In this episode, we wrap up talking about my brief two years working at the IU Department of Medical Genetics.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 79 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, we wrap up talking about my brief two years working at the IU Department of Medical Genetics.

One of my fondest memories of working in the Genetics Department was a cookout we were invited to at the home of Drs. John and Judith Gersting. I mentioned in a previous episode that he enjoyed restoring vintage Ford Thunderbird cars. He had recruited one of his programming classes to write software that kept track of scoring the judging of classic cars at car shows.

At the cookout, I had the opportunity to see one of his impeccably restored vintage Thunderbirds and another one that was a work in progress at the time. After my dad picked me up from the cookout, I told him about it. He was quite angry. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about it before we left? Didn’t you think I would be interested in seeing his car collection?” Whoops. Sorry, Dad. My bad. Dad didn’t restore classic cars, but he enjoyed working on cars. He did a phenomenal job restoring the old junk pickup truck he bought from my brother-in-law. I should’ve known he would have enjoyed seeing Dr. Gersting’s vehicles.

As I mentioned before, eventually, the genetics department began to run out of money. The work we did there was almost entirely funded by grant money. Research grants take a long time to process. You have to search for where grant money is available. You write a proposal that you think will interest them. Then you wait—sometimes months—while your proposal competes with dozens or more other proposals, all of which want the same small batch of money. To keep a steady flow of money coming in, you have to plan far in advance.

We have spoken at length about Dr. Donald Merritt, the department chairperson, who interviewed me for the job. Even though he was a bit of an ass, I’m sad to report that he developed skin cancer and had to resign. He eventually succumbed to the disease. The next person in line, I forget his name, was appointed “Acting Chairman.” The problem was he didn’t want to act until he was certain he was going to become the official chairman. There was a possibility they would hire someone from outside the department to take over. We had an acting chairman who wouldn’t act.

Our database project was Dr. Merritt’s pet project. No one was sure if our project would be a priority for the new chairman. No one was writing new grant proposals, and the money was running out.

One of the geneticists who was more closely a supervisor than Dr. Merritt was a Korean-born guy named Dr. KeWon Kang. He wrote a grant proposal and asked me to proofread it. I told him my spelling skills were terrible, but I would take a look at it. Even with my horrific lack of ability to spell, I could see there were numerous spelling errors. It was also written in very broken English, obviously by someone for whom English was not their native language.

It wasn’t just the spelling and bad grammar. Most of it was incoherent, and I’m not saying that because I did not understand the genetics. It was just a terrible piece of writing.

I was very blunt with him. I told him that if you submitted that proposal, it would be an embarrassment to you personally and to the department as a whole. I told him that I knew nothing about writing grant proposals. I explained I was incapable of fixing this one, but I could tell by looking at it that it was a mess.

I acknowledged that I understood that English wasn’t his first language. I said, “You need to look at this like it’s a disability. I don’t go around attempting to do things I’m physically incapable of doing. You shouldn’t be writing proposals in English when you don’t have the communication skills to do so effectively. I can write English well enough with the help of someone checking my spelling, but I don’t have the background and know what it takes to get grant money. So I can’t do this for you. You need to find someone who knows what they’re doing and can do it for you.”

I didn’t fault him for not having the skills to do the job. I did fault him forgot recognizing his own limitations before nearly making a fool of himself.

There was a fixed amount of money left, and no new money was coming in. It was just a matter of time before the entire project would be shut down. Even if we did get some money in time, it was unlikely that the funding levels would be as high as they had been. People started looking for employment elsewhere. They had spouses and children to think about. They couldn’t afford to be off work for several months until they found a new position.

On the other hand, I was living with my parents, paying a token rent. If the project shut down and it took me six months to find another position, I could handle it.

Linda, the divorcee who continued to sleep with her ex-husband, was the first to go. I don’t know where she ended up finding employment. When she left, they didn’t replace her, which meant that the rest of us could stay a little longer. I moved into her office, which was one of three immediately adjacent to the computer room. Before that, I had been in an office across the hall.

A couple of months later, Buz left. As I mentioned in the previous episode, he found employment with Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals. They used Hewlett-Packard computers, which were often connected to laboratory equipment in those days. He was familiar with them. As I mentioned, he had a Master’s degree in chemistry, so the job was ideal for him. Also, as I mentioned previously, we stayed closely in touch for many years, generally visiting once a week.

Dale was the last to leave before me. I don’t know where she found employment or what happened to her. I considered her a friend and should’ve tried to stay in touch. When she left, I moved into her office—it was the biggest one.

As I mentioned before, I typically arrived at 8:30 AM even though everyone else arrived around 9. I would go straight to the office and start running a file conversion program. It would take data from punchcard files in our old format and convert it into the new format for our database. If there was no new data yet ready, I would run the data consistency check program that I had written. These programs would take a couple of hours to run, so I would start them early in the morning and then take off to go for breakfast at the Student Union Building.

