We started up the 1980s with a grand party. Though Sally’s 50th birthday was in March, I decided to celebrate it in October. I was able to get football tickets for about 30 people to the Notre Dame-Navy game, and we took our own bus to the stadium. Afterward, we came back to the house for a "Sadie in 80'' party complete with campaign buttons for everybody. It was a big success.
Then we played host to our friends Gunnar Horenstein and his wife Kirsten from Sweden. Gunnar did the Neuro-Op at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. That is the Nobel hospital. They came for the International Neuro-Op conference that we held in New York at the Rockefeller Institute.
The conference was in March, so I told them the weather in New York would be no problem. I could not have been more wrong. We had the biggest snowstorm in decades.
Gunnar and I got to New York OK, and the trains were still running. But when we came back to Darien, all the streets were covered with snow. We trudged home and finally got to the house. The weather was so bad that we could not go out to a St. Patrick’s party. Sara never lets me live it down because I am used to saying that March is almost springtime.
Kwai Me a River
One of my hobbies was collecting toy soldiers. I received an invitation to speak in Edinburgh, Scotland. While there, we took a day trip and saw Stirling Castle, which was the home of the Argyll and Southerland regiments. As I was leaving their library, I saw a picture of their regiment looking very poorly. It turned out to be when they were surrendering at Singapore.This was the regiment that built the Bridge on the River Kwai. This was made into a famous movie in 1957 starring Alec Guinness and William Holden.
The book was titled "Miracle on the Kwai'' and written by Ernest Gordon. When I returned home, I wrote the Brigade Major upon my return to get a copy of Gordon's book. It was out of print, and Gordon had long ago left the regiment. He had left Scotland and had gone to a theology seminary in Connecticut.
I got an address for Gordon and sent the book in the hopes it would be forwarded. Soon after, one of our friends had his son get married in Princeton, New Jersey. It was a typical corporate wedding since the father was a big deal at Texaco. Sally and I had a marvelous time. When we left the large Princeton University chapel, we congratulated the minister for a lovely service.
Then about late December, I received a package that looked like a request for money. I was about to throw it out, but I opened it. Inside the package was a copy of the book signed along with a lovely note. Gordon was the minister in Princeton.
The next spring, I was at the fireman’s dinner in Darien and was talking to one of the local ministers who was an honorary member like I was. I told him my story and he said he knew Gordon and that he gave a sermon each summer at his pulpit in Darien. It's a small world after all.
Packing Our Bags
It was in 1979 that we took our first trip to China. There was Sally, Meg and Kelly. At that time you had to go with a group since they could not handle individual reservations. We went with the girls' school group, and I was to do some medical lectures in Beijing and Shanghai on behalf of Yale Hospital.
Another great trip was a visit to Rome. As a Knight of Malta, I was invited to go to the investiture of cardinals at the Vatican. Our Bishop in New York was one. I did not want to go, so Sally and Aunt Joan went without me.
The New York group had it well organized. The weather was great for an outdoor ceremony, the transportation back and forth was perfect and Sally and Aunt Joan had front-row seats. They went to several parties and Masses at the new Cardinals church. They also took day trips to Florence and Pompeii. And they did some great shopping of which the kids and I were the recipients.
In 1979, I had a meeting for the Eye Study Club and our British counterpart. I will tell you about this in the trip section. However, I was the darling of the British since Sally and I did all the work. In 1980 at the annual meeting at Oxford, I was the guest speaker and one of the few non-British members. I’ll write more about this in the trip section.
During this decade, I made some good friends in England, including Mike and Thalia Saunders. Mike did the Neuro-Op at Queen Square in London. He invited me over many other times. We were always glad to go to London. We always stayed in Knightsbridge and he lived a little further out in Acton.
When we arrived during our first visit, he called to welcome me. He suggested he'd pick me up and drive me to the hospital. He asked if 9 a.m. was too early. I carefully said no. I usually have three hours of work done by that time. I will tell you more about that later.
We were also there to see the tennis matches at Wimbledon. I had asked a friend at Texaco if he could get me tickets, and I would pay for them. He said yes. It turns out Texaco was a sponsor and had a corporate tent.
