louise Veronique, etc.” Smart,
pretty, a would-be Holly Golightly, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We wrote a lot of
letters to each other, funny stuff, we thought, and we went together to my Senior
Prom. That meant she had found some way to get to Walden from her Port Jervis
home, probably borrowing her father’s car. Eventually, she married a guy with a
fine sports car, then went with him (U.S. military) to Kinshasa in the Congo. That
marriage failed, leaving her with a son. There may have been another marriage.
A few years ago, she contacted me over the Internet, as some others have done,
to see if we could meet. Nice compliment, but no way would I do anything that
could cause Tina concern.
Money
Money was in short supply for us in the 1950s. We still ran a tab at the grocer
and our cars were typically one step away from the auto-parts graveyard,
imminent roadkill. One evening, we drove our old car by the Municipal Building,
where a heated debate was taking place over a proposed dog leash law. “Woof!
Woof!” we yelled out of our car window. The local paper quoted us correctly the
next day, but attributed it to “a passing truck.” You cannot believe all that you
read in the paper. “Truck,” indeed.
My first two years of high school, living outside Walden, I washed dishes during
some holidays and over the summer vacation at the neighboring resort-cumboarding house, on the fringe of the Catskills “Borscht Belt,” with much the same
clientele. The pay was low, the hours long, but there was a swimming pool that
31
was a perquisite. I ate well there, except one time when I was given chicken
backs and told the dish was “a delicacy.” Too refined for me.
My last year of high school I worked a bit at a shoe store then moved to the big
time, bagging groceries at the Thruway Market. These days when I see the
young baggers there, I am tempted to tell them how it was a step on the road to
my success. Then again, the casual way I dress may not inspire them. White
socks, jeans, sweaters with holes in the sleeves and fraying cuffs will never go
out of style, will they?
For several months I worked as a bookkeeper of sorts for a feed and grain store.
I went over the bills and the payments and put them in some master log, then
tallied them up at the end of the month. It was a form of double-entry
bookkeeping, indoor work, no heavy lifting, at least not much heavy lifting. Some
months I got everything to match up (balanced the books) easily. Other months
took many extra hours to find my mistakes. I was eased out of that position at
some fortuitous time, but it was clear to the boss and to me that I was not careful
enough to make bookkeeping my career. A weakness, not being careful with
details, but not as bad as being told one lacked sufficient personality to be an
accountant, as the old joke goes.
None of these after-school pursuits were high-status. I invited a doctor’s
daughter, Fran, to the Junior Prom. She accepted. She soon revealed to a
mutual friend that she really wished Ricky (more handsome and athletic) had
invited her. When I found this out, I told her I wouldn’t be taking her, “freeing” her
for an invitation from Ricky that never came. I was nobody’s pushover.
No sense wasting the prom expense on someone who did not appreciate it. I
took a good friend from church, Jean Jansen, and we had a great time, a time
remembered fondly to this day by both.
Pals
My best friends in high school were Phil and Dave.
Phil was a year older, graduated in 1959, a year ahead of me, and has kept in
touch one way or another since then. He served in the U.S. Air Force, continued
his education to become a teacher, taught developmentally challenged
elementary school students for decades, retiring only last year. Faithfully and
happily married over forty years, Phil and Ginny Nodhturft have one son, Phil III,
and he has made them proud. True friends of my family and me, they visit this
area from Florida almost yearly. We have a friendship that is rare indeed. (See
his contribution to “Tributes” at the end of the book.)
Dave was my classmate, a key part of our threesome, but he abandoned me our
32
senior year, once he got a car and started dating one of the cheerleaders, a bitter
pill for me. Eventually, he married that girl, had three children with her,
abandoned them all for a younger woman and a Hollywood career, and died
relatively young.
Lesson: don’t put a lot of faith in other people. Some will let you down.
Family Complete
With the birth of my youngest brother, Chris, in 1958, our family was complete:
Michael J. Cooper, lawyer; Priscilla T. Cooper, homemaker; Nick, six years
younger than I; Diana, seven years younger; Cliff, nine years younger; and Chris,
sixteen years younger. Soon I would be leaving the crew to go to college.
College Applications
My senior year, I applied to M.I.T., Cal Tech, and Cornell–for admission and
financial aid. Money was tight. Three applications would have to be enough. I
was fairly confident, being valedictorian and having both the College Board
verbal and mathematical aptitude scores being in the top percentile.
M.I.T. had a deadline for applying for financial aid that was a month earlier than
their general admission application deadline. I was a few days late, and they
informed me I would not be eligible for support until sophomore year, although
they did admit me. I was very likely to get aid for three years, not enough. Taught
me the importance of meeting deadlines.
Cal Tech did not accept me. Taught me there were plenty of others who were
brighter than I.
Cornell accepted me, and I received a full-tuition scholarship, based on my very
high score in the NYS Regents Scholarship Exam. Cornell it would be. The
classy Ivy League, I hoped. Not quite, as I will explain.
MY FRESHMAN YEAR AT CORNELL, 1960–61
In September 1960, after a summer as head counselor at a small local summer
camp, and a very pleasant romance with Rhoda, my co-counselor, I entered
Cornell.
I love to joke. One person described me as a child as being “ebullient.” My motto
is from Horace Walpole, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy
to those who think.” Mostly, I find life funny. My first year at Cornell was anything
but funny.
33
When I first arrived at 5406 University Halls (building #5, 4th floor, room 06), my
roommate had preceded me. Jerry was stereotypical New York City, regardless
of where he actually came from. He was NYC in speech, manner, dress. In his
closet were a dozen, perhaps even two dozen suits. I had, at most, one. There
was an income/wealth disparity.
For many of the students, including me, Cornell had not been their first choice.
They may not have respected it the way those would who had aspired to go
there. They were noisy, especially at night, often crude. I was disillusioned,
depressed, sometimes angry. My fight record that year was two wins, no losses,
against bigger opponents, as usual.
To cover living expenses I worked cleaning tables and washing dishes eight to
twelve hours a week at Willard Straight Dining Hall. Boring and definitely not
classy. Kind of thing to build character or at least a great familiarity with the tunes
on the jukebox, including “Moon River,” “Warsaw Concerto” and “Scotch and
Soda.” It helped pay the bills, as I was on my own.
Athletics for me that first year included intramural basketball and preparation for
and participation in the freshman boxing tournament. Boxing was very tiring,
even when the rounds were short, maybe two minutes each. Three rounds to the
fight. By the third round, the fighters were exhausted. My record: one win, one
draw. Good enough, and I had enough.
Physics, easy for me in high school, was hard: my first mid-term exam
performance earned me 17 out of a possible 100 points. I jokingly asked the
teaching assistant, “Is this my grade or my seat number?” Even graded “on a
curve,” it was a relatively poor performance. In preparing for the exam, I had not
worked on enough problems, having been satisfied to have understood the
general principles, the big picture, or so I thought.
I had lost my religious faith and yet had retained conservative political views that
put me in the minority at Cornell. The horror of the Nazi treatment of the Jews, as
described in Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life, shocked me. How could God
let such a thing happen? Without God, unfortunately, there seemed little on
which to base moral choices. Eventually I came to “Do onto others,” echoing
Christ and, essentially, Kant.
Albert Camus and existentialism influenced me, too: one should make of one’s
life a canvas, a work of art, one of which you could be pleased or proud. My
mother’s advice was along the lines of “Don’t do anything you would need to
keep a secret.” Of course, more easily said than done.
34
Not misbehaving was made easier by the paucity of those of the female
persuasion. The ratio of men to women was high, perhaps four-to-one, and a
freshman had little chance when compared to an upperclassman. With so many
more guys than girls on campus, I rarely had a date.
I do remember going out with Judy, a pleasant, rather plain fellow frosh I had met
during Freshman Orientation. We had a nice enough date, but we did not follow
up. Sophomore year, Judy returned after summer vacation, transformed. She
had undergone rhinoplasty (“nose job” in Cornellese), bleached her hair blond,
and dressed very well. She had become a real knockout, with lots of suitors. It
must have been more attention than she could handle, though, because by
senior year, she had stopped bleaching her hair and stopped dressing up,
looking more like the girl I had dated originally. Thoreau summed up such a
situation thus: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Robert Frost
entitled one of his poems, “The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,” in which the choices
often turn to have unpleasant, unexpected consequences.
Academically, as well as socially, I was just getting by in my freshman year. After
only one semester, I wanted out. My parents convinced me to give it another
semester.
MY SOPHOMORE YEAR AT CORNELL, 1961–62
After another summer of being head camp counselor with Rhoda, who was from
the Upper West Side of Manhattan, smart, attractive, athletic, and having what
my mother described as a “Miss America figure,” I returned to Ithaca, to share a
double room in Boldt Hall, much nicer than my freshman digs. Looked old. Had
Ivy. My roommate was Miles, tall, smart, athletic, good-looking, and wealthy,
quickly snapped up by the leading Jewish fraternity on campus, leaving me with
a double room and without a roommate. Two plusses: more space, more privacy.
My class work went better. My mood improved.
That fall, I “pledged” and then “de-pledged” a fraternity, Phi Epsilon Pi. I return to
the Phi Ep story below. I was not fully the frat type. “I wouldn’t join any club that
would have me as a member,” as Groucho Marx once said about himself.
Underscoring my unsuitability for fraternity life was the series of fights I got into,
one much-too-early morning, with the fraternity located across the street from
Boldt Hall. It was probably a spring Friday night. I wanted to study, and they
wanted to party. I was sober and tired. They were drunk and loud. I wasn’t the
only one to complain. Catcalls went back and forth to and from others at Boldt
Hall and the brothers at the fraternity. Campus police were called, came and
went, ineffectually.
35
I was fed up. I dressed, marched into the frat house, went upstairs and told the
guardian of the record player to turn it down. “Turn it down yourself,” he replied.
As I did so, he jumped me, but I put him down. On my way down the stairs
another guy grabbed me. That was a draw, broken up by the brothers. On my
way out, a very big brother came after me. I got in one good punch, then down I
went. He could have been a lot meaner but wasn’t, so I merely got a fat lip and a
bruised cheekbone. I felt good, though. Something had needed to be done. It
wasn’t just the noise, but also the demeaning catcalls from the fraternity that
seemed to require my direct action.
One bright spot my sophomore year was “Great Poets,” a course I took with
Professor Forrest Read. The course fulfilled an English requirement and met at a
convenient time, two considerations that outweighed the import of the topic.
Poets? Maybe I’d meet some girls there. Prof. Read came to English literature
after having started out as an engineer, so we had a technical bent in common.
The poets were great– Donne, Pope, Keats, Robert Browning, Yeats and Frost–
and some of the poetry has been unforgettable for me. I do not recall finding a
girlfriend there.
I was pleased by what Prof. Read did when I, uncharacteristically, disputed a
grade. He had given me a poor grade on a paper, thinking I had badly
misinterpreted one of Donne’s poems. In his office I made the case for my
interpretation, and he graciously backed down, raising my grade from 75 to
nearly 100. On another paper, he was even more generous. We talked about
other topics as well, and he gave me some good, avuncular advice. He was one
of the few people I have admired. That could be a theme.
My grades improved, though not uniformly.
Another bright spot: my social life improved greatly. I forget how I met Ellen:
brilliant, beautiful, violin-playing English major from a New York City suburb.
Daughter of a far-left M.D. from New Jersey, she and I disagreed on many
things, but we had somehow fallen for each other. She once said she had a
“thing” for Christian guys. That matched well with my “thing” for Jewish girls,
especially smart, pretty ones....
Despite some ups and downs, we went through the year as a romantic pair, and
she replaced Rhoda as my co-counselor at the summer camp, my last year
there. When I met Ellen again fifteen years later, she was still smart, attractive,
sensitive, and still wholly at odds with me politically. A marriage would have been
doomed.
TOGETHER
36
TINA’S FRESHMAN YEAR, MY JUNIOR YEAR, 1962–63
In the second semester of my junior year, when I fell in love with Tina, I had to
tell Ellen that she and I were through: “It’s not you, it’s me” or, more correctly,
“...it’s Tina.”
Tina Han Su, the girl originally from Kunming, China, and Douglas Winslow
Cooper, the boy originally from Manhattan, met in the course Chinese 102 on the
first day of the second semester at Cornell, in January 1963. In retrospect, it
seems miraculous, life-altering, for both of us.
The so-sophisticated and experienced upperclassman was enchanted
immediately. Beautiful, slender, refined, soft-spoken, smart, Tina was his Platonic
ideal of femininity. Quiet, with a bright smile and an easy laugh. Nothing crude,
nothing coarse, somewhat shy, not quite a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma (Churchill on the Soviet Union) but–yes, it’s a cliché –initially a bit
inscrutable. Blouse and skirt were her standard attire, rather unrevealing,
modest.
I asked her out for a “coffee date” with me at the student union—a traditional way
at Cornell to start. Did she drink tea? Did I? Can’t recall. The lovely face, the soft
but confident voice, the delicate hands, the just-right lips, flawless light tan skin,
jet-black hair, and adorable nose, the brains coupled with modesty. The more I
learned, the more I liked. Her family was quite educated, and they were
Republicans, my brand. She played the piano seriously and exceptionally well.
She herself was serious but happy, at ease. I thought maybe she liked me.
She says she liked my sense of humor and my intelligence. I liked to joke. Tina
liked to laugh. It was a good match.
So considerate. I had little money, as she knew. One early date, we walked
downtown to a movie. It was late and cold, and I suggested a cab for the trip
back. She would not hear of it. Later, Tina would carry out some of her prepaid
lunches from her dorm to share with me at nearby Noyes Lodge, overlooking the
small and scenic Beebe Lake.
Diplomatic almost to a fault, Tina would find the nicest way to express her
disagreement. It took time for me to learn to translate the hint of an objection to
mean she really didn’t agree or didn’t want what was proposed. “Not necessary”
or “you needn’t bother” often meant “not wanted.”
We’ll back up a bit here before we continue. Tina’s very close friend, Elaine
Tashiro Gerbert writes about the young woman Tina was during her first
37
semester at Cornell (a longer version of Elaine’s memoir can be found in the
“Tributes” section at the end of this book):
I first saw Tina the day I moved into Clara Dickson Hall VI at Cornell in
September 1962. It was in the lounge area of the dorm, where there was a
grand piano. She was playing something (which she later told me was
Schubert) that sounded terribly complicated and difficult—a waterfall of
notes that kept coming….
Tina and I noticed each other right away. There were few Asians at
Cornell in 1962, and none from upstate New York, except us. Moreover,
she was from an area not far from my hometown of Geneva. I recall being
introduced to her parents and older sister in the lounge area. Her sister
smiled at me with kind interest. As an Asian in a virtually all-white
university in the early l960s, one was an anomalous presence in an
environment that was grand, imposing, and sometimes forbidding….
[Tina] dressed simply, and her clothes were well made and different from
the store-bought skirts and blouses that a lot of the young women wore.
Understated elegance might be a way to describe them. She seemed not
to have many outfits….Her dress was subdued…I now realize her
mother’s influence and the taste of a Chinese gentlewoman with scholarly
inclinations in her clothes….
Tina was a disciplined person. Her manner was soft and she was kind to
others. But strict with herself….
Years later, fellow Cornellian Georgia Paul remembered Tina as being “a
cut above the rest of us.”
Of the Chinese women students at Cornell at the time, she seemed more
mature, more refined, wiser, and fundamentally surer of herself and her
values. She made an impression on Caucasians. In the spring of 1963,
she went through sorority rush because she wanted to experience it,
although she did not intend to join a sorority. I heard someone say that
Tina Su had received an invitation to join from every single sorority that
she had visited.
She seemed to have a date every Saturday night. On one occasion she
went out with a Caucasian student named Rick, who was a friend of a
woman in my corridor. I recall Moneen telling someone that Rick felt that
Tina was uneasy about going out with a non-Chinese man. I also heard
that she was criticized by the people in the Chinese student community for
38
doing so.
Chinese 102
Chinese 102 was the second semester of the double-credit, six-days-a-week
introduction to Chinese at Cornell. It met at 8:00 A.M. in the basement of an ivycovered building. Adorable, cheerful, pint-sized Mrs. Ni taught most of the
spoken Chinese lessons, being a native speaker. Miss Mills, attractive, serious,
taller and somewhat sterner, a former resident of China, dealt more with the
written language and the grammar. The class had eight students and was rather
informal. We all were interested in the language and enjoyed the class despite
the early hour.
What brought Tina to Chinese 102? What brought me?
Tina and I were both in the College of Arts and Sciences, which had a foreign
language requirement. I think that a few years of college language training were
sufficient. The first-year courses were typically double courses, so I could meet
this requirement by taking a language in my junior and senior years.
Tina entered Cornell in the fall of 1962, as a pre-med student. I had entered in
the fall of 1960, intending to major in physics, which met the requirements of
some of my scholarship aid. Tina had learned enough spoken Chinese, but not
the written language, to skip the first semester–Chinese 101–as long as she
worked on the written language on her own, which she had done. She had taken
French in high school, but French was no longer the useful, “universal language”
it once was; perhaps she could more quickly become proficient in Chinese. (Was
there even the thought that she might one day marry someone from China?).
Why was I taking Chinese? I had studied French and Latin in high school and
could likely have passed Cornell’s language proficiency test with only another
year of college French. But ever since my elementary school years, when I would
go a half-dozen city blocks to bring my father’s shirts to the Chinese laundry, I
had been fascinated by the little picture-words, ideographs, characters, of the
written Chinese language. The people at the laundry, through kindness or merely
good business practice, were friendly toward me. My stamp collection and coin
collection had many more examples of the cryptic written Chinese. I was curious.
In practical terms, China was a potential world power, though slow to bloom, and
my Chinese might lead to an alternate career, if physics did not work out. I did
take enough of the language to be able to pursue a master’s degree if I chose to
and came very close to enlisting in the U.S. Army to be trained as a Chinese
interpreter/translator.
39
The spoken language, the Mandarin dialect of Peking and of the educated
classes, has a simple grammar but is hard for Westerners to master because it
has many homonyms whose only distinguishing characteristics are the tones
superimposed on the syllables. Mau can mean feather or cat, depending on the
tone, and there are at least two more mau words with still different meanings. (A
few years later, during her first marriage, Tina lived for a time with her in-laws in
Taiwan; her confusing the tones sometimes led to humorous misunderstandings,
with some loss of face for her.)
The written language has its own special difficulties. Some of the Chinese
characters are self evident: “-” is yi, meaning “one” and “=” is er, meaning “two,”
and three has an added horizontal line. But from there on, the numbers are not
obvious: “+” is ten, for example. A small box is a mouth, and the word for “middle”
or “central” has an added vertical stroke. Most of the ideographs simply have to
be memorized. They are composed of one or more of 214 “radicals,” often
combined so as to give hints as to sound or meaning or both.
A reader of Chinese newspapers can get by with between a thousand and two
thousand such characters, where we ended up after the first two years. More
challenging work might require memorization of as many as 5,000 characters.
Contrast that with the typical educated speaker of English, who probably can
read and spell correctly (or almost correctly) 50,000 or more different words.
This disadvantage of the Chinese written language is offset by the fact that
speakers of different dialects of Chinese, which differ from one another as much
as do the various Romance languages, use the same ideographs for the same
words. They can all read the same texts. Sometimes, two speakers of different
dialects trace the word-pictures on each other’s palms to communicate.
Tina and I had pleasant times each morning in Chinese 102, followed by hand-inhand walks to whatever came next, often a coffee or tea date. When it was cold,
we would each take off a single glove and hold hands inside the pocket of my
coat. Bliss.
By Valentine’s Day 1963, we were deeply in love. We still are, 48 years later. I
can offer reasons that we fell in love, but I’m not wholly convinced reasons
explain it. Ducklings follow their mothers right after being born, but if they first are
in contact with a human being instead, they will follow him, I’ve read. Would they
offer up reasons for following him? Perhaps. Some mix of reason and physical
attraction had put me head-over-heels in love with Tina. Still am. Character
trumps all the rest, and she has proved she has it, in spades.
Destinations in Flux
40
When Tina and I met, I was pre-physicist, if there had been such a designation.
Actually, I was in the “B” physics option, for those who might not be intending to
go on to physics in graduate school. I wasn’t certain. The Soviet satellite Sputnik
had launched in 1957, and the nation was hot for science. It looked like a way to
get an interesting white-collar job, indoor work with no heavy lifting. I did not
want to have the money worries my family had during my early years. My
freshman year advisor, eventually a Nobel laureate, had little interest in my
plans, whatever they were. It may have been clear even then that I would not be
a physics superstar, but well-above-average was still achievable.
After a poor start, I got better grades and eventually graduated cum laude in
physics, not spectacular but not chopped liver, either. By my junior year, I had
obtained a much better part-time job, minding and “tuning up” the atom-smashing
cyclotron overnight on Saturdays (and some other hours). I watched an
oscilloscope, with its faint, dancing lines, and twiddled with any of a dozen or so
knobs and switches to keep this beam of charged particles at a high current.
Often, however, one needed only make sure the current stayed between certain
limits, and the job was about as taxing as babysitting a sleeping child. That left
lots of time to study my Chinese, memorizing those little characters and
practicing the words with the different tones. Many a Sunday morning, after my
shift was over, Tina and I would eat breakfast together in Noyes Lodge
overlooking the lake.
Tina’s pre-med coursework went well until she came to the dissection laboratory,
probably in comparative anatomy. The cat saturated with formaldehyde was her
Waterloo. She was often tired, too, and may even then have been showing early
signs of her (as-yet undiagnosed) multiple sclerosis. At that point Tina’s sister,
Irene, was studying dentistry (and eventually, orthodontia). Their parents had
high expectations for the children, including Tina, but Tina herself was not really
committed to medicine. That semester, she switched to Asian Studies, in which
she graduated With Distinction three years later.
Tina’s parents would ultimately get their M.D. child in their youngest, Gene. He
had no trouble with Brown University, Rochester School of Medicine, and
whatever extra hurdles he needed to jump to become the rheumatologist he is
today. He married a smart and career-oriented Caucasian girl, Christin Carter,
whom he met at Brown. They now live in Ann Arbor, where he has his medical
practice, and where Christy is a professor in the physiology department at the
University of Michigan, as well as the associate director of a biomedical research
center focusing on diabetes.
To brag a bit about my own family: Nick graduated in civil engineering from
Cornell and has become one of the vice presidents of a major engineering firm.
41
Diana became a nurse, worked a variety of jobs, and subsequently has cared for
my mother at home. Cliff obtained an M.S. in biology, then to law school for a
J.D., and on to become a finance manager at a car dealership in California. Chris
majored in chemistry, earning his B.S. from Clemson and his M.S. and Ph.D. at
Stanford. Chris is now Senior Director of Chemistry for the TB Alliance in New
York City, a nonprofit research-management organization dedicated to fighting
drug-resistant tuberculosis with the help of money from Bill Gates and Warren
Buffett, among others.
In both families, Su and Cooper, the apples had not fallen far from the trees. Our
parents were all college educated, at a time when such attainments were much
rarer than they are today. Both families prized intelligence and education, and it
showed.
Summer Vacation, 1963
In June of 1963, Tina and I were separated by the summer break. Tina worked
at the University of Rochester library, and I was at the Cornell University
cyclotron, “tuning up the beam.” It was hard on us to be apart. Letters helped.
A fellow graduate student, Charlie, was nice enough to agree to give me a ride to
Rochester one Saturday, in return for Tina’s finding him a date for that evening.
Coming out of the library that afternoon, Tina saw me and ran toward me, and
that vision took my breath away. Lovely, beloved, loving—Tina was all that and
more.
We could hardly wait for the fall and her return to Ithaca.
Fall semester was wonderful. Was this to be our last year together?
TINA’S SOPHOMORE YEAR, MY SENIOR YEAR, 1963###64
Forbidding Mourning
I have saved all Tina’s letters to me, as she has saved the Chanel No. 5
perfumed powder I gave her almost fifty years ago. More foreshadowing?
We knew we might only have our three semesters at Cornell to be together. Near
the end of the second of these, that fall semester, for my birthday in December,
1963, she wrote:
Dearest Doug,
You asked me what I would think of these sixteen months a few years
42
from now. My reply –now, after one year, after fifty years:
[She then quoted much of John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning,” including the following lines]
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Interassured of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.”
Happy birthday, darling.
Love, Tina
Donne’s “Valediction” is a favorite of mine, but a poem I haven’t read for many
years. I recently found my copy of Donne’s collected poetry. “Valediction” is there
among scores of others, including some other favorites of mine, but its page was
the only dog-eared one. I had read it to Tina at our wedding in June of 1984.
Toward the middle of the poem, Donne likens the connection between separated
lovers’ souls to “gold to airy thinness beat.” The thin gold foil may lengthen and
attenuate, but it never breaks apart. He ends with the metaphor of a circledrawing compass, with its moving foot representing the lover who must travel
away, while the central “fixed foot” always leans and “hearkens after it.” The
poem ends, in our case prophetically,
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
As Helen Keller wrote: “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that
we have loved deeply becomes a part of us.”
Phi Epsilon Pi
I have on my bedroom bookcase a group photograph labeled “Phi Epsilon Pi
Spring Weekend May 1964.” Among two-score college students in various
stages of inebriation, Tina and I are present, dressed somewhat more formally
than the average. Tina is in a Chinese high-collared dress, and I am in a white
shirt and tie, the tie thrown over my shoulder, in an attempt to look less formal.
43
We are obviously happy, even though we were due to be separated within a
month.
We were at Phi Ep through the hospitality of the fraternity brothers. During
freshman year, the fraternities and sororities “rush” the newcomers, inviting a
selected subset to their houses to hear why they should join, “pledge” the group,
then selecting, from those still interested, the students they would invite to join.
I think there were fifty-odd such organizations at Cornell. So far, so good. Not so
good was that they were fairly distinctly divided into Christian and Jewish houses,
each perhaps having a token few of the other, “minority,” members. Phi Ep was
almost wholly Jewish, as were my roommate at 5406 University Halls, Jerry
Baker, and another friend and fellow debate-team member, Al Berkeley. Only a
few fraternities showed an interest in me, and I preferred Phi Ep partly because
this pair would be in it and partly because I did not want to pledge a non-Jewish
fraternity, on principle. Quickly into the post-pledge period, I realized I had
neither the money nor the interest in alcohol that would make joining appropriate.
The fraternity brothers took my withdrawal graciously, and I attended an
occasional party at Phi Ep, when no longer a member.
Why Not Marry?
Why didn’t Tina and I get engaged, in 1964, or even get married? Lately, half of
Asian Americans (second generation or later generations) marry Caucasians. In
1964 such marriages were much rarer, if only because there were so few Asian
Americans. In the 1960s, some states still had laws against interracial marriage,
anti-miscegenation statutes. While the occasional stare did not bother us, we
believed that our children would have “marginal man” status in America, not
accepted fully by some members of either race. The racial mix might have
produced the loveliness of a Nancy Kwan or a child with a combination of our
personal strengths, but there was no guarantee.
We were 20 and 21 years of age, too young to marry with confidence, though a
long engagement might have been feasible.
Both sets of parents were against such a pairing, for reasons ranging from the
practical to the ethnocentric. Tina was an obedient Chinese daughter. I was less
obedient, but I did value my parents’ wisdom and greater experience. A marriage
would have caused much family discontent.
In this period in America, more so than today, interfaith or interracial marriage
was often discouraged. As Tina’s dear friend Deanne Gitner tells it (see more of
her contribution in “Tributes”), a dutiful Jewish girl, too, was expected to find a
Jewish man to marry:
44
Tina met Doug in her freshman year, but Tina told us (her corridor mates)
that she needed to find a six-foot-tall man from China, from northern
China, to keep her parents happy. We felt we understood her problem, as
we were all told to find a Jewish boy and that our parents would give us
trouble if we did not.
There were only two Asian women in our class in 1962, one of whom was
Tina. Tina’s parents sent her away for her junior year to London to study
and, probably, to get her away from Doug.
Another question troubled me: Would Tina and I have remained good to each
other in the future if external forces became oppressive? I had read Orwell’s
1984 and was convinced and saddened by the protagonist’s capitulation:
Winston loved Julia, but broke under torture. They were to continue with him or
turn to her. “Do it to Julia,” he croaked. Love was not enough. It was too
believable that one would blame the other if the conditions became very
unpleasant. I’d like to think we wouldn’t succumb, but I was by no means sure.
If marriage to a successful Chinese professional who loved her would be better
for Tina and eventually better for any children she would have, it would be selfish
of me to stand in the way. Tina felt the same about me and my best interests. We
left it that if neither had married someone else in five years, we would feel free to
marry each other. I meant it. Tina suspected that this was a polite refusal. We
had a communications failure.
As I have mentioned, Tina’s siblings Gene and Irene are both married to
Caucasians, as is Irene’s elder daughter. The more recent the marriage, the less
the controversy it aroused, if any.
Tina’s Diary, June1964
Tina twenty years later extracted the following from her diary, written at the time
of our separation:
June 8, 1964
Can’t even begin to say what this year has meant to me –only, for now,
that it has been the most wonderful, truly wonderful year of my life. I am a
different person in many ways and have gone through experiences I never
imagined would happen.
At present I am trying my best to alleviate the pain that fills my whole
45
being: Doug and I parted last Saturday, after he met Mom and Dad, and
he has not written yet. I know he thinks it is best, and rationally I think it is
best. However, it is not easy to erase the memory of a person most
dear....
He became my reason for being. He has influenced my thoughts and
actions to a great degree. I have matured because of him and have
learned so much .... It was the most beautiful thing–the most sincere,
earnest, appreciative, trying, fulfilling, happiest experience....
The pain comes and goes. It is not as persistent as two days ago. It is a
painful price that I gladly pay in memory of the past.
Whatever the outcome, I admire him most deeply –his spirit, his strength,
his kindness. I will always. He has given me so much.
I had been Tina’s first love.
APART
OLIVE DRAB FOR ME, 1964###66
We saw each other once or twice that summer. Tina was scheduled to go to the
University of London School of Oriental and Asian Studies. Her father was going
to take a sabbatical to teach at the college in Sheffield, England, joined there by
Mrs. Su. I was working at IBM in Kingston, NY, as a junior physicist. Briefly, as it
turned out.
In the fall of 1964 I received a terse communication from the Defense
Department:
Greeting: You are hereby ordered to report.... 18 November 1964....
“Greeting,” not “Greetings.” Short, not too sweet, legally binding. I would be off to
war, sort of.
Only months before, in June, I had nearly signed up with the U.S. Army Security
Agency for a three-year hitch that would include more Chinese-language training
at the Monterey Army Language School, then off somewhere to do top-secret
communications activities, using the Chinese I had learned. I was three days
away from enlisting in this program when my parents told me of a help-wanted
advertisement they had seen from IBM in Kingston, NY, seeking–among others–
46
physicists. My parents thought a career in physics might hold more promise than
one emphasizing my Chinese-language training. (They also probably thought
that my outgoing, iconoclastic, smart-alec personality was ill-suited for
undercover activities. They would mime furtively looking over the top of a
newspaper they were reading to suggest being a spy was not really my style.)
Yes, IBM wanted me, called me back immediately after the interview that day
with an offer I couldn’t refuse, as Kingston was only seven miles from home, and
I had no other offers. I liked the people I worked with there, got involved in
measurement standards work, to which I brought my physics training and an
interest in statistics, and chugged along. Non-working hours often found me lying
in bed listening to Peter, Paul and Mary and similar folk singers, often with tears
in my eyes. I wished Tina and I could be together. I still can’t hear those songs
without getting sad.
Basic Training
When the Army called, so to speak, I was in fine shape. Basic training (Ft.
Gordon, GA) was not too tough. As noted above, I had played, enthusiastically
but not very skillfully, several sports in high school, continued basketball in
intramurals at Cornell, and had boxed a bit my freshman year. I liked to think of
myself as fairly tough. Not tough enough to be a Ranger or a Marine, but tough
enough for the Army, as my basic-training experience confirmed.
I was, however, a mediocre marksman with the rifle, though not on purpose. It
did not seem I was Infantry material, although I admired the toughness of those
who were.
Testing put my I.Q. near 150, and I was part of a small group of recruits they
called together to try to induce us to become officers. It would mean extending
my two-year draft commitment to three years. The closing line in the recruitment
film was, “Don’t go to Officer Candidate School unless these gold bars mean
more to you than anything else.” That convinced me: two years and out.
Toughness, not intelligence, was a high value among our basic training
sergeants, as you might expect. I was surprised by one incident, though, where a
grizzled trainer addressed one of us privates as “Usarmy,” having read out the
familiar identification on one side of the uniform rather than the recruit’s last
name, as usual appearing on the other side.
While in Basic, I practiced the art of not being conspicuous. I headed for the
central zone of each formation, what I called the “noncommittal middle,” figuring
that when the first few rows or first few columns were called out for something
unpleasant, I might be spared. Later in life, I learned that “flying under the radar”
47
could be valuable. Better to be underestimated than overrated. (On second
thought, maybe I was wrong: some people may successfully glide through life
without much merit, making being overrated a plus.)
At the end of our eight weeks of Basic, assignments were distributed; three of us
were put into the special Science and Engineering (S&E) program, being sent to
laboratories, one of us to the Chemical Corps testing grounds in Tooele, Utah,
two of us, John and I, to Ft. Detrick Biological Laboratories in Frederick, MD. We
were pleased not to have been sent overseas, as the Viet Nam War was
beginning to pull many soldiers into it. We even had a ditty that went “There are
no S&E’s overseas/There are no S&E’s overseas....”
Ft. Detrick
Frederick, Maryland, was a pleasant small town, and Fort Detrick was not a bad
place to spend the rest of our two years in the “little green world.” A nice feature
was the town’s proximity to Hood College, a school for women, a mile away.
Some Hoodies would date soldiers; others not. Since most of us at Ft. Detrick
had finished college, we were more datable than the average guy in olive drab
(or khaki, depending on the season). Several of us jointly rented cabins in the
nearby Maryland woods, to which we would invite some of the Hood lovelies for
“labo” punch parties, labo being the chemically pure 190-proof ethyl alcohol used
in the labs that somehow made its way into our punch bowls.
I eventually fell nearly in love with one of the Hood coeds. Still not over being in
love with Tina, and occasionally seeing an old flame in New York City, I was not
as much in love with this very nice young woman as she was with me, though I
think well of her to this day. For my last hundred days in the U.S. Army, she gave
me a desk calendar with a quotation for each day. One I never forgot ran:
Much that I sought, I could not find.
Much that I found, I could not bind.
Much that I bound, I could not free.
Much that I freed, returned to me.
—Lee Wilson Dodd
If I were writing this as a novel, that would be yet more foreshadowing.
The Army was a good place to get stronger. I reached a muscular 185 pounds
and could do 18 chin-ups and lots and lots of push-ups. Our intramural teams did
well in football and basketball. One team we named the “Nads,” which puzzled
many until they heard our team cheer, “Go Nads, go!” My vocabulary was not
enhanced by my Army years. Altered, but not enhanced.
48
That added strength helped when best buddy John and I achieved the pinnacle
of our Army careers, “FTA” written in olive-drab spray paint in eight-foot-high
letters on the water tower that dominates the base, a task accomplished during
one foggy evening. FTA ostensibly stood for “Frederick Turtle Association,” but
the cognoscenti knew that “F### the Army” was an alternate reading.
Proudly, I quoted to John the boast of the poet Shelley’s King Ozymandias, the
pedestal of whose shattered statue read:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Not wanting to get into trouble, John and I took the more prudent course and
made our motto, “If nobody knows, nobody tells.“ We got away with it.
Ozymandias did not make out as well:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
After getting our security clearances (Top Secret, I believe) and perhaps
enduring some inoculations, we joined the ranks of biological warfare
researchers. Neither John nor I worked in the innermost, fenced area, where
actual biological warfare agents were tested. No bubonic plague or tularemia for
us! We worked with simulants, such as Bacillus globigii, which would make you
only a little sick if you mishandled them.
Chairborne Rangers
My work was testing, and eventually improving, the Large Volume Air Sampler
(known for short as the LVAS). It drew an enormous flow of air, directed it past
electrodes to charge any particles present and to deposit them electrostatically
on a wetted rotating disk, the special fluid flowing from which was then captured
and directed to sensors that could be made specific for biological material
(though not for particular disease organisms). We designed and tested a prefiltering device for weeding out the excessively large particles that were of no
respiratory threat. It was a type of impactor, not wholly dissimilar to the variableslit impactor that became my dissertation topic eight years later. More
foreshadowing.
The work was interesting enough. I linked up with the Penn State investigators
associated with the LVAS device and went to work at Penn State’s Center for Air
49
Environment Studies once I finished with my army service, 17 November 1966.
Given a November 1966 air pollution incident on the East Coast, my choice
seemed particularly wise.
If there is a career lesson in this, it is that planning helps you set your general
direction, but circumstances present the paths from which you will choose.
Brief Reunion, November 1966
Shortly after my discharge from the Army in November 1966, I arranged to meet
with Tina in Cambridge, MA. She had returned from England and was pursuing
her M.A. in Asian Studies at Harvard.
We had a long lunch near Harvard Square and again declared our love for each
other, as well as restating the difficulties we thought a marriage like ours might
entail. Truly loving each other could mean not getting married.
Her experience with the British in London had made her more aware of being
“different” by being Chinese. I, too, was somewhat more aware of that,
unfortunately.
Shortly thereafter, Tina wrote:
Dear Doug,
I am very glad you came. You mean a great deal to me, I cannot deny.
However, as long as there are doubts, I am in complete agreement with
you. If either of us finds someone else, it will be for the best....
Don’t worry. For the first time in a long time, I am convinced that we are
doing what is right. I hope to continue to be rational.
As always,
Tina
Her next letter to me was May 7, 1967, announcing her engagement to her future
husband, K.
I was crushed.
The Pennsylvania State University, 1966###69
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Part of what attracted me to the research assistant position I took at Penn State’s
Center for Air Environment Studies (CAES) was the likelihood that I would be
admitted to the graduate physics program with a full U.S. Public Health Service
Traineeship, with tuition and living expenses paid, for the two years needed to
get the M.S. degree. I had graduated from Cornell in physics with honors and
had scored at the 99th percentile in the verbal and 99th percentile in the
quantitative aptitude tests in the Graduate Record Exams that I took my senior
year. Indeed, I not only was admitted to Penn State but was awarded the
Traineeship.
The work at CAES dealt with pollutant particles and gases in the air, and I had
my first technical paper published, dealing with using light to measure airborne
dirt, “Effect of Humidity on Light-scattering Methods of Measuring Particle
Concentrations.” It was a great pleasure to see it in print. As with many of my
subsequent publications, it dealt with subtleties in measurement and data
analysis and interpretation, especially as applied to airborne particles. Eventually,
over a thirty-year span, I had more than 125 papers published in refereed
technical journals, some of which I was quite proud.
At CAES I also did some lecturing, primarily to undergraduates who would
become air pollution technicians. The work there was a nice mix of experiments,
data analysis, lecturing and writing. A colleague, John Davis, became a lifelong
friend.
Somewhat sadly, I learned of the transient nature of much professional
achievement early, at CAES. The widow of a noted engineer/scientist donated
his two score technical publications, done in a related technical area, to the
Center. We accepted gracefully, but when I looked them over afterward, they
were already outdated or of marginal significance. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Science had marched on.
I also learned about transience of scientific fads. Lasers were new and were “in.”
They had become available commercially only a few years earlier, and my M.S.
thesis advisor and I were able to get Federal research funding to use them in
particle measurement studies. From this came my M.S. thesis and, later, three
technical publications. The work was also the basis of a successful grant award
that funded work over the next Christmas and summer vacations. It was during
such a summer vacation period that I met the young woman who was to become
my wife. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, which is anatomically odd.
I learned, too, that graduate students are cheap labor, thus likely to be exploited.
When my M.S. thesis advisor wanted even more work done before signing off, I
appealed to the physics department chairman, who said, in essence: “Hold.
