After the trip to Russia, my father opened a store in Newark, New Jersey. Mary Orloff had been living with her brother Sam Orloff and family in Roselle Park, New Jersey. Sam and Celia Orloff had two sons, Arthur and George. I think it was in June, 1932 that I went to live with my father and Aunt Mary.
We had an apartment near the store in Newark. During the fall, I was enrolled in Weequahic High School. However, I did not go to this high school for very long. I ended up being enrolled in a boarding school in Lakewood, New Jersey. The school was the Fischel Boarding School on Madison Avenue. There were boys and girls in this school, however, not many. There were two groups at the school; one group had children who were below the seventh grade and the other group had students in the seventh and above grades. There was one teacher for our group, a Captain Platzer. Captain Platzer was a West Point graduate and was now a teacher. He was in the reserves and once a month he dressed up in a uniform with boots and a sword. He would go to some military exercise for a day. There were one or two students in each grade. I would get an assignment in each subject I was taking and I worked alone. Occasionally Captain Platzer would spend time with each student. French and algebra were among the subjects that gave me most trouble as Captain Platzer was a poor teacher. Frankly, thinking back to this time, I had very poor preparation for the high school level. I certainly did not develop good study habits at this school.
I was assigned a space in a room that had four beds and the three roommates were about my age. I believe each bed had a locker next to it for storing clothes and personal effects. I do not think that the roommates were particularly friendly. I suspect that the children in this school came from broken homes or there were personal problems. Sometime later in the year after I entered the school, a boy by the name of Saul came was enrolled in the school. Saul became my one and only friend at the school. There also were girls enrolled in this school and some of the girls were about my age. We were at the stage of teen age flirting. The girl's quarters were on another floor and it was on this floor that there was a bathroom with a bathtub. Saul and I would go together for a bath and we met a girl or two occasionally where there were quick kisses after leaving the bathroom.
I remember getting to know Lakewood resident teens of about my age. One was a girl whose father was a writer. The writer’s pen surname was Covenor and I was acquainted with his weekly feature Yenta Telebenda, in the Yiddish newspaper, The Forward. Covenor’s daughter had gatherings of friends at her house and I was invited several times. Her father came into the living room once and he seemed kind of unhappy with the gathering, but he said nothing.
When the summer of 1933 came the Fischel school moved to a large house on a New Jersey beach. I do not think it was Asbury Park but it was close. I was particularly unhappy there and one day I walked out and hitch hiked to Roselle Park. I went to Sam and Celia Orloff's house. George who was several years older than I am was there. I was not made to return to the Fischel School. So, in 1933, during what was left of the summer I was sent to an area near Peekskill, New York. This area called "the bergal.(Yiddish for the small hill)”. There were houses and tents in this area and the people all belonged to some radical societies. I was boarded by a family named Wishnefsky, or something like that. I slept in a tent with a son of my age and the son had leg braces due to an attack of polio. I believe his first name was Morris (I am not sure) and he kept repeating the term “comes the revolution.” There was a no longer used quarry that was filled with water. That was the swimming hole.
At the eastern end of the Queensboro Bridge, which connects Manhattan and Queens, there is an area called Long Island City. Queens Plaza was a sort of center of local transportation where the elevated train tracks were part of the subway IRT (Interborough Transit) and the BMT (Brooklyn Manhattan Transit) systems. It was at the Queens Plaza station that one could change between systems without additional fares. As a reminder, the subway system and trolley car fares were five cents ($0.05). The BMT elevated train tracks ran in a northern direction along 31st Street in Astoria. The IRT tracks ran in an easterly direction to Flushing. Steinway Street is parallel to 31st Street and it is between 38th Street and 41st Street. The southern end of Steinway Street ends at Northern Boulevard. Northern Boulevard runs easterly from Queens Plaza. When one crossed Northern Boulevard from the end of Steinway Street, there was a long viaduct over the Pennsylvania and Long Island railroad tracks and railroad train storage yards. Beyond the viaduct one comes into the Sunnyside area and the IRT elevated train tracks along Queens Boulevard.