Sally went one morning. My friend Mike was busy that afternoon and we decided to go our separate ways and meet later for dinner. I took the train out to Wimbledon. I told the man at the gate I was a guest of Texaco and they had my ticket. He did not believe me even when I showed him the tent. I even asked him to go over and check.
I was in one of my crazy moods and went to the next gate, which was guarded by some old-timer. I did a Marx Brothers routine and walked backward through the gate. He asked me where I was going, so I told him I was going out. He thought I was nuts, but I got in and was lost in the crowd before he could figure things out.
I went to the tent and had no problem. I was on my best behavior the rest of the day. The tickets were for seats at Centre Court. There was a TV, a tremendous buffet and a huge bar. When my host asked me how I got in, I told him my story and he thought I was crazy.
Our host and Texaco did a lot of things for all of us over the years, like helping Tommy use their house in London when I sent him over there to learn at Queen Square, and looking after Sara when she went to Austria.
The significance of the name Queen Square is a colloquium for the National Hospital for Neurological Diseases, which is England's top Neurological hospital. The term Queen Square is the actual address. Many years ago, one of residents on the street built his own water pump, which is known as the Yale Water Pump. The man who did that was Elihu Yale, who put up the money for the college that bears his name.
My Game Face
We made many trips to West Point for football and to Philadelphia, where we never missed an Army-Navy game. At one game, I had my face painted.
In the late '80s, we all went to a Notre Dame game at South Bend against Purdue. It was fabulous with all the activities starting on Friday and with a great pep rally that evening. The next day, I never saw such rain at a game. We sat through it all the way as did everybody else. After the game, we all went to the chapel and attended Mass. Every time we got up or sat down, you could hear the rustling of our wet clothes.
The hotel room we had was great, but it was the last room at the Hilton. It was the penthouse and had two baths. Between Sally and the girls, we used them both. When I booked the room, I asked the clerk how many did the suite sleep. He said that he did not know since they never counted them.
That weekend was the change from Daylight Saving Time, though most of Indiana did not believe in it anyway. Still, we had to change time zones when you go to Chicago. That Sunday morning, anybody we had asked did not know what time it was. We left early and ended taking an earlier flight home.
We made it to two more Notre Dame home games in the '90s. The second time we went it was the Florida State game in 1993. It essentially was the biggest football game of the year. They even set up special post offices with special stamps. At the game, there was an Air Force fly-by and so much else. Our accommodations were not as lavish this time but adequate.
During the '90s, we made many trips to London and I arranged to go to the Queen's birthday parade and the Chelsea flower show. By then we had entry to most of the clubs in London and we loved going to them. There was the Naval and Military club, which everybody called the In and the Out Club because they had those signs on the entrance driveways and on the door of the men’s bathroom.
Our hotel wasn’t fancy, but it was exactly what we wanted. It was situated just where we wanted to be. We always asked for our certain room so we could see the Horse Guards just across the street. On each floor, there was a small porch and we could watch them groom the horses while we had breakfast in our room.
The best feature was that the hotel had a huge ice machine. We would take a plastic bag and fill it with ice and put our sodas in it in the morning. Then when we came back late in the day, we would put our feet up to relax before dinner. Sally usually got some great cheese and crackers at Harrod’s. Usually, we were so busy all day that we didn’t eat lunch after enjoying a very good breakfast.
In 1982, I received word from my publisher that they would like a new edition of my book to publish it sometime in 1985. I agreed to do it. At the end of the year, I received my royalty check and summary of the book sales and inventory. At the bottom of the inventory list, it listed a large number of books that had been destroyed. I was upset. I would have sent them to my friends in China rather than destroying them. I told them that burning books went out with Hitler. The publisher told me it only kept an inventory to cover the projected sales for the next two years to keep the book from going out of print. If the publisher kept them, it would have to pay a yearly tax. I could just see them burning books in a pile in the park in front of their office in Philadelphia.
Hu's on First
In the '80s, we had lots of Neuro-Op friends come to visit us as houseguests, including several from China. Dr. Hu (pronounced Who) was an Ophthalmologist who was the head of a major teaching hospital in Beijing. I knew him when I was at Walter Reed in December for a big NIH meeting. Everybody looking for grant money came to bathe in the trough, including foreigners. I assumed he would be in town.