That building was about two blocks away, across the medical center campus. It had a cafeteria, bakery shop, ice cream bar, bookstore, full-size swimming pool, lounge areas, and hotel rooms typically used by people visiting the University to attend conferences or perhaps for visiting parents. It also housed IUPUI’s DEC-System 10 mainframe computer, which I had used remotely via computer terminals from the 38th Street campus throughout my nine semesters of computer science studies.

Beginning when I was a student programmer, I had lunch there every day. When I went full-time, because I arrived so early, I would often have breakfast there as well.

When the weather was warm, I would go out a back door of Riley Hospital near the loading dock and drive my wheelchair in the street to the Student Union.

One day, while I was on this journey, a photographer from the IUPUI newspaper snapped a photo of me from behind. You can see the photo in the YouTube version of this episode. The caption read, “When the first warm breezes of the year caused strolling students to crowd the sidewalks of Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis last week, one student found HER own way to avoid the crowd around the Student Union Building.”

First of all, I was in the street because the sidewalks didn’t have curb cuts. But more importantly, I had such long hair that the editor thought I was a girl. One day during lunch, I made my way all the way back to Cavanaugh Hall to the newspaper offices and asked to speak to the photographer. The guy I spoke to said, “I took that photo.”

“Well,” I said, “as you can see. I’m not a she.”

He let out a sigh and said, “I knew that. I tried to tell my editor that. He insisted on the caption even after I said you were male.”

Wow… So much for accuracy in journalism.

In bad weather, I would take the underground tunnels that connected the basements of nearly all of the buildings in the IU Medical Center. It was a longer trip through the tunnels than the aboveground journey, but I could get there without putting on a coat or being out in the weather.

Most of the buildings had no doors where the basements connected to the tunnels, but the Student Union had a door at either end of a long hallway. The doors opened outward, so when leaving, I could just push those doors open with my wheelchair. However, getting in was more difficult. I couldn’t pull them, so I would have to wait for someone else to come along and open the door.

I eventually discovered that if I took the long way around to the far basement door, it was usually cracked slightly ajar. I could wedge my wheelchair footrest into it and open it myself.

I heard that after 9/11, all of the tunnels were closed off to public access for security reasons. They installed locked doors or steel grating. Only maintenance people who had specific needs to use the tunnels were allowed access. I wondered if I would have been able to persuade them not to lock it down if I was still working there. Were there other disabled people who used those tunnels? Even if they issued me a key, I wouldn’t have been able to operate it on my own. I was very disappointed even though I had not worked there for decades.

At lunch each day, I never had any trouble asking strangers to help me with my cafeteria tray. The cafeteria made a really nice cheeseburger and steak fries. I would also get a Coke. I don’t recall ever ordering anything other than that from the cafeteria for the entire two years.

They had a pastry shop with fresh-baked donuts and coffee every morning. I would order a glazed twist donut, a cup of coffee, and two sugars. The lady who worked there began to recognize me, and I didn’t need to give my order after a while. She would just say, “The usual?” And I would say, “Yes.” She would come out from behind the counter and hand the food to me. I could put the napkin-wrapped doughnut in my lap and carry the coffee.

Nearby, there was a lounge area with some tables. I would sit there and eat my donut and drink my coffee. The TV was on every day. It was usually tuned to “Good Morning America.” I would have preferred “The Today Show,” but I was never there very long, so it didn’t matter.

An old friend of mine from Roberts School, Chris Fryman, was often sitting there in his wheelchair watching TV. We were in kindergarten together, but somewhere along the way, he was held behind a year or two because he missed a bunch of school for medical reasons. He had osteogenesis imperfecta, a.k.a. brittle bone disease. He had lived just a few blocks from me, and we rode the same school bus for 13 years. I didn’t know what had happened to him after high school, so I was surprised to see him there.

I asked him what he had been up to since high school, and he said, “Nothing.” His dad was the building’s maintenance supervisor. His parents divorced when he was young, and he lived with his dad. He had nowhere to go and nothing to do every day, and although he was somewhat independent, he could not be alone all day. So, he would come to work with his dad and just sit in the lounge of the Student Union Building, watching TV all day.

Eventually, he found a job working in the building. As I mentioned, they had a swimming pool there. He manned the desk, checking IDs and handing out towels. I was happy he finally had a job. I spoke to his dad, Jim, one day, asking why Chris never went to college or tried to get a better job. I didn’t want to ask something that personal of Chris directly. Jim explained that Chris had never done very well academically and was not college material. I never knew what kind of grades he had and presumed he was held back mostly for medical reasons, but perhaps he also had some sort of learning difficulties.