Celia Orloff maintained the store in Newark when my father opened the store on Steinway Street in Astoria. George Orloff told me that he worked for my father at the Newark store before the manufacturing part was moved to Astoria. The Newark store was closed eventually. My father’s new store address was 3146 Steinway Street and it was between Broadway and 31st Avenue. The store had fixtures built by my father. The front part of the store had racks to hang dresses on both sides, I think a center counter (but I may be wrong), and a counter with a cash register. On going into the back of the store, there was a long table on the left side and this was for spreading and cutting goods. On the right side there were a number of sewing machines. What the rest of the store back looked like draws a blank. I believe there was only one outside display window and that was on the left side looking from the street. There was a neighboring store occupied by a furrier with the surname Feller.
Our apartment building at 3215 41st Street was close to Broadway. I slept in the living room of our one bedroom, one bathroom apartment. We lived in this building at a time when an apartment got painted the yearly lease was signed,. It seemed that it was simpler to move our meager furniture and belongings into another newly painted apartment each year. All the apartments were similar. My bed was made from what was called a studio couch. There was a piece of furniture in the living room which served as a desk and a place for clothing storage. Above three drawers there was a panel which opened into a flat surface. I believe that I had a bookcase in the living room. There also was a table in the living room. There probably was an upholstered chair and a straight-backed chair in the living room. The small kitchen had a table and there were several chairs around the table. .
The daily life at this time frame is mostly forgotten. I believe that there was what today is called a “mom and pop” grocery store on Broadway and later a large market, also on Broadway. Before placing selected groceries on a counter, the grocer would list the price of each item on a brown bag and then calculate the total. Today, an electronic calculator set-up is absolutely necessary, totaling the prices of sale items. My father left for the store early in the morning and he kept it open until 10 PM at night This occurred six days a week. Now I wonder who made breakfast or what breakfasts were like. Lunch on school days is a complete mystery. Dinners are also a bit hazy. I do remember eating often at a counter in some sort of restaurant across the street from my father’s store. As for practical things such as how clothes were laundered or cleaned, I have no recollection. I suspect there was what was called a “Chinese Laundry” on Broadway. At this time, laundry stores operated by Chinese men were inexpensive to use and they were quite plentiful. I also am completely hazy about the clothes I wore and where and when clothes for me were purchased.
I spent some, but very little, free time in the back of the store where my father manufactured the aprons and dresses that he sold in front of the store. Mary worked in the store with my father. He always had difficulty in hiring sewing machine operators because they usually were not fast enough for him. I earned a quarter an hour on Saturdays by spreading goods on a long table. After all the spreading was finished, my father would draw the outlines of patterns on the top of the pile of goods. Then an electric cutting machine was used to cut out the areas of cloth that would eventually become aprons and dresses.
Sunday was the day of rest. So on Sundays we would visit either my father’s family or Mary’s family. Mary had a cousin, she called her sister. The cousin was Sonia Silverman and her husband was Bernard Silverman. Bernard worked for the Daily News and he was on the night shift (midnight to the morning). They had two daughters, Shirley and Rita. The girls were a bit younger than myself. Mary’s brother, Sam Orloff, was a salesperson for a grocery distribution company. The two sons, Arthur and George, were both older than me. I know that we visited Uncle Max and Aunt Fanny often. Quite often members of Aunt Fanny’s family, the Brusteins, were also visitors. Also we visited Uncle Joe and Aunt Bertha quite often. There were total family meetings at Uncle Joe and Aunt Bertha’s house (1840 Summerfield Street in Ridgewood, Queens). I also got to know a lot of Aunt Bertha’s family because there were days I would go to their house for companionship with Norman. Uncle Joe had cars as far back as I can remember and we would go to Uncle Max’s farm all together. I remember being in the car with Norman while on the farm and we played that we were on a space ship. I believe we turned the odometer to indicate the miles of our travel. Of course, the odometer could be turned and I suppose Uncle Joe never really knew how many miles the car had been driven. Less often, we would see Uncle Isaac and Aunt Miriam. When I was in my later teens I visited Uncle Isaac in his pharmacy and I would sit in awe as I watched him take portions of powders and liquids from various bottles and prepare medications to fill prescriptions. Today, the pharmacist has bottles of ready-made medications from which ordered doses are dispensed. All in all, there remains with me today warm feelings of the family meetings. After World War II the family scattered and we, the younger generation of the Rodnianskys (nee Rodninsky and Radin), became the older generation.