Enough.” A few years later, at Harvard, I had a somewhat similar showdown with
51
my doctoral thesis advisor; and I gave him the ultimatum that I would be leaving
at the end of the year, regardless. He relented. Three solid technical papers
resulted from that dissertation.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,” wrote
Lord Acton, probably without the teacher-student relationship in mind.
Of the three colleges I attended, Cornell, Penn State, and Harvard, I liked Penn
State the best. The people seemed nicest, least pretentious, the setting very
pretty. I lived a couple of miles off campus and had a car, but I often took my
bicycle back and forth, first to work, later to school. There was not a lot of traffic
then.
“Fame”
Another lesson learned at Penn State was the emptiness of “fame.” I was the
head of a conservative student political organization, Penn State Young
Americans for Freedom (YAF), that was particularly active and that grew rapidly
during the 1966–1968 years, partly to counter the activism of the school’s leftwingers, especially as it related to the Viet Nam War. Many people knew me on
campus. Those who were merely acquaintances would strike up much the same
conversation, which got to be a bore. No one asked for an autograph, mind you,
but it became clear that being “known” was not all that hot. Of course, being
known as a liberal might have been better.
Our YAF chapter did run a successful campaign that got me elected to be a
delegate to the Republican National Convention (Miami, 1968). The effort was
masterminded by Don Ernsberger, a friend who went on to become educator,
book author, and the assistant chief of staff to a Member of Congress. We put
posters up in almost all of the ten counties of Pennsylvania’s 23rd Congressional
District. I had written weekly opinion pieces for the local paper in the neighboring
town of Bellefonte, and during the campaign we issued a half-dozen position
papers that also ran in a few local papers. Two out of the five who were running
were to be elected. I was the second highest vote-getter, partly because my
name appeared near the top among the five candidates on the ballot, the
positions assigned by lot. I have the certificate on my wall, indicating I received
16,193 votes on 23 April, 1968. Not bad.
We had a party that night and listened to the election returns. We celebrated. I
was so happy, I backed my car into a tree. I still dislike backing up.
As an elected delegate, I got to participate in the Republican National Nominating
Convention that nominated Richard Nixon, who went on to beat Hubert
52
Humphrey for the presidency. I personally preferred Ronald Reagan but did not
think he could win, and my constituents preferred Nixon. The powers-that-were in
Pennsylvania wanted our governor, Raymond P. Shafer, to get our votes, as a
favorite son, to help in nominating Nelson Rockefeller eventually; but they
recognized quickly that my motivation was ideological, not political, and that there
was not much they could offer to give me or threaten to take from me that would
move me. A handful of others in our delegation joined me in going against the
governor. The other delegate from the 23rd C.D. seemed to have caved in, by
the way.
I also learned that Miami in August had the climate of a steam bath, without the
charm.
Love?
For much of my stay at Penn State, I generously shared my apartment with my
then-girlfriend, Laura. She was perhaps even more of a political activist than I.
Attractive, smart, creative, rather off-beat, a libertarian-conservative Jewish girl
from Long Island, she was my partner in much that I did while there. “Off-beat”?
She had a pet mink, Yang, who was tame and friendly, going against the
stereotypes of the breed. Less off-beat, I had a “beautiful young cat, UFO,
“Uninhibited Furry Object.” UFO became lost or stolen, alas.
One year our YAF group put together a team to compete in the Penn State
College Bowl quiz competition, something like today’s Jeopardy game. Scores of
teams entered, but Laura and I, along with Don Ernsberger, Anton Ness and Jay
Clenny, won hands down, giving us a nice public relations boost. I still have the
trophy.
I moved to Cambridge in the fall of 1969. After she moved to nearby Boston,
Laura and I got together frequently, but lived apart. I don’t think we discussed
marrying. We had “gone steady” but had not become engaged. By 1971, I was
engaged to C, my future wife. Eventually, Laura married a physicist friend of
mine, a talented and good-looking political ally, but that marriage didn’t last. I
hadn’t been invited to the wedding. I think she became a lawyer thereafter.
MY NEXT STOP, HARVARD, 1969###73
As my M.S. work wound down, it seemed appropriate to look for something
different, better. I was at the top of my class at Penn State that year, and I had
those fine GRE scores to try to cash in. I applied to several universities more
eminent than Penn State, got accepted by most, got financial offers from some,
and ended up going to Harvard University’s Division of Engineering and Applied
Physics (DEAP), with a Harvard Fellowship for the first year and a U. S. Public
53
Health Service Traineeship for succeeding years.
As it turned out, I had been well above average at Cornell, near the top at Penn
State, and merely middling at Harvard. On the other hand, though I did not end
up impressing Harvard, Harvard did not end up impressing me.
In DEAP at Harvard
My professors ranged from the inspiring to the depressing. The most famous prof
came in, wrote equations illegibly on the blackboard, mumbled in a monotonic
British accent, and did not seem to care whether we learned anything or not. His
book on fluid dynamics was considered a classic. The best professor I had was
Professor Howard Emmons, who taught a course on transport phenomena,
delivering lectures of rare clarity on material of genuine utility to me. He hadn’t
written a classic book. Such a nice man, too.
I came to Harvard planning to do my doctoral research on a device that I had
invented, the variable-slit impactor with photocounting. It measured an important
aspect of dust or mist particles (aerodynamic diameter) and did so with a
convenient counting method (detecting light scattering events). It was not clear at
first how to optimize its performance nor how to analyze the data it obtained in
order to compensate for significant inherent imprecision. The device, its
optimization, and its data analysis became my topics.
Although the device was novel, it had its limitations and never became a
commercial instrument. The data analysis techniques I worked with (data
inversion) became the source of several papers I wrote subsequently, on this
device and other measurement instruments. Some of that work made me proud.
In another field, similar theoretical work led to a Nobel Prize for the developers of
the medical CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scanners, which needed
related sophisticated data inversion techniques to make sharp images out of
smeared data.
By 1973, I felt I had done enough lab work and computer analysis. I had gotten
married a year before, was working part-time outside the lab, and I waved goodbye to my dissertation advisor. A year later, writing at home, after work, I finished
the dissertation and got my Ph.D.
At the Harvard graduation ceremonies, where many degrees of many types were
awarded, the undergraduate speaker presented his speech in Latin. The
graduate students and their guests were perplexed. Only other undergrads
seemed to be understanding it, laughing together at certain parts. Later we found
54
that only they, but not the other graduates and guests, had been given
translations. A tradition, it turned out. Cheap trick.
My dissertation advisor did not end up getting tenure at Harvard, but got a full
professorship at a fine engineering school. Not many years later, he committed
suicide, reportedly from disappointment with his career.
Lesson learned: it is more important to balance the whole life than optimize a
segment of it.
Harvard YAF
During this period at Harvard, 1969–73, I was very active in Harvard’s Young
Americans for Freedom chapter. Activities included writing, public speaking,
organizing, and hosting a radio talk show on Boston University’s FM station,
WBUR-FM. Almost all my friends were drawn from our political minority group.
We would not just sit down and shut up. Some of these allies went on to have
media and public affairs careers: Bill Kristol, Dave Brudnoy, Dan Rea, Avi
Nelson, Don Feder, Bob Biddinato.
Radio Days
From 1972 to 1976 I had a half-hour talk radio program on WBUR-FM. Around
1976–77, I did a lot of paid part-time four-hour talk-show work on a Boston
commercial AM radio station, too. To me, science was my vocation, my likely
meal ticket; public affairs media activities would remain an avocation. The
summary firing of the staff at my radio station, WITS, when it went from talk to
music, confirmed my decision. Fun, patriotic, but not to be relied on.
Science is a bit more honest, too. One liberal Democrat talk-show host was
leading a boycott of coffee because the price had risen too rapidly. He led it while
drinking ... coffee. He was amused, but I was not.
Science is less subjective, too. My radio station bosses in those days gave me
several rules for radio success that today’s most successful radio host, Rush
Limbaugh, ignores: he uses fewer guests, fewer calls, long opening monologues.
Sometimes you’ve got to break the rules.
MY FIRST MARRIAGE, 1972###82
Eight years after Tina and I parted at Cornell, I married C, whom my family once
characterized as “a Caucasian Tina,” at least superficially. C, too, was slender,
soft-spoken, rational and bright, seemingly as much in love with me as I was with
55
her.
We met in the summer of 1970, when I gave a lecture at Penn State to the
conservative youth group that I had led in previous years. Six years younger than
I, she had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business from the
University of Arizona, well-known to be a party school rather than an academic
powerhouse. We dated that summer, wrote during the fall, and got together again
when I returned to Penn State over the winter vacation period, to continue
research on a grant that had grown out of my master’s thesis work. I returned for
more research work at Penn State that summer, too.
In time I learned that her family was among the richest in Central Pennsylvania,
her father having started a road-building business many years before with little
more than a pick-up truck. They shared my conservative Republican views, but I
was not quite who they wanted their daughter to marry. My being at Harvard was
a minus, rather than a plus—too intellectual. Strike two was being comparatively
poor, although her father had started that way himself. Strike three was not being
impressed with wealth. Still, they were polite and took it well when C and I
became engaged. They just were not enthusiastic. Months later, C broke off the
engagement, to date some more, then changed her mind again after a month or
two, and the engagement was back on. I should have said no. More
foreshadowing.
While at the University of Arizona, C had been in love with the reportedly very
handsome son from a well-to-do car dealership family. He broke it off, and she
was deeply hurt—something I did not know for a long time. Her one-time beau
was much more like what her family had in mind for her and to show off to their
friends: less academic, more money, better looks, less outspoken, not so damn
bright.
One of my shortcomings was that I wore the wrong kind of shoes. To some,
these things count. We fixed that with Bass Weejuns penny loafers. Cosmetic
surgery of a sort. It’s been said that great minds talk of ideas, middling minds of
events, small minds about people. Shoes fail even to make this list.
The church wedding was in the summer of 1972. Her family went through the
motions for her sake, but their hearts were not in it. I was oblivious to all this.
My youngest brother, Chris, was not quite so oblivious, as he describes it (see a
fuller version in “Tributes”):
In 1972, when Doug was about to marry C––, it was clear to me that C––
was more or less a surrogate for The One Who Got Away. I’m sure that to
Doug and C––at the time, a lifetime of marital bliss seemed inevitable, but
56
there never seemed to be the same sparkle in Doug’s eyes when referring
to C–– as there ever was in his description of, and longing for, Tina Su. As
much as he certainly cared for, admired, and respected C–– he loved
Tina.
I have by now heard so many stories of the impact of first loves on subsequent
relationships that it makes the 50 percent failure rate of contemporary marriages
more understandable.
We moved to Cambridge for my final year of laboratory work and dissertation
writing at Harvard, then on to Watertown, MA, where I commuted to work for a
research firm while finishing up the dissertation in my spare time. These were
lovely times, for me at least. Her dog, a Border Collie named George, certainly
enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. C seemed to enjoy it, being in her very early retirement, at
25, doing a modicum of housework and playing with various hobbies, starting to
collect and cash trust fund checks. Some her family’s money started coming to
her from a trust fund when she reached the age of 25.
Although brother Chris may be right about my not loving C the way I loved Tina,
that was not how it seemed to me, and in my dissertation I acknowledged C with
an excerpt of a poem by Robert Frost, “Paul’s Wife,” the hero of which
Wouldn’t be spoken to about a wife
In any way the world knew how to speak.
Her major hobby was knitting with a knitting machine. Lovely yarns were
purchased and stockpiled. Some were used to make pretty patterned material,
usually taken apart afterwards, falling short of her perfectionist expectations.
More foreshadowing.
HARVARD PROFESSOR
In 1975 I answered an ad in a scientific publication for the position of assistant
professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Harvard
School of Public Health, Boston. The ad almost seemed written for me. Each of
the requirements I met or exceeded, so I applied. I interviewed. I waited. I was
not chosen. Rather, a graduate student, Dave, already in the Department, who
was just finishing his Sc.D. there, was chosen instead.
Dave’s credentials were solid, but not as good as mine. Something was fishy.
This came to the attention of one of the professors who had served on my Ph.D.
dissertation committee, and he raised enough of a stink that I was offered a
similar position, created out of the blue. Not an optimal situation for me; but it
57
was Harvard, we could live in downtown Boston, money was not in short supply,
and it might work out. I started in early 1976 with a standard five-year
appointment. A decision on tenure would have been due in 1985-86.
Lessons: “It’s not what you know, but whom you know … and who knows you.”
In early 1980 a committee was convened to consider my promotion to associate
professor and the granting of another five-year term. I was in good shape: I had
published a lot, taught a lot, brought in a grant or two, ran an environmental
health management program with the department chairman. One member of the
committee, despite my having submitted reams of supporting materials, wanted
more. I told the committee they had gotten all I was going to provide. I prevailed.
In July 1980 I was re-appointed for another five-year term, promoted to associate
professor.
After I had joined the department, I found a group of generally nice people who
were not, however, near the tops of their professions, despite the Harvard
connection. It would be unkind of me to elaborate further.
Unkind, perhaps, but it is too tempting not to do a bit of commenting. We’ll skip
over the married faculty members who had affairs with their students. We’ll
mention only in passing that the faculty member I thought least worthy of it was
eventually given a tenured full professorship, on the basis of his ability to raise
money from Washington, D. C., for research projects in line with the political
goals of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. He was said to spend more
time away from Harvard than back at school, no doubt an overstatement
suggested by the truth. Two more-talented faculty members were denied tenure
and moved on. For myself, I saw the handwriting on the wall: fat chance.
I had no love for the Environmental Protection Agency, and that came to be
reciprocated. Funded by an EPA project grant, my doctoral student, John Evans,
studied the sources of airborne dust throughout the U.S. and found that open
sources, such as roads (especially unpaved ones), quarries and the like, emitted
much more dust than did the smokestack industries that were EPA’s preferred
targets. They did not want to hear it.
On a second project of mine funded by the EPA (my division at the School of
Public Health was the Department of Environmental Health Sciences), I received
a call near the end of our work telling me that I was to make a co-author out of
my “project officer,” who, as was customary, contributed nearly nothing to the
scientific value of the project. The word had come down from the caller’s boss
that the EPA was to burnish its “scientific reputation,” for many of them a
contradiction in terms. The simple way to raise their stature was to tell their
grantees to add some EPA names to their papers as authors. I told him that
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authorship indicated and required scientific, not financial, contribution to the work
and that I would not do it. He replied that this would be the last such grant I would
get from the EPA. We hung up. Down the hall, a senior professor, full, tenured,
the whole works, gave in to a similar call. Not impressive.
“Who pays the piper calls the tune,” but we don’t all march to it.
Boston’s Back Bay
Partly because the issue of compulsory school busing for racial integration was
roiling Boston, C and I got a bargain on a floor-through apartment on
Marlborough Street in the Back Bay, a mile away from the School of Public
Health, to which I walked most days. Because of C’s trust fund money, we were
able to pay for the condo in cash. The other floors were occupied by substantially
older folk, who had earned their money, rather than inheriting it; but we all got
along, and I was chosen and served on the condo board for some time.
C and I could walk almost anywhere in Boston, and we ate out almost every
night. Nothing fancy, perhaps Chinese or Mexican or standard American food,
but pleasant, and a time to chat and to walk. The grassy mall along “Mass. Ave.,”
the Esplanade along the Charles River, the park and the swan boats in Boston
Common, the European look and feel of Beacon Hill–all were very nice.
Since we had no children, we did not have to worry about how to find schools for
them. Finding parking was biggest challenge. We had one space, for the BMW,
behind our condominium building. The other car, the Buick, had to be parked on
the street. Knowing the timing of the parking regulations and utilizing their
alternate-side-of-the-street nature, we were able to surmount this obstacle. No
need, as the wit said, to buy an “already parked” car. Once one unparked, one
did have to cope with Boston drivers, who rarely met a traffic rule they respected.
The Back Bay adjoins the Charles River, where I took up sailing with the Harvard
/ M.I.T. Yacht Club. The “yachts” were actually tiny sailboats, lots of fun. I
enjoyed sailing until I nearly got killed, which cured me: The wind shifted. The
boat tipped over. I was thrown into the water. The boom came crashing down
close to my head. If it had hit me, I might have been killed by concussion or by
drowning. Enough sailing. Flying was next. What could happen to you flying?
I started to learn how to fly a single-engine Cessna 172, as did C. It was very
exciting to be high in the air and know you could come plummeting down if you
screwed up, though the instructor would probably prevent that. Some beautiful
views were viewed, and the whole process was not as hard as I feared. C’s affair
with the flying instructor and our subsequent separation brought flying to an end
for me. Exciting, expensive, and a bit scary.
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More Radio
Back when C and I lived in Cambridge, every Monday we would walk across the
bridge to the Boston University campus, where I hosted my half-hour talk show
on WBUR-FM. The program was called What’s Right, their labeling designed to
make it clear what the listeners could expect. This was akin to a Surgeon
General’s warning on a cigarette package or a medicine bottle. I was pretty tense
during the show for the first few months, despite having had a lot of public
speaking experience; but over the four years that I did the program, I became
comfortable at it. Subsequently, when we moved to Boston, I did part-time gigs
on talk shows for WMEX (became WITS) and WRKO. If I had been a liberal, this
would have been a résumé-enhancer at Harvard.
My liberal colleagues at Harvard were not all that pleased, however, with my
libertarian-conservative politics. At my going-away lunch, summer 1983, a
colleague whom I had considered to be a friend said to the attendees, in all
seriousness, that I was “a nice guy, for a conservative.” He didn’t lie and claim
that some of his best friends were conservatives.
David Brudnoy
Preparing to write this memoir, I had reserved a special section about my
friendship with David Brudnoy, whom I would have described as my best male
friend during the period from 1969 to 1983, my years in Cambridge and Boston.
David, famous in Boston and well-known in national conservative political circles,
died in December 2004. I had long believed that we were very close friends. In a
gift he once gave me of a leather-bound autobiographical volume, The Education
of Henry Adams, Dave wrote, “One of the greatest books to one of the greatest
friends.” As a gift to Tina and me, associated with his single visit to us (in Bedford
Mews), he gave us another leather-bound volume, Milton’s Paradise Lost, with
the inscription, “To Tina and Doug, who have regained Paradise. Love, Dave,
Feb. ’85.” Seemed very friendly to me.
David was the very bright only son of a Midwestern Jewish dentist and his wife.
He was talented, ambitious, hard-working, and homosexual. Let’s add charming,
warm, always polite. We became strong political allies. When I first met him, he
was leaving the left to join the right, or at least the libertarian, minimumgovernment faction of conservatism, where he remained.
A thing I admired about Dave was that he took rational argument seriously.
Abortion was a main issue at the time. He favored its being legal. I did not. I did
not argue from the perspective of religion. My argument was closer to Kant’s
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moral imperative. I showed him the consequences of not defining a human
organism as one with the human genetic code, from fertilization on.
Definitions of humanness based on awareness, rationality, age in the womb, etc.
led to allowing practices such as euthanasia or the harvesting of embryonic
organs, practices that are repulsive and dangerous. I won’t go into the details
here, but Dave was intellectually honest enough to concede and to maintain that
new position as his thereafter. He understood that arguments that start, “I know
it’s human, but ...” refute themselves.
During my Cambridge and Boston years, Dave and I would talk frequently on the
phone or in person. We would breakfast together monthly, sometimes with C, at
the elegant Park Plaza Hotel. We lived a few blocks apart in the Back Bay and
had many mutual friends, in the media and in libertarian and conservative circles.
For example, we both spoke at a “Tell It to Hanoi” rally on the Boston Common,
December 7, 1969, before a few thousand supporters of the U.S. role in the Viet
Nam War. When he wrote an article on the occasion for National Review, he
noted “Harvard YAFer Doug Cooper gave the evening’s most thoughtful speech:
‘The war is not hurting us so much as are its critics, who clamor only for material
things; we need more than a higher standard of living; we need a higher
standard of character.” I had arrived at Harvard in September 1969, only three
months earlier than he, so this would have been one of our earliest interactions.
In 1997, fourteen years after I moved from Boston, Dave finished a memoir, Life
Is Not a Rehearsal, detailing his growing up, his ideological journey and
professional success, his lovers, his homosexuality, his drug use, his AIDS, and
his losses due to that lifestyle. He was at that time enmeshed in a very painful
decline that ended seven years later.
The blurb on the book jacket summarized his professional history: “A graduate of
Yale with a major in Japanese, David Brudnoy went to graduate school at
Harvard (East Asian Studies) before getting his Ph.D. in American intellectual
history at Brandeis. In 1976 he won a full-time talk radio slot at Boston’s WHDH,
then moved to WRKO in 1981, finally going to the region’s powerhouse, WBZ, in
1986. In addition to his hugely successful radio show on WBZ, he is a TV
commentator, film critic, newspaper essayist on politics and travel, and teacher of
journalism at Boston University.” They could have added that he was a frequent
contributor to conservative journals, especially National Review, but
“conservative” might not have helped book sales.
By the time Dave’s book was published, 1997, I was sufficiently distracted with
Tina’s and my life that I did not read it. Lately, writing this memoir, I’ve dipped
into it, getting many a surprise. Dave had revealed to me toward the beginning of
our friendship, in 1970, that he was homosexual, something he asked me to keep
secret. I knew nothing of his frequent drug use (Mescaline and LSD), until now. I
knew he had a drinking problem for a while, but I did not know the seriousness of
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it.
David, I hardly knew ye.
It seems that the friendship I thought we had was, in fact, of minimal significance
to him. I was not gay, as so many of his closest pals were. Once, in reference to
a media opportunity he could have opened up for me, he let slip that “my father
told me never to promote a rival.” Rival? I thought we were buddies.
I left Boston in 1983, and I do not recall seeing him after that, other than his visit
to us in 1985 and my trip to Boston with our son Phil in 2000, where we had a
highly enjoyable fancy lunch together. Phil would be at Boston College starting
that year. I was not eager for the two of them to become in any sense close.
Dave’s book reveals that for all his success in worldly terms, his was a sad life,
especially toward the end. He was a talented, ambitious, industrious man. His
uncle, Herbert Isbin, was a noted physicist/engineer. A cousin, Sharon Isbin, is a
well-known professional guitarist. As I knew at that time, and as his book reveals
even more clearly, his homosexuality was paramount in his life. There is a
narcissism, coupled with insecurity, a reflexive anti-conventionality, a
superficiality, and an obsession with sex that I came to associate with the
homosexual lifestyle, where promiscuity is markedly more prevalent than among
heterosexuals. You can look that up.
David memorialized one of his very close friends (someone I knew casually)
under a pseudonym in his book: “Blitz” died of AIDS in November 1989, at about
40 years of age. An earlier tribute Dave had written, using Blitz’s real name, had
gotten Dave excommunicated from that family’s inner circle, which deeply hurt
him. Dave told me he himself was nearly killed by a one-night-stander. His book
reveals his belief that his best friend probably died that way.
Dave died in December 2004, 64 years old, of a painful and prolonged illness
likely caused by homosexual sex. Absent the gay sex and perhaps the drugs, his
life expectancy would have been in the mid-eighties. He lost twenty years. He
described himself in his book as not brave but a “thrill seeker.” Was it worth
dying for, Dave? Blitz? R. I. P.
SEPARATION AND DIVORCE
C and I had eight years of a very pleasant marriage. We got along very well. We
were friends with a number of like-minded people, including several I knew from
radio work. In the summer of 1980, we were taking flying lessons, which was
very exhilarating. Indeed, C took some more lessons on her own, getting a bit
better dressed for them than seemed necessary. She even bought new
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underwear. For flying?
In September of 1980, I got a call at work from a marriage counselor, with C
there beside him, who told me that C wanted me to join her for counseling,
because she was distraught over the recent break-up of her romance with her
flying instructor. I told them she had a bigger problem than that: I was not likely to
continue the marriage.
I called the flight school and left them a message, too.
The meetings we had with the marriage counselor did not reveal significant
interpersonal problems, except a lackluster sex life. Besides having these
discussions with him, we each took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI), which has hundreds of questions. Once those results came in,
C was told to return twice a week for help. I was judged to need no such
counseling. She took two weeks away on an Outward Bound excursion to “find
herself.” When she returned, I told her it was over. She begged me not to break
up.
C and her family thought everyone related to them in terms of their money: if you
were nice to them, they thought it was because you wanted their money. If you
didn’t like them, it was because you were envious. I was not going to get credit
for forgiving her. I could never trust her again. I resented her ingratitude toward
someone who had loved her deeply and unselfishly. She wept.
My family had gone from loving C to feeling estranged by her. My friends Phil
and Ginny Nodhturft reminded me recently that they had heard my mother say
that a person who, like C, decorated her home with white carpets did not seem to
invite company. She continued by saying that a divorce was for the best,
considering how C had turned out to be.
C and I separated the week after her return. She was very remorseful. She
agreed I should stay at and keep the condo. I was terribly sad. Nineteen eightyone was a long, long year. I had to re-evaluate the previous nine years of our
relationship and concluded that much of it was in my imagination. C probably did
love me at first, but her parents undercut this. They saw me as a Republican
Woody Allen, a characterization that neither I nor any members of my family
accepted. Yet it seemed possible that I might be able to marry Tina someday, I
thought. Soon after, I wrote to Cornell to get Tina’s address and wrote her a note
to tell her of the break-up. She wrote a sympathetic response. It would be
another two years before I contacted her again.
Eventually, C and I “lawyered up” and spent well over a year in legal limbo, finally
divorcing in 1982 on the same terms we had initially agreed to. My famous
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Boston lawyer had painted visions of a very lucrative settlement, but produced
nothing. He had the gall to tell me that I would probably have wasted it, anyway,
as most newly rich, newly divorced folk often do. Fortunately, I was not that
interested in her family’s dough. No wonder divorce lawyers have a bad
reputation. It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it, and get paid lavishly for it.
Around that time, C’s precious dog, George, developed a serious illness. She
dropped him off at her parents’ house. Would she have stuck by an ailing
spouse?
Two years after that, when I was at Bedford Mews, C called me to see if I wanted
to “get together” to see her. She would be “passing through” nearby. I gave her a
quick update and told her that Tina and I were a month away from being married.
She had known of my love for Tina and wished us well. I wish her well, too.
I assume that C felt she had made a mistake in being unfaithful to me. I knew
she had much insecurity from her parent’s lack of faith in her and from her own
sense of inferiority–nothing she did or possessed met her hopes or expectations,
the basis of her need for counseling. She had a physical deformity, scoliosis (a
curvature of the spine), which may have made her feel unworthy, though it simply
engendered added empathy in me, when we were still close. It was one of the
reasons we chose not to have children, wisely.
What did I learn from this?
You rarely know people as well as you think you do.
Self-made men overestimate the quality of their construction.
Some rich people define themselves by their money.
Parents ought to be careful about how they treat their children’s beloveds.
Promises are only as good as the person who has made the promises.
Have a back-up plan in case things don’t work out as expected.
All’s well that ends well, as will be shown.
TINA IN CHICAGO, 1967–83
Meanwhile, all was not going smoothly for Tina in Chicago. The night before her
June wedding, Tina had cried. Too late to change plans. There was no
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honeymoon trip after their ceremony. As soon as they got to their apartment in
Chicago, K commanded her to clean the floors, indicating that kneeling was the
appropriate position for doing this. The courtship phase was over. Time had
come to make sure Tina knew who would be the boss.
Tina was expected to be a dutiful, traditional Chinese wife, not a modern
American woman. Chinese women have often been second-class citizens.
Besides her career, she was to handle all household matters, help write his
technical papers, and prepare ostentatious banquets for his colleagues. She was
working at the University of Chicago library that is dedicated to matters Chinese.
As he demanded, she went with him to Taiwan to aid his parents. She taught
English there for nine months. After they returned to the United States, she
moved on to become an editor at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
While they were still childless, they vacationed in Europe. At least, Tina got to
see Paris.
Tina also got to know more about blue-green algae than most of us want to. She
did much editing and re-writing of her husband’s papers on the topic, often after
getting home from her day job.
They lived in the academic enclave Hyde Park, close to the University of
Chicago, where her husband pursued his career. Her husband maintained from
the beginning a pattern of sleeping during the day, then going to the university
lab to work at night.
First son, Ted, was born in December 1973. Tina’s career paused. Because of
the father’s odd sleeping schedule, Ted was repeatedly hushed so that his father
could sleep during the day. Ted was shy, introverted, and obviously very smart.
Tina’s marriage was not going well, at least for her. I have a copy of her letter to
a friend, apologizing for “mysteriously” breaking down and crying when they had
gotten together in 1980, ten years before this letter was written. She
characterizes her husband, K, as “a demonic slave-driver whose primary
expectations for me were the amount of earnings I could contribute to the
marriage or the sum total of productive work I could accomplish for the
household. Any thought of continuing my studies was discouraged decisively. I
had become a mere shell of what I used to be, with little or no salvageable selfesteem.”
Ah, memories are made of this. Tina has never regretted leaving K.
One of Tina’s friends told me that when she and her husband rode with Tina and
K from Chicago to New York, they were appalled that K required Tina to feed him
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grapes as he drove, grapes which she was required to peel for him before he
would eat them. I thought “peel me a grape” was a joke. It makes me mad just to
think of it.
In 1981, Phil was born, another normal birth, a healthy, robust son. Tina
developed a temporary partial paralysis soon after, which was eventually
diagnosed as due to multiple sclerosis. Also in 1981, her husband had a heart
attack and ended up getting a triple bypass. Difficult times for all.
In February of 1983, I called Tina again. Their lives, and mine, changed radically
TOGETHER FOREVER
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life from what we give.
—Sir Winston Churchill
UNFORGOTTEN
I had been in love with Tina since February 1963. Naturally, within the first few
years after we separated in June 1964, I thought of her often. Once she became
engaged, and certainly after she married, I assumed we could never be together.
Almost anything would be a bittersweet reminder of her: an Asian woman, news
about China or Cornell, tales of separated lovers, certain songs.
The memory was happy and sad, something wonderful, something lost,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That I scorn to change my state with kings.
—Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIX
Some nights I would look at the moon and think that it was shining on both of us,
joining us in that way, at least.
After my marriage broke up, in late 1980, I wrote to Tina. Her careful, more-thanpolite response made me think that some day we might be together, but that it
was a long shot. I adopted my “actuarial strategy,” to outlive that marriage.
In 1982, alone after my first date with Gail, to whom I eventually became
engaged, I sobbed. This was so much less than what I had with Tina. In time, I
came to think it would be enough or at least the best likely to be available. We
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became engaged. When I realized my fiancée felt she, too, was settling for
second-best, I broke off the engagement. She deserved better? I deserved
better.
THE PHONE CALL, FEBRUARY 1983
Twenty years after we had fallen in love, I called Tina as I was passing through
Chicago. Her response to my short and semi-formal letter back in January 1981,
which had told her of my separation from C, had been carefully worded; but that
letter did allow the interpretation that her marriage was not going well.
My February 1983 call came little over a month after I had broken off my
engagement to Gail, ten years younger than I and more of a feminist than I could
abide. I needed to know whether my hope of marrying Tina some day was
realistic. As we spoke, it was so comfortable, you would have thought we had
spoken the week before. I told her truthfully that I had not stopped loving her
during the 19 years we were apart. I told her that what I needed to know was: If
she were free to do so, would she marry me? “In an instant,” she replied. Did
she love me? “Nothing has changed in that regard in the last twenty years.”
Wow!
Many calls and letters followed. We saw each other that spring, each pleased
with the other. Lawyers and negotiations followed to settle the divorce from K. All
very messy. All worth it, for us. Tina and young Phil went to her parent’s home for
a month, then to the Rosendale, NY, home of my mother and sister. We were
careful not to give K any ammunition for the divorce and so did not live together.
SEPARATION AND DIVORCE
When Tina and her husband, K, split up, they divided their assets and they
divided the children: Ted (9) stayed with his father; Phil (2) went with his mother.
I had expected both boys to come with Tina, but it was felt that Ted was more
attached to K and that K would lose too much in losing both sons. There is no
good way to break up a family, and Tina and Ted suffered from being apart. Tina
was greatly relieved to get out of that marriage and be my wife. Ted was an
innocent bystander. I hoped Phil would gain from the change. I felt K had it
coming to him for treating Tina poorly.
ROSENDALE, NY
Tina and Phil spent much of 1983 at the rural home of my mother and sister. It
was an hour’s drive from my workplace, IBM’s T. J. Watson, Jr., Research
Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, so I could easily join them every weekend, as I
had during that summer, when I traveled the 200 miles from Boston to do so.
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My sister, Diana, recalls (in “Tributes”):
Tina came to live with us in Rosendale with her two-year-old son, Philip. It
was a great time –on weekends Doug would come to see Tina and Phil,
and we’d all have a mini-party. Tina was a joy to have around, even
though she tried to work too hard–for instance, by taking a toothbrush to
the corners of the kitchen floor to clean them. Mom stopped her by crying
and explaining that we didn’t need things that clean.
Tina had multiple sclerosis. She was dear to us. My mother said she loved
her and couldn’t wait until Doug and Tina married.
Mom’s home was definitely country, twenty-plus acres of land, a barn, a pond,
one or two St. Bernards, some cats. Phil thrived. I can picture him in their
glassed-in room, the “greenhouse,” scooting around the dining table, riding a little
ice cream truck while we cheered him on and timed his laps. Tina bonded with
Mom and Diana. It was a very good situation in some ways.
Unfortunately, Papa, Michael J. Cooper, had committed suicide two years earlier
by hanging himself in the basement. Even though Tina’s coming to live with them
helped a lot, the memories of his suicide made the Rosendale home unpleasant
for Mom and Diana, and in 1984 they moved to Tucson, to be near my brother
Nick and his wife.
When my mother’s house was sold, Tina moved to Bedford Hills, renting a room
in a neighbor’s apartment above mine. Heavenly.
The neighbor was going through her own divorce and had two children, one
younger than Phil and one older. Phil got along well with both.
OUR WEDDING
On June 2, 1984, a month after her divorce became final, and 20 years after we
had so sadly separated at Cornell, Tina and I were married by a Justice of the
Peace in the living room of my Bedford Mews condominium. Her friends from
Cornell, Judy and Deanne, were there with their husbands, Matt and Jerry, her
parents, Dr. and Mrs. Su, attended, as did my mother and Tina’s brother, Gene,
and his wife Christy. A photograph on our wall shows Tina and me and our
parents smiling happily. The parents had come to approve of this marriage. Her
father said, “Love conquers all.” Quite apt.
At the wedding, Tina and I each read a poem to the other. Tina read Elizabeth
Barrett Browning’s poem that starts, “How do I love thee? Let me count the
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ways.” It continues to a climactic ending:
…. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
I read to her John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” the final lines of
which are
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
We were joyous about being married, serious about what it implied. That day,
one of Tina’s friends asked about Ted, which made Tina cry.
This time, she got a honeymoon, slightly delayed. I had a weeklong technical
conference scheduled for Paris toward the end of the summer. We made it our
honeymoon and enjoyed it immensely. During our absence, Diana cared for Phil,
a real blessing.
Our wedding rings are inscribed, “A dream come true.”
BEDFORD HILLS, NY, 1984–86
Bedford Mews, in Bedford Hills, NY, had about a hundred one-level units, with
sidewalks, a playground, a clubhouse, and a nice swimming pool. It was
affordable partly because it abutted a quarry on one side and a women’s prison
on the other. It was between rocks and a hard place.
We lived there from 1984 to 1986, with Phil attending nursery school and prekindergarten in the Mt. Kisco area. In fact, we had him take a second year of preK, not because he was slow, but because we wanted him to be a little older than
average in his grade in elementary school rather than a little younger. We had
academic achievement less in mind than the advantage of being able to handle
any bullying that might result from his being “different.” There was little or none of
that, it turned out, but being a half-year older than average rather than a half-year
younger probably helped him socially throughout grades K-12.
Tina let me be Phil’s dad, without interference. It was obvious that I was his
stepfather, not his biological father, but that made little difference, except making
me extra careful not to fulfill the stereotype of a harsh stepfather. I can remember
the only time I hit Phil. He was three or so, and we were walking on the sidewalk,
alongside the street. He stepped onto the street, and I told him not to do that. He
did it immediately again to test me, and I smacked him on the thigh and told him
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he had to obey me. He cried. We made up. That was that.
The next confrontation, nonphysical, would come seven years later. He had been
acting up. I told him, and I meant it, that I could put up with a bit more of that, but
not much more, as his mother’s health had become a problem already. If he
didn’t shape up, he would be sent to Chicago to live with K and Ted. He shaped
up.
We did not limit the visits or interactions with Ted and K and did not quiz Phil or
Ted about what was said or done. There was much friction between K and Tina.
Ted was understandably upset. Much later, at eighteen, at M.I.T., he became a
very serious Christian, forgave Tina, and–I hoped–forgave me.
I do not remember much about those first few years with Phil, except that I
quickly came to love him. I remember being on a business trip and seeing
someone with a boy Phil’s age, and I missed my Phil sorely. He was an easy
child to rear and to love, with a good brain, good looks, good attitude. At 29, he
still has all of these traits.
MILLWOOD, NY, 1986–93
Bedford Mews was a half-hour’s drive from the IBM lab. Tina wanted me to be
closer, to have less of a commute. She also wanted the Chappaqua school
system for Phil, if possible. The condominium complex she found for us,
Ledgewood Commons, in Millwood, was ten minutes from my work. The adjacent
Westorchard Elementary School was one of the three feeder schools whose
students would go on to Chappaqua’s esteemed Horace Greeley High School.
The condo’s ten-acre site was safely away from the highway, the half-dozen
buildings were duplexes that even had basements, along with a pool, a tennis
court with a basketball hoop, and an adjacent nature trail. Our back porch looked
out onto a lawn, backed by a forest. Phil had the facilities and the peers to play
with and did swimmingly.
Tina and I would go on slow walks across the condo grounds and up the steep
hill to the entrance, then back down again. She was taking baby steps. It was
charming and sad, as she showed a pattern of increasing disability that was likely
to lead to the picture I had forced myself to envision before I asked her to marry
me: Tina stuck in bed, immobile, with tubes attached. Tragic. Prophetic. The
thought of her enduring that had been terrible. To think she would have had to
endure it without me had been even worse.
The picture of Tina, Phil, and me that is on my dresser today was taken at
Westorchard Elementary. We are clearly happy. There had been some kind of
admission testing, to determine which class he should be in, and when it was
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done, the lady supervising the test said to Tina, “He’s got it. He’s really got it!”
Phil has proved her to be correct.
TED
Tina deeply regretted that she was not able to bring Ted with her when she left
Chicago. For years this was for her, as for Ted, a terrible loss. Our friend, Wendy
Garfein, describes (see “Tributes”) a day at Ledgewood Commons when she and
Tina shared their deepest regrets:
Sitting at her kitchen table and reliving her decision as she talked, Tina
remembered all the struggles she had gone through. She seemed to be
ashamed of herself for making the decision to survive, because it meant
leaving Ted behind. Years did not diminish her sorrow and guilt over this
decision. It was at that point that I shared my personal story and my own
sorrow and guilt over my own [analogous] decision years earlier in my life.
Self-acceptance has been difficult for both of us to achieve, but Tina’s
sharing with me, and enabling me to share with her, has helped us both.
Tina, by sharing her love-story, showed me that day the qualities which I
admire in her to this day: her courage, compassion, and integrity. I felt the
courage that she needed to make the decision to start a new life and to
leave behind her little boy, Ted. I knew that leaving him behind, she felt
that Ted must feel abandoned. Her compassion for Ted and her desire to
show him her love was evident to me. It was not so easy for a young Ted
to comprehend, however. I knew that with time and maturity, Ted would
understand her decision and grow to know his mother, as I do: as a
woman with the courage, compassion and integrity to live that love each
day.
In the tragic movie, Sophie’s Choice, that Jewish mother is compelled by the
Nazis to choose only one of her two children to be spared the trip to a death
camp. Tina’s choice was not so momentous but still was so very difficult.
ANOTHER CHILD?
Probably three years into our marriage, around 1987, we had a serious
discussion about whether or not to try to produce a third child, half-sibling to Phil
and Ted.