I sent a letter to Dr. Hu to join us for lunch at the Cosmos Club one Sunday if he was in town. Since the mail took so long, I told him to just show up. While we were having cocktails with our friends, in comes Junior Tennyson Hu with two girlfriends. I didn’t mind it being him rather than the elder Dr. Hu, but it reminded me of the Abbott and Costello routine of "Who's On First.'' We didn’t know Hu was on first.
Our friend Tennyson Hu later came up to Yale once. I remember driving him back to the house one Friday and he was singing "Bull Dog, Bull Dog, Bow Wow Wow, Eli Yale'' in Chinese. He had learned that when he was at the Yale School in China. When he got to the house and saw our kitchen, he insisted on making a Chinese dinner. The girls took him to the Palmer’s big supermarket. He got away from the girls with his cart and they went asking everyone in the aisles if they had seen a visiting Chinese professor with a shopping cart. He cooked that night but left an ungodly mess.
Another visitor was a Dr. Jang, an Ophthalmologist in Hunan province. She was not very sophisticated but had some great ideas. She knew I was going back to China. She translated my lectures into Chinese and used the Chinese national colors rather than Yale blue. One Friday after afternoon rounds and conference, I invited her down for the weekend. It was a bitter, cold night. Sally had turned on lots of lights and turned up the heat in the house. We went downstairs for some libation and the playroom was very warm. We had a fire in the small Franklin stove for effect. Dr. Jang asked if that small fire made all the heat in the house. We said no that we had a furnace. She asked, "What is a furnace?'' It tells you something about her life back in China.
Another visitor from China was Katherine Lao. She was much more mature and became a longtime friend of our family. She was the only Neuro-Op in China. She did her fellowship in Philadelphia. After we got to know each other better, she would tell us about China before Mao, during Mao and now. They thought she was one of those difficult intellectuals and sent her two children to Manchuria for retraining. They are all right now and her daughter is a dentist. Her son is an engineer.
I saw Katherine about 2004 when I was coming back from Mongolia. I stopped to see her and to get an honorary degree for the work I had done in China.
Colin Powell
One year, my secretary Sandy won a trip to the Oscars in Los Angeles. She was on her way to the Oscars, but the limo driver was from out of town and somehow got lost. They stopped a man at the curb. The darkened windows were somewhat intimidating for him. As the window was put down, he reached in his jacket. But at the last minute, he did not when he saw whom it was. It was Colin Powell.
I met Powell later at West Point when he received the Thayer Award. We all ate in the Cadet mess hall that day. After dinner, he gave a speech. In a very nice tone, he pointed out he was from Hunts Point (the Bronx) and not West Point. When he was Secretary of State, my friend John Countryman would invite me to his briefings at the State Department for the retirees. If I was in town, I would go. It was very enjoyable.
My son Tommy was in medical school at Wake Forest and was considering his specialty, which was to be surgery. One the best places was the University of Washington in Seattle. One Friday afternoon while Sally and I were dressing to go out to dinner, I called a doctor friend, Tom Carey, to see if he could get Tommy permission to visit the school for a few weeks. He called me back one hour later. He received permission to come, and the chief of cardiovascular surgery would take him under his wing. And Carey had a room for him and would loan him of one of his cars.
Joking, I asked him what took him so long. While Tommy was there, my friend took Tommy out for dinner with the chief of surgery and the dean, so his Residency was signed and sealed.
Tommy, however, went to the Pittsburgh with the help of another friend of mine whom I had trained with from the days when I used to borrow surgical beds.
Once in a while, I would make a special effort to make a new patient feel at home. The local Jewish population was big for bringing over relatives from Russia and finding them a home in one of the nearby apartment buildings. They brought one of them in one day and she did not speak any English. I tried to be very sociable by welcoming her in Russian, which I took at the Academy. Suddenly, this nice quiet old lady was in a fit. Turned out she was born in the country of Georgia, and they hate Russians. It does not pay to do a good turn.