It seemed that I always had the means for going to the movies, having an occasional hot dog, the fare to ride the subway system, and buy books and magazines. I think that when my mother was alive, I opened a bank account and it may have been done as an elementary school project. When we settled in Astoria, I was given an allowance of two dollars a week and that was for the subway or trolley fare needed to ride to school and for lunches. I believe to save money for other expenditures, I walked to school instead of riding on a trolley car and I suspect that I skipped lunch during school days. After the age of 14, I amassed some money when I worked for my father. There was a short interval in which I had a job delivering dresses for some manufacturer in Manhattan. The dresses were delivered to apartments in posh areas and I would get some tips. That job did not last long. I wonder if I still had a bank account to draw money for my expenditures on items such as books and hobby materials. At used stores in Manhattan I bought old medical and various science books. I believe the prices were about ten cents for books that I bought. I bought popular pulp magazines such as The Shadow, Operator Five, and Doc Savage. These magazines used rough textured paper and were about ten cents each.
When we lived in Brooklyn before my age of 12 years, it became apparent that I was not going to be a ball player. In front of our apartment house on Madison Street, box ball was played. Three bases and home plate were marked out on the street with chalk and a rubber ball was pitched underhanded toward home plate. A member of the opposing team would hit the ball with his fist and the rest is like baseball. A variation called punch ball was that a batter would punch a ball toward fielders. These games were a forerunner of stick ball played in the streets of New York. In stick ball, a ball was hit by a batter with a stick which may be part of a broom. I was a real dud for I could neither hit a ball or catch a ball. When I went to camp and I had to play softball or basketball, I was usually the last one to be picked on a team.
However, I became an ardent sports fan. There was an intense rivalry between the National League baseball teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. I cannot explain why I became a New York Giant fan as I was raised in Brooklyn. I never went to see a Brooklyn Dodgers ball game at their home stadium, Ebbets Field. I did watch exciting “sand-lot” baseball games across the way from Uncle Max”s farm. The first real professional baseball game I saw was played at the Polo Grounds (upper Manhattan) and at that game the future
baseball Hall-of Fame Carl Hubbell pitched for the New York Giants. Also another legend who played in this game and eventually a member of the baseball Hall of Fame was Mel Ott, who set slugging records for the New York Giants. The New York Yankees also became an exciting team to watch, however I was ever loyal to the New York Giants. As time passed the teams players changed and I will say here that I did go to the Polo Grounds often. Another New York Giant legend I saw play was Willie Mays. It was when the New York Giants became the the San Francisco Giants in 1958 and the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers that I lost a team to root for. Although we live in Atlanta, Georgia, at this time, although I still like to watch baseball games, I have lost interest in the Atlanta Braves and the game in general because of the outrageous salaries given to ball players. I still am slightly loyal to the former New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants.
For a while I was a fan of professional boxing during the era from the famous long-count of the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney heavyweight championship fight through the time Max Baer and his brother Buddy Baer fought in the heavyweight class. Many fights were held at the Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and a new outdoor boxing stadium, the Madison Square Bowl was built between Northern Boulevard and the railroad yards in the Astoria area. Some of us teen-agers were allowed into the Bowl toward the end of the heavyweight championship fight between Primo Carnera and Max Baer. Although Primo Canera was large I was impressed by the seemingly just about as large Max Baer. Max Baer was Jewish and he wore the Star of David on his boxing trunks. He won that fight with Primo Carnera. As far as I am concerned it was after the last fight in which Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round that I lost interest in boxing.
I don’t remember when I became a football fan. I suspect the time was when I went to college because being on campus of a major university in the fall brings on football fever. I still am a fan of college football games, especially of teams fielded by the universities I attended. Eventually I became interested in professional football and for a while I was a New York Giant football team fan. Now in Atlanta, I watch the Atlanta Falcons play on TV, but I have not gone to a game in person. In general, I do not want to support professional sports because of the outrageous salaries the players are getting.