Characteristically, Tina wanted me to have a child “of my own,” as I had not had,
nor tried to have, one in my first marriage. Phil was adorable, so another like him
would be great, and a little girl like Tina would have been delightful, too.
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At 43, Tina was a bit old for this, and the risk of birth defects increases with the
parents’ age. At 44, I was not sure I had the energy for a baby. I had been the
eldest brother of five and had done my share of “parenting” in that role. I could
take it or leave it, much as I had come to love Phil. I feared that Phil and Ted
could feel a bit displaced by the presence of a half-sibling, whom they might
suspect we favored. We decided not to have more children.
The next question was: tubal ligation for Tina or vasectomy for Doug? True to her
generous heart, Tina volunteered for the operation, wanting to leave open the
possibility that if anything happened to her or to our marriage, I would not be
prevented from having a biological child with a subsequent wife.
So often in the past, Tina put others ahead of herself. Now, Tina comes first, but
everybody counts.
A teacher in her high school, Mr. McGhee, recognized how special she was and
applied to her the quotation, “All things noble are as difficult as they are rare.”
Noble, rare, Tina.
In retrospect, choosing not to have another child seems to have been the right
decision. Our health issues have often been very challenging. Still, we can’t know
what we have missed.
Soon we would have our hands full with multiple sclerosis and then cancer.
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
Multiple sclerosis—MS—is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which the
body’s immune system attacks the covering of nerve cells, the myelin sheath,
leading to scarring of the sheath and a loss of its primary function, electrical
insulation.
Nerves throughout the body, but principally in the spinal cord and brain, can be
damaged this way. The damage can affect sensory, motor, or brain nerves,
leading to a wide variety of symptoms, from tingling to paralysis to loss of
coordination or cognitive skills and sometimes loss of sight and speech. Many
cases remain relatively mild, producing annoying but not disabling losses, and
not shortening the victims’ lives.
Four types of MS are usually described, but most patients, as did Tina, go from
having relapsing-remitting episodes of MS to having a secondary progressive
form, with a slow, sometimes very slow, continued loss of function. Our
neurologist has speculated that Tina’s immune response may have “burned itself
out,” so that the slow healing of the neurological system may lead to gradual
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improvement. We hope so.
For several weeks when Tina was near 10 years old, she had an episode of
blindness, an optical neuritis that might have been a warning sign that she had
MS, which is hard to diagnose, because of the wide spectrum of symptoms. MS
is rare enough, one per thousand in the U.S., that it can easily be overlooked. It
is a heritable vulnerability, with children of MS victims having a 1 percent chance
of developing the disorder (about ten times the incidence in the population at
large). The likelihood of an identical twin having it is 30 percent, if the other does.
Environmental factors also play a role, with children born in sunny climes less
likely to develop MS. There is evidence suggesting a connection with vitamin D,
as well as sunlight. Tina is mildly allergic to vitamin D, developing an itchy rash
from ingestion and even from exposure to sunlight, which generates vitamin D in
the exposed skin.
The Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of mononucleosis, not uncommon in children,
may trigger the mistaken immune response. Much is still to be discovered.
So far, there is no cure. Various methods of suppressing the immune system
reduce the frequency and severity of the attacks, but only imperfectly and at the
cost of leaving the patient more susceptible to infections. In 1994, Tina
optimistically started one of these drugs, beta interferon; but after a few months
the neurologist stopped it when her white blood cell count became dangerously
low. Tina found the lump that was a breast cancer shortly thereafter and believes
that the immunosuppressive drug caused it. While it is true that immune
suppression can allow the development of some cancers, the process takes time,
a decade or more, rather than weeks.
The on-again, off-again nature of MS leads to credence in “discoveries” of
dubious “cures” that turn out to be just a matter of lucky timing. Special diets, bee
venom shots, removal of dental amalgam, and, currently, the surgical
enlargement of veins leading from the brain, are among the many remedies that
have been proposed and have become fads, but none have proved effective
after extensive testing.
When we married, June 1984, the signs of Tina’s MS were virtually invisible,
although she did feel more tired than she thought she should. By 1990, she was
still able to walk, but only in baby steps; her fatigue had worsened, and she
showed some loss of mental clarity.
By 1993, she was using a cane, was barely able to climb stairs, and it was time
to move from our duplex. Short-term memory and occasional reasoning losses
were noticeable, as well.
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STEROID PSYCHOSIS
During the Ledgewood Commons period, Tina had a severe MS exacerbation,
bad enough that she was hospitalized, though I do not remember the symptoms.
She was treated with ACTH, a powerful steroidal anti-inflammatory drug,
intravenously. The second day of hospitalization, she told me a lurid tale of highly
improper activity at the hospital by a neighbor who was a doctor on the staff. I
was shocked. Before I lit into the hospital staff, I asked her some more questions,
as the story made no sense. None of it made sense. None of it had happened.
She was suffering from steroid psychosis, her brain’s overreaction to the drug.
Many more strange ideas popped into her head that week. This persisted for a
week, a very sad week, as I feared it would not be reversible. It was.
Twenty years later, a milder steroidal treatment (an inhaler) produced initial
indications of steroid psychosis, so we discontinued it, and the symptoms faded
away.
NEAR DEATH IN TUCSON
We visited my mother and sister in Tucson around the spring of 1990. They had
a ranch house with a lovely pool. Tina had not been swimming since the previous
summer, so she was eager to do so, and she had been an excellent swimmer in
the past. I went into the pool with her and was shocked to see her starting to
drown. She could no longer swim. True, her gait had gotten a bit worse, but
neither of us expected this. What if I had been late in joining her?
BEING DAD
Never having played soccer, I started merely helping out at Phil’s soccer
practices. I came to understand soccer by analogy to basketball and hockey, with
which I was more familiar. The youngest kids swarm like bees around the ball;
but as they get older they learn to spread out, get clear of defenders, give and
receive passes to put themselves in scoring position. I became a soccer coach.
It was a pleasure to coach Phil and his friends, almost all of whom were very
nice. All the players were to get at least half of the game playing time each game.
Beyond that, the better players played more. One parent, of an obnoxious
underperformer, berated me for not being more egalitarian. What seems fair to
the less able can be unfair to the more able.
I helped Phil learn to swim, and he made very good use of the pool.
When Phil left Chicago with Tina, I was “Doug,” not “Dad,” to appease Tina’s
husband, who was Baba, Chinese for Papa. In my heart I was Dad, and years
later we changed to that. I was determined be a loving father to Phil and to have
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whatever relationship would be allowed with Ted. For years Ted was estranged
from us, and I am still “Doug” to him, but “Dad” to Phil. Ted and I are, at least,
good friends.
Phil has his parents’ genes, with brains, good looks, a strong, tall body. People
have commented that his gestures and speech resemble mine, which makes me
happy to hear. I say that he has my smile. Tina and her ex-husband are both
very serious people. Ted is quiet and somber. Phil is outgoing and cheerful. He
has had our love and encouragement, but not the pushing that some parents
exert.
When Tina was a young girl in a suburb of Rochester, she and a few friends had
a tree house, where they would get together as the “Gloom Club.” Play and
poetry were somehow part of this, but I don’t know the mix. She was a very quiet
and serious child. We have a picture of her at about 5, neatly dressed in a
jumper over a sweater over a blouse. She is refusing to smile for the camera.
She is adorable. It’s on my dresser, “To Doug, Love, Ting.” Close by is her
engagement picture, a large version of the one that ran in the New York Times,
in May 1967: beautiful, though still serious. A portrait based on this is to be on
the cover of this book. Next to that is one of Tina and Phil (age 6), and me, all
smiling radiantly. History summed up in three photographs.
Two more pictures emphasize a similar message: a poster-size photo of Phil at
age 2, happily cuddling a small stuffed St. Bernard toy, and a smiling Phil at
nearly 29, triumphantly graduating from the University of Chicago’s top-ranked
business school with his M.B.A.
When he was around six, we entered Phil in a Saturday “Chinese School,” where
he would be with other Chinese-American children, learning a bit of Mandarin. He
didn’t like it. After a couple of months to be sure, we let him drop it. He is an
American boy, of Chinese ancestry, with the emphasis on American.
Did he want to play soccer? Fine, I’ll be an assistant coach. Basketball? Let’s do
it. Swim? Here’s how. Build muscles? Great idea. Saxophone? Give it a try for at
least a year. Within the confines of my “tough love,” or “tough, love” philosophy,
he had lots of room for choices, to see what fit him and what did not.
Phil was not a typical only child. His brother was in Chicago. His father and Ted
would call weekly and arrange very rare visits here or there. At six or so, he flew
to Chicago on his own. What made a bigger difference than a brother and a
father in a distant city was Tina’s slowly developing incapacities. She, not he,
was the center of concern in our home. He made his own breakfast often, helped
with chores, was master of his bedroom domain. He was a help and a pleasure.
We rarely disagreed. Praise was a better incentive than criticism, and the latter
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was minimal. What was there not to love about Phil?
He is second only to Tina in the hierarchy of those I love. He understands that I
have tried to lead by example, “do as I do,” while recognizing our differences. We
both admire strength, intelligence, honesty, warmth, a sense of humor. He
embodies these. He understood Tina’s progressive disability and has treated her
lovingly, tenderly. To me he was both loving and respectful, just what I wanted.
Tina did nothing to interfere with my parenting. There was no second-guessing.
no disagreement that led to “But Mom says....” We discussed what we were
doing, agreed on a course of action, backed each other.
TINA’S CRASH
During the first few years of our marriage, Tina’s was steady, though the steps
were small. She drove our second car with care, but with decreasing ability. I
tried to get her to cease. We first had the car adapted to hand controls for the
gas pedal, but she had trouble learning their use and usually reverted to foot
controls. Toward the end of the Ledgewood Commons phase (1986-93), she
pushed the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal while backing up, shot past me
and through the open area between the buildings, then smacked into a
neighbor’s garage, causing $17,000 worth of damage to their garage. We love
you, too, State Farm Insurance.
Fortunately, no children were playing where they often did, or the mishap could
have been lethal. Reluctantly, Tina relinquished her car keys and never drove
again. Thereafter, she felt, perhaps correctly, that the neighbors viewed her as a
bit of a hazard. When I decided to accept a buyout offer from IBM soon
afterward, she was not sad to leave, except for having to say goodbye to Ruth
and Mal Goldberg, Zane and Wendy Garfein.
RAMSEY, NJ, 1993–2000
In 1993, IBM had a slow year and decided to cut costs by offering an early
retirement package to a subset of its workers. Eligibility required being over 50
and having worked more than ten years with the company. I just qualified in both
criteria and was one of the very first to take the offer. The key item for us was
continued participation in IBM’s medical benefits program. The buy-out offer
came at about the time that Tina could barely make it up the stairs to our
bedroom in the two-story condo. During one MS exacerbation, we had a
temporary chair lift put in, running up alongside those stairs. The handwriting was
on the wall, the wall beside the stairs: We would need to move soon.
I predicted to an IBM friend, also qualified for the buy-out, that first IBM would
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pay some of us to leave, but in the following years they might just push him out.
He disagreed. I was right.
TEXWIPE
I did some job searching before I left IBM. Pickings were slim. The best was a
small family-owned firm, the Texwipe Company, in a town next to Ramsey, NJ.
They employed roughly a hundred people, split between the New Jersey
headquarters and the North Carolina manufacturing site. They made very clean
cleaning materials for manufacturing areas that need to be ultra-clean, primarily
for the micro-electronics and pharmaceuticals industries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that an institution is the lengthened shadow of a
single man. In this case, Texwipe, the man was Edward Paley, the smart, decent,
and creative founder of the company.
Before being hired, I visited the headquarters several times, once giving a talk,
and found Ed Paley the most impressive of the bunch. His three sons–Steve, Bill,
and Doug–were involved in the business, which presumably they would inherit.
Steve, not a scientist but an interested and intelligent layman, focused on
technical matters. He was my boss, and generally a good one. Bill was mostly
involved in marketing. When he was not skiing, Doug got involved somehow,
also. When the firm was later sold, none stayed on.
I had developed a good reputation in contamination control science and
technology. The Texwipe Company sold its products on the basis of their
technical merits. For example, its wipers were cleaner and more absorbent than
most of the competitors’ products. Their needs and my skills were a good match.
I was nominally the Director of Contamination Control. I supervised testing and
quality control for their products and made a few, unwelcome, visits to the plant
in North Carolina to show them how to do things more cleanly. My other major
activity was to represent the company on various industry panels and to do some
scientific publishing to give the company added scientific panache. I was a
public-relations scientist, if you will.
On the verge of hiring me, they had one remaining concern: would Tina’s health
coverage be their responsibility? When I assured them that my IBM retirees’
insurance had that covered, they sighed in relief and signed me on. While their
concern was understandable, prudent, and all that, it was not–shall we say–
lovable.
The work was reasonably interesting. The people were nice, and some are my
friends to this day. I published some more papers and was involved in setting
some industry standards. In prestige and challenge, the job was a step or two
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down from my Research Staff Member position at IBM, though it paid as well.
Ramsey was a pleasant town, and we only needed to get Phil through middle
school and high school, then we could move on, as we did.
PHIL AGAIN
Moving from Millwood and Ledgewood Commons was a real loss for Phil, as he
had good friends nearby and loved to play basketball on the condo’s court, swim
in the pool, sled down the hill. He would be fifty miles from this. I told him I would
take the hour’s drive with him any weekend he wanted to visit his friends and that
I would get a basketball hoop built in our own backyard. We did make a few
visits, may have had some friends back as guests, and the basketball set-up was
among the first items completed at our Ramsey, NJ, home. With Tina’s ability to
walk declining precipitously, Phil understood why we had to leave Millwood and
didn’t complain about it.
SMITH MIDDLE SCHOOL
For Phil it was a new town and a new school, Smith Middle School, a half-mile
away, a good bike-riding distance, rather safe. Phil made friends easily, did well.
He was active in soccer and basketball and well liked.
Phil’s involvement in sports gave us many pleasant memories. Soccer in the fall
found me helping to coach, with Tina sitting in the stands with other soccer moms
(and soccer dads). Not much scoring, but a lot of running around. After a while,
you get to recognize near-scoring opportunities, which are dramatic in the lowscoring games.
He was not chosen for the sixth-grade basketball team, however, partly because
he was unknown and still short. I told him he would eventually excel, if he chose
to, and that by his senior year he could be a starter. I suggested that he work
hard on jumping high, because that would offset any height deficit he might have.
Players like Calvin Murphy had been successful basketball pros, even though
less than 6 feet tall, because of their jumping ability. I also told Phil that it was
better to excel in one sport than not excel in several and that I did not want him
playing football, as I knew too well how easily one could get injured. He took all
this to heart. He worked on his jumping. He lifted weights to get strong. He grew
to be a strong, though light, 6’3” and was effectively even taller than that because
of his jumping ability.
TINA’S CANCER, SPRING 1994
Tina found the lump in her breast while showering. It was pea-size, perhaps
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smaller. The time was the spring of 1994, a year after we moved from Millwood
to Ramsey and only months after she had started the immune-suppressive beta
interferon injections in the hope of lessening the multiple sclerosis exacerbations
that were rapidly diminishing her physical abilities.
The biopsy confirmed our fears. The usual choices presented themselves:
remove the lump, remove the breast, treat with radiation or chemotherapy. With
little hesitation, she and I decided that a mastectomy, removal of the breast, was
the treatment we wanted, the one thought most likely to prevent recurrence or
spread. Weeks later, this was done, and it was followed by an extended period of
relatively mild chemotherapy.
The incident illustrated many of Tina’s strengths:
—She was alert to her health and did not deny what she found.
—She sought professional help immediately
—She identified and weighed the options, in discussions with me.
—Having chosen, she moved quickly to carry out what reason required.
—She did not bemoan her fate.
—For many years after, she faithfully underwent somewhat uncomfortable
mammographies.
She was, as always, a brave soldier
CANCER AND MS AND PARAPLEGIA
The mastectomy and subsequent treatment had weakened Tina somewhat. The
combination of that and her MS was decisive. She tried pitifully hard to keep
walking by using a walker, but she became bedridden by the end of 1994.
We used a wheelchair and transferred Tina to and from her bed with a sliding
board. We installed a ramp from the garage. We put handrails in the shower. It
seemed as though each modification we made to our home or our lifestyle was
rapidly outrun by the decline in her abilities.
Late that year, 1994, we hired our first home health aide, from a foreign-worker
placement agency. Kasia had won some green-card lottery in the Ukraine, had
some health aide experience there, and spoke absolutely no English, only
Ukrainian and Polish. Using pantomime and a Polish-English dictionary, we
made ourselves understood. Sweet woman, hard worker. She lived and worked
with us for over a year, benefiting from and appreciating the English lessons that
Tina gave her.
Around this time, when Tina was newly paraplegic, we were introduced to a
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couple from a church we had visited from time to time. Namie was an attractive
and articulate Japanese American, wheelchair-bound with Parkinson’s, and Doug
was a handsome, charming and intelligent Ph.D. chemist. We were in our fifties,
and they were about ten years younger. We had them over to have lunch, and
they were able to come because we had a convenient ramp into the porch where
we would be entertaining them.
Parkinsonism is a progressive neurological disorder affecting primarily the motor
nerves. The jerky motions characteristic of the ailment can be controlled with
medication, but this often leads to lethargy. There is little loss of thinking ability, if
any at all. Namie was very active during lunch, and I found myself –to my shame
–wondering whether she was going to knock our nice China cup and saucer off
the table. Her husband was uneasy about that, too, unfortunately. The
conversation flowed readily, however, as we had lots in common. We parted on
good terms, and Tina and I expected to get invited by them to get together again.
This never happened. Instead, we learned a few months later that Doug had
taken off, putting her in some faith-based nursing home. This did not raise
churchgoing to a higher priority for us.
Recently, I checked the Internet to see where Namie was. I found her picture in a
publication put out by a charitable nursing home in upstate New York. She had
continued her hobby of painting (!), and some of her pictures were in the
photograph. I have read that a large fraction of marriages (perhaps 85 percent)
with a disabled spouse do break up, especially if it is the wife who is disabled.
Shameful.
PHIL AT RAMSEY HIGH SCHOOL
High school basketball games were fun. Phil got some playing time as a
freshman on the junior varsity team and won a starting role there as a
sophomore. He had some playing time as a junior on the varsity and was a
starter as a senior, probably the third-best player on their league’s championship
team, with fine speed, good passing, dribbling, shooting—and he often grabbed
the rebounds, even against taller players. He was one of the few on his high
school team who could easily dunk the ball. I see in my mind’s eye his catching a
rebound on its way out of bounds, throwing it, while himself in mid-air, downcourt to teammate Steve Kupfer, before sailing out of bounds himself, with Steve
scoring at the far end. Hustle, agility, situational awareness.
Phil’s coach thought he could get an athletic scholarship for basketball at a small
college (Division III) if he wanted, but Phil’s tuition was going to be covered by his
professor father’s interschool exchange, just as Ted’s had been, and we could
supply much of the living expenses, largely with money we had set aside for
each boy from the buy-out of Tina’s share of the Chicago condo. No need to go
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the athletic scholarship route.
Phil balanced sports, academics, and social life well. Popular, even class
president his senior year, a fine student, athletic and charming, Phil glided
through Ramsey’s high school.
WHICH COLLEGE FOR PHIL?
Well before his 2000 graduation, Phil and I discussed his plans for college. He
had no particular field of interest, so I suggested that a business degree might
give him latitude in future choices, with better job opportunities than a liberal arts
major would. He agreed.
He applied to several colleges, among them Boston College. We liked that it had
a good reputation and had retained some of the Jesuit founders’ emphasis on
moral behavior. Ten percent of their new admissions were class presidents, as
was Phil, whose grades were near the top ten percent of his high school class.
The school had an active sports program, intramurals to participate in,
intercollegiate teams to cheer. BC it was.
BOSTON COLLEGE
Boston College proved to be a very good choice. Phil graduated in 2004, with
some solid training in obtaining his bachelor’s degree as a business major.
Strong friendships were formed. His grades were good. Fun was had.
The few students we met from Boston College were kids we liked and that we
had no reluctance for Phil to be with. We liked his steady girlfriend, Maggie. He
was clearly learning something in his coursework. He finished toward the top
quarter of the graduating class. The campus atmosphere was traditional and fun,
and he and we enthusiastically rooted for the football and basketball teams. His
senior year he shared half of a house with ten of his BC buddies, and they have
remained friends.
AMIGOS
One summer during college, Phil spent two months in the Dominican Republic,
volunteering in the Amigos program, living with a teacher’s family in a tiny town,
eventually helping to upgrade their athletic facilities. We missed him. It was good
experience: nice relationships with the host family and friends, helped his
Spanish, though his stay did not much improve the lives of the people there.
Such is the nature of much volunteer work.
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MAY CORPORATION
The summer between his junior and senior years at BC, Phil worked in a
marketing internship for the May Corporation (then owner of the Filene’s
department store chain). He did so well that they committed to hire him when he
graduated from BC. He worked in the Boston area, then moved to New York
when Macy’s and May merged. Closer to us meant more convenient visits.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
After a couple of years with Macy’s, Phil was ready to pursue an MBA. He did
well on the MCAT exam and applied to several schools, including the University
of Chicago. U of C’s business school, Booth School of Business, admitted him for
fall 2008. He did well there, got good grades. He lived in the Hyde Park condo of
his father and stepmother, who were there half the year. He made good friends,
with one of whom, John, he later shared a New York City apartment, when they
both got jobs in the New York metropolitan area. The girl he started dating
midway in his first year, Jessie, we liked a lot. I thought she was the kind of girl I
would have picked for him or for myself: smart, pretty, polite, cooperative,
congenial, and of Asian ancestry. After two years of going together, they broke
up, however.
Phil interned with American Express between his two years in the MBA program.
AmEx and he seemed like a good match, so he accepted their offer that fall to
come to work for them after graduation.
What Phil sets out to do, Phil gets done.
LAKE OSIRIS, WALDEN, NY
2000–THE PRESENT
In looking for a home to move to in retirement, we had some requirements. The
place needed to be:
—within twenty miles, better ten, of the home of my mother and sister
—scenic, preferably near a body of water
—large, with numerous bedrooms, not necessarily fancy
We succeeded on all counts, our current home:
— is five miles from my mother and sister;
—overlooks Lake Osiris, a 25-acre scenic body of water;
—has six bedrooms, two bathrooms, two half-baths, two kitchens, a living
room, and a dining room, though no basement or attic.
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The house was actually two houses, the second built later as an attachment to
the first, conjoined, if you will (“Siamese,” if you are politically incorrect).
We had sought a large house to be able to have live-in help, if needed, and to be
able to offer a home to my mother and sister, should that be desired.
The rooms, and their uses, were as follows:
—one bedroom became Tina’s;
—the dining room eventually stored equipment, supplies, etc.;
—the larger of the two kitchens became the nurses’ kitchen and
headquarters;
—one bedroom became my office;
—one bedroom, near the lake and next to the second kitchen, was for
visitors;
—one bedroom became Phil’s;
—one bedroom was used for aides, nurses, or visitors, as needed;
—the two large bedrooms upstairs became an attic and my bedroom,
adjacent to a small half-bathroom between them; and
—a living room, with couches and a TV set. It is hardly ever used.
My mother was 83 at that time, living with my sister, and we then thought
(accurately, as it turned out) that one or both would live with us eventually. Mom
did come to our house ten years later, in mid-November 2010, at 93, after a fall.
Robert Frost wrote that home is where, when you have to go there, they have to
take you in. I would say: Home is also where, when you need to go there, they
want to take you in. Better still: it is where, when you want to go there, they want
to take you in.
In 2000, when we moved to Lake Osiris, Walden, Tina was paraplegic, confined
to bed or to her wheelchair, and we traveled using a van that accommodated the
wheelchair. She was up for an hour or so at each mealtime. She could use her
left arm and hand to feed herself, to control the TV remote control, to answer the
phone or ring for help and to write, though poorly. It was a pleasant, relatively
stress-free time.
My mother wrote about Tina in June 2001, as part of a writing assignment in a
course she was taking. Tina’s condition and my mother’s love for her are evident:
You would not expect a person in my daughter-in-law’s situation to be
notable for her sense of humor. She has multiple sclerosis, and for the last
five years, she has been unable to walk or use her right arm and hand.
She spends her days now propped up in bed or in a wheelchair. What little
strength she has in her left hand is not enough to operate the chair.
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There are times, of course, when she expresses her frustration, but she is
usually cheerful, and, of all the people I have ever known, she has the
quickest laugh. Start to tell Tina a joke, and she begins to laugh
immediately.
She has lost so much. I remember her running after me as we hustled
through Times Square on a quest for tickets to a play. When she visited us
in Tucson, she swam fifty laps at a time in our pool. An accomplished
pianist, she struck the chords of a Tchaikovsky concerto with ease. Before
her marriage to my son, her master’s degree from Harvard and a talent for
writing had earned her a job with the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now my son hoists her from bed with a Hoyer lift, a device that scoops her
into a canvas seat and deposits her in her wheelchair. Occasionally,
someone pushes the chair up to her piano, and, with her left hand, Tina
picks out a melody. No chords.
In her bed she has a computer against her drawn-up knees on which she
spells out letters to her friends and family. She talks on the phone to her
former schoolmates. She talks to Amy, the sky-blue parakeet in a cage
next to her bed, and to Brandy, her Golden Retriever, who nuzzles her
hand with a cold nose.
Tina was born in China and brought to the United States when she was
two years old. Although she is truly an American girl, her upbringing and
her looks reveal her ethnic roots. Her speech, while completely idiomatic,
is noticeably formal in structure. In appearance she is recognizably
Chinese. Her black hair hangs straight from a center part, curving up just
below her ears. Her dark eyes are almond-shaped. A faint pink colors the
rich ivory skin over her wide cheekbones. Small, even white teeth show in
her ready smile.
Seated in her kitchen, she can look out through a glass door at a lake and
watch as squadrons of Canadian geese ripple its surface. She converses
with guests, moving her good hand elegantly to emphasize her words.
Sometimes she speaks too softly for me to hear. The fault is with my
hearing; she has always had a low voice. In marrying my son, she has
joined a family that is large and often boisterous. This has never bothered
Tina, and she has learned to make herself heard in even the largest family
groups.
But mostly what she does is laugh, head back, tears streaming from half-
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closed eyes, as every quip transports her.
The perfect audience!
That was Tina in 2001. We had moved to Lake Osiris the year before.
METAMORPHOSIS, MARCH 2004
In Franz Kafka’s story, “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor Samsa awakens one
morning to find he has been transformed into a giant insect, a beetle. The story
continues with the shocked response of his family and others who come to the
home, his alienation from them all, and his rapid demise, partly out of
consideration for his family.
When Tina awoke from her medically induced coma in early March of 2004, she
was herself in a shocking situation: no longer able to move arms or hands, still
unable to move legs or feet, given oxygen through a tube passing over her lips,
past the larynx, into the windpipe. Gregor Samsa could speak, with difficulty, but
Tina could not at all. I cannot even imagine how she must have felt.
Fortunately, nurse Terry Bush was there with her in the mornings, and I was
there in the afternoons. We could help with her care, with assurance,
communicating with a list of common words or by spelling out very short
sentences, guessing the letters and getting her eye-blinks or smiles in response.
It was during this period that one of the attempts to get us to sign a DNR order
was made. A couple of medical professionals (doctors? nurses?) had come into
the room and were urging this on her. She was in no condition to disagree with
the people she was so dependent on, but I had her power of attorney and was in
fine condition to say, “No!”
When your life has been turned upside down, you are in poor shape to give
“informed consent.” Health proxies, signed in the past and predicting what you
would want done, do not necessarily reflect how you will feel at the time they
come into play, nor how you would feel about the consequences, if you were
alive later to reflect on them.
Tina chose to live, and we are all grateful for that.
COMING HOME AGAIN
In June of 2004, when we came home from the Critical Care Unit after the 100
days that nearly killed her, Tina was on a ventilator, quadriplegic, fed through a
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gastric tube. Not only was she totally dependent on us for her care, the list of
infections and problems that had developed while hospitalized was daunting. She
had been “colonized” by two strains of hospital-acquired bacteria and given only
months to live. She was safer home or in a hospice than in the hospital, our
doctors agreed. Being given the choice of home or the hospice meant there was
a good chance she had only months to live. She took it in stride.
Elaine Tashiro Gerbert, Tina’s close friend from college days, visited us while we
were in Ramsey, when Tina still had the use of her left arm and hand. The next
visit, after the near-fatal MS exacerbation and the onset of quadriplegia, is
described in “Tributes” and excerpted here:
The next time I saw her, she was living in Walden and had suffered
greatly. She was wearing sunglasses because the light hurt her eyes. She
tilted her head and reassured me, “It’s Tina. I’m still here. I’m still the same
person you knew forty-four years ago.“ One of the first things she did was
to make sure I had eaten lunch. And then she wanted me to walk around
the lake with Doug, to be sure to enjoy the lake.
This was in the fall of 2006, after my mother died in April. I remember a
telephone conversation I had with Tina early that year, when my mother’s
cancer returned and she was getting progressively worse. Tina told me to
pray. To pray, pray, pray. She knew what she was talking about. After
Pierre [Elaine’s husband] died in May 2010, I visited Tina and Doug.
Because of her immense suffering, which she bore so stoically, Tina knew
what loss and grief felt like, and she consoled me many times over the
phone.
I don’t know from what depths Tina drew the strength to be as
compassionate and courageous through all the years—over 6,000 days–
in the face of such extreme trials. When I think of her life, I have to
conclude that in spite of her many losses, she has been loved deeply and
she has loved deeply. She has retained her belief that life is good, and
she has lived profoundly and well.
As I write this book, in mid-2011, she is in better general health than when she
came home, her periods of mental clarity are interspersed with episodes of
verbal repetition or mental confusion. Her mood is usually good, and she is not in
pain. She relates warmly to staff, family, friends, and she enjoys TV, videos,
music, news, and is loving toward and beloved of many. Several of the
contributions to the Tributes section expand on this.
THE TINGDOM, TINA’S WORLD
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On the Internet site that Phil created for us in 2005 (www.tinyurl.com/mfyh47),
one can see Tina’s room, which I call “the Tingdom,” with its multitude of medical
devices helpful in keeping her alive: the ventilator, the compressor and atomizer,
the pulse oximeter, the hospital bed, the oxygen (O2) line coming from the
oxygen concentrator in the nearby equipment room (formerly the dining room),
where her wheelchair, a second ventilator, and boxes upon boxes of medical
disposables are stored. On the nearer of our two porches is the gasolinepowered electric generator we use when power goes out.
The Tingdom, proper, is Tina’s room, where I say that the Empress Ting of the
Ting dynasty reigns. I sometimes refer to her as “Your Highness” or “Your
Magnificence” or “Tina Su-per Cooper,” but she finds “Tina Su-preme Cooper” a
bit too much. She rests with one or more of her little subjects in her bed: Teddy
bears with names like Sarah Bear Cooper (from nurse Mary Wilkinson’s
daughter, Sarah), Tina Bear Cooper, Tyler Bear (he’s young and jade green,
sharing Tina’s birth nation), and Ezra Cornell Bear.
By her TV sits a much smaller bear (Di-di, younger brother in Chinese), along
with Teddy Bear Cooper and Philly Bear Cooper, and the longest-serving stuffed
toy, Sally Wabbit, a Chapstick Aide (she keeps it under her tiny sweater). Sally
Wabbit wears a nurse’s cap fashioned for her by nurse Dori Oskam. The stuffed
animals are part of our continuing campaign to support Tina’s morale. They are
gifts from friends, family and staff. Now that my mother is staying with us, Tina
insisted she have one of the bears, giving to my mother Sarah Bear Cooper.
When I see Tina in the morning, I ask how she has been doing, tell her how
magnificent I think she is, and inquire as to the overnight behavior of the bears.
Her reports are uniformly favorable. Once, when Tina was being fed through the
gastric tube, I explained that I had asked the bears once whether they, too,
wanted something to eat and they had said, “No, thanks. We’re stuffed.” She
laughed.
I like to joke with her. One day I felt for her toes through her socks and claimed
that I counted eleven toes. Why hadn’t she told me before the wedding? Was this
grounds for an annulment? She smiled her megawatt smile.
Tina loves to have her hair washed, especially by our Barbara George. Barbara
puts her heart into all she does, even this, and it shows. We used to give in to
Tina’s request to dye her hair, but the itchiness of her scalp for days afterward
led us to stop. Her hair now has a salt-and-pepper look and has become wavy.
Where the waves came from is a big question, apparently the side effect of one
or more medication.
The weather forecast I give to Tina for the Tingdom is always the same:
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“temperature in the low 70s, no precipitation, and–at most –a gentle breeze.”
This always wins a smile.
I used to call myself the Consort to the Empress Ting, a mere commoner, but she
would not have it. She elevated me to Emperor, and I accepted. We issue an
occasional edict, such as (on a Monday), “tomorrow shall be Tuesday, in the
Tingdom; it’s been about a week since we had one, and the subjects desire one.”
My Most Precious Ting plays along in the spirit of the jest.
Another metaphor I use with her is that of a binary star system, two suns
revolving around a common center, warming and illuminating each other. My
Ting is the light of my life, and she assures me I am the light of hers.
She is wonderfully easy to please and very appreciative. Nurse Kate Murphy
gave us for Valentine’s Day a heart-shaped framed needlepoint for Tina’s wall:
“Always kiss me goodnight.” I comply happily.
On the walls are her Cornell A.B. and Harvard M.A. diplomas, a beautiful
watercolor done by her mother (three small birds chatting on a tree branch),
another by her mother’s teacher, and a calendar (Golden Retrievers last year,
China the year before). The wall she sees ahead of her from her bed is a
robin’s-egg blue, a color she requested soon after we moved to this, our “yearround vacation home.” Repainting the whole room (it is an off-white) would have
been awkward, and the fumes unhealthful, so Tina accepted this compromise.
When she leaves the Tingdom to go to our lakeside kitchen, she can see Lake
Osiris, getting an even better view at it if the weather allows us to be on the
adjacent porch. She spends an hour out of bed each afternoon.
This is Tina’s world, pretty much. I had bought, years before we were reunited, a
reproduction of Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World,” showing a vaguely
disabled-looking young woman in a field gazing longingly toward a house,
presumably her home, a distance away. Not knowing Tina’s condition at the time,
I nonetheless felt the painting symbolized her being separated from where she
should be, with me.
I later learned that the “Christina” who was the inspiration (but not the model) for
Wyeth’s painting was a woman whose legs had been paralyzed by polio. Wyeth
had seen her crawling in a field. Eerie coincidence.
To add to the coincidence, Tina chose to be “Christina” Cooper the first decade
of our marriage, signifying a complete break from what had been an unhappy first
marriage. When we moved to Ramsey in 1993, she reverted to being called
“Tina,” thinking to accommodate my brother Chris.
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Tina has a window on the world, with a fine flat-screen TV given her by Gene and
Christy, with associated DVD and CD and tape players, a digital TV subscription
to over a hundred TV channels, including some fine music channels, and several
hundred DVDs, tapes and CDs. Her favorites are comedies, travel, nature,
documentaries, musicals, concerts, and inspirational presentations.
HORTON
The children’s book author Dr. Seuss penned a story about Horton the elephant,
who, having agreed to keep an egg warm on behalf of its absent mother,
encounters many difficulties in fulfilling his pledge. Surmounting each of them, he
proudly announces “an elephant’s faithful, one hundred per cent.” I’m happy to
reassure Tina occasionally that I have the same philosophy and am not going to
be outdone by Horton.
Horton Hospital, part of Orange Regional Medical Center (ORMC) in Middletown,
NY, was the site of Tina’s 100-day battle against death from February to June of
2004. We have been ever so thankful to the nurses and doctors there who saved
Tina’s life. No, it was not named after an elephant, but they succeeded in a big
job.
IATROGENIC ILLNESSES
Tina caught at least two different infections while in the critical care unit of the
hospital. Elsewhere, and at a different time, I picked up bacterial and viral
infections from an invasive procedure by an urologist. In Tucson, my mother
suffered damage during a heart catheterization. The mother of a neighbor at
Lake Osiris died of a systemic infection after her colon was punctured during a
colonoscopy. There are simply still much too many medical errors occurring,
leading to what are termed “iatrogenic,” doctor-caused, illnesses. Near the age of
sixty, I had a virtual colonoscopy, a CT scan of that area, involving no
endoscopes where the sun does not shine. I will do the same at 70. The loss of
some detail in the exam is offset for me by the gain in safety and peace of mind.
WILL TO LIVE
I’ve learned of patients who have refused treatment and died. Keeping Tina from
getting discouraged has been a priority, as has not misleading her with false
hope. I summed up what I asked our nurses to do as “keep her safe, healthy, and
content.”
Since her near-death experience, she has shown a continuing will to live.
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My love for her and her love for me is part of what keeps her going. She loves
Phil and Ted and some of the other members of our families. She loves, or nearly
loves, some of our nurses and they reciprocate much of that affection. She
enjoys what entertainment we can arrange for her TV screen.
When I hear discussion of “quality of life” as a characteristic, a “metric,” to be
evaluated for access to medical care, I am uneasy. Before you are ill, you have
one opinion of what you would want done for you. When ill, a different opinion is
likely. When recovered, your evaluation will probably be different still. Even less
well informed are the opinions of those who would judge your situation. Given the
problem of perspective and given the shifting degrees of mental clarity, one must
be very careful about the issue of “informed consent” for various proposed
options.
In the hospital, I was asked several times to sign a DNR order for Tina. If her
heart were to stop, a DNR order would limit the efforts taken to revive her. I
refused to sign, believing she would come to want all efforts attempted, as I did. I
have learned that sometimes the very existence of DNR orders suggest to the
staff that little more need be done for the patient, who then becomes secondclass, lower-priority. The institutions would deny this, of course, but the
eagerness for having DNR orders suggests otherwise. At the least, they may
serve to shield staff from liability in the case of premature death.
I have been told of a beautiful woman who suddenly became permanently
bedridden. She told the staff to close the blinds on the window, to leave her
alone, and she refused treatment until she died.
The will to live is necessary, even if not sufficient.
COGNITIVE LOSSES
About half of those stricken with multiple sclerosis suffer significant losses in
mental abilities. Memory, especially short-term memory, becomes less reliable.
Reasoning ability may suffer, at least intermittently. The patient may be lucid one
minute and not the next, perhaps repeating the same thing over and over again
or echoing what is being said.
The movie Charly (based on the short story “Flowers for Algernon”) is a
heartbreaking take on this kind of situation, as we see a brilliant patient lose his
thinking skills, regain them with a chemical treatment, and then be doomed to
lose them again, as the treatment is found to be only a temporary palliative.
In Tina’s case, significant cognitive deficits were noticeable near when Tina lost
her ability to walk, the tenth year of our marriage, 1994. Two heavy blows. She
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felt deeply the loss of the use of her legs, but she did not notice the loss of
mental acuity, which unawareness was a blessing in a way. I felt her cognitive
loss even more acutely than her immobility, as the pleasure and utility of our
conversations were diminished.
In her current condition, Tina—once an editor at the Encyclopedia Britannica—is
sometimes quite aware and clear-headed; at other times her speech may
become somewhat muddled and she appears to be confused. Her heart remains
pure gold, however, priceless to all who know her.
We hope that future developments in MS treatment will allow restoration of her
wonderful mind.
TWO SONGS
In the 1960s, the song I associated with us was:
Oh my love, oh my love
I cried for you so much,
Lonely nights without sleeping
while I longed for your touch.
Now your lips can erase
The heartache I’ve known.
Come with me to a world of our own.
We’ll build a world of our own
That no one else can share.
All our sorrows we’ll leave
far behind us there.
And I know you will find
There’ll be peace of mind,
When we live in a world of our own.
—Tom Springfield
—performed by The Seekers
It came true twenty years later.
When my voice changed around age 11, there was no need to go for an audition
at the Church of St. John the Divine, which had been contemplated before the
change. Now, I enjoy trying to sing, especially to Tina, a song of love:
You were meant for me.
And I was meant for you.
