Thursday, June 01, 2006
When I got back from work today Erika told me that her Grandfather had died the night before.
She was taking it well, and as this has been expected for some time, it wasn't a huge surprise. Still a hard thing to bear, but in some ways, due to his condition, a relief as well.
Her Mother was also reported to be doing okay, and she had actually gone to see him and Erika's Grandmother the weekend before (that was the weekend of three dogs, which was an experience in itself). He has had something akin to Alzheimer’s for years, so there was essentially no-one at home; he didn't recognize his daughter, and he didn't even recognize his wife. They both lived in a seniors' home in Cleveland, and for the past couple of years at least he lived in a continuous care ward.
He was my Grandfather-in-Law, but I sometimes liked to think of him as my Grandfather, never having known any of my Grandparents (they were all gone by the time I was one year old). He was Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Case Western University, and I believe for a time was "in competition" with the likes of Watson and Crick to discover the shape of DNA. In the 50s he managed to get on Senator McCarthy's list of supposed Communist sympathizers, apparently for having given the Russians the formula for a high explosive. I gather that his reasons for doing this were not political, but because he knew that a couple of shipments of the substance sent to the Russians had been sunk by Nazi U-boats and he handed over the formula in order to prevent this sort of thing happening again. I may have some of the facts wrong, but that's how I remember the story. As a result of being on the McCarthy blacklist he couldn't find work in the States for the longest time, so he went north to Montreal and taught at McGill for several years. Later, when McCarthy was himself a thing of the past, he moved back to the States and taught genetics in CWR in Cleveland. He was a world traveler, and before he and his wife moved to the seniors' home I remember admiring the artworks they had collected from their trips to exotic locales back from a time when they were truly exotic.
I still remember him fondly from his 85th and 90th birthday parties, the former held in Toronto, and latter in Cleveland. He enjoyed his ice cream, and several varieties were on hand in large quantities at the former occasion. Many old friends and former students attended him at his 90th, which was held in a large meeting room at the seniors’ home. This was a man who left a significant academic legacy. I remember having a few minutes to chat with him at that bash, which was a time when he was still lucid, but when he realized he was slowly losing his memory. I asked him whether or not he still kept up with the latest scientific developments in his field. He said no, citing his failing memory, and mentioned that he had recently dropped his subscription to Nature magazine, to which he had subscribed to for something close to 50 or more years. They apparently sent him a note along with a complementary subscription saying that anyone who had subscribed that long deserved a lifetime subscription.
I didn't see him at the depths of his decline, but Erika and my daughters did get to see him on a weekend excursion to Cleveland a few months ago. Vanessa remembered him from when he was more lucid, but Annie was too young to remember him from previous visits. When Erika mentioned the death to them both, Vanessa cried, but Annie was unsure how to react, as she found him in his later stages "a bit creepy".
A sad end to a man I always admired, but a case where death seems a genuine release.
Postscript: an extensive obituary from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
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