After moving into our apartment in Astoria, I began to build model airplanes from kits sold for that purpose. A kit would contain thin pieces of balsa wood with imprints of patterns for airplane parts. Inasmuch as balsa wood is soft, the airplane parts pattern could be cut out with a razor blade. The airplane would then be assembled by gluing the parts according to the plans. The kit had paper which was used to cover the airplane frame. The propeller and the back end of the airplane were connected with a rubber band. By revolving the propeller the rubber band would be wound up and when the propeller was released it was supposed to revolve rapidly enough for the model airplane to fly. My models never did fly. The last model that I built was from a plan which I drew from a photo of a Condor biplane with skis. This was a model of an airplane flown by Admiral Byrd at the South Pole. I entered the model in a science fair at the New York Museum of Natural History. Lo and behold, I won a prize of twenty-five dollars ($25.00). At the time I built model airplanes, I had the desire to have a future career as an aeronautical engineer. This desire changed when I took chemistry in high school.
I became acquainted with quite a few boys and girls as I was growing up in Astoria. I met Mildred (Millie) Braun (who lived in Astoria with her mother and father), and Sylvia Osorovitz, Sol Weber, Sol Goldman, Gordon Levin, Leonard Henschel, Danny Greenberg (surname changed to Green later on), Leonard Henschel, and Joseph Romm, all who lived in Sunnyside across the Pennsylvania and L.I. Railroad tracks from Astoria, at Bryant High School. Quite often we all met at a Jewish Center in Sunnyside. I would go to Millie’s apartment and together we would walk to Sunnyside for a gathering or a get-together at the Jewish Center on a Sunday night. I was treated nicely by Millie’s parents. Millie’s father died because of cancer at a relatively young age. Sylvia Osorovitz’s apartment was a gathering place for some of us. Joe Romm’s parents had a dry goods store and the family seemed to live behind the store. During the summer Joe’s parents ran a store in Far Rockaway and a group of us would go to the store, change to bathing suits in a room behind the store, and then spend the day at the beach. I remember stopping at Sol Goldman’s apartment to start our rounds of picking up other members of the group. Sol’s mother was talkative, loud and shrill. His father always sat in his undershirt near a window. Sol Weber’s father ran a grocery or deli and we would meet Sol at the store. Gordon Levin lived in an apartment . His father would always be sitting near a window listening to the radio. Gordon’s younger sister was beautiful and had flaming red hair. She was not part of our crowd. Leonard Henschel lived in a small house and we probably met Danny Greenberg at Sylvia’s apartment. The group would walk around chatting and we that eventually we would end up in someone’s house. Most of the fellows were one class ahead of me at Bryant High School. We all went to a school prom when I was still in my junior year. I asked one of the girls from the Jewish Center to go with me and she accepted. I rented a tuxedo and all I can say now is that this skinny teen-ager with acne wore a tuxedo the only time in his life. I met my date, Evelyn Levine at Sylvia Osorovitz’s apartment. Sylvia’s parents took photos of us. I believe Sylvia’s father gave us a ride in his car to the Manhattan hotel for the prom. After the prom our group went to Child’s restaurant and we all took our dates home using the subway. I don’t think Evelyn and I spoke more than a few words each that evening. However, when I was home for the summer during my college days, when we went to Rockaway Beach with the old group, Evelyn was there and we chatted like old friends. I never saw her again. As I recall Joe, Danny and Sol Goldman went to City College of New York City. I am not sure what their majors were. Joe ended up with a job in Washington, D.C. Danny and Sylvia got married and they had a son before World War II. They lived in Sunnyside. Sol Goldman had a wonderful orator’s voice and I understand he ended up working as a radio station announcer in Philadelphia. Sol Weber eventually, became a hero as a member of the parachute infantry during World War II, and he ended up in the insurance busines. Millie met Norman Ludwig and they were married eventually.
I had two other friends who lived in Astoria. One was Clifford Mace. He had migrated from England with his mother and a sister. He lived in an apartment across the street from our place. Clifford had a set of fencing foils and masks and he taught me some of the rudiments of fencing. Clifford also had a saber and he would wave it in a menacing way once in a while. We had a common hobby of building model airplanes with balsa wood and paper coverings. After graduation from high school, Clifford went to work for a bank and eventually we lost contact with each other. The other friendship was with George Mondrillo. His family was of Italian heritage. George had two sisters, Rosa and another. George’s mother was a large woman and she always seemed to be in good spirits. George’s father was unemployed for a long time and it was only when World War II came about that George’s father found work. Once in a while I was asked to stay for dinner and pasta was the dish. George was bright and made good grades in school. He was particularly adept in language courses. After high school graduation, George found a job in a hotel I believe and he took college courses at night.