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Nature patterned you
And when she was done,
You were all the sweet things
Rolled up in one.
You’re like a plaintive melody
That never, ever, never, ever let me free,
And I’m content
The angels must have sent you
And they meant you
Just for me.
—written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown
—performed by Gene Kelly
TINA’S SELFLESSNESS, A SMALL EXAMPLE
Tina has consistently put the interests of others ahead of her own. Whenever I
see my Automobile Association of America roadside assistance card in my
wallet, I am reminded of this. Sometime during the Ledgewood Commons phase
(1986###93) of our marriage, she did someone a favor by editing a manuscript,
for which that person insisted on paying her at least a nominal sum.
When Tina received that payment—her first “paycheck” during our marriage—
she insisted on treating me to an AAA renewal, something I was considering
discontinuing. I was touched and accepted with gratitude.
TINA’S COURAGE
Tina’s courage is an inspiration. She has faced her decline bravely, doing what
she could, when she could, without feeling sorry for herself or worrying overmuch.
Nurse Maria Schmick writes:
From the first moment I met Tina, I was awed by her positive
outlook on life. How could one human being face such a horrid
disease and still show such gratitude and grace? Her hands may
be bent, but her heart is big. And though her legs can’t carry her
anymore, her mind reaches far beyond that limitation. MS may
have claimed her body, but in terms of will, she has beaten MS to
oblivion because it will never claim her spirit.
Leaving an unhappy marriage accompanied by her younger son, and leaving
behind her elder son, to join a man she had been in love with twenty years
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before, took courage. “If you’ll jump, I’ll catch you,” I said. She jumped. I caught.
Frankly, it was gutsy on my part, too. Like countless others, I’d been too often let
down by others. By my fortieth year on the planet, I was somewhere between
skeptical and cynical about my fellow human beings. Yet this decision was
simple for me: I knew if I did not take the opportunity to marry Tina, I would regret
it, always wondering what might have been, sometimes fearing that she went
through some terrible times without me.
Generally cautious people, we took a chance on each other, chose a “road less
traveled by,” and won.
TINA’S MEGAWATT SMILE
I check on Tina in the Tingdom a dozen times a day. If she’s awake, she greets
me with what I call her megawatt smile. Bright and lovely. I kid her, telling her it
may cause us to get a huge electricity bill. She smiles more. I kiss her on the
cheek, loudly, long and gently. To prevent infecting her, we do not kiss on the
lips, another loss.
If it’s the afternoon, I ask her whether she wants to get up “sooner” or “later,” and
we—the staff and I—are guided by her wish.
We roll her onto a sling, then raise her with a hand-pumped Hoyer hydraulic lift.
When we reach our lakeside kitchen, the first order of business is for me to brush
her teeth, to keep that megawatt smile bright. We do it with a minimum of
toothpaste and water, to reduce the risk of aspiration. Next will be chatting,
watching TV, having me read to her. After an hour, it’s back to bed. Once a day,
every day.
TINA’S MODESTY
When I suggested calling this memoir The Ting and I, Tina demurred. “THE Ting”
seemed grandiose to her. Ting and I would be okay. She never was showy. Even
her Christmas lights needed to be subdued, not “gaudy, gaudy, gaudy,” as she
characterized some neighbors’ dazzling displays. Tina Han Su, reserved.
Confident in her own self-worth, Tina is still modest. A compliment will be
acknowledged, but with the equivalent of “You are too kind.” It is, she tells me, a
Chinese thing. Praise a Chinese cook’s elegant and lavish dinner, and she may
reply that she just “threw it together.” It is hard not to like.
Rather than keeping up with the Joneses or showing off, the tendency is not to
embarrass the Joneses by making them look lesser in comparison. No
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conspicuous consumption, generally.
Of course, not all Chinese behave this way, but it is traditional.
One principle of Chinese interpersonal behavior is not to lose face nor cause the
other person to do so. Objections or refusals are stated obliquely. It can be hard
for an American to sort out. Concern for public appearance can be excessively
other-directed and stultifying, but it helps produce polite behavior,
It was likely the second year of our “going steady” that I got the Debate
Association to go along with entering Tina into the Fall, or Spring Weekend,
Queen competition. She looked lovely in her Chinese high-collared dress, but
she had arranged to downplay her lovely figure, modestly. She knew her figure
was “not bad,” in her own words. She had understated, I knew. About fifty girls
competed, and Tina was in the top 25 but did not make the second cut. Since the
affair was run by the fraternities and sororities, Tina was a long shot. Being Asian
may not have been a plus, either. What sting there might have been in not
winning was gone when we noted that the clearly prettiest girl in the competition,
a knockout of a blond, did not even make the top 25. We told that girl that we
thought she should have won.
One time we were in my room in the house I shared with several other guys, on
Wyckoff Avenue. My room was actually a converted porch, had a nice view, with
windows on the ground floor. That evening, a housemate (with a date) came in
the front door, and Tina and I climbed out the porch window. We could have said
“Hi,” but sneaking out seemed even better. Modesty? High spirits? Both.
In her current situation, Tina has been a good sport about being undressed so
many times daily by so many different nurses for her personal care. Excessive
modesty in that regard could have been a major problem.
Modesty loses out to pride when Tina starts talking about her family’s education
or my family’s. It’s a Chinese thing.
TINA’S PATRIOTISM
Tina loves America. Her mother’s family, almost all of them stuck in China, has
seen terrible times. The opportunities here for Tina’s parents, their children and
grandchildren have been great, and Tina is appreciative. She’s an American
woman, with a Chinese flavor.
She loves the Fourth of July celebration and the songs of patriotism.
She votes at each election, now, though getting there is a challenge. Fortunately,
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she votes Republican, so I help her get to the polls. I sign in for her and advise
her on her selection, but on a rare occasion, we’ll split our votes. She is more
traditionalist and I more libertarian. She might vote for a Democrat, if he were
Chinese. I won’t.
A former Asian Studies major, and originally a daughter of the Central Kingdom,
she follows events there avidly. The closest she’s been to the mainland of China
were her nine months with her first set of in-laws, teaching English on Taiwan.
Now, she catches nightly news on CCTV, Chinese Cable TV, which originates
from Beijing, is done in English, and is not obviously biased or following the
Communist Party line. Its interviews tend to be more intelligent than those I see
on U.S. TV. More factual, analytical, thoughtful. Some of our Public
Broadcasting System’s interviews are comparable, but their biases I spot more
readily.
One of her favorite Teddy bears is a jade-green baby bear, Ty, which was made
in China. Just like you, I tease. She smiles and agrees.
GIFTS
The handsome Seiko quartz crystal watch I am wearing Tina gave to me 26
years ago, a wedding gift that replaced the less elegant watch I’d had for a
decade, given to me by my first wife. The messages were clear: Tina loves me,
wants me to have a better watch, wants traces of that other woman removed
when possible.
Gifts that are well suited to the recipient are hard to select. Your heart needs to
be in the right place and you need to know what the recipient needs, wants, likes,
or at least can use. Someone in Tina’s situation, so limited in mobility, cannot use
many of the conventional gifts. Much that she could use, she already has. Even
so, gifts that miss the mark are welcome when they signal love or affection from
the giver.
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and to be loved in return.”
—From Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy,”
--- sung by Nat “King” Cole
BIRTHDAY GIRL
It surprises us how well Tina keeps track of the birthdays of friends and family.
I’ve got to have them written down to have a hope of remembering most of them.
My sister’s birthday is August 6, the same day of the year we bombed Hiroshima
with an atomic bomb. I’m not saying that my sister reminds me of that explosive
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event, but it is a memorable date. It is not surprising that Tina remembers that
one, but she does surprise with some of the others. She likes to keep track of
them because she likes to order cards, sometimes gifts, well ahead of time.
In mid-May this year, Tina told me she wanted me to order my sister Diana’s
present, a very nice perfume. She knew the birthday was three months away, but
she wanted us to be ready. She even plans Christmas presents way ahead,
when I’m looking forward to the Fourth of July.
“Birthday girl” reminds me: When I enter the Tingdom while she is being given a
bath in bed, I’ll sometimes compliment her on her outfit, her birthday suit. My
birthday girl.
Dressed, she is a present wrapped for me.
CHARM BRACELET
Tina’s left arm is locked straight down touching her hip bone. She cannot move
arm or hand or fingers at all. Her right arm is bent and locked so that the hand is
nearly touching her throat, and neither the arm nor the hand nor the fingers can
she move.
Three or four years ago she commented that she could not see her wedding ring,
on the left hand down by her hip. I said how sorry I was; then I started thinking.
The solution was a charm bracelet for Tina’s right wrist, which she can see. We
put the wedding ring on the gold chain bracelet (a gift for the nearest suitable
celebration day). Problem solved. She was very pleased. We knew she would
like a little gold cross, the next addition we made to the charm bracelet. She was
very pleased. For our 25th wedding anniversary, 2 June 2009, I gave her a gold
heart charm with “Happy 25th! Love, Doug” on one side, and “Together forever”
on the other. She was extremely pleased. The fourth charm for the bracelet came
on her next birthday: the Chinese character for “love” in gold. It pleases us both.
OUR LOVE OF PETS
It is said about Washington, DC, that if you want a friend there, get a dog.
Tina had not had pets while growing up, at least not the conventional dog or cat
or bird. My childhood was the opposite, with dogs, cats, birds at various times. As
noted above, my childhood favorite dog was Duke, a Retriever/Husky mix,
handsome, intelligent, affectionate and protective. He was Husky-tough and
Retriever-gentle. Tina and I decided, when Phil was ten or so, to get a dog,
preferably a Golden Retriever.
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When we were at Ledgewood Commons in Millwood, Tina and I saw an ad
asking for someone to adopt both a German Shepherd and a Golden Retriever
from a boarding operation, because their owner had died many months before.
We got Muffin, an eight-year-old blond Golden Retriever, separating her from her
companion, as we could not handle both. Tina fell in love with Muffin, who
became a valuable member of our small household. Muffin could be protective,
too, as a Shepherd-mix dog found one afternoon when he got too close to Tina
and me. Muffin bit him and sent him off. Muffin usually spent much of the day in
the kitchen with Tina. They had bonded.
Muffin was a good sport. Once, when Ted visited us, he and Phil arranged to put
a disposable diaper (hole cut out for tail) on Muffin, who took it good-naturedly,
without enthusiasm.
Muffin died in 1995 and we waited about five years to get another dog, A few
months before retiring and moving to Lake Osiris, I told colleagues that we were
moving to a country location and would like to have a dog there, preferably a
Golden Retriever. Like being rewarded for casting one’s bread upon the waters, I
soon was contacted by a co-worker whose year-old Golden that had turned out
to be too much for her six- and eight-year-old children to handle, an unsolvable
problem because both parents worked. The dog had “failed” obedience school.
Brandy, having a coat as deep red as her name suggests, was indeed a
headstrong alpha female; but she has grudgingly allowed me to be boss, at least
sometimes.
Tina was using a wheelchair by then, and Brandy somehow knew she needed
Brandy’s protection. Brandy liked to play tug of war with Phil or with me, but
would not pull anything from Tina’s hand. She got between Tina and a physical
therapist when Tina cried, “Ouch!” She preferred to sleep on the porch in cold
weather, but many nights would find her indoors, asleep outside Tina’s bedroom
door.
Brandy was Phil’s buddy but acted more like my partner. After only a few months
in the new house, she came upstairs to alert me to something amiss: the
propane heater was sputtering, as the tank was running out, and Brandy thought
it might be dangerous. Smart. She is not allowed in the living room. I put a sign
where she could read it: “No Brandy.”
She is my personal trainer and I am hers. In good weather, we “circum-ambulate”
Lake Osiris, a scenic mile-long walk that once took twenty minutes, but now
takes twenty-five. After our neighbor’s fierce Akita, a Japanese police dog, died,
Brandy named herself boss dog of Lake Osiris, a position she has enforced since
then with all the other dogs nearby. Recently, at age 11, Brandy put an
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obnoxious visiting pit bull terrier in his place, when the dog, running loose, came
too close to us.
When Brandy wants something or when a change of nursing shift occurs, she
finds me to let me know. Different looks and different motions convey different
messages. She has a variety of barks, ranging from “I want to be on the porch” to
“if this strange man [UPS delivery] tries to come in, I’ll tear him limb from limb.”
Once, when she heard the MGM lion’s roar on the TV, she ran to the TV set to
confront it. Even those nurses who are not generally comfortable with dogs have
gotten to like Brandy and are reassured by her protective presence. The doglovers love her, too.
Brandy knows how to please. Some mornings, when she wants to get fed or go
out before I am up, she stands ten feet from my bed and stares silently at me. If I
wake up, I call her to me and then either get up and do as she wants, or tell her
to go lie down, let me rest, which she does. If staring doesn’t wake me, she lies
down and waits quietly for me to wake up. Such a good dog.
Tina also became very fond of the parakeets we had. Perry was first, while we
were in Ramsey. He only lived three years, a bit short for a ’keet. We tried again,
several years later, with Amy, whose cage was in Tina’s bedroom. Another
delightful companion, who also lived only about three years. Too sad to try a
third.
The dog my mother and sister have now is a Beagle, Russell. Rescued from a
pound, he seems perpetually happy and grateful. My sister dotes on him, taking
her marching orders from him. I, on the other hand, explained to the little person
in a fur coat, as my sister sees him, that I am the Alpha Doug and he is the Beta
Beagle. When he visits us, Brandy imparts much the same lesson. She lets him
share our living space: Russell can be under the tables; Brandy has the rest.
OUR FRIENDS
Tina has made friendships that have lasted for decades. From high school there
are Nancy, Mary, and Jan, who still write. From Cornell, Deanne and Judy and
Elaine. Some from the period of her first marriage write at Christmas, but divorce
puts a strain on friendships, as the affection for one or both members of a couple
raises questions of loyalty once the couple breaks up. No friends remain from our
Bedford Mews years. Wendy and Zane, Ruth and Mal, friends from Ledgewood
Commons, still frequently call or write, with occasional visits. Erica Shapiro from
those days would still do so, but she died a few years ago, a friend to the end. No
one from the seven years in Ramsey, NJ (1993###2000) is still in touch, though
Dolores Daley was good to Tina before she, too, died.
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Interesting to me are those seeming friendships that did not last. From grade
school, Polly was Tina’s close friend. Wealthy and pretty, she went through
several marriages. She visited us when Tina was paraplegic. The visit seemed to
have gone well. We never heard from her again. She is now a California girl. I
mean, woman.
Pasha and Nilo in Bedford Mews had two children, one being roughly Phil’s age.
We enjoyed their company, and they seemed to enjoy ours. He was an MD, and
both were of middle-Eastern origins. After we moved, we corresponded a bit, but
it became clear their attention was elsewhere. Other MDs or Middle-Easterners?
Tina was still ambulatory then; and Harry and Amy, parents of Phil’s friend Scott,
were friends of ours while we were there in Millwood, and the boys were buddies.
But when we moved away, our relationship ended. The same thing happened
with Grant and Amy, a marriage of a Japanese-American editor and an American
“princess.”
We made fewer friendships in Ramsey, during most of which time Tina was
paraplegic. The mixed-race nature of our family could have been a factor, but I
think it was more that people are made uncomfortable being in the presence of
those with evident disabilities. Also, the focus of our lives on handling the special
circumstances attending her disabilities gives us a different set of interests and
priorities and leaves relatively little time or energy to engage in exchanging
favors and doing things with others outside the home.
My friendships were not as many, nor generally as enduring, as Tina’s. Phil from
high school (see “Tributes”) has written often and visited when he and Ginny
come north, annually. Male friends from Cornell, Penn State, and Harvard have
all gone their separate ways, with only George Nash from Harvard graduate
school still in contact. Co-worker John Davis from Penn State died a few years
ago, but had remained in touch. Good man to the end. For a decade, four of us
from my last employer have lunched monthly near Ramsey. John, Kathy, and
Howard have been my faithful friends. At lunch, three of us try to show Howard
the errors of his political views. Several of the women from my past have
contacted me through the Internet, which was flattering. Thanks, but no thanks.
Were our roles reversed, I would not want Tina on too-friendly terms with other
men.
Here at Lake Osiris, we have friendly acquaintanceships. Would any persist if we
moved?
Even familial relationships are tenuous. Careers lead to separations.
Misunderstandings, slights and problematic in-laws can hurt feelings. Preserving
communication and affection proves to be difficult.
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IN-LAWS
Tina’s parents quickly came to see the wisdom of Tina’s decision to marry me.
She might well need someone who was devoted to her. They were cordial to me
and treated me fairly.
My family, especially my mother and sister, fell in love with Tina. Shortly after
leaving Chicago, Tina came to live with them, bringing Phil. It was a very
pleasant time in a lovely rustic setting.
We have been within fifty miles of my mother and sister since 1994 and within
five miles since 2000. When Tina could still travel, she would visit them
occasionally with me. Traveling in the special van we have, with a ventilator and
an oxygen tank, is more difficult, reducing the frequency of such get-togethers.
Any mechanical break-down along the way would be a major problem.
In mid-November 2010, my mother fell, cracked a bone, and temporarily became
bedridden. After a brief hospitalization, she was moved to our home, where she
has been rehabilitating since. Because my mother and Tina love each other, my
mother’s transition to our home has been much easier than it would be
otherwise. “Easier,” not “easy.”
My relations with Tina’s brother and sister have been good, and Tina has gotten
along well with my siblings.
In-law problems are common, with good reason. Even identical twins, having
different experiences, grow up to be much alike but not identical. Fraternal twins
are less alike. Non-twin siblings are even less alike. Your children, still more
unlike you. Your spouse, more different yet. The differences compound once we
get to in-laws. As for me and for the spouses of Tina’s siblings, my in-laws
squared or some-such, well, you get the picture. “Out-laws”? Not quite.
We are advised to treat our children’s spouses carefully. They may end up
selecting our nursing homes.
OUR NEW YEAR’S EVES
At Ledgewood Commons, Millwood, NY, we often celebrated New Year’s Eve
with best friends Wendy and Zane, Ruth and Mal. Smart, compassionate, loyal,
they have been treasures. Twenty-five years later, they still stay in touch and visit
when they can.
Wendy Garfein’s write-up, in the Tributes section below, mentions these New
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Year’s Eve get-togethers. Without these four special friends now, Tina and I wrap
up New Year’s Eve an hour early, celebrating on Atlantic Standard Time,
synchronized with our Canadian “cousins” in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
We sing “Auld Lang Syne” with the nurse on duty and thank God for another
year.
Resolutions are few, if any. Making it through another year will be success
enough.
OUR LOVE OF MUSIC
As noted elsewhere here, Tina was an accomplished pianist, good enough to
have debuted on stage with the Rochester Civic Orchestra in 1962. She found
the courage to play, despite the stage-fright and natural shyness that made this a
tense proposition. She had studied for twelve years at the Eastman School of
Music, one of the nation’s finest. She continued that interest for decades. Even
now, unable to move arms or fingers, she will ask to be brought to the piano or to
our small electronic keyboard to play. We have to tell her that this awaits a
breakthrough in the treatment of her MS. She accepts this, reluctantly. It makes
me very, very sad.
Once Tina became bedridden, paraplegic, a principal source of entertainment for
her was the television set in her room. We bought lots of tapes, CDs, and DVDs
for her to enjoy. Before becoming quadriplegic, she could use a remote control,
use a call button to summon help and pick up the phone to make or take a call.
She lost all those sources of her limited independence in February 2004. We
have tried to be alert to her needs, but she often has to wait patiently while
something else is being attended to. “Tina comes first, but everybody counts” is
our motto, to set priorities and maintain perspective.
Today, Tina often chooses to watch one of the digital music channels, Light
Classical, Classical Masterpieces, or Easy Listening. Her favorite CD is Leonard
Bernstein’s conducting of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Tina and I enjoy the
same kind of music and have spent some happy times side by side in her bed
listening to or watching an orchestral performance.
While of elementary school age, I was given the opportunity to take piano
lessons from the wife of a professional musician who lived near us on Riverside
Drive. She taught me the basics, but my unwillingness to practice killed this
endeavor after six months or so. I gave up piano to have greater proficiency at
stick-ball, played on the street by the corner of Riverside Drive and 181st Street. I
should have stayed with piano. My mother would play some of Grieg’s Piano
Concerto on the upright piano in our living room, and I really liked that dramatic
work. She kept playing into her 80s, with popular tunes and Christmas carols
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replacing classical pieces.
In high school, I became competent on a much simpler instrument, the tuba. The
tuba is the lowest of the brass section of the orchestra, analogous to the double
bass in the string section. In concert, it sits on your lap. Wrapped around you, for
marching, it is a sousaphone, named after that Sousa. Woody Allen claimed he
had always wanted to play the cello in a marching band. The sousaphone was
only slightly more portable.
Recently, Tina offered to have us buy a tuba for me, if I’d like. I declined, but it
was a typically sweet offer from her.
LISTENING BETWEEN THE LINES
When Tina talks, we must sometimes listen between the lines. She almost never
insists and only rarely requests, not wanting to impose on us.
Recently, we were on the porch, looking at Lake Osiris. I was getting ready to
brush her teeth. She said she likes to have that done after she’s been fed. That
was scheduled half an hour later. I asked her if she would like to have her
feeding sooner. Yes.
After the feeding through the gastric tube, we continued to chat a bit and enjoy
the view. I forgot all about doing her teeth.
She said, “My tummy feels full.”
“That’s good,” I replied. I thought a while. “Does that mean that you would like me
to do your teeth now?” Yes.
When I was done, I asked her whether reminding me that she had been fed was
the way she wanted to communicate that I should give her tooth care. She
dodged the question a couple of times, then admitted that I had gotten it right.
After 26 years of marriage, I was getting better at listening between the lines.
LITERALLY TINA
Ever the editor, Tina takes people’s words literally, precisely. There have been
many examples, but I’ll relate the latest:
The Space Shuttle rocket was scheduled to be launched that day, around nine in
the morning. Tina was avidly following the story on television in the hours
preceding the launch.
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I came into the Tingdom and commented on the impending event, “They are
going to launch it around nine this morning,” I announced.
“No,” she replied, “it will be at 8:54 AM.”
Yes, of course. I was close, but not quite right.
OUR FATE
“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
What’s your astrological sign? A silly question. Or is it? I have always thought it
coincidental that Tina’s birthday and my mother’s are the same, April 3. A little
spooky, what?
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reviewed studies that show that the
birthdates of those who succeed in some activities, such as certain sports, are
not randomly distributed. If your league or your school cuts off eligibility as of
December 31, then those born toward the beginning of the year will be almost a
year older than the youngest entrants, an advantage that continues year after
year in some situations.
We chose to hold Phil (born August 26) back from first grade for such reasons,
so he was nearly 19 when he graduated from high school. I started first grade at
nearly seven rather than nearly six, with my December 21st birth date. Skipping
second grade put me right back behind the pack, however, dooming me. It did
get me out of the house at seventeen and a half, though.
More seriously, Tina and I like to think we were “fated to be mated.” It seems
amazing that the girl from Kunming and the guy from Manhattan could have
found each other.
How lucky is that? There are over a billion folk in China. We have here in the
U.S. currently a few million Chinese. That’s roughly 1000 to 1 odds of being here,
out of China. MS is a one-in-a-thousand illness, twice as frequent among females
as males (X chromosome-related: XX vs. XY probability). Without MS, Tina
would likely have been unwilling to leave her marriage. Maybe she would have
had the energy to continue her Ph.D. studies, as she had qualified for. I nearly
went to M.I.T., but my scholarship application was a few days late. Less than one
student in a thousand at Cornell was in Chinese 102, so the probability of a
randomly picked pair being there was less than one in a million. The random
nature of genetic combination means that she could have been born a very
different person than she was, the same being true for me.
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It does seem miraculous, designed. For the other side of such speculation, see
Frost’s poem “Design,” which I will not quote here, as it undercuts my thesis,
grimly.
I prefer to believe “You were meant for me....”
WHY?
Our nurse Kate Murphy said about Tina that some people are put on this Earth to
bring out the best in others. Tina does that.
Below are several excerpts on this subject, taken from the tributes section at the
end of the book.
Our first nurse, Terry Bush, writes:
Tina received compassion from all around her –- staff, friends, family –but she gave back so much more. Tina demonstrated her compassion for
each person in her smiles, her listening ear, and in her obvious enjoyment
of one’s company.
My getting to know Tina is one of the greatest blessings of my life. I will
forever be grateful for the opportunity given to me to be part of Tina and
Doug’s lives and to have them be part of mine.
From our younger son, Phil:
A day spent in my mother’s shoes would teach me to live life graciously
and without bitterness. In the face of tremendous personal losses, she
remains thankful for what she has: a loving husband and sons, a dog that
keeps her husband in shape, and a new flat-screen HDTV. Rarely feeling
sorry for herself or seeking sympathy from others, she treats those around
her with kindness. She politely thanks the nurses for every task they do,
whether it is administering her afternoon medication or changing the
channel to Oprah promptly at 4:00. Asking after the nurses’ families, she
treats their problems like her own.
Our friend Wendy Garfein:
She lives a daily life today which I know of no other person could easily
bear, but which brings her happiness and love, knowing she can still share
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in her husband’s and children’s lives. For her husband and children, her
choice to live today has given them as much or more. Her daily courage
has been an inspiration to me, her compassion even now for others’
suffering always amazes me, and I continue to find her a woman of great
integrity and abounding love for others.
Our longest-serving staff member, Barbara George, whose care for her
handicapped son is an inspiration to us, writes:
I admire her strength, concern for others, and love and gratitude to her
devoted husband, Doug, ‘the absolute love of her life,’ who took on the
challenge of her disease with lots of love and a level head, as to how to
care for Tina and create a world for her within her home. I have much
admiration and respect for each of them, as they love and care for each
other, each worrying more about the other than about himself.
Our longest-serving nurse, first among equals, Diane Beggin:
I still find it remarkable, as I did long ago, that Tina remains so
psychologically and emotionally vital and strong despite everything she
cannot do or cannot experience. Through her I believe she taught me how
to deal with my personal inabilities and disabilities… to accept myself. And I
thought I was the strong one–her nurse. In retrospect, my patient has
become my healer.
Nurse Audrey Pottinger:
It’s such a pleasure to witness the ongoing loving relationship between her
and her spouse. For them every day is Valentine’s Day. Upon meeting
the Coopers, my older son remarked that he hopes to find someone with
whom he could share such a loving relationship. I pray he does.
Instead of being bitter, Tina chooses to love, to care and to enjoy the life
she has. It’s a choice all should emulate. It’s a choice I am learning to
make.
Tina is not only the light of my life, she shines on others’ lives, too, as nurse Mary
Wilkinson writes:
... it is always wonderful to see Tina smile. She smiles in the face of
tragedy. And it can make anyone forget just how tragic the situation really
is. I am deeply sorry for what MS has done to her physically. But it has
never damaged her amazing spirit. Tina is truly an amazing, wonderful
person and I am grateful and honored to be a part of her life. God keep
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her safe and warm. She is a living angel.
Angel? She has some of her mother’s independence. At about the same age,
five or six, when Tina refused to smile for the camera, she was told by her
mother sternly, not to touch the baby’s (Gene’s) bottles, especially the nipples,
which had just been sterilized. Humph! She gave several of them good, hard
squeezes. Her mother caught her in the act. I maintain that this is the last time
she did anything bad. At Cornell, I called her “Angel,” but she asked me not to, as
she felt she did not deserve the title. Here we disagree.
Angel or not, she is a blessing to the lives of those who know her.
Frost wrote, about Eve,
Never again would birds’ song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Tina has changed our worlds, too.
A PERFECT WORLD?
Various passages in the Bible present God as speaking to someone in a dream.
This happened to me, I think.
The summer of 2008, while I was enduring elevated intracranial pressure, my
hydrocephalus, I had a dream in which God answered one of my major
questions: Why hadn’t God made a perfect world? There is so much that is
imperfect, even terrible.
In the dream, I was in a perfect world. Everything was exactly as it should be. No
dirt, disorder, unkindness. Nothing needed to be changed, nothing needed to be
done. In fact, there was nothing to do. All was supplied. Don’t change a thing.
The Voice of God, so it seemed, asked essentially, “Now, what?” I saw His point.
FAITH
“Together forever,” we hope. That’s inscribed on a charm I gave Tina for our 25th
anniversary. We say it to each other daily.
A retired physicist, I put much stock in evidence and reason, less on faith. When I
pray, I pray that Tina be healed or at least be comforted. Perhaps asking for
healing is reaching too far, but Robert Browning wrote that one’s “reach should
exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?” In heaven, Tina would be healed.
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On earth, if healing is not in the works, then consolation, or better, joy, may be
possible. Love certainly is.
The cosmic Big Bang, fourteen billion years ago, certainly seems like the act of
creation. Creation implies Creator, though it leaves open His origin.
We know there are billions of galaxies, each with millions or billions of stars. So
far, however, we find that the chemistry and physics of these stars is the same as
we have here. That leads to another observation: there are a dozen or so
fundamental properties of the forces and of the matter that make up our world
that need to be within a percent or less of their value on Earth for life to exist,
even for the universe to resemble what it does. The probability of getting these
properties all to be within the proper limits just by chance is infinitesimal. Cannot
happen. Had to be designed by a Designer.
Unfortunately, there is no consensus on what the Creator/ Designer/God intends
with all this. Various religions have various beliefs. If there are humanlike entities
on other worlds, they are likely to have multitudinous religions, too. We are left to
come to our best understanding in the limited time we have alive.
I believe Christ was divine. He told us we are to love one another. He said that
his Father, God, had a place for us after we die, depending on our faith. It is
inconceivable to me that other good people of different faiths will be excluded,
though I know it is Christian dogma. We’ll see.
Tina and I will be buried side by side, though not likely simultaneously. If we are
resurrected, wonderful. If not, so be it. Either way, “Together forever.” This will be
engraved at the bottom of our shared headstone.
KARMA: WHAT GOES AROUND
Karma, in Indian religions, is the doctrine that your current status reflects your
past behavior, even in prior lives. On the other hand, there is the skeptical view
that “no good deed goes unpunished.” I’ve long feared this is true. We get
involved in someone’s problem because no one else would and we find too late
why the others were wiser than we were.
“What goes around, comes around.” Tina’s character and her love in 1963
created the love and loyalty that make me happy to care for her now, almost fifty
years later.
Were our roles reversed, she would do this for me.
RATIONAL OPTIMISM
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The Rational Optimist, a book by Matt Ridley, describes us rather well. Without
optimism, you might not try. Without reason, you might try foolish things.
Since the suppression of her white blood cell count by beta-interferon, Tina and I
have been in a “watchful waiting” stage with respect to MS treatments. Immune
suppression is still the primary approach, one with modest success and
significant risks. So many other approaches are being investigated that we are
hopeful one will be the answer.
We are not living awaiting the cure. We are enjoying each day, knowing the
longer Tina stays alive, the greater the chance we have for a breakthrough.
We pray for a miracle, but perhaps each day we have together is already a
miracle.
FINDING TIME
Thinking about writing about Tina and me, I couldn’t imagine where I would find
the time. Having started, I find it fairly easily.
Much time spent reading can be switched to time spent writing. Skim email, skim
the newspaper articles, be selective going through magazines and websites. Cut
back on reading fiction, watching sports, movies. No crossword puzzles.
Anything worth doing at all is probably worth doing less intensively, except book
writing. Too long between sessions and there is too much forgotten, misplaced.
Jam it together. One idea suggests another. Keep momentum up. This from a
one-book expert.
I started with pieces and a vague outline. Some pieces fit. Some of the outline
took a different shape. More pieces were written; more were fit in. Not the best
way? At least it got the frightening project underway. “The best is the enemy of
the good.” Don’t stop.
Now I understand why so many authors’ acknowledgments at the beginnings of
their books praise the forbearance of their family and friends during the time they
were immersed in writing. Even our dog, Brandy, has gotten short-changed. We’ll
take longer walks together when the writing slows and the weather improves.
OUR PROSPECTS
Despite the dire prognosis given in June 2004, Tina has made it through an
additional seven years. Her spirits are good. Her general health is sound.
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Granted, a severe respiratory infection could be fatal, but she has survived a few
of those already.
Current research in multiple sclerosis centers on prevention and repair, with
progress being made on both. Prevention involves keeping the immune system
from attacking the body itself, specifically, from attacking the myelin sheath that
covers and insulates the nerves. For other autoimmune diseases and for many
other conditions, the behavior of the immune system is critical, so there are
multiple opportunities for breakthroughs concerning autoimmunity to occur as
research continues on all of these.
Repair involves replacing the scarred myelin with new myelin. Another route
would be to encourage the growth of alternate neural pathways. Here, too, much
research activity is underway. Stem cells from Tina’s own body, for example,
might migrate preferentially to injured sites, without triggering a damaging
immune response. This has been demonstrated in mice.
Neurological improvement would need to be followed up with much physical
therapy for Tina to regain some of her previous mobility. Neurological
improvement might also diminish cognitive losses she has suffered.
Barring a lethal infection, Tina would be expected to live into her 90s. Her father,
despite poor nutrition in childhood, lived to 88, her mother to 95. In America,
women live longer than men, Asians live longer than whites, who in turn live
longer than blacks. These trends are all in Tina’s favor.
My own mother is 94 now. My medical problems are few and not severe. My
insomnia puts me at some added risk. The hole in my head with a tube to my gut
(a shunt to deal with hydrocephalus) cannot be figured as an advantage. I expect
and want to live much longer, with Tina.
“Together forever” is our dream.
OUR LOVE
Robert Frost wrote:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
Dawn goes down to day.
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Nothing gold can stay.
Yet Tina and I have been in love for 48 years, together and apart. As her father
said at our wedding, “Love conquers all.” As one of those it conquered, he would
know.
Robert Browning took a different position from Frost:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life,
For which the first was made.
We agree with Browning.
MY DREAMS OF TINA
A few times each year I have dreams about Tina that I remember after I awaken.
There may well be others that I do not recall. Invariably, she is healthy, without
disability, though in her sixties. Usually, the scene is our bedroom, and she
moves without hindrance.
Yesterday morning, the day after Easter, I had a particularly vivid dream. Tina
was lying undressed on our bed, surrounded by hundreds of pastel - colored
Easter eggs, inviting me to join her. She looked about twenty years old, as
beautiful as she was at that age. Her movements showed her to be fully healed,
as though never ill.
I wondered: is this a preview of Heaven?
GRATITUDE
Gratitude seems out of style. Lots of people have their rights. Some acknowledge
their responsibilities. Less is said about gratitude.
I thank God I am alive and Tina is alive and Phil is alive and many others whom I
love or care about or who contribute to our welfare are alive. Thanks to my
parents and Tina’s parents for creating us, caring for us through our wholly
dependent years and continuing thereafter. Thanks to friends, family, staff,
neighbors, employees and employers of various types, who have helped make
our lives better. I give special thanks to Barbara George, who has helped get us
through these difficult times in myriad ways. Thanks for the incredible
technologies that have gone into our daily living, making a safer and richer life
possible.
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Thanks for those who designed, built, transported, and maintain Tina’s lifesupport equipment and the appliances, the TVs, computers, cars, heaters and
coolers, etc. Thanks to those musicians who recorded the lovely music I am
hearing as I type this.
Thank you, one and all.
Especially I am thankful for Tina. It is nice to be loved, even nicer to be in love
with someone, nicer still to love the one who loves you. I am thankful for Phil,
who has enriched our lives. I am thankful for Ted, who has forgiven us our
contribution to his childhood losses.
I am thankful to God, for creation, for the daily miracle of our existence. I do not
understand Him, do not understand His universe, His purposes, nor why I have
been so lucky and others at least as worthy have been unfortunate.
The French poet Paul Valéry wrote, “The universe is but a defect in the purity of
non-being.” I disagree. Why is there something rather than nothing? I do not
know, but I am grateful there is.
OUR DESTINY
“Anatomy is destiny,” wrote Freud, concerning gender.
“Biology is destiny,” say those who believe we are what our DNA has
programmed.
“Timing is everything,” others say.
“Location, location, location,” real estate agents emphasize.
Gender, genes, era, geography greatly influence the lives we end up living.
We have to “play the hand we’re dealt,” with good cards and bad. I do view life as
something like a card game, where playing more skillfully improves your odds
without guaranteeing you will win.
Tina and I feel we have been lucky and prudent and have won. As we sat on our
porch on a recent fall afternoon, we each agreed that if that were our last day on
Earth, it had all been worth it
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PART II. REFLECTIONS: HOME CARE
MEDICAL INSURANCE
HANCOCK LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE, 1995###2009
During my IBM employment, the John Hancock Insurance Company got IBM to
allow them to offer a special deal for the IBM employees to obtain long-term care
insurance. The options had fixed total payouts, with the middle option that we
chose being a total of $210,000, several times my annual salary at that time.
They could not deny participation due to prior medical conditions, and we were
open about Tina’s multiple sclerosis, the symptoms of which were mild back
then.
Five or ten years later, when we met the disability requirements to qualify for
weekly supplementation of our home health aide’s salary, Hancock started
paying about $250 per week to reimburse us. This went on for fourteen years,
paying about half to two-thirds of the cost of our aides, who typically worked a
thirty-hour to forty-hour week.
Thank you, John Hancock.
EMPIRE BLUE CROSS / BLUE SHIELD, 1983###2004
During the 100-days’ war against Tina’s aspiration-caused pneumonia, from
February to June 2004, we ran up roughly a half-million dollars in hospital
expenses, covered by IBM’s policy with Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New
York State. When she returned home, round-the-clock skilled nursing was
similarly covered, without a problem by Empire BC/BS, whether the billing came
from the nursing agency or from me.
Thank you, Empire Blue Cross / Blue Shield.
INSURANCE BLUES: MVP, 2005
One must sometimes fight one’s insurers.
At the start of 2005 we were moved by IBM from Empire to MVP. The early
section on Tina’s choice to live has already described some of the 100-day
struggle that was fought mainly in the Critical Care Unit. More details in Terry
Bush’s piece in the Tributes section below.
MVP wanted more documentation than Empire had required. We sent them
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reams.
MVP wanted to stop paying for the skilled nursing at home, labeling Tina’s need
as “custodial care” rather than “skilled nursing care.” Custodial care is roughly
equivalent to babysitting, which would include giving bottles and making diaper
changes. Tina was on a ventilator, fed through a gastric tube, quadriplegic, and
in pain if morphine were not given in proper amounts at proper times. There were
about a half-dozen prescription medications to be given at various times during
the day and night. The gastric tube needed daily care. The tracheostomy needed
daily care.
All activities needed to be documented, to assure they were done, to provide
continuity of care from shift to shift. We had hospital orders for all this, along with
a doctor’s orders as well. Still, MVP carped. They planned to stop paying for
daytime skilled nursing care. They refused to pay for overnight care.
From 10:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M., through all of 2005, I was the overnight nurse,
resting beside Tina, getting up for the administration of medicines, answering
overpressure or underpressure alarms from the ventilator, suctioning secretions
from her trachea, changing her disposable diapers by rolling her carefully on the
bed while keeping from hurting her tender wrist joints.
I do believe “work is love made real,” and this was a labor of love. The loss of
sleep was less a problem than was the fear that I would be alone when we lost
electrical power, as we do several times each year here, or when she had an
emergency condition requiring my immediate attention and my calling for help
simultaneously. Evacuating her from a fire would be terribly difficult alone, too.
Walking the dog briefly or checking some questionable condition outside meant
abandoning her. Not good, not good.
We appealed the proposed removal of MVP financial support for the daytime
nurses, and we pushed for overnight skilled nursing as well. Two levels of MVP
reviewers turned us down. Two levels of IBM reviewers turned us down. An
independent outside medical review, our last hope, vindicated our position
entirely. Yes, one must sometimes fight.
We had started replacing some of the agency nurses as early as August 2004.
By January 2005, I believe, we no longer used the agency. We started hiring
overnight nurses in January 2006. MVP was slow to pay, getting behind a month
or two for much of the year. At $25,000 per month, this created a significant
cash-flow problem.