After I quit working at genetics, I never heard from him again. Google searches tell me that his mother died in 2017 at age 85 and was preceded in death by her first husband, James, and her son, Christopher. I had forgotten his dad’s name. Another search revealed that Jim died in 1994 at age 62. That same record mentioned his son Chris died in 1983 at age 28. We were never very close, but I had known him for many years, and I’m sad that he had never had the opportunity to accomplish much. I hope he had a happy life anyway.

I have fond memories of the Student Union Building. A few years ago, I was writing a blog about my college experiences and went looking for a photo of the building. I couldn’t find it on Google Maps. I didn’t realize it had been torn down in 2010 to make room for the new Eskenazi Hospital, which opened in 2013.

My original script for this episode said that I could only find one low-res image of the Union Building, but while preparing this podcast, I found dozens of images in the IUPUI Digital Archives. It includes construction photos from 1952, lots of photos from 1956 when the IU School of Nursing was opened, and some more current versions from 2004, which depict the building as I remembered it from the late 1970s. Although IUPUI wasn’t officially formed until 1969, the IU Medical Center has been around in one form or another since the early 1900s. See the YouTube version for some of these photos and the links in the description for the entire archive and a history timeline of Indiana University in Indianapolis.

After everyone left, it was strange working alone in the genetics department. I don’t recall, but I don’t believe we continued to have the weekly Friday afternoon staff meetings. The only people around the computer area were me and the keypunch lady, Paula.

There was no pressure to get anything done. Any progress I made was appreciated because their expectations had diminished to zero under those conditions. Some days, I just sat around the office, occasionally checking on the status of the file conversion process. I would sit at Dale’s desk reading an Analog Science Fiction Magazine that I had picked up at the Student Union Bookstore.

Despite the lack of pressure, my health began deteriorating. I would get headaches every day and take some Anacin Aspirin. In the afternoon, I would take a break and go upstairs to a vending machine room in the hospital and grab a Coke.

I had no realization of how much strain this was putting on my heart: coffee for breakfast, Coke for lunch, afternoon Coke for a break, and sometimes Coke for supper. And I was unaware that Anacin brand aspirin also contained caffeine.

At the end of the day, I was exhausted. I would go to bed immediately after supper and fall asleep quickly. In the morning, I was still a mess.

I became severely constipated, and I thought that I was bloated so much it was affecting my breathing. After about three days of this, I went in to work one morning in April 1979 and just couldn’t function. At about 11 AM, I picked up the phone and called my dad at the sheet metal shop where he worked about a mile away. I told him I had to go home. I was exhausted.

As I went to hang up the phone, my arm slipped, and I dropped the receiver. I managed to fling it forward enough that it landed on top of the phone, and I was able to wiggle it into place to hang up. I told someone I was leaving. I went to the lobby and waited for Dad. When I got home, I immediately went to bed.

I never returned to the offices of the Indiana University Department of Medical Genetics.

In our next episode, we will discuss the downward spiral of my health that turned my life upside down.

I suppose before we go, I should close out the Gersting Chronicles.

Some years later, when my sister Karen was in high school, I went to a regional science fair where she exhibited. Drs. John and Judy Gersting’s son Adam, who was approximately my sister’s age, was also exhibiting there. I had a brief, friendly conversation with John.

One day, my friend Rich and I were in a computer store to purchase a copy of the newly released MS-DOS version 6.0, and we ran into Dr. Gersting. Google tells me that would’ve been March 1993. I was able to brag that I had co-authored a book on computer graphics.

I think it was at that encounter that he told me that he had converted our entire genetics database software package to run under Fortran on an IBM PC. They had sold off the big PDP 11/70 because a single PC was more than sufficient to run the entire project. The guy who was the acting chairman was finally appointed permanent chair, and funding was finally resumed. I don’t know if they ever hired any additional programming staff, but they had to hire someone to manage the database

I attended a software conference once, but I don’t remember when. Gersting was in attendance, and we had a nice chat.

A few years ago, I read an article about a new and innovative educational model. You would insist that a student have complete mastery of a block of material before allowing them to proceed to more material in the subject. I laughed out loud about these “innovative and new concepts.” Hell, Gersting had been doing it decades earlier. We couldn’t go to the next chapter in his book until we had passed the quiz on the previous chapter 100%.

I had heard that the Gerstings had moved to Hawaii to take teaching positions there but had returned to Indianapolis and were now listed on the IUPUI website as Professor Emeritus. I obtained their email addresses from their staff listings on the website and sent them both an email reminding them of who I was, including a link to the article about the new and innovative educational concepts. They were both genuinely pleased to hear from me and to hear that I was alive and well.

Once this episode goes public, I will email them again. They are still listed on the IUPUI website as Professor Emeritus, and I’ve not discovered any obituaries for them, so I’m hoping they are still around.

It was a great honor to study with them and to have them consider me a colleague. I have learned more than computer programming from them both, and I cherish all these memories I have shared with you over the past many episodes.

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