Had the pleasure recently of re-establishing contact with a former UConn colleague, Carroll Burke. Carroll was on the faculty of the Pathobiology department, where she directed UConn’s electron microscopy lab and subsequently became Director of the Institute of Water Resources. She also co-authored a manual on basic virology laboratory techniques that still is used as a standard text at many universities. Forty-five years or so ago, the two of us had both been engaged in separate projects that required large volumes of data for analysis by computer, which was a formidable task because, a) all the data had to be punched onto cards for input into the computer, and b) “THE” computer (there was only one in all of New England) was located at MIT in Cambridge, where the MIT folks were kind enough to allow other New England universities to use it Monday to Friday, 12 midnight to 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. to noon on Saturday.. (The MIT computer at that time was the most powerful IBM had ever built, and it had a whopping … hold your breath … 36 K of RAM. Also, IBM didn’t sell it to MIT; instead it was leased for $40,000 a month!) UConn had only two card-punching machines in its data processing center at the time; access to them was strictly rationed, and difficult to obtain. So, Carroll and I would share our allotments, helping punch each other’s data. We spent many an afternoon and evening merrily … or exhaustedly, depending on what kind of day it had been … punching data onto cards, followed by a late-night drive to MIT together in a state-owned car from the university motor pool; (UConn didn‘t allow reimbursement for travel by private auto in those days.) (Another “small world” bit …UConn’s motor pool at the time was under the purview of a gentleman named Colonel Moyle, who was a relative of a wonderful little girl named Katherine Orme, who years later became my daughter-in-law!) A funny note about Carroll and I traveling by car together. We soon discovered we both felt very comfortable with the other driving, and then discovered it was because neither of us had any depth perception. That meant we were seeing distances between cars similarly, albeit we both probably were unknowingly driving too close or too far from other vehicles and thus being a menace to every other driver on the road! But we felt comfortable while doing it. :-) :-) Anyone who’s ever worked at a University knows competition between faculty can on occasion be rather vicious, especially in matters relating to tenure, promotion and salaries. At such times, it‘s good to have friends who can be counted on for support, and Carroll always filled the bill for me and other members of my department. It‘s a real “upper“ being back in contact with her.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 03:53:23 +0000