UNITED HEALTHCARE
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Next, we were switched by IBM to United Healthcare (UHC), the group we are
with now. They were less demanding than MVP, and more helpful; but the
transition delayed our reimbursements (we pay the nurses, weekly, ourselves) for
two or even three months, amounting to $50,000 to $75,000 in arrears. I fear that
few other couples would have had the savings we had that let us cover this
shortfall. Eventually, UHC caught up, to our relief.
Thank you, United Healthcare.
THANKS TO IBM
In seven years, IBM has paid more than two million dollars for Tina’s care. My
decisions to work for IBM and, ten years later, to take their early-retirement buyout, paid off for us. We are greatly appreciative. The ten years I worked for IBM
proved to be the best working situation I ever had.
We lost one round of the lottery of life by Tina’s being stricken with MS, but we
won another round by having IBM’s help, and we won the big jackpot by getting
to be married to each other, having been in love since 1963, but apart for
nineteen years.
We are, indeed, fortunate.
HOME CARE
PREVENTING INFECTIONS: FLU SHOTS
A major threat to quadriplegic patients like Tina is infection, especially respiratory
infection and, secondarily, bedsores. If Tina gets the flu, certain antiviral
medicines may help, but basically she is on her own—her immune system must
create the antibodies that destroy the viruses.
Each fall, flu vaccinations are made available to combat the current version of flu,
which is different every year. In 2009, a second version, H1N1, became a threat
as well.
Tina and I each get vaccinated. For people in their 60s, as we are, it reduces our
risk of catching the flu by roughly 50 percent. We require our nurses to get the
shots as a condition of employment, made clear in the interviews we do in
selecting new hires. This reduces their risk by 50 percent or a bit more, except
that some of them are in contact with large populations of institutional patients
who are more likely than most to catch the flu.
In 2010, there was controversy surrounding the safety of the H1N1 vaccine,
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which controversy seemed to me to be overblown. Regardless, we required this
second flu shot, not for the benefit of the nurses, but for the benefit of Tina.
Nursing means you take certain responsibilities and some added risks, for
example, you drive to work when the roads are slippery. Four of our nurses
strung us along several months, not indicating they would not get the H1N1
shots. When they did not get the shots after a month’s warning of our deadline,
they were fired.
PREVENTING INFECTIONS: BEDSORES
Your skin protects you from infection. Remove even a modest fraction of it and
microbes will overwhelm your immune system and kill you. Antibiotics can wipe
out some of these organisms, but some have evolved to be multiple-drugresistant strains that we cannot yet defeat.
Lying in bed (or sitting) motionless keeps pressure on portions of the skin near
the supporting bones. Blood to these areas is not supplied or removed in normal
amounts, so cells begin to die. Altering the patient’s position frequently can
prevent this. Urine and fecal matter can irritate the skin, making it more likely to
fail. Sliding associated with being moved can exert shear forces that can tear the
skin. Once such a sore, a bedsore, develops, the patient is at risk for systemic
infection and death; thus, bed sores must be prevented, and treatment started at
the first sign of a developing problem.
We had one such sore during Tina’s paraplegic period (1994-2004) and one
during her current period of quadriplegia (post 2004). The first was due to
inadequate attention by a home health aide and me. We should have changed
her position more frequently and taken greater pains to keep her clean and dry.
The second bed sore resulted during hospitalization, with unusual urinary and
bowel incontinence as contributing factors.
At home we have taken many steps to prevent bedsores. We have an air
mattress with a checkerboard pattern of air pockets: when the “black” squares
are up, the “red” are down and vice-versa, thanks to the action of an air pump
that every few minutes changes from inflating one air path and suctioning the
other, to the reverse. We also put her on her side a total of a few hours each day.
Being placed on her side is less than optimal for Tina, because she cannot rest
as well or see the TV as well, but it works out, especially during daytime naps
and some periods in the overnight shift.
Our staff has told me horror stories of fist-size bedsores down to the bone on
nursing home patients who received inadequate care. By that stage the sores are
deadly. Too many patients, too few staff, poor morale among the staff all can
contribute. Once a bedsore starts to develop, it is admittedly a challenge to
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reverse.
Christopher Reeve was the well-known actor (Superman) rendered quadriplegic
by the severing of his spinal cord in an equestrian accident in 1995, the year after
Tina became bedridden. We closely followed developments in his case. Until
2004, he wrote and spoke as though he believed his spinal injury would someday
be cured. That year he stated that he had lost that faith; bedsores recurred,
despite presumably the best of care, and he died from the infection or from a
reaction to the antibiotic given to treat it. Small, but deadly are bedsores.
We care for Tina’s skin very, very diligently.
MANAGING NURSES
Managing nurses is like trying to herd cats, I jokingly told our nurse of greatest
seniority here (six years). She agreed. They are very independent. They can be
warm and purr. They seem to be listening to you, and yet….
We have had excellent nurses, judging by their behavior and by Tina’s health. I
jokingly say that they are a hand-picked crew, but that the next time I have to
choose, I’ll use a computer. Only kidding!
Monitoring
“Trust, but verify.” That may seem contradictory, but both elements are needed.
You cannot supervise and observe everything, and you have chosen people who
are trained to do what you need and generally want to do it right. Not keeping
track is a recipe for failure, however. At the least, communications have got to be
confirmed as received and understood. Beyond that, good practice needs to be
acknowledged and bad practice corrected. Overly close observation breeds
tension and resentment, but a lack of observation may communicate that you
don’t care, or it simply may contribute to missing something significant.
Agency Woes
We started by using a nursing agency to get our round-the-clock nursing shifts
covered. The agency charged IBM about twice what it paid the nurses, which
may have been a fair reflection of the need for administration and profit. The
nurses they supplied were highly variable in quality, however, some excellent,
some poor. Getting coverage for certain shifts, such as weekend overnights, was
uncertain. Sometimes I was the overnight nurse, which I could handle as long as
the night was routine, the equipment functioning properly. Sleeping or resting
beside Tina, I gave medicines by the gastric tube, responded to high-pressure or
low-pressure alarms from the ventilator, If we had lost electrical power, it would
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have been difficult though not impossible to handle alone, as I touched on above.
Hiring Our Own
“Who pays the piper calls the tune.” I decided to do the hiring and paying myself.
The extra trouble of doing so was offset by the improvement in quality it led to.
Within six months, I was hiring our own nurses, supplementing and finally
replacing the agency. I advertised in the local paper, interviewed them and made
the hiring decisions. We live in the country, so finding our house was part of the
intelligence/diligence test. About half made it to the interview, and about half of
these were hired.
I paid them more than the agency had paid theirs, but charged IBM less than
what the agency charged, using our best approximation of the actual costs,
which included a variety of government surcharges.
There were no “off the books” dealings, as this is a sure-fire way to get in trouble
or leave you open to blackmail by a disgruntled employee. And Uncle Sam needs
our money, right?
“You get what you pay for.” I would not expect our nurses to work for nothing,
and I know they don’t work here only for the money. By paying wages somewhat
above average and by providing a pleasant working environment, we have been
able to attract and keep an outstanding crew. The doctors have commented on
Tina’s excellent condition and care. The nurses in the hospitals have commented
on the high quality of our nurses when they have seen them in action. We have
our nurses stay with Tina during her rare hospitalizations, even though we are
not reimbursed for this.
Interviewing
Interviewing the candidates, I had to get a sense of not only their skills but also
the reasons they wanted this job. The salary was attractive, especially for LPNs
(Licensed Practical Nurses), who often elsewhere would get only half the hourly
pay of RNs (Registered Nurses). To eliminate RN-LPN rivalry and to
acknowledge that their duties at our house were identical, we paid both the same
rate, giving RNs some preference in choice of shift hours.
Home care does not provide much career advancement, does not offer the
opportunity to meet a nice, eligible doctor, does involve getting along with the
family, and–in our case–a seventy-pound Golden Retriever with an alpha-dog
temperament. Smoking was taboo, given the oxygen in use and the difficulty
there would be in evacuating Tina safely in case of a fire. Nurses were told not to
come to work with a cold, as a respiratory infection was the likeliest cause of
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death in cases such as Tina’s.
The highly successful coach of Penn State’s football teams, Joe Paterno,
recruited far more high school quarterbacks than he was going to play in that key
position. They were typically outstanding athletes, and they proved their prowess
when he deployed them in other positions. When I interview, I look for something
like that, some outstanding strengths that will add to our team. The nurses vary in
their stronger and weaker areas, but as Rocky and Adrian said, they “fill gaps.”
Barbara George
Of great help has been the home health aide I hired in January 2004, a couple of
months before Tina’s crisis. An aide does not have the training nor the
responsibilities of a nurse, but at that stage Tina needed only the kind of care you
might give a baby, “custodial care,” in the jargon of the trade. Our aide, Barbara
George, had helped run a doctor’s office, had cared for her father during a yearlong battle with cancer, is endowed with much common sense, skilled at dealing
with people and managing the appointments and nursing shift scheduling and the
ordering and inventorying of the many medicines and disposables Tina’s care
came to require. She also helped the nurses in a variety of ways and kept Tina’s
spirits up, never letting the significant problems in her own home impact the
relationship she had with Tina. Bless her.
Verleen Lewis
How did a nurse from a village in South America make it to us? We needed
people who were not afraid of the responsibility of a ventilator-dependent patient.
The second nurse I hired (August 2004) was an intelligent, warm, attractive
mother of two, originally from British Guiana. A minister’s wife, she was an LPN
who had no ventilator-dependent case experience. She was willing to learn,
however, and I was able to train her easily. [Perhaps half of the nurses we hired
subsequently needed such on-the-job training.]
For a year and a half, her family lived within a dozen miles and she commuted
daily. Her husband’s ministerial career then took them to Long Island, so for
another two years she came Monday mornings, worked during the week,
sleeping at our house, and returning home Friday evening. When this got to be
too much for her and her family, we regretfully waved goodbye (November 2007).
She was inspired to continue her education toward her RN license.
Diane Beggin
Another early hire (November 2004) was a local RN who has been with us since
then, for more than six years, serving effectively as our head nurse and my
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personal nurse. Her high intelligence, broad experience, and almost obsessive
attention to detail, along with great personal warmth, and a great sense of humor,
have made her an invaluable asset. Although we did inherit from the agency a
variety of forms with which to track medicines and treatments daily, she improved
them, developed new management tools, and provided insightful advice on a
wide variety of nursing and management issues. Now semi-retired, she still
comes to nurse, to organize, and to write the semi-annual reports we need to
submit to our insurers, United Healthcare.
Home Atmosphere
Some say the problem with public transportation is the public. Nurses will tell you
that the problem with home care is the home. They can do their jobs under a
variety of conditions, but the nature of the home can make the job pleasant or
unpleasant. We tried to keep that in mind. Tina is a patient patient and a gracious
and grateful one. I am appreciative, too, though businesslike in manner. I praise
in public and criticize in private and try to be clear in communications. We have
not only detailed shift record forms to be filled out each shift by each nurse, but
also a communications notebook for information that is less technical but needs
to be shared.
One goal is to make the job a place the staff looks forward to coming to.
We try to live up to our motto, “Tina comes first, but everybody counts.”
Scheduling
On the refrigerator in the nurses’ kitchen, I post two or three months of shift
schedules. Each row is a date, and the columns are for three or four shifts,
typically 4 to 10 hours each, during that date, indicating which nurse (her initials)
is to be on duty. I started by giving each nurse pretty much which shifts she
preferred, and then I negotiated to fill the less-popular hours. I required the
nurses doing 16 hours or more a week to serve some week-end time. The 10hour shifts were almost always overnight, from 10:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. If a nurse
needed to take some time off, she gave up hours temporarily to another nurse or
traded with other nurses. They marked up the schedule to show the revision, with
my approval. If a nurse did the same shift for a month or two, she “owned” it.
There was a “use it or lose it” factor. New nurses were hired to fill particular gaps,
then later tended to get more hours as the occasional vacancy developed. With
the help of my nursing business manager, Barbara George, we almost never had
a period without nursing coverage.
Privacy
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In the home care situation, we have almost no privacy. The baby monitor
connecting Tina’s bedroom to the nurses’ kitchen/headquarters is almost always
on. Whatever one does or says is likely to be known. The nurses, too, have little
privacy, as they may readily be overheard or observed. One gets used to it, and
we make some effort to back off and provide each other a bit of privacy, at times.
Of course, when you are not doing something you shouldn’t, the need for privacy
is less. Once or twice during the week, Tina and I lock her bedroom door, use the
dimmer to turn down the lights, turn off the baby monitor, and turn on some
romantic music. It’s a good opportunity for each to tell the other, “I love you,
every cell, every second; every molecule every moment; all ways, always.”
Why Dontcha?
“Why don’t you…?” This is followed by an explanation of how you could do more,
better. It’s helpful, in offering an idea you may not have considered, and not
helpful, in seeming to add yet another burden. My response is often along the
lines of “Yes, but….”
Nurse Michele Shehata says her grandmother has a saying, “Everybody wants to
fish, but no one wants to get his feet wet.” When I’m given a suggestion that
requires added work, I try to delegate that work to the one making the
suggestion, such as the suggestion that we make “fruit and vegetable smoothies“
in a blender for Tina. Delegating the suggestion to the innovator may discourage
input, but it makes me feel less stressed. Often, the suggestion is not carried out,
because there were good reasons why it had not been done already.
Why not make smoothies for Tina?
The benefits are small. She cannot taste the smoothie, given through a gastric
tube. She is already getting a balanced nutritional diet, without evident
deficiencies, although a variety of foods might provide something not known to
be missing.
The problems are numerous: We keep track of everything she gets, to help
interpret her responses, such as rashes, flushing, etc. We would need a standard
formula for the smoothie, one that we tried out in small increments at first. The
ingredients would need to be purchased, then washed and cut up and prepared
in the same proportions each time. They need to be processed in the blender,
with the excess saved or discarded. The blender needs to be cleaned thoroughly.
Who is to be responsible for each of these steps? We have a crew of ten nurses.
Which ones will do what, when? This will need to be “charted,” scheduled. Right
now her daily calorie intake is 1,200, and her weight seems stabilized (we almost
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never get her to a scale). An extra 100 calories per day would mean she might
gain an extra pound each month or two, unless something else is reduced or
dropped. What would we eliminate?
“Smoothies” died a natural, organic death.
How Many Nurses?
There are 168 hours a week to be covered in round-the-clock nursing. We
generally have had eight to ten nurses at one time, whose weekly hours usually
ranged from about 8 to about 39, averaging roughly 16 hours per nurse. As a
rule, our nurses got along very well with one another, often chatting awhile about
personal matters during the change-of-shift periods, which we did not
discourage. Different nurses had different strengths and weaknesses, but by the
end of a week, what needed to be done got done.
How Old?
The nurses who worked out best for us were typically forty to sixty years of age.
All had been married. Almost all had children. Almost all used this as a part-time
job, as we did not offer health insurance, which they typically had through other
means. Compassion and intelligence were most valuable traits, and these
women became the primary source of Tina’s social life, as we had few friends
and family who could visit us regularly. To lessen the risk of contagion, we mildly
discouraged visitors.
Male Nurse?
Only rarely has a male applied for the position. Tina would not feel comfortable
with one, nor would I. We have not ended up with one.
TLC
The doctors who have treated Tina have remarked on the exceptional care she
has obviously been getting. Her continued survival is little short of a miracle. We
are proud of her and proud of ourselves.
PROBLEMS
Ah, you say to yourself, perhaps, this sounds too idyllic. Were there no
problems? The biggest ones were the rare but scary infections Tina contracted.
She came home from the Critical Care Unit with Pseudomonas and drugresistant methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), common hospitalacquired infections. Her good general health and the use of antibiotics beat these
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back, though MRSA remains in her system. For five years there were no
bedsores, a major risk in these bedridden patients, and then one developed
under unusual circumstances and took many months to conquer, but we did, with
added help from a wound-care specialist, Edie Fitzpatrick, RN. During the last
seven years there have been a few viral respiratory infections, for which
medicine can do little. Fortunately, Tina’s body has fought them off. Still, each
day is a minor miracle. I have encouraged the nurses who really rely on this job
to get a second one, too, just in case.
Other problems? Young or inexperienced nurses generally did not do well. The
20-year-old I hired as our first overnight nurse fell asleep in her chair and
remained asleep as I got up from our bed, got Tina’s medications, and returned
to administer them. That was grounds for termination, and I did. (Recall they
once shot sentries for sleeping on duty.) During the past seven years, I fired two
or three others for being asleep on the overnight shift. One of the two was in her
twenties, also. Inexperienced middle-aged nurses tended to be nervous but
generally worked out. There often was a willingness to learn that helped offset
the lack of experience and a maturity that made them more suitable companions
for Tina.
Language Barriers
A different kind of problem arose with nurse Kim, originally from Korea. Very
nice, hard-working, caring, careful. Not too good with English, unfortunately. One
day she described giving medicine X when it should have been Y. No real harm
done, but when she went to take another job–soon after–I was both sorry to see
her go and a bit relieved. “Trust, but verify” indeed.
Even native speakers of English have some misunderstandings due to the
special jargon of the nursing profession. I’ve kidded those trained in British
schools with the witty saying that Britain and America are two countries
separated by a common language.
H1N1 Flu Shots
As mentioned above, we lost several nurses over the issue of H1N1 flu shots.
One had provoked an argument prior to this that led to her dismissal, but the
underlying issue seemed to be her dread of the H1N1 shot. Because the flu
could be deadly to Tina, an individual nurse’s desire to avoid possible side
effects could not weigh heavily with us. We could not let some skip the shots
while requiring the others to get them. Sorry. We lost some capable nurses.
Ms. Take
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One nurse’s behavior led me to court. She was a hiring mistake, and I’ll refer to
her as Ms. Take. In some senses she was a hardship case. She was married,
had five children and now custody of a grandchild. In her interview, Ms. Take
acknowledged that she was a smoker, which was usually disqualifying. She
promised never to smoke on the job, and I think she kept that promise. She was
an LPN, intelligent but not well-educated, with more than a dozen years of
appropriate experience. Preferring not to work overnight, she was still available
for any shifts we had. That might have been a tip-off. Two of her three references
did not call back, another tip-off, but the one who did was favorable toward her.
Ms. Take was chubby, sloppily dressed, warm and articulate. I took a chance and
hired her.
She started with a half-dozen hours per week. Eventually, she was working more
than the threshold necessary to qualify for unemployment benefits. After the
requisite six months of this, her performance declined. Then she missed a shift
without alerting us, with an excuse that did not sound true. I warned her that she
was on probation. A month and a half later, on two consecutive overnight shifts,
she failed to initial the numerous boxes that document medications and feedings.
I knew she was busy making beaded jewelry to sell, which was acceptable as
long as she met her obligations to Tina. The morning of her second night she
took home with her the shift report record, the first time anyone had ever done
that. I called her, listened to her excuses, and fired her.
When the Department of Labor wanted to give Ms. Take unemployment
payments because she claimed that was fired without adequate cause, I
appealed. Two Administrative Trial Judge hearings, of about an hour each,
followed. In the first, I presented my case, and I felt optimistic. In the second, the
same judge seemed leaning toward favoring Ms. Take, who had not disputed my
narrative. Subsequently, the judge found in her favor. Reasons were as follows:
–We lacked an instruction book for the nurses (though the forms made it
obvious what needed to be done).
–We hadn’t warned her she’d be fired if she took our property (nursing
records) home (did not tell her theft was not OK?)
–You aren’t supposed to be fired for a first offense, generally, and this
was the first time she had failed to document medications and
treatments twice in a row.
We had been warned that such judges tend to favor the employee over the
employer. Looked that way. I call her Ms. Take partly because she collected a
substantial amount of unemployment money and partly because she had
lectured one of our staff on how to maximize child welfare payments from the
state. Because we paid well above the usual LPN wage, she could honestly
maintain that she could not find a comparable job in her area. Perhaps she had
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outsmarted us, making herself eligible for unemployment then getting herself
fired.
In two or three other cases, we succeeded in appealing unemployment
compensation decisions concerning other nurses we fired for good cause.
Live-In’s Relatives
When we were still using home health aides rather than nurses, we let our
foreign-born aide have her husband visit from the Mother Country for a week or
two and stay with us. He was odd but not much of a problem, except that Tina
thought his hands strayed once too closely to her breast. Being a slow learner, I
let her twenty-something son stay for a much longer period, which came to an
end when he informed me that he is “a homosexualist,” not something the father
of a teenage boy wants to hear, at least not this father.
Theft
Theft occurred in the seventh year of our nursing program. A week’s worth of
morphine doses disappeared. A few months later, a nurse’s book of Robert
Frost’s poetry was taken. Not long after that, cans of the protein powder
supplement were taken; near Christmas, a $100 bottle of Giorgio perfume was
snatched. Another book seems to be missing, and other items could well be gone
without our having noticed them.
Fortunately, it is only “stuff.” We alerted the nurses that they should not leave any
valuables of their own behind, and we let the matter drop, but it undermined my
trust in the few nurses who could not be ruled out as thieves.
EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES
Redundancy
When possible, we have had back-ups for our equipment: two ventilators, large
and small oxygen tanks to supplement the oxygen concentrator, heating and air
conditioning units in Tina’s room to supplement the central heating and air
conditioning, a gasoline-powered 5,000-watt electrical generator to protect us
from power outages, the longest of which was 95 hours. Our previous special
van had two gas tanks.
The multitudinous disposables used daily also need to be in abundance, taking
into account the possibility of delays in receiving shipments of them. We have a
month or more of all of these, including the crucial special complete nutrition
liquid. This much stuff required a room for storage, our dining room, and a sharp,
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detail-oriented home manager, Barbara George, to track them.
Computer
Our computer and computer skills aided us greatly once we replaced the nursing
agency.
We pay the nurses on Thursday or on their last shift of the week. The
spreadsheet program on our computer enables us to print out the details of date,
shift, hours worked, gross pay, deductions (FICA and Medicare), and net pay.
Two copies are made, one for the nurse, the other for her to sign and return to us
for our records.
The insurers want similar information, monthly. The federal government also
wants much the same information monthly, along with the deductions and the
matching employer “contributions” to FICA and Medicare.
Quarterly and annual reports for the state and federal government are required
as well. I do the first draft. We have an accountant to prepare the final draft. The
same happens with the preparation of the IRS W-2 income tax forms at the end
of the year.
Fun!
Hospital Bed
A sturdy hospital-type bed, where the upper third and the lower third can be
raised or lowered electrically has proved very valuable. The full-queen bed we
use is wide enough to allow easy movement of Tina onto her side and back. The
width allowed me to sleep or rest beside her during the year without overnight
nurses. The head rest is up for watching TV, being fed, talking on the telephone,
and gastric tube and tracheostomy care. It is down for disposable diaper
changes, bed baths, shampoos.
Hoyer Hydraulic Lift
Nurses tell me that back injuries are endemic to their profession. Lifting and
transferring patients cause most of the injuries.
Tina weighs 125 pounds, rather slender at 5’5”, lighter than the average adult
patient. Still, the Hoyer hand-pumped hydraulic lift is a back-saver. Pump, pump,
pump and up she rises, like Mary Poppins as she thinks happy thoughts. Open
the faucet-like valve, and down she comes, slowly if you are careful. Tina lands
onto her bed or into her wheelchair like a snowflake in the winter, a flower petal
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in the spring, a glider in the summer, and a leaf in the fall.
Pulse Oximeter
Using laser light, these highly informative meters give pulse rate and the
percentage oxygen saturation of the blood. Some are smaller than a deck of
cards.
Tina’s normal pulse rate is 70###90 per minute. Lower than that may indicate she
is sleeping or may be a cause for concern. Higher than that suggests agitation or
a fever.
Tina’s normal oxygen saturation percentage (pO2) is 98–100 percent, quite good,
in response to the additional 3 liters per minute of oxygen supplied to her by the
ventilator, mixed with the room air. Lower than that suggests the oxygen line has
become crimped or disconnected or that there is a leak. Without the line, she
registers 92–94 percent pO2. Breathing room air for minutes without the
ventilator, she can stay near 90 percent, the low end of the safe range, but we do
not know for how long, and we are not eager to test it. In an emergency (say, a
fire), she will be evacuated immediately, quite possibly without the ventilator.
Ventilator
The ventilators we have will not let Tina’s respiration rate fall below 10 per
minute, a value she often reaches during deep sleep. Usually, the “vent” monitors
her natural breathing pattern, adding input air as she starts to breathe in,
withdrawing air as she breathes out. It assists, rather than replaces, her normal
respiration.
The ventilator is one of several pieces of equipment in Tina’s room that repay
some familiarity with electronics, mechanics, fluid flow and physiology, much of
which I had expertise in from my career in environmental science and
engineering. The ventilator displays a series of values for her breathing cycle, the
most useful to us being the breath rate, f. Values of f between 10 and 20 per
minute are of no concern. Values in the 20s may indicate a problem. When she
started to develop pneumonia, the rate went to the 30s per minute. Time to call
911.
The ventilator is a modern technological miracle. Sure beats an iron lung.
Washer–Dryer
A medium or large wash is done each of our four shifts each day. Pads, sheets,
pillow cases, nightgowns, towels, all need washing and drying, with different
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frequencies.
When the washer needs repair? Yes, we have a backup.
MEDICATIONS AND NUTRITION
By our seventh year of home care, we were using the gastric tube to administer
the following medications, vitamins, and foods the indicated number of times per
day: morphine sulfate* (eight), Carafate (sucralfate)* (four), Baclofen* (three),
balanced nutrition liquid* (five), protein supplement* (twice), Prozac* (once),
vitamins B6, B12, C*, and MgO, K, Ca* (each once), Fe (twice), yogurt (twice),
Benadryl* (twice), Proloprim* (once), Ativan* (once), cranberry juice (once),
aspirin* (once).
None of these was given against doctor’s orders. Those with asterisks were
prescribed; some were available over the counter. Keeping track of these was
done by a matrix, a “chart,” with rows being the items and their timing and the
columns being the dates, with the intersection initialed by the nurse giving the
item. Each chart noted the four chemicals to which Tina is allergic. A similar
chart was developed for the many treatments needed regularly.
We had doctors’ orders for another dozen medications on a PRN (as needed)
basis. This way, we were not asking the nurses to give Tina something not
medically authorized.
In feeding, there are two easy ways to go wrong: too much food or too little. For
Tina, we started with five cans of a 250-calorie balanced-nutrition drink. With the
yogurt and juice, the total was nearly 1,400 calories. After a year or so, my 125pound love had gained definite chub. Creases had formed in the skin on her
back, and they were getting irritated. We cut back by one can a day to four per
day, about 1,200 calories in all. Two feedings with whole cans were replaced by
two feedings with half cans plus water. Slowly, the former sylph returned. At
roughly 4,000 calories per pound of weight gained or lost, losing ten pounds
should have taken about
(10 lb) x (4,000 cal/lb) / (250 cal/day) = 160 days,
probably not too different from what transpired. Physicists love equations.
My mother represented the other way to go wrong. She ate like a bird, a fussy
bird, at that. In three months she went from about 125 pounds to about 110, a
loss of 5 pounds per month. A similar estimate indicated she was getting 5 x
4,000 / 30 = 700 too few calories a day. I summarized this for her: “Eat or die!”
She started eating more. “Eat and live!” became the rallying cry.
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SIDE EFFECTS
Powerful medications rarely have only one effect on the body. The other effects,
“side effects,” one hopes will be benign or mild. We have to be watchful for them,
especially during the early applications of a given medicine.
Tina is allergic to a few meds, and these are prominently listed at the top of each
medication scheduling chart. If a new drug being started is related to any of
these, we watch with particular care.
From the various nursing and medical handbooks, one can read a listing of
typical, unusual, and rare side effects, with some highlighted as serious. In home
care, the prescribing physicians are relying on nurses and family to detect such
adverse reactions.
Less obvious is the interaction of two or more drugs to aggravate the side effects
of each. We noticed Tina was losing her hair, which would have been very
upsetting for her. We spotted two of her drugs that had this as a rare side effect.
Combined, apparently, they were more of a problem. Checking with the doctor,
we dropped or found a substitute for one of the drugs, and this problem went
away. Surprisingly, one or more of her medications has led to a lovely waviness
of her hair.
Drug interactions are hard to detect and probably more common than most
people think. The number of combinations goes up rapidly with the number of
drugs. For drug A and drug B, there is only 1 combination, AB. For A and B and
C, there are 3 combinations: AB, AC, BC. For A and B and C and D, there are
AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD, six paired combinations. For N drugs, each new drug
adds (N-1) more pairs. Note, too, that three or more drugs lead to sets of triadic
combinations: A and B and C and D have: ABC, ABD, ACD, and BCD. No
wonder surprises turn up! We traced Tina’s only seizure episode to such a threedrug combination.
Did I mention that physicists love equations?
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
The first page of the three-holed binder we used for our nursing information,
charts, and shift reports has had a list of instructions–and telephone numbers–to
assist rapid decision-making in the event of an emergency. We have discussed a
few scenarios with the staff. Rapid onset of respiratory infection and fire are the
two paramount risks. We choose nurses who are strong enough and well enough
to drag Tina out of our home on their own in case of a fire during the few hours a
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day I am typically not at home.
Most critical is providing two paths for air flow to Tina’s lungs, so that if one is
blocked, she still gets air. The tracheostomy tube that goes into her throat is
curved, so that it extends downward inside the trachea (windpipe). Inside it has a
small balloon, the “cuff,” like a tire inner-tube, that surrounds it. This means there
are two paths for air: through the tracheostomy tube in her throat or around the
tube to exit normally from her windpipe to larynx, mouth, nose. Depending on
the degree of inflation of the cuff, much, little, or no air flows through the space
between the cuff and the inner wall of the windpipe and on to larynx, mouth,
nose. Full inflation seals the cuff to the wall, keeping any fluids, such as saliva,
from flowing into the lungs, a benefit. Full inflation prevents air from going to the
vocal cords, greatly limiting the patient’s ability to communicate. Full inflation
means that any blockage of the trach tube cuts off air to the lungs, a dangerous
condition. We use partial inflation of the cuff, giving us two ways for air to get to
and from the lungs, through the trach tube or around the cuff, somewhat raising
the risk of aspiration of fluid into the lungs, but lowering the risk of asphyxiation.
We have tested our ventilators and have assured ourselves that when they are
off, Tina can still inhale and exhale through them. Off, they do not assist,
obviously, but they are not stopping the flow, a critical concern. They have built-in
batteries, and we have back-ups for them, but if some electrical fault should
cause them to stop, Tina could still breathe.
In various places around our house are stored plastic gallon jugs filled with tap
water. We usually drink bottled water, as our well water is mediocre. When we
lose electrical power, and even when we fire up our gasoline-powered generator,
we do not have electricity for the well pump. Water for cleaning and flushing
quickly becomes an issue. We once had a 95-hour (four-day) outage, when our
gallon jugs were very useful.
The gallon jugs of water could be useful against a very small fire, and we have
fire extinguishers in each kitchen, by each exit door.
PAIN MANAGEMENT
Before her near-death exacerbation and aspiration pneumonia in the spring of
2004, Tina rarely complained of any pain associated with MS. This MS
exacerbation that cost the remaining use of her arms and hands and nearly cost
her life also left her with painful contractures of the elbows and wrists.
The primary doctor at the hospital active in her care, Dr. Richard Walker, an
internist and pulmonologist, agreed with me that we must give her protection
from this pain, as it made moving her for in-bed care traumatic and threatened
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her will to live. The solution was morphine, and I was adamant that she be given
enough, even if risky, to protect her from pain. He agreed.
For seven years now, we have been able to shield her from that pain. In a few
instances, a shortage of morphine or an oversight has left her unprotected. The
resumption of that pain proved the need for the continuing pain coverage.
Morphine sulfate solution became harder to get in 2009. We switched to
morphine sulfate pills, water soluble, thus also capable of administration through
the gastric feeding tube. We hadn’t realized they would be half the price of the
liquid. Instead of costing us $420 per year, it is $210 per year. Since IBM pays
four-fifths and we pay only one-fifth, the liquid was actually costing a total of
$2,100/year; so using the pills instead saves a thousand dollars per year. The
other advantage was that the pills constituted one-eighth of the total daily dose,
and thus were given every three hours. The morphine solution was one-sixth of
the total daily dose, given every 4 hours. More frequent doses in smaller
amounts help preserve a nearly constant level in the blood, and nearly constant
pain protection.
Tina gets five other prescription medications at various times of the day and six
feedings throughout the day with a balanced nutritional fluid. She also receives
cranberry juice and yogurt, along with a host of vitamins and minerals. She is in
robust health, needed if she has to fight off viruses, for which there is little
available effective medication.
All of this is kept track of with “charting,” listing of each item, its time of ingestion,
day by day, the nurses initialing what they have given. A similar set of documents
chart the treatments, from bathing, to diaper-changing, to care for the gastric
tube site to care for the tracheostomy site, etc.
Frequent monitoring of crucial vital signs—blood pressure, pulse rate, blood
oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiration rate and volume—has helped us catch
incipient infections rapidly. Still, an attack of pneumonia once developed within
only a few hours, and we had to call 911 and the emergency medical technicians
to rush her to the hospital, forty-five minutes away.
Intravenous antibiotics given through a triple-lumen catheter placed in her upper
chest, saved her life. A couple of other times, intravenous lines threaded from
her arm to a major vein in the chest were sufficient. The irritation of those veins
that occurred at that time means that the next time, we will have to re-install a
port surgically. It all gets a bit scary.
Several doctors have told us she has been receiving exceptional care at home.
We call it TLC, “Tina-loving care.”
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DOCTOR TRIPS
We see a pulmonologist four times a year, a throat surgeon four times a year, a
general practitioner as needed, typically several times a year. If something is
amiss, there will be tests and scans, hither and yon. We bring our most recent
records. We record the results of the visit in a book dedicated to doctor visits.
Each trip requires the life-support equipment. Each trip is an adventure, because
if the specialized van breaks down somewhere, we’ll have major trouble. The
van’s lift requires electric power, without which Tina is trapped in the van. If the
van’s doors jam, the same problem results. Even if we get her out, what next?
Call 911 and transfer her to a stretcher and take her home. Don’t forget to bring
the cell phone.
The consequences get more serious if we are brought to a halt during a summer
trip. Heat is very hard on MS patients, as it aggravates the deficiencies in the
insulating properties of the myelin covering the nerves. In the winter, cold is the
threat. We try to schedule most of our trips for the spring and fall, the more
temperate seasons.
DOCTOR TRIP FROM HECK
The doctor trip from hell would be one where our special van breaks down on a
lonely road in the winter or the summer, with an electrical failure. No heat, no airconditioning, no power lift for entrance or exit from the van, with Tina stuck
inside. As I write this section###on April 25, 2011###we had just had a somewhat
less than hellish trip.
The multi-specialty doctors’ practice in Middletown is about twenty miles away,
typically a forty-minute ride, plus loading and unloading time. We allocate an hour
each way. For this trip, we had originally scheduled back-to-back appointments
with two doctors in the group, a pulmonologist and a new gastroenterologist, to
save us from having to make two trips. A few days previously, we were told we
had to postpone one of the appointments, because Medicare does not pay for
two doctor visits to the same practice on the same day. We put off the
pulmonologist for a few days.
The van’s motor started up well, despite not having been used for a few days.
The horn was strangely anemic. The power lift rose more slowly than usual in
getting Tina into the van and descended more slowly in delivering her to the
doctors’ parking lot. An electrical problem? Stay tuned.
We waited almost an hour for the gastroenterologist. When we saw him—
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presentable, articulate, speaking rather good English, though a bit too softly for
my poor hearing—it became clear that Tina’s feeding tube was not going to be
changed then and there, as we thought it would be. No, no. You can't have fed
her within five hours of the procedure (which itself is often done by nurses and
takes about five minutes). No one had warned us of this. Furthermore, they had
no gastric tubes on hand. You have to bring your spare, then they use it and give
you a prescription for one or two more. No one had told us this, either.
When I explained the inconvenience of making two trips, the doctor informed me
about the Medicare reimbursement rules, emphasizing that he would not lie for
us and claim we had come a different day. Charming. I might have said I would
not lie for him and tell someone else that I thought his practice was well run, but I
did not. I’m more charming than he is, surpassing a low standard. We used this
man because his predecessor gastro kept us waiting a couple of hours without a
warning of any kind. What is it with the gastro guys?
After making a new appointment for a week later, we packed up our gear to take
our van home. I turned on the ignition—and nothing happened. No gauges
moved, no radio came on, certainly no starter motor was motivated. Dead. We
tried jump-starting, with the help of the kindness of strangers. No luck. I called
AAA. The van’s electrical system was too complex for local garages, because of
the power-lift modifications for the wheelchair. We called an ambulance and got
Tina into it, transferring her from wheelchair to stretcher and folding up the
wheelchair to squeeze it into the vehicle. We had wanted an ambulette
(wheelchair, not stretcher) service, which would take us all and leave Tina in her
chair, but the listing in the Yellow Pages was not sufficiently clear.
Much waiting ensued. Tina, our nurse, and I all were patient. We were in the
temperature-controlled waiting area of the office building containing the medical
practice, safe and sound. We had two oxygen bottles with us. Nothing really bad
happened. Of course, nearly a thousand dollars in ambulance and towing fees
were put on the credit card. It’s only money. Better yet, it’s only plastic.
In a few days, we were scheduled to return to the same practice, this time for a
pulmonary check-up. We could hardly wait.
Postscript: We junked that van and bought another, newer, used van, one whose
exit access was not dependent on electrical power, so that we could get Tina out
of it even without battery power.
HOSPITALIZATIONS
During the seven years since Tina’s crisis, we have had an additional few
hospitalizations, generally for a week each, and generally associated with an
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infection of some kind. Respiratory infections are the most dangerous, but urinary
tract infections can also become systemic and life-threatening.
If the infective agent is a virus, not much can be done to fight it except to support
the patient as her immune system battles to save her life. Combating secondary
bacterial infection is often required, too. A bacterial pathogen is likely to be
susceptible to antibiotic treatment. A mild broad-spectrum antibiotic might suffice,
though often one needs a stronger drug tailored to the specific type of organism,
Gram-negative or Gram-positive, staphylococcus or pseudomonas, etc. Medicine
that can be given orally (by gastric tube, in Tina’s case) is more easily
administered than medicine that needs to be given intravenously. In Tina’s case,
several such IV treatments have left her arm and foot veins too fragile. That’s
why a chest-level port will be needed.
When she is hospitalized, we have our own nurses accompany her, doing as little
or as much as the hospital staff is comfortable with. This is expensive, as our
insurance does not cover this second layer of nurses; but it assures that her
special needs are understood and receive attention. It provides continuity of care
for her and continuity of employment for the nurses.
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PART III. REFLECTIONS: PERSONAL
ADDICTION
There are alcoholics in my family’s gene pool, from which my own genes were
sampled. I never liked drunks, as I once explained to a drunk brother-in-law,
never found them funny, cannot abide movies about drunks, like Arthur.
Alcoholism has been called “slow suicide,” and it produces messes for the
addicted individual and the people near him. Fortunately, I can take liquor or
leave it, and no longer drink any; my head might need to be clear to make crucial
decisions about Tina’s well-being. As Kim Darby’s straight-laced young woman
character in True Grit put it, “I won’t put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”
Tina was not a drinker, either. A significant fraction of those of Asian ancestry
respond differently to alcohol from the response of Caucasians, and the
response was not pleasant for her.
Still, many talented people have often been addicts of one sort or another.
Alcoholism is apparently an occupational hazard for writers. Perhaps talented
people tend to be those who focus unusually much, like an addict is focused on
his addiction. Stars in the radio business, the media business I knew fairly well,
those on my conservative side, anyway, have publicly admitted such problems:
David Brudnoy (drink and drugs), Larry Kudlow (cocaine), Glenn Beck (alcohol),
Rush Limbaugh (pain pills).
Tina intoxicates me. Am I addicted to Tina? Could be. Could be. Committed?
Certainly. It is said of a ham-and-egg sandwich that the hen is involved but the
pig is committed.
BEAUTY
“Beauty is skin deep,” but “ugly goes all the way to the bone.” These are unkind
generalizations, but they do reflect truth, especially about the appraisal of
women.
If you are a woman, some think you can’t be too rich, too thin, or too beautiful.
From early childhood, the better-looking are better treated. They may be
assumed to have virtues that they in fact lack or just be seen as fortunate, lucky.
Perhaps beauty suggests genetic superiority. It is nice to be around beautiful
things, including beautiful people. They sense it, too. It may well improve their
outlook on life, bringing optimism and thus greater success and enjoyment. They
like to gather together, these Beautiful People.
A drawback is the sense of entitlement being beautiful may engender. No need
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to be quite as nice, considerate, warm as the less attractive. A woman may feel
that she is not loved for herself but for her looks, either rebelling against that or
obsessively worrying about the effects of aging.
Maintenance can be a problem, too.
Tina has been beautiful but unspoiled by it.
My mother was a particularly pretty young woman, so much so that she was a
dress and furs model “on Seventh Avenue,” the New York garment center of old.
She was also brilliant, the smartest person in the room, almost always. She
wanted a large family and had five children. One Mother’s Day I gave her a card
we both found particularly apt: a beautiful Golden Retriever mother is leading five
puppies of hers on leashes she is holding in her mouth. The card reads. “Always
behind us ... and always a step ahead.”
I guess some of this holds true for good-looking men. Of average looks myself, I
noticed one day when out walking with one of my brothers that women’s heads
were turning to follow us as we walked by. I’d never experienced that. He’s
happily married to a very pretty and smart woman, with two good-looking and
smart children. The handsome shall be choosers, too. We wish them well.
Tina says I’m handsome. I thank her for the compliment, then reply with the
adage “Handsome is as handsome does.” After all, I don’t want to be loved just
for my dashing good looks.
We know nature can be beautiful, as can music, art, even mathematics. I worked
on an interesting problem with a mathematician colleague at IBM and solved it in
a brute-force, computer-intensive way. I was pleased to have obtained an
answer, but it fell short in his eyes, as it lacked the elegance of a correct and
simple summarizing equation. The engineer in me was satisfied. The
mathematician in him was not.
My handsomest technical paper was “Estimating an Instrument’s Counting
Efficiency by Repeated Counts on One Sample,” an elegant application of the
Poisson distribution. Yes, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
BRAINS
Would you rather be beautiful (handsome, for men) or smart?
To sharpen that question, let the choices be
—average intelligence, 1 in 1,000 in good looks
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—average looks, 1 in 1,000 in intelligence.
The advantages of being good-looking are many and well-known. Life, at least
while young, generally goes more smoothly. People respond more favorably.
Your other abilities are probably overestimated because of it. People are drawn
to you. And yet, and yet, you can draw the wrong kind of attention from the wrong
people. Incest or recruitment into homosexuality or sexual molestation is more
likely. You may tend to try to “get by on your looks,” rather than cultivate your
other strengths. Your early choices may result in bad results.
Unusually pretty and unusually smart, Tina has been blessed. One of our nurses
speculated that her wealthy ancestors in China were able to be highly selective in
whom they chose for mates for their children. Eugenics in action.
In my mother’s era, women often found it wise to hide their intellects. Beauty
trumped brains. I think that has changed, for the good. Being average in looks is
not a major hindrance, and being smart is clearly a plus. Still, whether you are a
man or a woman, you can make those around you uncomfortable by showing off
your intellect. Use it to make better decisions, to progress at home or work. Don’t
be too proud: Even if your intellect is as rare as 1 in 1,000, this country has
300,000 people as smart or smarter.
MENSA MEETING
My mother is a brilliant woman. Did I mention that she went through U. Mass.,
Amherst, in three years, rather than four, and that she graduated near the top of
her class? An English major, she did some journalism work after the family nest
was empty. Before that, though, during a slow period when the family lived in
Rosendale, she thought it would be fun to join MENSA and see whom we’d meet.
MENSA is an organization for people in the top 2 percent of intelligence, as
measured by an IQ test. She took the test, surpassed the requirement easily, and
signed up. Somewhat later, she held a little get-together for other MENSA folk in
the area. I think we had a half-dozen at our house. All were undoubtedly bright.
Except for my mother, they seemed to rank low on the social-skills-quotient
[SSQ?] scale. Some were obvious misfits. We got to know one whom we would
see occasionally wandering loose from his group home in Kingston, NY.
A memorable moment occurred when one MENSA guest described how she
handled a job interview at a company that specialized in construction materials.
She told them, “I love cement.”
We never hosted a second MENSA meeting.
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LOVE VERSUS NEED
In 1964, when Tina and I separated, I was 21 and what lay ahead was a mystery.
Would I be able to handle the challenges likely to come? I had little besides my
abilities and my bachelor’s degree in physics. In 1983, when I decided to call
Tina while in Chicago, I felt I had much more to offer her than before. I had grown
up, had weathered some difficulties, had a successful career well underway and
was financially sound. I could give her a secure and loving marriage, if she
wished. I wanted her very much, but I did not need to have her.
Henry David Thoreau put it so well: “I will come to you, my friend, when I no
longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.” Love is more
about giving than about getting.
TRUST
Whom do you trust?
In a country with a fifty-percent divorce rate, approximately, for first marriages
and for second marriages, one cannot have complete confidence in the fulfillment
of the marriage vows. If you can’t trust your spouse, others become even more
suspect.
Start with your parents. Were they honest? Reliable? Did they have your best
interests, rather than their own, at heart? Extend the same questions to
evaluation of your siblings. Extend it to yourself in your dealings with others.
As we consider people outside our family, with few exceptions, their
trustworthiness becomes even more suspect. Friends? Better than
acquaintances, who are generally better than those who hardly know us, who are
generally better than those who want our votes or our money.
I think that there is currently less emphasis on being a truth-teller than there once
was. Don’t believe all that is written or said, obviously.
Trust yourself, if you deserve to. Trust your spouse, with open eyes. Trust your
best friends, cautiously. Trust people to be people rather than to be saints. Trust
the universe to be neither malevolent nor beneficent. Trust God? He will have His
way, which may or may not please us. Presumably, it will be for the best overall,
not necessarily for what is best for us individually.
Judging from the experience of His “chosen people,” His ways are mysterious
indeed.
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ENVY
Greed has justifiably fallen into some disrepute. Envy, on the other hand, seems
to be in ascendance.
Greed can be an incentive, impelling you to produce more or exchange more in
order to get more, and thus greed can have its socially beneficial aspects,
however unattractive a personality trait. When it escalates to theft, we have a
criminal problem.
Envy seems likely only to make you want to take away from another what you
wish you had for yourself. Not productive. Not nice at all. When it escalates to
theft, we have a criminal problem.
The envious assume they know the truth about the lives of those they envy.
Often, they are quite mistaken. The poet Edwin Arlington Robinson describes the
fortunate Richard Cory, but note
… we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Corey, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
THE HARVARD BRAND
Tina is proud of her Harvard M.A. and of my Harvard Ph.D. She mentions my
credentials to the incoming new-hires. She may sometimes refer to me when
talking to them as “Dr. Cooper ...,” but I stick to “Mr. Cooper.”
I liked getting into Harvard and thought well of many of the people there. Pride,
however, is close to smugness, perilously close. Once I graduated, I found that
some people viewed my Harvard connection favorably, but others were eager to
prove they were not impressed. Win some, lose some.
I tease my brother, who has a Stanford Ph.D., that although some like to call
Stanford “the Harvard of the West,” one never refers to Harvard as “the Stanford
of the East.” I am not above a bit of sibling rivalry.
RELATIVITY
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“Sharp knives make the meat more tender,” the waiters and waitresses at Kent’s
Steak House in Atlantic City were exhorted by signs posted in the kitchen, in the
latter part of the summer of 1961, when I worked there as a busboy to
supplement the money I had made at Camp Merry Hill. Keep those steak knives
sharp! If you had to fight to cut up your steak, you concluded it was tough rather
than that the knife was dull.
Our conclusions about reality often depend on what tools we bring with us,
physically and mentally, to evaluate it. We see the world “through a glass darkly”
and this shapes our beliefs and thus our behavior. This should humble us and
also make us skeptical of the seeming confidence of others, many of whom are
frequently wrong, but rarely in doubt.
Our motives shape our perceptions and analyses, too. “Where you stand often
depends on where you sit.” Different positions in life give different views, have
different payoffs, different risks.
When solving a problem, it is best to have a wide range of “instruments”
available, whether these be actual tools or mental models. “When you have only
a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I tend to hoard “stuff,” thinking
someday I’ll find a use for it. Occasionally, I do. Of course, one must be sure
never to run out of duct tape.
Not only scientists, but all of us, need to test our perceptions and conclusions
against outcomes. When interpreting the motives of others, we are confined to
what they say and what they do. “Watch the feet” or “actions speak louder than
words” we are wisely advised. Another maxim is “do not rely on the good words
of someone who is seeking something from you.” If they love you, they are likely
to be thinking more about giving to you than about getting from you.
Tina has proved to be as promised, and I hope I have.
BEING UXORIOUS
One day in the Tingdom, I told my precious Ting that I am hopelessly uxorious,
explaining that this rare word, from the Latin “uxor” (wife) means in English
“madly in love with one’s wife.”
I commented on the word to one of our nurses, and we wondered whether there
was a corresponding word for a woman who is madly in love with her husband.
Neither of us had heard of such a word, so she text-messaged to a divorced
woman friend, her expert on matters of the English language, and her friend
supplied the corresponding word immediately: “crazy.” We laughed long and
hard.
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I noted then that I do not know of a feminine form for the term “yes-man.” “Yeswoman” is not yet in our vocabularies.
As the “Tributes” section shows, I’m not the only person who thinks so highly of
Tina. For one example, my brother Cliff writes there:
There’s no amount of words that can express my gratitude for all those
hours you spent commiserating with me through my pain. It was your
consultation that helped me feel strong, when all seemed lost, and I love
you for it.
You, kid, are truly the strongest and most resilient person I know. You’ve
endured unspeakable pain and suffering, and all our minor problems pale
in comparison to what you’ve experienced. You truly are a saint and
deserve all of God’s blessings.
BRAIN SURGERY
“Ask the man who’s had one.” No, I’m not going to give advice on brain surgery,
but I’ll tell you my experience.
On September 4, 2008, a surgeon made a hole in my skull and then ran a tube
from my head, under my skin, connecting my brain’s right lateral ventricle to my
peritoneal cavity. My forehead now permanently looks like I have just bumped
into something. Still, I am grateful to modern medicine and especially Dr. Michael
G. Kaplitt, M.D. and Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery at New
York Presbyterian’s Weill-Cornell Hospital. Without this operation, I was going
downhill, toward dementia and death.
Dr. Kaplitt impressed me from the start. Direct, honest, confident without seeming
arrogant, he explained what needed to be done. I felt my head would be in good
hands.
As a newborn, I had nearly died of hydrocephalus. If not cured or subsiding
spontaneously, this leads to convulsions, retardation, death. Within the confines
of the brain / spinal cord system circulates a fluid, the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF)
that is necessary for temperature and chemical management, for the health of
the brain. Tiny pores at the top surface of the brain allow the fluid to flow through
the brain, to two cavities, the lateral ventricles, then to a third cavity, then to a
fourth cavity (fourth ventricle) and on to the spinal cord region, from which it later
returns. The fluid is sterile, preventing infection. The flow is about a half pint (250
mL) per day, normally just seeping into the blood circulatory system. And
eventually excreted.
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If the channels through which the CSF flows out of the brain though the ventricles
are too small, or if CSF production is too great, pressure builds up in the
ventricles, which in turn press the outer portion of the brain against the inside of
the skull, damaging the outer portion of the brain if allowed to continue too long.
Those crucial convolutions and folds become flatter, almost ironed out.
In adults, there’s a “classic triad” of signs indicating that CSF pressure has
become elevated: urinary incontinence, short-term memory deficits, and
problems with walking (gait irregularities). Making diagnosis difficult is the fact
that each of these signs can have other plausible causes. All three together
pointed to hydrocephalus, with which I was diagnosed in the early summer of
2008.
Looking back, I thought some of the symptoms in milder forms were present as
much as a decade earlier. I sought help after I had I fallen twice, but it had
already become clear something was wrong when I had difficulty getting in or out
of my car and, even before that, occasional unusual urinary urgency.
Tina’s neurologist, Dr. Baradaran of Middletown, NY, listened to my recitation of
symptoms, did some simple tests, had me get a CT brain scan, and very
somberly gave me the bad news: hydrocephalus, requiring brain surgery. I
sought second and third and fourth opinions, with the same diagnosis, prognosis,
and prescription: I needed a hole in my head, a valve to control cranial pressure,
and a tube to my abdominal area for the overflow.
We found Dr. Kaplitt, and had it done. Amazing technology, really, with a valve
that can have its pressure setting adjusted using magnetic force applied
externally, without breaking the skin. I just have to stay away from MRI
equipment and from those magnet-based scanners they use in airports and
courthouses. Bumping that portion of my forehead on something hard would not
be a good idea, either.
My deep gratitude to my surgeon for the successful operation and subsequent
fine-tuning of my ventricular-peritoneal shunt will not keep me from relaying a
joke, probably created by a nurse, about the pride of some surgeons:
“What’s the difference between a surgeon and God?”
“God knows that He is not a surgeon.”
INSANITY
During this period of hydrocephalus my thinking was sluggish, my memory poor,
my emotions and their display (affect) confined within a rather limited range,
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rarely very happy or sad, but mellow, instead. It was not as enjoyable as feeling
sharp, but it was not so bad, either. Unfortunately, it could lead to permanent
brain injury or even death.
After the surgery, I had an invasive examination of the urinary tract at the office
of a urologist in a nearby city, and that cystoscopy gave me a bacterial infection
that was curable and a viral infection that was not. Next time, doc, make sure
your assistant has sterilized the ‘scope. The bacteria were of the type usually
associated with nosocomial (hospital derived) infections. The virus was common
to urban areas especially.
The urinary tract infection caused by the post-op cystoscopy (they had put a
flexible endoscope, a light pipe, where men are not designed to have one be put)
gave me powerful delusions: I was not sure where I was, and –although mellow–I
was sure that one of my favorite nurses was killing people and putting their
bodies in the big boxes that I had along the wall of my room. I never opened the
boxes, but I did leave an obstacle in her path on the stairs to warn me if she were
coming. Amazing!
The nurses got me to the hospital, where I stayed several days, recovering
rapidly. The final delusion led me to believe that on the day I was scheduled to
be discharged, September 28, 2008, there was going to be a general change of
hospital personnel. You see, they were really all members of the Polish Secret
Service, watchful allies of ours, and they were scheduled to rotate to different
hospitals that day. It never made the newspapers, and I came to doubt it a day or
two later.
Tina’s staff performed as desired; they did not need my constant vigilance. I was
very appreciative. During the latter part of this mental incapacitation, I asked one
of my staff to take possession of my handgun, a 9mm revolver I had obtained
(with proper paperwork) shortly after the O.J. Simpson jury returned its “not
guilty” verdict in his obvious killing of two people. One really could not rely on the
cops, who come after the crime, or on the jury, too easily swayed by prejudices
and ignorance, to be reliable deterrents. The expression among some gun
owners is that they would rather be tried by twelve jurors, in the case of shooting
someone, than be carried by six pall-bearers, if killed for the lack of a weapon.
There have been occasions out here in the country, especially in the winter,
when the Lake Osiris population is down, when I have come downstairs with my
weapon (and its muzzle-mounted laser pointer) to investigate possible trouble.
My mother fears I am going to gun down some Girl Scout cookie-monger. Don’t
come at night, dears.
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Having been heavily dependent on my intellect, I regretted the dimming of it
during this period but found a certain tranquility that offset the loss. Perhaps that
is how one feels with Alzheimer’s. Having mental quickness and emotional
responsiveness restored was better, still, more fun. My past delusions have
made me more sympathetic to those who cope with them regularly. They were
scary, with no offsetting benefits.
SLEEP
“Sleep [that] knits up the raveled sleeve of care ... Chief nourisher in life’s feast,”
Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth.
Getting sleep in the caregiver role is not easy, even when you have plenty of help
in giving that care. My year of lying beside Tina as the overnight nurse helped get
me into a pattern of sleeping lightly, waking easily several times per night. When
that phase passed, I still did not sleep well, even upstairs in my own bed, likely
due to a combination of minor medical problems of my own and underlying
anxiety about Tina’s condition.
Why not take a pill? Years before Tina’s near-death, I did. Sometimes they
worked, sometimes not. One night during that critical hospitalization, I took a
couple of Tylenol PMs and slept soundly. Too soundly, it turned out. In the
middle of the night they called me to tell or ask something important about Tina’s
care. Whatever it was, I responded plausibly, but remembered it only vaguely
when I awoke. That’s too dangerous to let happen again, I thought. I no longer
take anything stronger than milk before bedtime.
The Bard wrote, “to sleep, perchance to dream ... there’s the rub.” Several
dreams lately have been of my being in jeopardy, with people ignoring it or
leaving me to face it alone.
To keep from being sleep-deprived, another dangerous situation, I take frequent
naps during the day. I have read that they are almost as effective as the same
amount of time spent in regular sleep. They are pleasant, so much so that one
wit described being awake as “that unpleasant time between naps.”
TALK
I married a quiet woman. It’s a blessing. “Talk is cheap” and “silence is Golden.”
Usually.
Why do some people talk so much? Some are nervous, filling the pauses with
their noise. Some are so self-absorbed, they do not realize we are just not all that
interested. Too much information, “TMI.” Often the patter is like that of the stage
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magician, designed to distract: Ignore what I’m doing; listen to what I am saying.
As the man said when his wife caught him in bed with another woman: “Who are
you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Manipulation is the goal of another type of talker, who argues, persuades,
nudges, suggests, pleads, berates, wheedles, to name a few. Leave me alone!
Conversation is a form of exchange, a trade. If one party is lying or deceptive, he
is exchanging counterfeit words for honest words of the person he is talking to. In
economics, Gresham’s Law, an economic principle, is that cheap money drives
out dear; in other words, debased coins and currency tend to proliferate, while
valuable coins and currency are withdrawn from circulation, hoarded. Similarly,
lying becomes endemic. The honest people no longer want to tell what they are
thinking. “Political correctness” drives out candor.
If we are to count to ten before speaking in anger, the quiet person is doing that
already. If a soft response turns away anger, a quiet response is softer still.
Granted, virtues can be overdone, becoming vices. Too little talk could make us
mysteries to one another. Misunderstandings may more easily arise. Sometimes
we must speak up or ask others to do so. With a quiet person, we may not know
what we are missing.
President Theodore Roosevelt advised, “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” Yes.
MIRRORS
In my preschool years, especially, I was fascinated by my reflection in mirrors. I
have a theory about that, related to a family secret. Fun-house mirrors are fun
because they reflect a distorted image back to us. If we look fatter or thinner than
we really are, we discount it mentally, knowing the deliberate distortion of the
mirror. Subtle distortion, however, can be mistaken as reality.
Those addicted to looking at their reflection in mirrors are narcissists. Those who
never look are risking being oblivious to the impressions they are making.
People are our mirrors, too. We learn something about ourselves from their
reactions to us. Some of these “mirrors” are distorting. Through
misunderstanding, ignorance, bias, projection, taste, as well as group
identification, past experiences, and so on, these reflections can present us as
better, different, worse than we are. “A decent respect for the opinions of
mankind” is appropriate. Going much beyond this is being “other-directed,” one
too much subject to the winds of fashionable opinion, unsure of your own worth
unless reinforced by those around you.
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“Inner-directed” people look within themselves to find value, direction, love. They
are less likely to follow the crowd, unless they truly agree with the crowd, in
which case they may lead it.
In the morning, when I kiss Tina on the cheek and tell her how wonderful she is,
she sees her worth reflected in my love, and she returns her love to me, in what
Norman Wasserman (in “Tributes”) describes as her “eye-worship of Doug.”
EARLY RETIREMENT
In 2000 I retired, at age 58, much sooner than I would have predicted years
before. I had not been in any rush to retire, but conditions changed:
—Tina’s paraplegia due to MS required more care and management.
—Phil was graduating, so we need not stay in Ramsey.
—The company I worked for was being acquired and about to change
dramatically.
My career had been successful enough: I did some good research, published
some good papers, taught at a university, served as an editor for a technical
journal, received a few awards from my primary technical association,
culminating with the honor of being named a Fellow of the Institute of
Environmental Sciences in 1995. My areas of expertise included air pollution,
industrial hygiene, contamination control, aerosol science and technology,
mathematical modeling and statistics. None of it seemed as important as my
family’s well-being, especially Tina’s well-being.
Moving to Lake Osiris, Walden, NY, would put us near my mother and sister,
place us in a scenic location, with lower housing costs, especially property taxes
and initial price. It was possible that I would build up a consulting business, which
did not materialize, or that I might teach high school physics, chemistry or
mathematics, for which positions I had qualified by taking the appropriate tests.
Our son Phil discouraged me from that last choice, knowing I would be unhappy
with the kids’ lack of discipline. “You’d hate them,” he warned.
Another option was to start looking for a full-time job in my science/engineering
profession. It was very unlikely I would find one near Ramsey or near my mother
and sister, but somewhere in the U.S. I probably would have. I would make more
money than would be coming in during retirement, but that additional money
would be taxed at near 50 percent, Federal and state. I found that offensive. I’d
rather live less expensively than be a workhorse for those to whom we are
“spreading the wealth.”
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As a nation, we are creating disincentives for work. My example is just one.
Recently, our head nurse had to cut back her hours working for us. The
government railroad pension her husband was to get put an upper limit on what
she could earn. Going above the limit would result in reductions of the payments
to her and to their younger child. I agreed that working for us beyond that limit
was illogical, and we would ration her hours carefully. My discussions with
another nurse on how many hours she wanted made it clear that one
consideration was a program or two of financial assistance that penalized
working more than half-time. More talent lost.
Before starting this book, I was enjoying my retirement: managing Tina’s care,
reading, walking Brandy, visiting my mother and sister, exercising, running
errands, listening to the radio [music and political talk]. Putting myself back to
work, as an author, has invigorated me, and these other activities have only
lessened slightly.
Not only are we wasting the talents of those we have discouraged from working,
they themselves are not living as fully as they might.
NUCLEAR FAMILIES
Tina and I come from relatively isolated, nuclear families. For years the five Sus
were the only members of their extended family living in America. They had to
rely on themselves.
My immediate family of seven was also isolated. My mother and her sister were
at odds. My maternal grandparents were not in the picture; my mother’s mother
died young, and her father died shortly after my birth. Michael Cooper was
estranged from his many siblings. His parents were deceased.
Greater opportunity for extended familial interaction might have been helpful—a
source of mutual assistance or, for example, an influence mitigating harmful
situations arising within the nuclear family. That’s speculation, of course. Mighthave-beens are might-not-have-beens, too.
Phil and Ted have each grown up with few relatives nearby. Phil’s current steady
girlfriend, Jessie, comes from a rather large clan of Taiwanese Americans. To
celebrate her graduation with her MBA, some forty people were present at the
dinner, most of them relatives. Phil will be getting a new perspective on families if
he and Jessie marry.
Postscript: Phil and Jessie are no longer going together.
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MARRIAGE: THE MATING GAME
It occurs to me that during the dating phase of our lives we get to know well, say,
a dozen potential spouses, more or less. We hope to pick one and mate for life.
Enjoying modeling things, as I do, the model I have for this is as follows: A deck
of cards is shuffled. We are dealt a dozen cards in a single pile, face down.
Dating is picking a card. If you get to know the person pretty well, you have
turned over the card and seen its value, from deuce to ace. You can discard it
and continue through the pile, but once you decide to hold a card, to marry it, you
do not get to see the rest of the cards in your pile.
If the first card you pick is a deuce, you know you’ll surely do better with a
subsequent pick. If it is an ace, you have won, as there will be no higher card.
What if it’s a king or a queen or a jack? Nice cards, not necessarily the best in
the pile, but each might be. If one of these is the next-to-last card in the pile,
which is to say your future dating opportunities are very limited–your biological
clock is ticking, perhaps–you’ll probably pick it, knowing that it is unlikely that the
last card is higher, though it might be. To be kind, we won’t show you the last
card. Well, sometimes life does later show you that last card, the person who is
even better than the person you married, so the model might have to adjust for
that. You might “divorce” that first pick and try to “marry” that higher card. The
costs of doing that can be very high.
I know people who discarded a high card, then settled for a lower one as the pile
of opportunities ran low. I nearly did this myself. They might have been satisfied
with that lower card if they had never held the higher one.
Others misread the cards, mistaking a 6 for a 9 or a jack for a king. I did this
myself.
Some refuse to play the mating game at all, which is a shame.
Unfortunately, the stakes in the real mating game are very high, and the
opportunities for fooling ourselves or being fooled are very great.
Sometimes you win, and winning is wonderful.
PRE-NUPTIAL AGREEMENTS AND TRUSTS
My first marriage, like most first marriages, did not involve a pre-nuptial
agreement, even though my wife, C, could be expected to be worth tens of
millions of dollars eventually. My second marriage, unlike many second
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marriages these days, didn’t involve a “pre-nup,” either—despite there being
children from Tina’s first marriage and some moderate net worths involved.
Where children or substantial fortunes, or both, are present, some agreement on
what to do in the case of another divorce seems prudent, though terribly
unromantic.
I have observed the downside of such agreements among our contemporaries. In
one instance, it seemed to me that the fussing over relatively small matters
reached the point where one or both of the parties became disillusioned with the
other, although they did marry anyway, a sad result of an excessive concern
about money and things. With so much else at stake in marriage, it is a shame to
put such an emphasis on material things. Granted, with divorce now as common
in second marriages as in first, all too common, some provision for that possible
outcome does need to be made.
To protect her from herself or from me, my first wife’s resources were largely tied
up in a “trust,” some of which became available when she turned twenty-five. An
arrangement like this seems to make sense, in that you do not want to make an
immature person prematurely rich, for her own well-being, if nothing else. Still,
note that “trust” really means “distrust.” For my part, I did not look deeply into her
financial situation, never wanting to be beholden to others or wanting to be
awaiting a payoff sometime in the future. When a big check did come in one
year, we celebrated that her “ship had come in.” We may have taken a vacation
that year. I still worked at the university over the summers.
Money bequeathed by parents for a severely handicapped offspring raises
similar issues. The person controlling the money must be someone who can be
trusted to have the trustee’s interests at heart and to have the knowledge and
wisdom to do what is actually for the best. The implied distrust of those involved
in the care of such offspring creates something of a psychological problem for
them. What makes sense rationally has, again, its emotional drawbacks.
If I react toward you as though I think you are likely to cheat me, you will probably
behave differently from how you would have responded if I acted as though I
trusted you. Depending on my character, one approach is better than the other.
You have to decide whom you are dealing with.
MARRIAGE: POTHOLES AND PITFALLS
“Bait and switch” refers to the selling tactic of seeming to offer one thing, but
ending up providing another, inferior, item.
I have heard a number of instances where this tactic led to marriage. The
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courtship was wonderful, the post-wedding period something else. A bit of
“company manners” might be expected before, and “letting down one’s hair”
might be experienced afterward; but the stories I’ve heard go well beyond that,
more like fraud. It may be an important reason why about half of first marriages
end up in divorce and about half of second marriages end up likewise. There was
no such deception in Tina. The magnificent human being I thought I was getting
is the person I have been married to for 27 years.
Another flawed approach to marriage is domination of one partner by another.
Sure, in different situations one must decide, and then the other person follows;
but consistent domination is demeaning and destroys the love one began with.
Those countries where women are little more than servants to their husbands
victimize half the population directly and all indirectly.
Tina is too precious to waste in such an environment.
A third flawed approach is that of the overly assertive woman. She speaks to a
man the way men do not speak to each other without expecting a fist fight to
ensue. “A soft answer turns away wrath,” I think the Bible says. So true. Tina has
mastered this, or perhaps it is just part of her DNA.
Men can be obsessed with their careers, women less likely so. Women can be
obsessed with their children, men less likely so. The best life involves a balance
rather than the maximization of a portion. Tina and I have striven to do just that.
DEAFNESS AND LOSS OF VISION
Tina has exceptionally good hearing. She was tops in a hearing test given in
second grade in Monroe County, NY, which includes the city of Rochester.
As did Beethoven, I am going deaf. There any similarity ends. My hearing is fair
to poor, progressively requiring me to ask people to repeat themselves. Tina is
very soft-spoken. You can begin to see problems. We’ve tried various
technological fixes, but it is hard to watch the same TV programs together. Loud
enough for me is too loud for Tina. Closed captioning helps, though it is an onscreen distraction.
My mother arrived in our household in November 2010. She admits to being
“deaf as a post,” a humorous overstatement. If you yell into her right ear, she can
hear you. An expensive hearing aid makes an undramatic and tinny-sounding
increase in volume. The best thing so far is the $25 electronic megaphone I got
last year and used with her in her own house and now sometimes in our house,
especially to deliver my longer messages.
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Deafness means Mom misses or mis-hears much of what goes on around her.
The once-brilliant mind is not getting the proper input. Blindness would limit her
more, but deafness is a real barrier to interpersonal relations.
My vision problems that cannot be corrected with glasses (cataracts, epiretinal
membranes) are not limiting at present, except for reading the fine print; but they
are expected to worsen, in which case I will need assistance.
For Father’s Day, younger son Phil bought me a Kindle (electronic book), which I
love. The text size can be adjusted for comfort and many of the available titles
can be “read” audibly by the device’s text-to-speech feature.
I read fifty or so books in the first six months I had the Kindle. For Christmas
elder son Ted gave Tina one. She has listened to This Is China, a compact
history of that important nation. Our latest technological addition has been an
Internet wireless streaming device (Roku), which, when combined with our
computer and the home’s WiFi set-up, allows easy instant access to myriad
movies, using our Netflix subscription. Tina and I enjoyed several movies
together within weeks of setting it up, with Phil’s help.
As technology continues to improve, the impact of our disabilities will decrease.
Even if Tina is not healed, as we pray and hope she will be, some wonderful
invention may help her enjoy her life more.
INTERNET
What a wonderful institution! Electronic mail helps us keep in touch with friends,
get useful information from a variety of sources, and have the opportunity to
make big bucks if we will just give our banking information to our benevolent
future partner from Nigeria.
One of our nurses had a months-long near-romance with a “soldier in
Afghanistan,” who eventually needed her banking information so she could hold
the $20,000 he had coming to him from Canada. Sure.
Several of my past romantic partners have sent me electronic feelers via email.
It’s like SONAR pings or RADAR pulses. Flattering. I’ve even succumbed to my
curiosity to see where some of them are, too.
The Internet helps us keep up with the latest on MS, though so very little is of
direct value. We need not just prevention, but repair.
The Internet connects us to Amazon.com, which facilitates getting books
downloaded to the Kindle electronic book reader, which can read to us by text-to-
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speech technology or just make my reading easier with adjustable-size fonts.
The Internet connects us to Netflix.com, whence cometh the DVDs Tina enjoys,
along with many suggestions for many more, along with instantly available films
on our computers or, with a Roku and WiFi set-up, on the TV in our kitchen. The
Internet search engines allow me quickly to determine who wrote “Much that I
lost, I could not find .…” (Lee Wilson Dodd) or confirm which poet wrote “a man’s
reach should exceed his grasp” (Robert Browning).
While searching for something else, I found on the Internet information from a
book publisher that might be interested in a manuscript like this, without charging
me a fee to publish. More searching led to more alternatives.
I use The Drudge Report and Instapundit to get a quick picture of what is
happening.
This is far beyond the technology I used in the early 1970s to connect with
CompuServe and print out email responses on a clunky teletype.
Computer Glitches
Computer crashes and computer viruses threaten my literary efforts. It was
merely death that Keats feared would still his pen,
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain...
Now that I have Carbonite backup service (free plug for a good company), I no
longer fear crashes. When our elder son gave me a new computer, I was able to
get all my older computer’s files by logging on to my Carbonite account. Nice.
Last night, for instance, my computer screen was filled with a blue background
with superimposed scary warnings from a company telling me that a viral
infection threatened my computer, needing immediate attention, which their
service would provide. The headline is “WARNING! YOUR’RE IN DANGER!” A
few clicks later, I was asked to give credit card info to get a virus removal
program. That made me suspicious. The misspelled word in the headline added
to my suspicions. When nothing I tried got rid of this malicious program
dominating my screen, I found a way to get to Google, which led me to lots of
information about this Malware. More reading convinced me that Malwarebytes’
Anti-Malware was the product I needed, and it is free. Worked beautifully.
Thanks. A free service deserves this free plug, too.
Technical Formats
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Do you have a useless collection of vinyl long-playing 33-rpm records or of eighttrack audio tapes? Betamax videotapes? Manuscripts on discs no longer usable
or in formats no longer readable?
The fear of becoming unable to regain material “lost” this way has me writing this
memoir with Wordpad, a program that puts it into plain text format, file extension
“.txt.”
I have used plain-text word-processing programs whenever I could in the past.
Often they lack features that a sophisticated word-processing program has, but
the advantage of continued future access outweighs those considerations for me.
Midway through the project, I switched to Microsoft Word, with many more
features and the capability to create .txt files if I need them. As Polonius advised,
one must neither be the last to shed the old, nor the fist to embrace the new.
Tina likes to have photographs taken. I do not. No doubt she liked the results of
these in her earlier years. I did not. I prize the beautiful photos we have of the
younger Tina. Mine, not so much. My best photo was taken when I was 17.
We have taken our photo shots during our marriage primarily with Polaroid
instant film, no longer readily available. Our sons use digital cameras and get
some beautiful results. I wonder if the formats they are saving them with will be
available when they want to see them again, decades hence. We still have our
photo albums. Hard copy is (nearly) forever.
Pornography
In my elementary school days, the Riverside Drive phase, the search in the
apartment building cellar for return-deposit bottles would on occasion produce a
dividend, an issue of Esquire magazine with a nearly naked woman, the source
of much fantasizing. In later years, Esquire was supplanted by Playboy, but I
had moved on.
As a married man, I have avoided the ever-more-explicit photos available on the
Internet, not seeking them out and moving on rapidly if they cross my path. In
one of my few agreements with ex-President Jimmy Carter, I believe it is disloyal
to lust after any other woman than my wife, even if nothing more comes of it.
Sadly, we hear of men “addicted” to Internet porn, another negative consequence
of the sexual revolution, now exacerbated by enhanced communications
technology.
Unfortunately, as a society we are sex-saturated and sex-obsessed. It is irritating
to me to see that even the female news presenters on the programs I watch are
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wearing tops designed to emphasize and display cleavage. Emphasizing that
aspect of your “talents” in a newscast seems to me to be a kind of cheating,
something like surreptitiously putting alcohol in someone’s health drink. One
nightly cable commentator often arranges to show us the scandalous things
being done by others....
Just as we frown on conspicuous displays of wealth, or at least some of us do,
we should frown on other displays likely to arouse envy, arouse desire that
cannot be legitimately fulfilled. We don’t want to go too far in the other direction,
either. I recall a recent cartoon with a census-taker interviewing a resident:
“Sex?”
“No, we’re British.”
MONEY
“Love of money is the root of evil.” But how about just liking it?
For my first twenty years, my family was frequently short of money. A paramount
factor in many decisions was, “How much will it cost?” There were four children,
and a fifth much later. Though “Papa” had a law degree, he preferred to be a
salesman, despite its ups and downs. I remember in the late 1950s helping him
one Christmas Eve to install an aluminum storm door for a customer, in the bitter
cold. Not long after that, he went back into law, going through a partnership or
two, getting a position with New York City in a Kingston, NY, branch, making a bit
of additional money with a part-time office in downtown Rosendale, NY,
population a few thousand. I knew I was never going to be in sales, nor in law. I
decided I would look for something in the white-collar professions that would
bring in at least a middle-class income without drama.
Money narrowed my choices of college to attend. Applying was expensive for us.
I would need a scholarship. M.I.T. required the scholarship application to be in a
month earlier than the regular application for admission. I was accepted to M.I.T.
but applied a few days after the scholarship deadline and therefore would have to
wait a year before becoming eligible for the scholarship aid I would have
otherwise been very likely to get. That taught me that deadlines can be crucial. At
the interview for Cal Tech, I was told I was likely to be admitted if I did not need
scholarship aid to attend, but not likely if I did need it. I was not admitted. Tuition
and some expenses were covered for Cornell, so I went there.
Money influenced my decision not to join a fraternity, though it was not the sole
factor. My job at the Cornell dining hall was low status, with whatever
consequences that involved. That was not a big issue for me. If it is not what you
know, but whom you know, my contacts there were of little future value.
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The time away from studying or playing was regretted. I obtained a better parttime job, through physics friends, at the cyclotron, which eased money worries
considerably and often gave me quiet study time while there.
My dear Tina was not interested in me for my money, clearly. I always
remembered that. When my first marriage and a subsequent engagement did not
work out, I knew that if Tina still loved me, it would not be for my floor-through
condominium apartment in Boston’s Back Bay, nor my faculty position at
Harvard, nor my media appearances. Tina had loved me when I had nothing
other than myself.
When I decided no longer to be a millionaire, meaning no longer to be married to
C, I wondered how many other people would have made the same decision. Was
it foolishness to toss away being rich?
A year or two after the marriage broke up, say mid-1982, I knew for sure that I
could no longer afford to live where I was living. Slowly my bank balance was
going down. As a single person with a 2,200-square-foot apartment on
Marlborough Street, I was losing ground. Harvard support personnel once
complained, “We can’t eat prestige” in their campaign to get higher wages.
I understood. Some of my faculty colleagues came from moneyed families and
their salaries were not key for them. While married to C, I had been in much the
same position.
Although some professors developed lucrative consulting businesses, I had not.
My associate professorship was barely adequate for a married person with a
small family living in the suburbs and inadequate if one wanted to live nearer and
send the kids to decent schools. If I were to remarry, it would mean moving.
Once Tina and I decided to marry, early in 1983, I started to look for a new
position. Eventually, I received offers of full professorships at the Illinois Institute
of Technology and the University of Cincinnati and a research position at IBM’s
Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, NY.
Any of these would provide an adequate standard of living. It would put us close
to Ted and to Tina’s ex, one advantage and one disadvantage. Cincinnati was
part-way there, while IBM seemed most likely to be willing and able to afford the
kind of crushing medical expenses sometimes associated with multiple sclerosis,
where the patients live a long time and need a lot of care. That’s just how it
worked out, and we thank IBM for its generous policies.
Waste not,
Want not.
Make do.
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Do without.
This old New England advice fit Tina’s temperament and mine.
Warren Buffett emphasizes living below your income, as we did. Our cars were
usually second-hand or bought at the end of the model year. No expensive
vacations, no second homes, no smoking or drinking or gambling. No expensive
hobbies or tastes.
We had a head start with the money I made on selling the Back Bay condo, and
we used that to buy our Bedford Hills, NY, condo for cash. We sold that at a profit
and bought the Millwood, NY (Ledgewood Commons) condo, also for cash. We
sold that at a near break-even price and then bought the Ramsey, NJ (Jean
Street), home for a lot of cash and a mortgage that we paid off in a few years.
We sold the Ramsey house at a profit and paid cash for the Lake Osiris property,
at a substantially lower price than we’d been paid for the Ramsey home. We
improved the insulation at the Lake Osiris house and eventually put in vinyl
siding. One of our house transformations caused a neighbor to ask, “Did the
bank approve of your doing that?” Paraphrasing Louis XIV of France, I was
happy to reply, “I am the bank.”
Years later, I read the book, The Millionaire Next Door, which recommended a
lifestyle we had already adopted.
Along the way, from Cambridge to Lake Osiris, some interesting things
happened, money-wise. An ex-girlfriend of mine solicited C and me to invest
$5,000 in sugar futures, nearly a sure thing, she said. The amount was one
month’s income, more or less, and we bought in, thinking we’d either make some
dough or get this woman off our backs permanently. She made a 20 percent
commission, we later learned, and we lost all the money when the price of sugar
did not rise far enough, fast enough. She never called again, though. She later
became a lawyer.
A financial advisor recommended South Shore Publishing, then the stock
dawdled along doing nothing much for a few years. Suddenly, the executives of
the company became eager to buy out the stockholders and take it private.
Against strong share-holder resistance, the executives prevailed. Surprise,
surprise: the next year the company began making substantially larger profits,
greatly raising its value. Creative bookkeeping can cover a multitude of sins.
After I left Boston, the woman in the couple occupying one of the floors above us
in the Back Bay was found to have embezzled a lot of money from her academic
employers.
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With the hubris of a physicist but the wariness of one who has at least felt poor, I
looked into the various systems suggested for beating the stock market. Most did
not hold up under scrutiny. John Casti’s book Searching for Uncertainty: What
Scientists Can Know about the Future contained a captivating chapter,
“Meanwhile at the Casino,” on efforts made to beat the market, generally without
success. However, it showed that the top-rated 100 stocks (Group 1), of Value
Line evaluations, produced truly remarkable gains from 1965 to 1989, the last
year available. Plotting the performance of Groups 1 to 5 (highest=rated to
lowest-rated segments of the market) produced graphs that looked like doseresponse curves, with Group 1 doing much better than Group 2, which did better
than Group 3 (roughly breaking even) which did better than Group 4 (losing)
which did better than Group 5 (losing even more). The evidence seemed
convincing.
I was persuaded. I put our “speculation money” (roughly 5 percent of our net
worth) into ten or so of the Group 1 stocks. I then followed Value Line closely,
sometimes having to change my investments because they fell out of Group 1.
For whatever reason, as the investment disclaimers always note, the past did not
necessarily predict the future; and for ten years or so, I did no better than did the
Standard and Poor’s Index of the 500 largest-capitalization stocks. If you can’t
beat ’em, join ’em. I got out of Group 1 and put that money into an S&P 500
Index Fund, where it sits today, almost unwatched. Diversify, diversify. Current
thinking on investing emphasizes diversifying, as accurate prediction eludes all
but a very few.
With Phil about to graduate from high school in June 2000, it was a logical time
to make a move, retire early. Texwipe, the family-owned company for which I
worked, was being sold to the conglomerate Illinois Tool Works. The new owners
might or might not be emphasizing selling their products on the basis of the
technical characteristics of their materials (they did not, as it turned out) and thus
might or might not need a physics Ph.D. and statistical quality control guru as
their Director of Contamination Control (they did not).
Did we have enough money for me to retire at 58? The advice we received was
that one needed an income of about 80 percent of one’s pre-retirement wage,
which we could almost do, and we might not need quite as much, as we were
moving from more expensive Ramsey, NJ, to less expensive Walden, NY. Tina
was paraplegic at this point. We had a home health aide 35-40 hours per week
on the weekdays. I handled the evenings, overnights and weekends. Long-term
care insurance, bought during an open-enrollment period at IBM (Hancock could
not disqualify us because of MS), covered most of the aide’s salary. We could
and did retire with minimal financial uncertainty.
At 62, in 2005, I took Social Security early. In case the rules would change, I
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wanted to be “grandfathered in.”
As mentioned above, Tina’s 100 days in and near the Critical Care Unit in 2004
cost about a half-million dollars, covered by IBM’s retiree medical insurance.
Every year of our in-home nursing care since 2006 has cost about one-third of a
million dollars, again covered by IBM. By now, without that coverage, we would
have been devoid of savings, though our pensions (TIAA-CREF, Principal,
Fidelity, Social Security) would have provided income. Despite the medical
insurance coverage, the not-covered elements of Tina’s care have sometimes
used half our annual income: deductibles, co-payments, disposables–for
example, $1,500 per year for disposable diapers---and on and on. Sometimes
the insurance reimbursements fell two to three months behind, amounting to
$50,000-$75,000. What would people with less savings do? To its credit, our
current provider, United Healthcare, has generally kept the delay to a month.
Now, because of our ages, Medicare covers much of the direct medical costs. If
we became officially poor, Medicaid would provide some services, far fewer than
we now have, only what they decide we should have. Some people have
suggested to me various ploys, including divorce, to make Tina officially poor
enough to get Medicaid. No. No. No.
The lesson: “Provide, provide” as a Frost poem urges. No one else is going to
bail you out. Being on the public dole puts you at a big disadvantage. Even family
members are not likely to help much.
INFLATION HEDGES
Ten years of retirement and part-time management of Tina’s care have gone by
pleasantly. I’ve enjoyed writing this book, and it has been a distraction from minor
problems. I have come to grips with the fact that I will never read all the things I
want to read. There is no end to it. Time to make official my switch from passive
to active: I’ve just changed my “business card” by adding “Freelance writer”
below “Physicist, retired,” and on the back of the card I've put information about
this book and our website.
In the past few years, TV and radio commercials have been touting the purchase
of gold as a hedge against the possibility of severe inflation in the near future.
Makes sense, so far as it goes. In the recent past, the price of gold has risen
precipitously, suggesting that the perceived value of the dollar has been falling
and the perceived value of an asset that should not lose its intrinsic worth has
been rising. Of course, the demand for gold could be a fad, a bubble. We’ve
been there before, with housing and—before that—with the "dot com" boom and
bust, along with Enron. Not quite as bad as the Dutch tulip craze centuries ago,
but bad.
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Real estate, like gold, is likely to rise as the value of the dollar declines, though
many other factors are involved. We have a home we own without a mortgage. If
I were really convinced rampant inflation was imminent, I would take out a
mortgage at current low rates, figuring to pay it off in the future with devalued
dollars. Hating to be in debt, I haven’t chosen this course, even though it would
be a hedge against inflation risk.
As investments, bonds are likely to lose value if inflation accelerates. The
behavior of stocks is less predictable under these conditions.
It occurred to me that returning to work part-time, thus staying employable, is
another way to hedge against future inflation. Wages tend to go up as the value
of the dollar declines. I am looking for ways to work at home, probably as a
technical writer, possibly as a copy writer, possibly doing light statistical analysis.
We’ll see.
OUTSIDE SUPPORT
“God helps those who help themselves.” Let’s hope so. More often it seems it is
“God help those who help themselves” because few others will do so.
Child support for Phil from Tina’s ex-husband ended after about a year. To me,
this was not a big issue, just characteristic of a certain type of man.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society Support Group in Mt. Kisco (near our Bedford Hills
place), c. 1985, was pleasant and encouraging. Friendships developed there that
lasted years. Still, the newly diagnosed seemed not really happy to see the wheel
chair-bound members. Too scary. Cognitive losses can create complications.
The more you might benefit from such a group, the less able you are to be
involved, and perhaps the less willing the group members are to be involved with
you.
In April 2011, I received a card from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s
New York City/Southern New York Chapter, inviting us to register for support
groups, one or more of sixty possible choices, to meet for 90 minutes at a
session in one of the five boroughs of New York City, some seventy miles south
of us. The front cover lists these 17 of the 60, none of which seemed likely to be
worth the trek to the city:
—Black Voices in Connection
—But You Look So Well
—Caregiver, Partner and Family Groups
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—Children who Have Parents Living with MS
—Cognitive Concerns
—Grupos en Espanol
—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transsexual
—Living with MS
—Men’s Concerns
—Newly Diagnosed with MS
—Opting for No Treatment Now
—Orthodox Jewish Women
—Pain and Spasticity Management
—Professional Working Men
—Residents of Nursing Homes
—Stress Management
—Twenty [sic] and Thirties Networking Group
To be less critical, I might have found worthwhile the “Caregiver” or “Cognitive” or
“Stress” groups, had they been nearer to me.
If you choose a country setting to “get away from it all,” you must not be
surprised if you have gotten a bit too far.
Our friends at Ledgewood Commons (Wendy and Zane, Ruth and Mal) were
good company and remained our friends ever since, real psychological support.
Wendy’s piece in the section at end of the book describes the kind of emotional
support that she and Tina gave each other. Ruth was kind enough to accompany
Tina and me to church and ended up converting from Judaism to Christianity,
with Tina’s sponsorship. Zane and Mal and I have remained good friends, and
their visits to us usually include a walk around Lake Osiris and the settling of the
political and economic affairs of state, nation, and world.
Emails help, too. We have a few steady e-correspondents.
“A friend in need is a friend indeed.” That must mean that someone who helps
you when you need it is truly a friend. It can’t mean that one is more attractive as
a friend when needy. Our friends have had a mixed record. Types of support
include calls, letters, visits, holiday cards and presents. Some have come
through. Some have not.
Neighbors have helped occasionally, but we can’t reciprocate, and we do not
request it. Sometimes the coming and going of our nurses inconveniences
neighbors, but they do not complain. We do appreciate it and thank them warmly.
How about relatives? By the time MS gets truly difficult, after one is 40 or 50,
parents are often too old, perhaps no longer alive or are absorbed in the
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problems they and their other children have. Tina’s parents made several
monetary gifts to us, representing 10 to 20 percent of our income in those years.
The trust fund in their wills represents another few years of income, should it be
needed for Tina’s welfare. Very generous and much appreciated. Tina’s brother
and his wife and their children have visited on the day after Christmas each year,
driving from her parents’ home in Delaware, and giving us nice gifts, including a
microwave oven for our kitchen and a flat-screen HDTV for Tina’s bedroom. We
appreciate it. Her relationship with her sister has long been less warm, so little is
expected there.
IBM has been wonderful. We are thankful for all their help. We wish them
continued prosperity. Obamacare has us worried, as some companies are
choosing to dump their obligations onto the public plan. Such a plan is not going
to cover our in-home care 24 hours per day.
After my mother cracked a pelvic bone, we were able to transfer her here from
the hospital after a few days. Medicare provided a half-dozen physical therapist
visits, after which they stopped, my mother having been “treated,” though not
greatly improved. My sister has been a big help. Two of my three brothers have
contributed to a portion of the added costs.
In talking with our staff members, I learn a common story: one child carries most
of the responsibility of caring for parents; the others do not. We’ve done better
than that.
Granted, if you marry someone, you are taking your chances, “for better or
worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.” If you choose to create
children, you are signing up for decades of responsibility.
We do think, Tina and I, that children have a responsibility, an obligation, from
love and duty, to assist their parents in times of need. We hope ours will not have
to be called on to sacrifice for us.
QUALITY-OF-LIFE RATIONING
Some people argue that it is a waste to spend our resources on the disabled,
especially as they get older. I disagree. It is a dangerous philosophy.
We value things on the basis of their usefulness and their scarcity. Water is
useful, but widely available, thus generally inexpensive. Silver has practical and
monetary uses and is relatively scarce, so it is much more expensive than water.
We do not know how long we will live. As we get older, we know there is less
time left; it is scarcer. If we can make good use of it, enjoy it, be helpful,
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whatever, then the scarcity enhances its value. Even if what we do is not as good
as it was years before, the years we have left can be quite precious. Tina’s life is
precious, as is my own.
Some social planners come from another perspective, viewing public funds for
medical care as “investments.” Babies who are unwanted or unlikely to survive
do not merit investment, in this view. Your productive value goes up as you grow
up, become educated, enter the work force.
Toward retirement, your productivity may decline. When old, at the very least,
you have only a few more years in which to produce. These planners are
reluctant to “invest” much more in you. Time to “pull the plug” on Grandpa or
Grandma. Get that DNR order signed, and let them expire with the next heart
attack. This approach is “rational” from a public-expenditure viewpoint, though it
takes no account of the value of the ill person to himself and to those who care
about him. It is part of a slippery slope that goes from not treating to euthanizing.
Notice that none of these calculations take into account gratitude for past actions.
Some people have not done merely what they were paid for on the jobs they had.
They have done more than required, better, cheerfully, cooperatively on the job,
at home, with their families, friends, neighbors, community, country. Shouldn’t
this all count, too? A good Granny deserves better treatment than a bad one.
Tina’s care has been expensive. We’ve spent money. IBM has spent more and
Medicare has had a share. We certainly expected to help pay our medical costs.
IBM recruited me partly though the attractiveness of its medical benefits program,
which I knew we might someday need. When IBM wanted to cut its work force, I
volunteered, again considering future needs for medical coverage. That leaves
Medicare: decades of withdrawals from my paychecks have gone to this
program, with the notional “locked-box account” for coverage of my family and
me. As with other insurance, some people end up needing more and others less,
a lottery of sorts. Fair enough, we thought. Now, some suggest we are “selfish”
to be getting “more than our share” of medical coverage. We are not exactly
winners of a lottery, but no one argues that winners of lotteries are “selfish” for
collecting “more than their share.”
IN GRATITUDE: TO OUR DOCTORS
THANKS!
We are especially grateful to the doctors who have made possible Tina’s
continued survival and well-being in the seven years since February 2004, when
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she nearly died. Most credit must go to Dr. Richard F. Walker, internist and
pulmonologist, whose role is described below. His name comes last, as my
ordering is alphabetical, but he has been first among equals in Tina’s care.
Asadolah Baradaran, M.D., neurologist. Dr. Baradaran was seen annually by
Tina to follow the progression of her multiple sclerosis, to prescribe what few
drugs could be of help in her case, and to advise us as to possible new
medicines or treatments. When it became very difficult for her to travel, he was
willing to advise us by telephone. He correctly diagnosed my hydrocephalus,
recommended the treatment we finally chose, and has monitored my progress.
Thanks to Dr. B.!
Peter Chidyllo, D.D.S., dentist. Because Tina’s health would be seriously
threatened by another aspiration pneumonia, Dr. Chidyllo modified his usual
techniques in her dental care to minimize that risk. He also monitored and
advised us on the health of her teeth and gums, to lessen the risk of infection.
Alexander Fruchter, M.D., F.C.C.P., internist and pulmonologist. During a
life-threatening episode of respiratory and systemic infection, when Dr. Walker
was not available, Dr. Fruchter managed Tina’s care to a successful outcome.
He has since then shared the responsibility for Tina’s health with Dr. Walker and
Dr. Guneratne.
Franklin Guneratne, M.D., family practitioner. Dr. Guneratne is my personal
physician and serves a similar role for Tina, and for my mother, unless the
situation requires referral to a specialist. Dr. Guneratne is exceptional in his
careful and caring attention to our well-being and his determination to assure our
health. Perhaps it is a small thing, but I remember his coming out to our special
van in the rain to give Tina her flu shot, to spare her from getting wet. It was
characteristic of this gentleman.
Michael G. Kaplitt, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S. Dr. Kaplitt performed the brain-saving
operation that gave me a V.P. shunt and a re-awakening of my mental acuity.
Without his skilled help, our lives would have been diminished and this book
never written.
Sergey Koyfman, O.D. Dr. Koyfman has been responsible for Tina’s
tracheostomy during the past few years. He performed the surgery that
expanded the opening into which the tracheostomy tube is placed, and four times
per year he replaces the used tube with a new one, not a trivial matter. He’s a
pleasure to visit, so these sometimes painful excursions are not as feared as
they might be.
Richard F. Walker, M.D., F.C.C.P. During Tina’s 100-day struggle against death
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in the Critical Care Unit, Dr. Walker was the one I relied on most to bring her
through. He made sure she was getting what was appropriate. He discussed
what was happening and would happen and he took our concerns very seriously,
being willing at times to modify his own approach to take into account our needs
and wishes. He describes some of this in his insightful Foreword. Over the
ensuing seven years, we have seen him two to four times per year, when he
would evaluate Tina’s health, check the medicines she was getting, perhaps
adding or subtracting or adjusting them. We looked forward to our office visits.
Clearly, he cared greatly for Tina and about our efforts to keep her alive. His
expertise and his firm commitment to us were crucial to Tina’s survival. Thank
you, Dr. Walker. Thank you so much.
IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT F. STARBUCK
Robert F. Starbuck died a hero in Vietnam on February 4, 1967. Only 25, he was
a sergeant of an elite RECON Marine detachment holding a hill against
overwhelming odds. He was awarded the Silver Star, our armed forces’ secondhighest decoration for bravery.
Bob and I were football teammates, high school classmates, and friends. He was
very likeable and decent. His death must have been shattering to his family.
When I learned, much later than 1967, of his death, I pondered what I could do in
his memory. Moving back to Walden, I found that our high school, Valley Central,
held an annual awards ceremony for members of the athletic teams. I
established the Robert F. Starbuck Captain’s Award in his honor, going each
year to the captain of the football team, in recognition of Bob’s leadership,
courage, strength, and service to our country.
Recently, a memorial ceremony was held in honor of our local servicemen who
died. There is never enough we can do to thank such people.
The story of Bob’s last battle is one of those in the book, Honor the Warrior: the
United States Marine Corps in Vietnam, by William L. Myers, published in 2000.
Mr. Myers dedicates his book to the nearly 15,000 members of the U.S. Marine
Corps who died in Viet Nam. His dedication includes this excerpt from a poem by
Laurence Binyon:
But they shall not grow old
As we who are left grow old.
Age will not weary them nor the years condemn,
But at the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We do remember.
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PART IV. TRIBUTES
This section contains observations, recollections, tributes to Tina, from me,
family, friends, and acquaintances, including our nursing staff. We have edited
some, minimally. After the tributes from our family and friends, the staff
contributions are approximately in the order in which they started work for us.
These are gifts for Tina’s 67th birthday.
MY TRIBUTE TO TINA
This book itself is meant as a tribute to Tina. Here, I add a bit more.
I was a New York City Cub Scout and then Boy Scout. We recited “a Scout is
trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty,
brave, clean, and reverent.” Tina, herself once a Brownie and then a Girl Scout,
meets these criteria, too.
TRUSTWORTHY If Tina says she did it, she did. If she said she will do it, she
will. I would trust her with my life, as she has trusted me with hers. To me, a man
who has been deceived many, many times on important matters, this is crucial.
LOYAL She did her best in a difficult marriage between a Chinese man and an
American girl of Chinese ancestry. She has always been on my side during our
marriage, her loyalty never in doubt.
HELPFUL When Tina could, she did. Those who knew her would have to keep
her from helping more.
FRIENDLY Quiet, with a lovely smile, and an easy laugh, she makes and keeps
friends readily.
COURTEOUS A genuine lady, without airs.
KIND Never seeking to harm, always wanting to console.
OBEDIENT Here we have a little difficulty. She obeyed her parents’ wish that she
marry a Chinese man. She obeyed that husband for years and years. I did not
want, did not ask for, did not need obedience, though our frequent agreement
was a blessing.
CHEERFUL Mostly, and almost always when I am with her.
THRIFTY “Waste not, want not.” With only one exception that I can recall did we
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disagree on a significant expenditure. I ascribed that to MS, which was likely the
cause.
BRAVE Perseverance in the face of known or uncertain obstacles. My family had
a cat we called “C.P.” for “courageous persistence. Undaunted. Tina’s approach
was no less.
CLEAN Almost fastidious, but not excessive.
REVERENT “Why has God allowed this to happen to me?” has given way to
thankfulness for what she has, rather than regret for what she has lost, and
together we have regained our faith.
Let me add, STRONG. An exceptional inner strength. She does not give up,
does not give in to the “monster that has seized” her (MS). The word “coolie,”
once applied to Chinese laborers, comes from the words in Chinese, ku li, for
“bitter strength.” Tina is strong, but not bitter.
PHIL CHIANG
In late 2007, Phil wrote what follows in response to the MBA application question:
“If you could step into someone else’s shoes for a day, whose would they be, and
why?” (500-word maximum)
I would like to spend the day in my mother’s shoes, but she has not worn a pair
of shoes for years. Every day my mother goes through extraordinary means just
to live another day. Despite great obstacles and setbacks, she continues to live
her life in a determined, selfless, and gracious way.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 30 years ago, my mother has slowly
succumbed to the unpredictable, debilitating disease. She began walking with a
cane when I was in fourth grade, moved into a wheelchair when I was in eighth
grade, and was bedridden by the time I started high school. During my senior
year of college, she nearly died from pneumonia. She is now completely
paralyzed from the neck down, reliant on life-support equipment and 24-hour
nursing care.
From one day in my mother’s shoes I would learn true determination, the kind
that transcends an all-nighter at the office or running an extra mile. My mother’s
determination is not only to survive despite the incredible odds against her, but to
continue to live life to fulfill her purpose: to be there for her family as a loving,
caring wife and mother.
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She accomplishes this goal in small but meaningful ways, looking beyond her
own problems to focus on those around her. For example, although she seldom
leaves the house, she is still an avid viewer of the Weather Channel. As my
father heads out to walk the dog every day, she reminds him to wear sunscreen
or to take an umbrella. Ignoring the fact that she hasn’t been able to eat solid
food in years, she always asks what I’ve had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
making sure I have had enough to eat. And as a nurse holds the phone to her
ear, my mother regularly calls relatives and friends to recommend a TV show or
movie that she thinks would interest them.
A day spent in my mother’s shoes would teach me to live life graciously and
without bitterness. In the face of tremendous personal losses, she remains
thankful for what she has: a loving husband and sons, a dog that keeps her
husband in shape, and a new flat-screen HDTV. Rarely feeling sorry for herself
or seeking sympathy from others, she treats those around her with kindness. She
politely thanks the nurses for every task they do, whether it is administering her
afternoon medication or changing the channel to Oprah promptly at 4:00. Asking
after the nurses’ families, she treats their problems like her own.
Early last year, I moved back to New York City to be closer to my mother and to
help her whenever possible. However, she is the biggest supporter of my
decision to pursue an MBA, despite the fact that it could mean moving away from
her.
It is my mother whom I could learn the most from if I stepped into her shoes for a
day, and it is her unflagging determination and selflessness that make her my
constant source of inspiration.
TED CHIANG
Ted, a computer scientist now in his mid-thirties, made time in his hectic
schedule to write a short tribute to his mother, with whom he reconciled in his late
teens, as part of his conversion to serious Christianity:
My mother chauffeured me and–when the roads were impassible–happily pulled
me along, sled and all, to school, libraries and friends’ houses, and had my
friends over to our home often, too.
She maintained a belief in God amidst a thoroughly secular atmosphere, taking
me to church. She loved to sing and play “Go Tell It on the Mountain” on our
piano. I know she still believes and would do all of this again for me, if she could.
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NANCY MEISENZAHL
Nancy has been Tina’s special friend since their high school days together.
Dear Doug,
You and I have never met; however, during the past two years because of our emailings, I have realized my thoughts of you are true. My thoughts being what
Tina had spoken to me regarding you over the past many years are, that you are,
and have always been, a very compassionate, loving man whom Tina has loved
dearly, with her whole heart. She has put her solid trust in you, and you are what
has given her the inspiration to look forward to each new day.
Tina was a remarkable pre-teenager when we met; I believe it was in 1956 when
we were both in sixth grade. I had never seen a “Chinese person up close,” as an
eleven-year-old would say. I remember telling my mother about her after school
the day we met. My mother was so pleased that I had met Tina and hoped we
would always be close.
As I learned more about Tina and where she was from, I realized she had lived
close by, maybe next door, to the man I took piano lessons from, Mr. Santucci.
Little did I know, during the time I would be at his home, that I would meet his
neighbor and know her for 55-plus years. I took piano lessons only for about two
years because he insisted I had to participate in recitals and I was too shy to; so,
with my parents’ approval, I quit. But Tina, as an accomplished pianist, amazed
me. I remember going to her home and her playing the piano like I had never
heard before. She “read” music and played so flawlessly. I have always loved
piano music and whenever I hear it I think of her and my brother Richard. My
brother took lessons, too. Richard quit also because he was more adept at
“playing by ear,” which he still does occasionally. But Tina, as I mentioned,
continued to play and did so with such joy.
The distance between where Tina lived in Henrietta, at 90 Clearview Drive (the
next street over from where I live now), and where I lived then, on West Henrietta
Road, was about five miles. I always felt close to Tina even though we only
visited each other’s homes a few times. I always looked forward to seeing her at
school and after school, and our phone calls. Going to Rush-Henrietta Central
was the only place I had to see others my own age. I had only one neighbor,
Mary DeWald, who lived about one-eighth of a mile away. I lived in the “country.”
There were no other girls I was close to. In the 1960s new developments were
built in Henrietta, but not anywhere near where I lived, so school was my only
social life, and Tina was a huge part of it.
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At one time, I had been dating a boy named Phil Tyler. Phil went to Monroe High
School and had a part-time job working for my father; that is how we met. As is
said, ‘it is a small world’ because when I told Tina about Phil, she told me she
knew him. She had known him for years before she moved to Henrietta and
assured me he was a ‘nice boy’ and was happy for me that I had met him also.
Unfortunately, my relationship ended with Phil.
Tina excelled in all classes, and I did not, so we saw less of each other during
our high school years. Fortunately, we have kept our contact with each other. We
wrote many letters and heard each other’s “news” of our lives. Tina went on to
college at Cornell University (Phil also graduated from Cornell). I went to work at
Rochester Gas and Electric.
While Tina was at Cornell, she mentioned a wonderful friend she had. This young
man’s name was Doug Cooper. Tina had expressed concern because he was
not of Chinese descent and her parents probably would not approve of her
choice. I know this part is important, but I cannot remember all the particulars
surrounding this relationship, but I do remember Tina’s being horribly saddened
to have to leave Doug and continue on with her life.
Marriages came, and we were both blessed with children.
Then, one afternoon, Tina phoned. She told me her devastating news…….she
had been stricken with MS. I, knowing very little about MS, started reading all I
could relating to that dreaded disease. I was devastated to know that my best
friend had been given such a diagnosis. There was nothing I could say or do. No
one deserves this or any other sickness that changes the course of their lives,
especially Tina. Why? No answer could be given.
The next phone call from Tina was the news of her divorce. What else?
I was also going through divorce proceedings and was no help for Tina. I had a
difficult time regarding my divorce, having to find a job, which was not easy, since
I did not have a college background, and raise three young sons on my own
income. My life went on. My children did very well. I am still single.
Divorces came, and our lives continued. It was not an easy course for either of
us, especially Tina. However, Tina and I have kept in touch. There were several
years that only Christmas cards gave us our “updates.”
Tina’s next phone call was the most exciting of all! She told me the wonderful
news that Doug Cooper from Cornell University had “found” her! That made my
day and many, many days.
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Since that time, life for Tina has, from what I have been told, been bittersweet.
She has the horrible disease and the love of her life. Doug is what has sustained
Tina.
I have told Tina and Doug’s beautiful love story to so many friends. The story of
Tina’s life could be a movie that would win awards; for such a heartening,
uplifting, tear-jerker that would be remembered by all who see it.
We have not seen each other for several years. Our friendship has endured with
our phone calls and e-mail. Memories and good thoughts have kept us the
friends we are.
I love Tina. I always have, ever since I met the most beautiful little “Chinese girl”
in sixth grade.
May God continue to be beside her with her loving husband, Doug, and sons.
With my love and fond memories,
Nancy
MARY KAY SOLERA
Mary Kay Solera was a good friend of Tina’s in high school, but afterward they
lost contact. Recently, through the Internet, they found each other. Mary Kay
contributed the following to the Tributes:
Tina was one of the first classmates I encountered at Rush-Henrietta High school
in 1959. I had transferred at mid-year from an inner-city high school of 4,000
students. Rush-Henrietta was so much smaller and I had hoped it would be
friendlier. Entering in January was very difficult, as student had their “clicks” and
groups, and had been together since grade school. I have to say that Tina was
the first person to actually talk with me….she was friendly, beautiful, smart, well
rounded, and she made me feel welcome.
As the semester continued, we had a few classes together where we got to know
each other better. She was so interesting and we found we had many things in
common. Tina had a depth and value to the discussions we had and the way she
did things. She wasn’t your typical teen talking about frivolous, trivial things, but
rather a strong, cultured individual. She was much wiser and more mature than
the majority of the class. I truly enjoy and appreciate this about her. We enjoyed
some serious debates over a variety of topics. I knew Tina was going to succeed
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in whatever she decided to do. Her family, Dad, Mom and brother, were just as
warm as she was inviting me into their home with some really delightful Chinese
hospitality and delicious food.
After graduation everyone went their separate ways and off to college miles
away. We married, had children, worked and life just occupied our time. I had
tried to locate Tina over the years to no avail.
Thank God for the Internet! I found Tina via a research article and contacted the
author. Voilà, we are reconnected!
Tina, may God bless you and your family. You are a blessing to me and to many!
Mary Kay
GENE SU
Eugene Y. Su, Tina’s beloved younger brother, writes:
As the younger brother of Tina, I suppose I have known Tina for more years than
most. Time passes by, and many memories fade and/or become a little blurry. At
this point, more of my impressions and memories are related to adult life, and the
growing-up period seems quite distant.
Tina was a strong and athletic adolescent and teenager; and while she did not
play any sports formally, none of us Su children did. We were expected to be
nice and good, caring individuals who studied hard and worked hard, although
not necessarily played hard. Unlike me, Tina excelled in music and was an
accomplished pianist by the time she went to college at Cornell.
I remember her going to off to college, and leaving the house. This seemed like a
very large step to me at the time. So much can happen in college, like dating….
Subsequent years seemed to fly by. I also went away to college, and then was in
“survival mode” during medical school and residency. In college I also met my
future wife, Christy, a blond (as in non-Chinese) Caucasian. We married and
moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we raised two daughters and took care of
my (our) parents from 1995 to 2009, our father passing away in 1996 and our
mother, in 2009.
My parents, especially my mother, were devastated when Tina was diagnosed
with MS and watched helplessly as Tina’s condition worsened. As the younger
brother and as a physician, it was painful for me to see Tina’s physical debility
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inexorably progress to the point of total paralysis of all extremities, ventilator
dependence, and feeding tube, requiring constant 24-hour care and monitoring.
The good news is the Doug and Tina story, and indeed this is a true story of
almost unbelievable proportions. To be able to live one day at a time and to
actually enjoy each and every day is something we all seek and yearn for but
seldom achieve, and I am thankful to God that there is this small miracle in Doug
and Tina’s everyday lives.
CHRIS COOPER
Christopher B. Cooper is our much-loved youngest brother. Our age difference,
sixteen years, almost puts us in two different generations; his delightful wife,
Nicola, is young enough to be my daughter. Their two bright and handsome
sons, Matthew and William, are young enough to be our grandchildren. Chris
took time out from a hectic schedule to write up his personal recollections about
Tina and me:
The reader can certainly appreciate that, because I am sixteen years younger
than Doug, his early life, and even his time at Cornell, were effectively unknown
to me. My earliest impression of Tina Su was probably as a preteen, when it
appeared that my oldest brother was occupying his time/life with a range of
activities (e.g., the U.S. Army, Penn State, Harvard, sailing on the Charles River)
seemingly, in a sense, to fill the void left by Tina’s absence from his life. In 1972,
when Doug was about to marry C, it was clear to me that she was more or less a
surrogate for The One Who Got Away. I’m sure that to Doug and her at the time,
a lifetime of marital bliss seemed inevitable, but there never seemed to be the
same sparkle in Doug’s eyes when referring to her as there ever was in his
description of, and longing for, Tina Su. As much as he certainly cared for,
admired, and respected C, he loved Tina.
My first true recollection of Tina would not come for another ten years or so, after
Doug had “found” her once again. I can remember meeting Tina in 1983, a year
before I was to return to graduate school in California, having worked for a
couple of years back on the East Coast. Her kind and gracious manner was–and
remains–a trademark of hers, and I could immediately appreciate what Doug
found so appealing as well. Upon returning from California four years later, I got
to know Tina considerably better. Over the last two decades, I have come to
know Tina as my sister-in-law, as Doug’s wife, and as Phil’s and Ted’s mother.
She always made me feel welcome and at home during my visits to their home in
Bedford Hills or in Millwood, New York and, later, in Ramsey, New Jersey. She
also continues to laugh heartily at Doug’s jokes (to the point of literally bringing
tears to her eyes)! This should not be taken lightly, as Doug has a way of
cranking out copious “gems” and “less-than-gems,” and yet Tina seems to find
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them all hilarious! It is all very endearing, which, for me, perhaps summarizes my
impressions of Tina.
A gracious, loving, endearing lady who has brought immeasurable happiness to
those who know her best.
What may not be well recognized is that Tina has always made my wife, Nicola
(a native of England), feel more at home within the Cooper family, as Tina had
spent some time in England following Cornell. We would often retrieve voice-mail
messages from our home phone whenever Tina had “found” one or another
English TV programs/specials that she felt would be of interest to Nicola, and
even though we may not have taken her up on each and every viewing
opportunity, it’s still true what they say: “It’s the thought that counts”!
In recent years, while her physical abilities have one by one been taken away,
Tina has always expressed her love and concern for me, my wife, and my
children. We all love Tina very much, and we feel blessed to have this time with
her.
DIANA COOPER
My sister, Diana, has been especially close to Tina. As a retired nurse, Diana
understands Tina’s condition better than most people would. As an exceptionally
warm person herself, Diana shares a loving relationship with her sister, Tina Su
Cooper. Diana writes:
Tina is one of those people you warm up to and know you like a lot in the first five
seconds you meet her. As for me, my first impression of Tina was of a warm and
startlingly beautiful long-haired, thin college girl with a divine light in her eyes.
She had an open heart and gave me a hug and kiss when we met in Rosendale
in 1964. I returned her hug and kiss gladly. It would be years before I would see
Tina again, but I knew how wonderful Doug and she were together.
The next time I would really get to know this marvelous woman was when Doug
and Tina resumed their engagement two decades after being separated by
unfortunate circumstances and marriages. Tina came to live with us in
Rosendale with her two-year-old son, Philip. It was a great time–on weekends
Doug would come to see Tina and Phil and we’d all have a mini-party. Tina was
a joy to have around, even though she tried to work too hard–for instance, by
taking a toothbrush to the corners of the kitchen floor to clean them. Mom
stopped her by crying and explaining that we didn’t need things that clean.
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Tina had multiple sclerosis. She was dear to us. My mother said she loved her
and couldn’t wait until Doug and Tina married. I was delighted as well.
After Doug and Tina did marry, Tina’s unfaltering support for the Cooper family,
her generosity, and her empathy for our problems made me love her even more,
if that is possible. My mom had loved her own little Chinese doll as a child, and
she particularly loved Tina as the best daughter-in-law she could possibly get in
life. I agreed. She’s been the best sister for me in my life.
Tina’s been my friend through breast cancer and many other problems. I could
always count on her for her wise advice and warm comforting words, no matter
what my problem. Over the years I’ve only come to admire her more for being
such a “good soldier,” as her dad called her, through this ordeal of multiple
sclerosis, which has left her paralyzed from the neck down. I get a big smile from
her every time I see her–which makes me cry when I’m out of her sight.
She’s so brave. God bless her. I keep praying for a breakthrough for my dear
Tina–I love her so much.
With love,
Diana
CLIFF COOPER
Cliff is the most warm-hearted of my brothers. He’d “give you the shirt off his
back.” Sometimes, others have taken advantage of that. His affection for Tina
comes through in this tribute to her for her 67th birthday.
Dear Tina,
Happy birthday to a beautiful, intelligent and wonderful sister. It’s truly a joy to
have you for a sister.
Through the years, you’ve always demonstrated unwavering loyalty and support
for me, and I truly do appreciate it. I will never forget the way you consoled me
when my marriage disintegrated. There’s no amount of words that can express
my gratitude for all those hours you spent commiserating with me through my
pain. It was your consultation that helped me feel strong, when all seemed lost,
and I love you for it.
You, kid, are truly the strongest and most resilient person I know. You’ve
endured unspeakable pain and suffering, and all our minor problems pale in
comparison to what you’ve experienced. You truly are a saint and deserve all of
God’s blessings.
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Today, may your birthday bring you joy and happiness, and the knowledge that
this brother truly loves you!
Love,
Cliff
ELAINE TASHIRO GERBERT
Elaine has been one of Tina’s closest friends since they met at Cornell in the fall
of 1962. A member of the University of Kansas faculty, she was recently honored
for twenty years of service to the school. Here she describes Tina during times
when Tina and I were apart and later when we were together. Her contribution is
greatly appreciated.
I first saw Tina the day I moved into Clara Dickson Hall VI at Cornell, in
September 1962. It was in the lounge area of the dorm, where there was a grand
piano. She was playing something (which she later told me was Schubert) that
sounded terribly complicated and difficult—a waterfall of notes that kept coming–
compared to the Turkish Rondo by Mozart that I had played at my second and
last piano recital two or three years before. (I was very surprised to learn just
recently, from reading the advance copy of other sections of this book, that Tina
had played a concerto with an orchestra! In all the years that I’d known her, she
never mentioned that astonishing achievement. What is also notable is that her
first husband, who was Chinese, never mentioned it once it in the many times my
husband and I spent in his and Tina’s company. It is typical of well-bred people of
societies influenced by Confucian values to not call attention to their
achievements or those of their family members.)
I don’t quite remember when we first talked, but I know it must have been in the
dorm, for her corridor and mine were adjoining. I think we were on the top floor
(sixth?) of the dorm. Unlike Donlon Hall, where students shared rooms, we in
Dickson had single rooms. They were small, just large enough for a single bed, a
dresser, a desk, a small bookshelf, a closet, and a chair. I remember spending
part of the first Sunday at Cornell sitting on the windowsill of my room reading a
book by a well-known scholar (Kitto?) on the Greeks for a Western history class.
I read it self-consciously and conscientiously, looking even at the page with the
publication information, something I had never done in high school. This was big
time. Not just college but CORNELL University! With so many in the freshman
class coming from downstate, New York City and Long Island, where people
seemed so much more sophisticated and knowing than many of us from small
towns in upstate New York, Cornell was awesome. I felt like and was a small-
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town girl with a tiny repertoire of social skills.
Tina and I noticed each other right away. There were few Asians at Cornell in
1962, and none from upstate New York, except us. Moreover, she was from an
area not far from my hometown of Geneva. I recall being introduced to her
parents and older sister in the lounge area. Her sister smiled at me with kind
interest. As an Asian in a virtually all-white university in the early 1960s, one was
an anomalous presence in an environment that was grand, imposing, and
sometimes forbidding. Later that fall, I saw Tina and her brother running across
the lawn in front of the dorm. She may have been chasing him. That they could
have felt so at ease as to play like that on Cornell grounds surprised me. I could
tell that they had a special bond, that they really liked each other. And that
surprised me, as my brother and I would never have played like that in public.
We didn’t have that kind of relationship or that kind of ease in American society.
The consciousness of the Second World War and our Nisei parents’ enemy
status and internment was branded too deeply in us to permit such spontaneous
displays of sibling affection.
Tina and I often saw each other in the dorm, and to this day I remember well her
appearance then. She was slender and fair-skinned, wore her fine, black hair
about chin length. She dressed simply, and her clothes were well made and
different from the store-bought skirts and blouses that a lot of the young women
wore. Understated elegance might be a way to describe them. She seemed not
to have many outfits. She often wore a dark blue full skirt with a bright pink
blouse that set her complexion off nicely (she had rosy cheeks and her lipstick
was rose red). She wore a wide, soft, black leather belt that had a large buckle in
the front. Her skirt was longish and her black shoes were flat. She also had a
dark coat, I believe, with a large, round soft collar that complemented her face
very nicely. Her dress was subdued. I now realize her mother’s influence and the
taste of a Chinese gentlewoman with scholarly inclinations in her clothes.
I would sometimes see Tina in the corridor bathroom in the morning or just
before bedtime. She wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe and brushed her teeth
vigorously. (Georgia Paul on my corridor sometimes scrubbed her face with
laundry detergent. Young women can be very determined when it comes to
keeping themselves clean.)
Tina was a disciplined person. Her manner was soft and she was kind to others.
But strict with herself. She restricted her intake of sweets because, as she said,
they were not good for you. (I think I probably kept cookies in my room.) She held
herself to a high standard. She told me that she would not ever engage in certain
kinds of behavior, not because it would be wrong according to religious
principles, but because it would hurt her parents.
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Years later, Georgia Paul remembered Tina Su as being “a cut above the rest of
us.” Of the Chinese women students at Cornell at the time, she seemed more
mature, more refined, wiser, and fundamentally surer of herself and her values.
She made an impression on Caucasians. In the spring of 1963, she went through
rush because she wanted to experience it, although she did not intend to join a
sorority. I heard someone say that Tina Su had received an invitation to join from
every single sorority that she had visited.
Tina was studying Chinese and had papers with brush-written Chinese
characters hanging from the walls of her room. She dated Chinese men. Bob
Tzu, I think was the name of one. And another was Victor, a sophomore who was
killed in a traffic accident returning to Ithaca after Thanksgiving break. (She was
not outwardly upset by Victor’s death. It must have been a great shock, but she
was philosophical about it. It made her think about the meaning of life. I recall her
challenging me by asking if I ever thought about death.)
She seemed to have a date every Saturday night. On one occasion she went out
with a Caucasian student named Rick who was a friend of a woman in my
corridor. I recall Moneen telling someone that Rick felt that Tina was uneasy
about going out with a non-Chinese man. I also heard that she was criticized by
the people in the Chinese student community for doing so.
One spring day in 1963 some of us were walking down the Balch Hall sidewalk
on the way to class when all of a sudden two people holding hands rushed past
us, flying down the steps. They moved like birds and seemed full of joy. It was
Tina and a guy, whom Georgia Paul pronounced as “cute.” On another occasion
Tina told me about a poem sent her by an admirer who saw her in the library. It
was a poem about “the girl in the red sweater.” I don’t know if the author was
Doug or someone else. On another occasion a male student whom she didn’t
know saw her photo in the freshman directory and called her up for a date out of
the blue.
I left Cornell after my freshman year and transferred to UC Berkeley because my
parents had moved to Riverside, California. Tina and I corresponded a bit. Her
last letter came as she was about to go to England to study. She commented on
how frighteningly similar our lives were (although I thought they were quite
different).
I remember calling Tina’s home in Rochester around the year 1967 as she was
getting ready for her wedding. I spoke briefly with her mother but could not speak
with Tina as the ceremony was drawing nigh and people were intensely engaged
in the preparations. Her mother seemed excited and proud that her daughter
was marrying a University of Chicago scientist.
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Then, in the fall of 1969, shortly after I had entered the graduate program in
Japanese in the Department of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations at
Chicago, I was walking through the library in the card-catalogue section when
who should I see but Tina!! She was walking with a quick, light step and looked
very slender and smart in her nice clothes (she always wore skirts or dresses).
She had had a recent haircut. It was such a surprise to meet again like that. She
was then working in the East Asian library.
At Thanksgiving time, Pierre, whom I would later marry, came out to Chicago to
visit; Tina and her husband invited us to their apartment for dinner. Pierre and K
were drawn to each other and became good friends. As K later said, they were
both foreigners in America. Both were highly intelligent, excitable and highstrung. They reacted quickly to things and laughed a lot. I believe that they
shared an understanding of life. We spent many pleasant times in Chicago with K
and Tina. There was always laughter as Pierre and K spurred each other to
laugh when they were together. They seemed to find relief in each other’s
company.
K worked very hard, spending long hours in his lab. He had to perform in a
foreign culture, and Tina helped him a lot, writing and editing his reports and
doing a multitude of other things for him. She took her role as a wife seriously
and did her best to be a responsible helpmate.
When I finished my MA degree in 1972, Tina and K did something for me that
astonished me. They organized a party in their apartment to celebrate the
occasion. Tina had me invite all the people I thought should be invited, and they
prepared a table of foods and drinks and opened their home to strangers. I was
wondering whether I should invite my advisor, Mr. McClellan, who was like a god
at the time. Would he actually deign to come? Tina said, of course, you must
invite him. So I did. He said he would have to consult with his wife, who kept their
social calendar, and of course they were busy and did not come. But it was a
good thing to invite him. McClellan had met Tina earlier. She had interviewed for
the job of administrative assistant in his department (he was chair) when she first
arrived at Chicago. He remembered her well, telling me that she was very pretty
but overqualified for the position.
One early summer day in the early 1970s, we met for lunch in the cafeteria on
campus. Tina came dressed in navy blue slacks and clogs. She was wearing a
light blue shirt with a navy blue sweater or sweatshirt on top, but the sleeves
were short so that the shirtsleeves were exposed. It was the first (and last) time I
had ever seen her in slacks. She said, “I must look like a field hand.” It was
funny, because Tina could never look like a field hand. Even in this garb, she
looked delicate and refined. Another piece of clothing I remember well is a long,
gold winter coat with a black herringbone pattern. It was closely fitted and was
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striking with her dark hair.
By the beginning of my third year in Chicago, I knew that Tina was under a lot of
pressure. K would sleep in the evening after dinner and then get up after
midnight and begin working in the lab. He’d then come home and sleep again
until it was time to prepare for his classes. The schedule left little time for
socializing and relaxation as a couple. One time I and a few other graduate
students were eating lunch in a dining hall in the building where Tina had her
office. She was then working on a project dealing with American Indians for the
Encyclopedia Britannica. I saw Tina and K having lunch together at another
table. Later, Tina asked me about my lunch companions. I sensed or imagined
that she missed that kind of life, where a group of graduate students meet for
lunch and natter away. She was working on the EB project but it seemed to be a
kind of stopgap measure, something to do to be busy and productive. I think she
would have been happier if she could have plunged herself in work for a Ph.D. in
Chinese studies, in a field closer to her heart. I wonder if she thought that her
duty to K came first and that she ought not to give herself to her own studies.
She was serious about the project and attended an Indian powwow. Later, K said
that he could still hear the tom-toms beating in his head.
Living in Hyde Park was not easy. The neighborhoods were not safe, so one
could not easily leave the apartment high rise to stroll about at will. I believe that
Tina felt trapped in that physical environment. Their apartment was up high, and
living far from the ground is not healthy. (My cousin, a physical therapist, recently
attended a workshop in which the importance of having physical contact with the
ground for physical and psychological well-being was stressed.) Once, Tina
telephoned me on a late Sunday afternoon. Pierre and I had just come back from
a long walk. I think she wished she could have been out that afternoon instead of
shut up in the apartment while K was in the lab. I wish I had thought to invite her
to join us on our meandering strolls.
Tina had spent time in Taiwan, but I don’t think she particularly enjoyed the
experience. She wasn’t fluent in Chinese and was treated as an outsider. One
day she saw an enormous rat in the kitchen of the family house and she
screamed. It was not appreciated by the family. Relations with her mother-in-law
did not appear to be warm. On one occasion she had been very upset when her
mother-in-law visited them in Chicago and without asking, took it upon herself to
rearrange the contents of her kitchen cupboards. (They also traveled in Japan,
and she seemed to like it very much. She told me that she had had her hair cut in
a Japanese beauty shop and that one of the other customers asked that her hair
be cut the same way.)
I was in their kitchen one day when they opened a can of peaches, and one of
them thought it looked or smelled funny. They immediately threw it away. At the
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time, I thought it was a rather extreme reaction. Now in retrospect, that was the
first sign of the concern for health that would grow more pronounced as problems
with health came to dominate their lives. (The problems became full blown after
Pierre and I had left Chicago.) It was health problems that turned their second
European vacation sour. K had to be hospitalized because of food poisoning
when they were in Italy. He told us that Tina with her quick thinking had saved his
life. (Pierre also remarked on Tina’s quick thinking and efficiency one day when
she took a telephone message.)
When we were about to leave Hyde Park for Japan in late summer 1973, Tina
was pregnant. On one of our last evenings in Chicago, she invited us for supper.
We had Kentucky Fried Chicken and petit fours. We went into the nursery that
they had prepared, and she showed me the things she had bought. They didn’t
know if it would be a boy or a girl so the baby things were yellow. Ducky yellow.
She had even bought safety pins with plastic heads. I was impressed by her
forethought. It was so characteristic of her to be organized and to think and plan
ahead. Needless to say, their apartment was always immaculate.
We corresponded while we were in Japan [1973]. In her letter Tina said that she
was painting the apartment and that the work was therapy for her soul. I knew
that she was in deep distress.
We stopped in Chicago to pick up our things in storage after our year in
Kamakura. I have a photo taken of the four of us sitting side by side on their
couch. Tina was then quite pregnant. I remember her telling K to photograph her
from the neck up. We are all smiling in the photo, happy to be together, and
happy over the coming of their first child.
We visited them in Chicago when the Association for Asian Studies had its
meeting there in March 1978. We were then living in Iowa City. They had moved
into another high-rise apartment and were experiencing great aggravation over
carpenters who had begun making the kitchen over but hadn’t returned to finish
the job on schedule. The dinner that Tina prepared for us that evening was
elaborate, with many meat dishes. She kept getting up from the dining table to go
into the kitchen to stir fry yet another dish. Teddy, then around 3, was seated to
her right. She sat up very straight in her chair and coached him carefully, telling
him to close his mouth when he chewed. He was a beautiful little boy with perfect
features. He looked a lot like his mother. After dinner we sat in the living room.
Pierre and K carried on as usual. Tina looked tired. She seemed disengaged and
depressed.
When we were living in Tempe, Arizona, in the early 1980s, we didn’t receive the
usual Christmas card from Tina and K. She always sent the card and always
signed K’s name first and hers second. Pierre telephoned their apartment and
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learned about the difficult divorce.
In the mid 1990s I learned about Tina’s MS and felt devastated by the appalling
news. Pierre said that in Chicago oftentimes Tina had a kind of halo around her
head. He attributed it to the electric waves generated by the activity taking place
in her nerves. I thought of the many times that Pierre and I had walked into a
restaurant and had dinner and so wished that Tina might be able to do that with
Doug again.
We saw Tina and met Doug for the first time shortly thereafter, when we were in
NYC and took the train down to Ramsey. At that time she still had use of her left
hand. We all had dinner that day at the dining table. Chinese take-out, followed
by ice cream. Tina then had her parakeet, Amy.
The next time I saw her, she was living in Walden and had suffered greatly. She
was wearing sunglasses because the light hurt her eyes. She tilted her head and
reassured me, “It’s Tina. I’m still here. I’m still the same person you knew fortyfour years ago.” One of the first things she did was to make sure I had eaten
lunch. And then she wanted me to walk around the lake with Doug, to be sure to
enjoy the lake. This was in the fall of 2006, after my mother died in April. I
remember a telephone conversation I had with Tina early that year when my
mother’s cancer returned and she was getting progressively worse. Tina told me
to pray. To pray, pray, pray. She knew what she was talking about.
After Pierre died in May 2010, I visited Tina and Doug. Because of her immense
suffering, which she bore so stoically, Tina knew what loss and grief felt like, and
she consoled me many times over the phone.
The day they took Pierre’s body away, I spent the night on his hospital bed air
mattress to see what it was like to sleep there as he had done for the previous
six months. It was not pleasant and I could not imagine how he could have stood
not leaving that bed a single time throughout 180 days and nights. Tina’s trial
was so much greater. Pierre was confined to bed when he was 84 and he
enjoyed food and drink up to the end. He had free use of his arms. I don’t know
from what depths Tina drew the strength to be as compassionate and
courageous through all the years###over 6,000 days###in the face of such
extreme trials. When I think of her life I have to conclude that in spite of her many
losses, she has been loved deeply and she has loved deeply. She has retained
her belief that life is good and she has lived profoundly and well.
WENDY GARFEIN
Wendy and Zane Garfein have been among our very closest friends since we
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met them in 1987. As part of her tribute to Tina, she recalls a particularly moving
conversation they had.
For Tina on her 67th birthday:
I met Tina and Doug in 1987, the summer we moved to Ledgewood Commons.
Their son, Phil, became the link to our two families. I first met Phil and Doug in
the swimming pool, and then later met Tina as Phil and our son, Ben, became
friends.
When I first met Tina, I was instantly impressed with her graciousness and
beauty. She was very welcoming to their home and invited Ben to share play
time with Phil often. It was on one such occasion, when Ben and Phil were
playing, that Tina and I were talking over coffee and tea, that Tina shared some
of her life with me.
She reminisced about meeting Doug in college at Cornell and falling in love as a
young woman with him. They had wanted to marry, but Tina’s parents did not
approve of her marrying an Occidental. They sent her to England to study [for her
junior year] and would not permit her to marry Doug. Tina complied with her
parents’ wishes, not wanting to disappoint them and respecting the traditional
values of her parents. Subsequently, both she and Doug married other people.
Their history resumed some years later after Doug and his first wife divorced and
Doug located Tina, who was living in Chicago with her Asian husband and two
boys. [He wrote her a brief letter about the break-up of his marriage.] It was not
until about a year later that they met in person in Chicago. Both were struck by
the bond which they still felt for one another.
It was at this juncture that Tina and Doug decided they wanted to be together. I
will not go into the details of this decision, because I know that Doug will be
detailing this information in his story about them. However, I will say that Tina did
not make the decision lightly and was terribly conflicted years later when talking
about it, because her first husband would not grant the divorce without her
promising to leave Ted behind. When telling her story, Tina wept; and I wept too,
because I understood that this was not what she wanted to do. For her then, it
was a matter of her physical and emotional survival, as well as her love for Doug.
Sitting at her kitchen table and reliving her decision as she talked, Tina
remembered all the struggles she had gone through. She seemed to be
ashamed of herself for making the decision to survive because it meant leaving
Ted behind. Years did not diminish her sorrow and guilt over this decision. It was
at that point I shared my personal story and my own sorrow and guilt over my
own decision years earlier in my life. Self-acceptance has been difficult for both
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of us to achieve, but Tina’s sharing with me, and enabling me to share with her,
helped us both.
Tina, by sharing her love story, showed me that day the qualities which I admire
in her to this day: her courage, compassion, and integrity. I felt the courage that
she needed to make the decision to start a new life and to leave behind her little
boy, Ted. I knew that leaving him behind, she felt that Ted must feel abandoned.
Her compassion for Ted and her desire to show him her love was evident to me.
It was not so easy for a young Ted to comprehend, however. I knew that with
time and maturity, Ted would understand her decision and grow to know his
mother, as I do: as a woman with the courage, compassion and integrity to live
that love each day.
I told her that then, hoping it would help her. Today she continues to be that
same person. She lives a daily life today which I know of no other person could
easily bear, but which brings her happiness and love, knowing she can still share
in her husband and children’s lives. For her husband and children, her choice to
live today has given them as much or more.
Her daily courage has been an inspiration to me, her compassion even now for
others’ suffering always amazes me, and I continue to find her a woman of great
integrity and abounding love for others.
Happy Birthday, my friend!
Love,
Wendy
DEANNE GEBELL GITNER
Deanne Gebell Gitner and Tina formed a strong friendship at Cornell. Both were
from upstate rather than “the city,” and each was a member of a minority group
(Jewish and Chinese, respectively). They have remained warm friends during the
nearly fifty years since they first met. Deanne writes:
Tina lived next door to me in Dickson Hall our freshman year, and she shared a
double with our friend Maddi Daub in our sophomore year. The Dickson dorm
was all single rooms and only women. It was a time when women students were
fighting for their rights. For example, the women’s dorms had curfews when the
semester began, and no curfews when the semester ended a few months later. I
do not know how much these things affected Tina, but they may have.
Tina met Doug in her freshman year, but Tina told us (her corridor mates) that
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she needed to find a six-foot-tall man from China, from northern China, to keep
her parents happy. We felt we understood her problem, as we were all told to find
a Jewish boy and that our parents would give us trouble if we did not.
There were only two Asian women in our class in 1962, one of whom was Tina.
Her parents sent her away for her junior year to London to study and, probably,
to get her away from Doug.
Tina and I lived in adjoining Balch Hall rooms for our senior year. When Tina
returned to Cornell in 1966, she began to fraternize with the few Asian students
who were at Cornell then. Doug had graduated. Tina kept up her search for a tall,
handsome Chinese boy. She had been noticed by a group of Taiwanese
graduate students (men) who wanted to get to know this beautiful Asian woman
who studied all the time in Olin Library. One found a unique way of getting to
meet her, making her the only person I knew who came home from the library
with an armful of flowers. It was too late. Doug had already claimed her heart!
JUDY JAYSON SONFIELD
Tina developed several lasting friendships at Cornell. Judy and Tina’s friendship
has lasted for nearly fifty years, a tribute to their loyalty and empathy. Judy and
Matt Sonfield and Deanne and Gerry Gitner were the special friends Tina invited
to her second wedding, June 1984. And they were the friends who visited her
during her nearly fatal hospitalization in 2004.
I’ve known Tina since freshman year at Cornell. We roomed together as
sophomores—the year Tina and Doug became totally involved with one another
and the year I met Matt, my future husband. It was a wonderful time for both of
us.
At the end of our sophomore year, both Doug and Matt graduated, and life
changed for all of us—with Tina going to London and Doug and Matt going on to
work and graduate school, respectively. By senior year I was married and living
in Cambridge. After Tina married and moved to Chicago, we didn’t see one
another for many years.
Then everything changed. Tina was diagnosed with MS, and Doug came back
into her life. Matt and I, along with Deanne and Gerry Gitner, attended their
warm, intimate wedding. At the wedding luncheon Tina’s father made a beautiful
toast to their enduring love.
For a number of years, while Tina’s MS was under control, we were able to meet
for dinners, attend a college reunion, and they joined us at our son’s Bar Mitzvah.
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You could easily dwell on Tina’s illness and on her constant battle over these
many years, but Tina and Doug’s romance during college and their coming
together years later is the love story that I like to share.
RUTH GOLDBERG
Ruth and Mal Goldberg, like Wendy and Zane, have been among our very
closest friends since the days in Millwood, NY, when we could get together
easily. Now living part of each year in Florida, Ruth writes:
Tina was and has always been a sweet, loving and giving person. She has been
a very good friend to me. We used to share many happy moments together. I
loved getting together on those great New Year’s Eve celebrations as well as
sitting quietly and talking. When Tina began to have trouble driving, I took her to
church every week. We became spiritually connected, and we will be forever. I
feel blessed that she has been such a loving friend to me.
BARBARA GEORGE
The staff member who has been with us the longest is Barbara George, who
deserves a book about her own life and about her care of a dying father, a
severely handicapped son, and our Tina. She has been aide, confidante,
business manager, psychologist, labor-management liaison, and we sometimes
call her my “rent-a-wife,” to which she does not object. Barb contributed the
following:
A Tribute to My Hero and Friend, Tina Cooper
I came to Tina’s home in January 2004, seven years ago–I was trying to adjust to
life without my beloved father, who had just passed away that December from
esophageal cancer.
I met Tina and was so taken with her positive, kind, sweet, loving manner. You
would expect someone in her condition to be bitter and difficult, but she was so
positive and grateful for her care and help. I admire her strength, concern for
others, and love and gratitude to her devoted husband, Doug, “the absolute love
of her life,” who took on the challenge of her disease with lots of love and a level
head, as to how to care for Tina and create a world for her within her home. I
have much admiration and respect for each of them, as they love and care for
each other, each worrying more about the other than about himself.
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TERRY BUSH
As she explains below, Terry Bush, LPN, was hired in early February as an overqualified home health aide. She was a nurse who needed a time-out from the
stress of nursing. Shortly thereafter, Tina had an MS attack with an
accompanying aspiration pneumonia that nearly killed her. Terry became our onthe-spot representative in Tina’s hospital room for much of each day. When Tina
came home, Terry came with her and worked with us as a nurse until the fall. We
were delighted to have her, fell in love with her, and missed her greatly when she
had to leave because she was allergic to the flu shot proteins. (We enforce our
flu shot requirements without exception.) She remains a dear friend.
Working as a private duty nurse with ventilator-dependent patients can take its
toll, emotionally and physically. Making the decision to work as a home health
aide for a while, I answered an ad in a local newspaper. The listing, which
requested someone to help with cooking, cleaning, and personal care of a
woman, sounded just like what I was looking for.
I called and was scheduled to meet Tina and Doug Cooper the following evening.
I was informed that Tina had MS with limited mobility, but fully capable in other
areas. Unexpectedly, Doug asked if I would give Tina a full bed bath while I was
there, not as a part of the interview, but as a favor. I agreed, although nervous,
never having met them.
The next evening I met two of the nicest people in the world. They were polite,
considerate, and welcomed me into their home. Spending personal time with
Tina was special as we talked about our families and ourselves. I felt truly
blessed when I was asked to come back.
Tina was sweet, and we became friends almost immediately. We shared stories,
listened to music, and laughed together, all while I performed the duties I was
hired to do. This was just the restful break I was seeking–but not for long.
One week later, Tina was lying in a hospital bed with pneumonia. Doug spent
day and night by her bedside, hoping the doctors’ predictions were incorrect. Not
wanting to leave Tina alone, but needing his own rest, Doug asked if I minded
changing my position as home health aide to Tina’s private assistant in her
hospital room. Although this was closer to nursing than I had been wanting, I
already cared too deeply for this special lady to walk away.
I don’t recall the medical details, but I do remember the tears in our eyes as
Doug and I watched Tina’s health worsen day by day. She was not expected to
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live through the night several times. But God had other plans. After weeks of
hopes and disappointments, Tina returned home, dependent on her ventilator for
every breath of life.
More nurses were hired, and round-the-clock care had begun. Doug was not a
nurse, by license, but he was honored and respected as head nurse by all of us.
He scheduled, provided medical supplies, and became mediator between doctor
and patient. But the care he provided did not end there. His love for his wife went
much deeper … so much deeper.
I had heard the love story of Tina and Doug. How they met in college and fell in
love, how life separated them from each other, and how miraculously they were
reunited many years later. Although their lives had taken different paths, they
were destined to be together. This lasting love and devotion for each other
sustains them today.
Tina trusted the ability of the nurses as professionals, but her ultimate faith and
trust was in her husband. She knew he was overseeing every aspect of her care.
He kept her aware of changes in her health, doctors’ orders, and staff. He
worked right beside the nurses and could perform any and all duties himself.
He provided Tina with a wheelchair and a lift to transfer her from the bed to the
wheelchair and back again. Every day Tina sat in the cheerful kitchen to visit with
him, or on the front porch facing the lake and flower bed. Tina felt Doug’s love
surrounding her in everything he did for her, in the words he spoke to her, and
most of all, in the looks of compassion and devotion he bestowed on her.
Being Tina’s nurse was a blessing–a double blessing. Performing medical
procedures and care is what I enjoy, and doing it for such a loving person makes
it more enjoyable. (I guess my week-long break as home health aide was all I
was meant to have.) Tina was very fragile when she first came home. Her needs
were many–ventilator-dependent, unable to speak, tube-fed, unable to eat or
drink by mouth, needing physical therapy to keep her joints pliable (causing pain
no matter how gently it was done), and given medication on schedule day and
night, interrupting the little sleep she was able to find amidst all the new noises
and activity in her room.
While her body remained fragile, Tina’s spirit grew strong. (Her complaining
consisted of a frown on her face.) She withstood the changes in her health
condition with the attention she received from the nurses, each one caring for her
as a friend as well as a patient.
Tina received compassion from all around her–staff, friends, family–but she gave
back so much more. Tina demonstrated her compassion for each person in her
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smiles, her listening ear, and in her obvious enjoyment of one’s company.
My getting to know Tina is one of the greatest blessings of my life. I will forever
be grateful for the opportunity given to me to be part of Tina and Doug’s lives and
to have them be part of mine.
DIANE BEGGIN
Diane Beggin, RN, joined us in November 2004 and has served the longest with
us of any nurse. Tina’s health was so compromised then that we knew each day
was a miracle. Diane’s exceptional intelligence, her dedication to Tina’s care, and
her outstanding attention to detail have made her first among equals on outrstaff.
She writes about the impact Tina has had on her:
Years ago, in November 2004 when I started working at the Coopers’, I
anticipated it would be a short-lived position. Tina was rather delicate and
overcoming a long hospitalization. Her prognosis was guarded, and that was
being optimistic. But I was recuperating from a cervical spinal injury that left me
unable to work in the CCU—for the time being. So this seemed to be a perfect
position for me. I could use my critical care experience to care for Tina while I
prepared myself to return from the “disabled list.” I never anticipated that, while
Tina would thrive, my progress remained static and I could never return to the
unit. As I look back, that “temporary” job at the Cooper’s and Tina became
blessings in disguise. And for more than one reason.
The days passed to months to years. During this time, Tina and I laughed and
joked how our lives had similarities. For instance, her sons are named Ted and
Phil. I have a Tom and a Bill, and it turns out that their personalities are as similar
as their names. We’d reminisce about Chicago, our love of Hyde Park, the
museums and the terrible weather but glorious Christmas window decorations
that the city presents during the season. We’d discuss everything from timeworthy news issues to complete nonsense. Our dreams and hopes for our
children were imagined. Our memories of our youth were retold. We chatted
about everything and nothing. But we also maintained our own identities and
opinions. Neither of us always agreed with the other–and we weren’t shy about
stating such. Truly, little by little we were becoming friends.
I still find it remarkable, as I did long ago, that Tina remains so psychologically
and emotionally vital and strong despite everything she cannot do or cannot
experience. Through her I believe she taught me how to deal with my personal
inabilities and disabilities… to accept myself. And I thought I was the strong
one–her nurse. In retrospect, my patient has become my healer.
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First and foremost, Tina is my patient. But I can also state that I love this
beautiful, intelligent, strong, determined, proud—and yes, humorous—woman.
We still hold our own unique opinions and feelings. Sometimes we don’t always
agree, yet we continue to chuckle seven years later. We certainly have a
personal relationship and not merely a professional one. And I treasure the
history we share.
The Cooper family is my family–every single one of them–because of Tina. But
what makes this relationship so special is that Tina also wanted to be, and is, a
part of the Beggin family. I feel honored to be loved by her.
Funny how my misfortune long ago became an opportunity and gift that could
never have been envisioned. From Tina, the Coopers and this “interim” position,
I have had the opportunity to have a satisfying nursing assignment. But I gained
so much more. I have learned self-tolerance. I have a developed a cherished
friendship and another family. I have the luxury of caring for someone for whom I
truly feel affection. And I hope this “temporary” job continues for a very long
time. Tina and I still have more chuckling to do…
MARY WILKINSON
Mary Wilkinson, RN, has been with us for six years. She has given Tina loving
care, her warmth and attention to detail permeating all that she does, mixed with
her upbeat updates on her three children, who are at the center of her life. She
writes:
I first met Tina Cooper in March of 2005. One of the first things I noticed about
Tina was her warm, caring smile. The second thing I noticed was all the medical
equipment surrounding her that she must live with everyday just to survive. And
when I started working as her nurse back in 2005, I really didn’t know how long
she would survive. Maybe a few months, I thought to myself, or maybe a year. I
had no idea at the time, but I knew in my heart I would do whatever I could as a
nurse to help her live the best life she could at that point.
So, time went on, and I learned quickly from speaking with Tina in our little chats
that she was indeed someone very special and truly a kind, caring woman with a
great heart that was also full of empathy for others. So surprising to see at first–
how empathetic Tina would be to other people’s tragedies when the fact was that
her situation in itself was tragic, but she never once complained about it. She
was and is a true fighter—a very strong-willed individual with a heart of gold.
I have grown to love Tina as a dear friend. Tina and I have enjoyed good
conversations together. Through the years, we have laughed often at funny
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movies. I discovered early on that Tina was a very well-educated, smart woman,
but I was also very pleased to see that she shared in my sense of humor, and we
would often enjoy each other’s funny stories. After all, laughter is the best
medicine, right?
Anyway, it is always wonderful to see Tina smile. She smiles in the face of
tragedy. And it can make anyone forget just how tragic the situation really is. I am
deeply sorry for what MS has done to her physically. But it has never damaged
her amazing spirit. Tina is truly an amazing, wonderful person and I am grateful
and honored to be a part of her life. God keep her safe and warm. She is a living
angel.
AUDREY POTTINGER
When we won the insurance overnight nursing coverage dispute, we were able to
hire overnight nurses. One of the first two I hired, Audrey Pottinger, RN, has
shown the compassion, capability, and reliability that let me know Tina is in good
care while I sleep. She writes:
I am blessed to be a part of a team entrusted with caring for a truly remarkable
individual, Tina Cooper. Tina is simply one of the most caring, loving and
appreciative persons I know. Her sincere concern for others is admirable and
worthy of emulation.
Despite her disabilities she finds ways to show her friends and family members
that she cares. She remembers their birthdays and ensures that the day is
recognized with a greeting card, a phone call or both. Tina frequently inquires
about the well-being of my family. Since we both have two sons who were born
seven years apart, we enjoy sharing about their accomplishments and current
events.
It’s such a pleasure to witness the ongoing loving relationship between her and
her spouse. For them, every day is Valentine’s Day. Upon meeting the Coopers,
my older son remarked that he hopes to find someone with whom he could share
such a loving relationship. I pray he does.
I am greeted warmly each time I arrive, and she never fails to thank me several
times during the shift for the care she receives. This makes me feel special and
appreciated even though I know that every other nurse is treated in that manner.
Instead of being bitter, Tina chooses to love, to care and to enjoy the life she has.
It’s a choice all should emulate. It’s a choice I am learning to make.
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DORI OSKAM
Dori Oskam, RN, joined us as an overnight nurse in January of 2006, as soon as
I won my dispute with MVP over 24-hour nursing coverage. Dori is the mother of
five girls, two in college now. She is a cheerful, highly competent nurse, as well
as an uplifting personality. We value her greatly, sometimes kidding her as being
our “Viking,” tall, blond, strong, energetic, and pretty. She contributed the
following:
I first met Tina about five years ago when I came to work as one of her nurses.
Ever since then, I’m reminded of how much I hate this disease (multiple
sclerosis) and what is has done to Tina. She is such a beautiful woman both
inside and out. Despite her many challenges, she has kept her sweet, tender
spirit and not become bitter or angry. Tina has always been so kind and
concerned for everyone else. Her love for her husband and two sons is inspiring.
I can honestly say that she never complains, which is amazing to me. She
appreciates everything that is done for her, and she can’t say thank you enough.
She always has a big smile and kind words for everyone! Even in the middle of
the night when I have had to wake her out of a sound sleep, I have never known
her to be cranky! I have had some good laughs with Tina, as well as some
serious talks. I enjoy her company very much.
It has truly been a blessing to know Tina as the wonderful person she is. I
consider her my good friend. My continuous hope and prayer is that she’ll be
totally healed. I would love to lose my job for that reason!
GOD BLESS YOU, TINA!
KATHY KARPIAK
Kathy Karpiak, RN, has been with us since June 2006, five years of diligently and
intelligently caring for Tina. She writes:
When disease debilitates the body, and long-term medications affect the mind,
the indefatigable and constant human spirit remains. Tina is truly a kind, wise,
unique, and beautiful lady at the deepest levels. To quote Mahatma Gandhi:
“Where love is, there is life.”
MARIA SCHMICK
Maria Schmick has been with us for several years, helping to provide nursing
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care during the most difficult time period for us to get coverage, overnight from
Saturday night to Sunday morning. Her calm, quiet efficiency instills complete
confidence in us. She writes about Tina:
From the first moment I met Tina, I was awed by her positive outlook on life. How
could one human being face such a horrid disease and still show such gratitude
and grace? Her hands may be bent but her heart is big. And though her legs
can’t carry her anymore, her mind reaches far beyond that limitation. MS may
have claimed her body, but in terms of will, she has beaten MS to oblivion
because it will never claim her spirit.
I once told her she didn’t have to “thank” me for everything … try telling a bird not
to fly. That is part of who she is, grateful for the simplest things in life. She also
has another part that shows itself with an impish quick wit. More than once she
has made me burst out laughing or do a double-take only to see that soft smile
appear and her eyes sparkle a little brighter.
Take that, MS!
KATE MURPHY
Kate Murphy, RN, is a veteran nurse who joined us six years after Tina came
home. Kate brightens any room she enters. I kidded her and another nurse of
Irish descent about their talking together in low tones, like Mafia members. Kate
Murphy said, “It’s the Murphy-a.” She had been with us for about a year when I
asked for her comments. About Tina, she writes:
I came to work for the Cooper residence in March 2010....What I found on this
job is something I never encountered before. My patient, Tina, is an inspiration to
me, not to mention her devoted husband. Tina is the most appreciative patient I
have ever had the pleasure to take care of. I never met someone with her
limitations who showed such grace and caring and will to live. When I come to
give her care, she thanks me constantly. She is so gracious; she always wants to
know how I am doing. I make her laugh. We talk girl stuff!
When Tina says she has great nurses, I tell her that Mr. Cooper hand-picked us
like a bunch of flowers, just for Tina.
When I read poetry to her and I don’t know a word, she has me spell it out to her
and always knows its meaning. Sometimes we have great conversations. I wish I
had known her before she was ill.
I watch the love between her and Mr. Cooper. It’s a beautiful thing.
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I look forward to caring for her a long time.
ANGELA MULLINGS
Angela has worked with us as a nurse for a year now. Caring, competent,
cheerful, she is a joy. Her tribute starts with a quote from Helen Keller, a
different one from the one I used above:
“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They
must be felt in the heart,” wrote Helen Keller.
Tina, I admire your strength and courage. Thank you for your kindness, gratitude
and warmness you always show to everyone in your presence.
MICHELE SHEHATA
One of our “Class of 2010” nurses, Michele Shehata has impressed us with her
careful, caring nursing and her warm, mature personality. In only a year, she has
made a secure place for herself on our staff. She wrote this tribute to Tina:
I started working at the Cooper house in March of 2010. I knew from my first
meeting with Tina that I was going to enjoy working with her. She truly is a
special person. Tina’s kind nature, generosity of spirit, intelligence and her
courage are inspirational. Although there is much work to be done, there is
always time for a chat, and I always look forward to being in her presence.
Tina loves music, her dog Brandy, her nurse “friends,” Barbara, her family, and
her beloved husband. I believe that her sense of well-being and given health can
be attributed to a variety of factors, first of which is a true love that sustains her.
Second, excellent nursing and home care from an amazing group of women who
are caring and competent and who all manage to get along very well. I credit Mr.
Cooper for hand-picking each of Tina’s caregivers and for creating an
environment that is conducive to healing for Tina and welcoming for us. Last, I’d
add a little luck and a dose of divine intervention.
I wish Tina continued health and happiness and will take this opportunity to thank
her for the joy she has brought into my life. I’d also like to thank Mr. Cooper for
bringing me “on the team.” Some experiences affect us so deeply that we carry
them throughout our lives. My time at the Coopers will always be fondly
remembered.
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PHIL NODHTURFT, JR.
My best friend, extending all the way back to 1957, Phil Nodhturft, has chosen to
pay tribute to me in this book. I am deeply touched:
The year was 1957. I can’t believe that fifty-four years have passed since the
time Doug and I first became friends. Some people come into your life and exit
almost as quickly as they entered.
Not so with Douglas Winslow Cooper.
We met at Walden High School when my family moved from New York City.
Walden is a quiet little village nestled snugly in the heart of Orange County in the
Hudson Valley region of New York State, about 70 miles north of New York City.
Doug and I had absolutely nothing in common. He was exceptionally brilliant and
I was the average good-looking jock. He enjoyed taking classes like chemistry,
physics and calculus. I, on the other hand, relished in meeting girls in Mrs.
Gridley’s Home Economics class and looked forward to playing football after a
strenuous day of academics.
Doug also played on the football team, and this kid who was a year younger than
I intrigued me. As it turned out, we had a lot more in common than not. We both
came from large families. Each of our families had five children. Coincidentally,
we were the eldest of our siblings and we each had only one sister. We enjoyed
many of the same interests, and as we matured, those interests provided many
hours of enjoyment, as we sat around the dinner table recounting the good times
we shared.
I would have to say that the qualities that endeared Doug to me were his sense
of honesty and loyalty. Throughout the years of our friendship I have never once
doubted Doug’s motives. Although it might sound like a cliché, “Doug’s word is
his bond,” and that, in my judgment, shows the measure of this man.
Another quality I would like to add is the word “commitment.” It is this quality that
truly sets Doug apart from many other people I know. Let me explain. Doug is
married to his lifelong “soul mate,” Tina. Tina and Doug met when they were both
undergraduate students at Cornell University. At that time, Doug was taking
mathematics and chemistry, majoring in physics. Clearly, not the usual course
load, but as I’ve mentioned, Doug is not your usual “run of the mill” student.
Several months after Doug and Tina began dating, we met for dinner and Doug
told me that he had decided to add the study of Chinese to his already
demanding course load. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and inquired, “Why
would you add such a strenuous language to your already very heavy schedule?”
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Doug’s response was very matter of fact. He said that he had met Tina, who was
Chinese, and felt continuing on in the study of Chinese was the least he could do
for the “girl of his dreams.” Well, how could anyone argue with that logic?
There was only one small impediment to Doug’s plan. It’s called “in-laws,” or at
least “future in-laws.” Tina’s parents would not consider Doug as a worthy marital
partner. So, being a dutiful daughter, Tina acquiesced and their relationship
faltered for a while: in fact, each married someone else. As fate would have it,
their respective marriages were apparently not as blissful as they had hoped, and
each of them eventually divorced.
Several years passed before Doug and Tina had the opportunity to rekindle their
Cornell relationship. Only this time the parental objections were overcome by the
true feelings Doug and Tina shared for each other. Providence has a way of
searching out the truth; and in the case of Doug and Tina, the simple truth was
that they loved each other very dearly. Doug and Tina were married. Their
marital vows, “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse,
for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this
day forward until death do us part,” proved to be prophetic.
Throughout their married life, no one could ever doubt their love for each other.
To this day I remain in complete awe of my old high school friend. Unfortunately,
Tina has developed multiple sclerosis and is totally dependent upon others for
her care. Doug’s unwavering love and support for his Tina are demonstrated with
every passing day. Many lesser mortals would follow the advice of health care
professionals, to put Tina in a nursing home or a hospice, but not my friend
Doug. He made a commitment on their wedding day–and that commitment is one
Doug intends to keep. His entire life revolves around caring for and watching
over his beloved wife, Tina.
My wife, Virginia, and I have often talked about Doug and Tina with each other.
We have the utmost respect for Doug and the manner in which he has conducted
his life. I feel blessed to be counted as a friend of Douglas Winslow Cooper.
The Lord has made it possible for two loving soul-mates to be united forever in
the bonds of holy matrimony. Being the man that he is, Doug will continue to care
for his wife, in their home, and on his terms. In the end, our Creator will judge us
all. I have no doubt that Doug’s relationship with Tina and the commitment he
has demonstrated toward her will provide them both with everlasting peace.
Jesus has declared, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I
would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
When their time comes to a close on this earth, they will forever be reunited
under the watchful eye of our God. Until then, Doug and Tina’s special
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relationship will continue to be an inspiration for all who believe in the power of
love.
NORMAN WASSERMAN
Norman and his wife, Tatyana, brighten my life during their frequent weekend
visits to Lake Osiris between spring and fall. They are an engaging, progressive
couple, and I look forward to stopping to sit and chat with them, when Brandy
takes me for a walk around the lake. When possible, I have them visit Tina and
me at our home, too.
If I were a stranger coming upon Tina Cooper’s website [tinyurl.com/mfyh47] by
chance, I would be intrigued at the very least. I would linger over it, marveling.
But knowing Tina, however briefly—in 15-minute and 30-minute exposures,
scrupulously allocated to me and my wife, Tatyana, in recent years—it goes far
beyond just marveling. We came to Tina late, so to speak, and to Doug a bit
earlier. Words and photos cannot describe this relationship, the bonding that
reverberates in the air when they are together. There is Tina, supine or in a
wheelchair, often breathless, resorting to a mouthpiece for needed oxygen,
unexpectedly a comforting smiling and half-smiling force in a room of medical
machinery. There is an aura: of withstanding with great dignity. The wise softspokenness, the familiarity with pain–and also the peace and patience, face
brightened with little pleasures–understanding herself, understanding the efforts
of visitors to make it easier; the acceptance of fate without a hint of defeat; the
eye-worship of Doug, the empathy for his love of her, her love, her love of life
despite it all; the inconceivable sharing. Doug Cooper, the other partner: he who
gives and receives and reassures, the trembling human warmth beneath his
attentiveness, never flagging, businesslike and soft at the same instant; a
beacon, a buoy with boyish grin.
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