In the fall of 1933 I was enrolled in a junior high school in Queens. This school was in Sunnyside and the way to get there was to walk the nine blocks to the BMT Broadway station, to ride to the Queens Plaza station and then change to the IRT line for a ride to a station in Sunnyside. The other way to go to school would be to walk and I did that come rain or snow, hot or cold.
Because I never graduated from an elementary school, I had no good record from the Valley Stream Junior High School, the Weequahic High School in Newark, and I had a not very good education in the Fischel school, the Queens Junior High School had problems in assigning me to a particular grade level. The subjects I took in the junior high school in Sunnyside included Latin and algebra. What was to plague me for a long time as a student is that I did not develop good study habits
After a year in the junior high school I was transferred to Bryant High School which was one block from Queens Plaza. Here again, I usually walked to save the carfare for other purposes. The courses of study at Bryant High School included English, Latin, French, history, mathematics, chemistry, and physics. There were two terms at Bryant High School in which the English courses were entitled Speech. We had to make speeches and we even acted out plays. Assignments in English included book reports. As I was an avid reader I did well with book reports. The Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith caught my imagination and I gave two different reports in two English classes as I gleaned different viewpoints after reading the book twice. I liked history courses when they involved current affairs I did not like history courses in which dates of events had to be memorized and this seemed to be more important than the actual history of the events. I took Latin for one year only and then I took French for two years. What I remember about the language courses is the memorization of vocabulary and how to conjugate verbs. There was no instruction about speaking French. In the subject of mathematics I took algebra, plane geometry, trigonometry, solid geometry and advanced algebra. I found that although math was interesting, I did not have a natural bent for the subject. Physics could have been interesting except that the gray-haired teacher made it boring. It was my chemistry teacher Rosalie Kant Kirshen who made chemistry an exciting subject. It was her presentation of the subject that made me decide to pursue a career in chemistry instead of aeronautical engineering. At this time on learning that Mrs. Kirshen was interested in biochemistry, reading the books Arrowsmith and Paul De Kruifs Microbe Hunters and the thought of becoming a biochemist to explore the secrets of life intrigued me—I had dreams. I purchased some used (and probably ancient) college chemistry textbooks and began reading them with great excitement. I even tried to do some experiments at home with little success. Since I did not take a biology course at Bryant high School, I thought that I would like to dissect a frog. To get a frog I hitch-hiked to the “The Bergal” and I tried to catch a frog at the swimming hole. I was unsuccessful, so I hitch-hiked back to New York City.
My English and Speech teachers were enthusiastic and they also made the students enthusiastic about drama. I remember studying Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the whole class attended the play on Broadway. John Gielgud played the role of Hamlet. Theater became one of my passions and I was able to scrape up money to attend plays on Broadway when the seating on the second balcony cost 55 cents. Plays I remember going to see included Tobacco Road, Three Men on a Horse, and the musical Babes in Arms. Opera also became a passion when a friend treated me to a performance of Carmen at the old Metropolitan Opera House. On Saturday afternoons, when I was not working for my father, I would have the radio in our apartment tuned in to the live Texaco broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera House. When we came to Atlanta, I found that for a quite a few years the Metropolitan Opera would bring operas to the Civic Center. I was able to attend quite few opera performances.
What generally seemed more interesting than school work were the extracurricular activities at Bryant High School. I eventually joined the Heralders, the oratorical society and the Playwrights Club. To be admitted to the Heralders, one had to give a speech for a specified period of time such as five or ten minutes. However, I never did get to be a member of the debate team in the Heralder Club. My greatest accomplishment in the Playwrights Club was the winning of the first prize for a one act play. I think the play was about some scientists who were entrapped in a cave in the Antarctic and they had a cure for cancer. The Antarctic part must have come from my following the explorations in that area by Admiral Richard Byrd. Only two plays were submitted in this contest so the other play must have been a lot worse than mine. The prize was a book entitled Shakespearean Nights by Edward Stasheff. Mr. Stasheff was a teacher in our English Department. The inscription inside the book spelled my name Nathan as Nathin. As for the play, I do not have a copy and it is probably just as well. I still have the book. Two years in a row just before the end of year holiday recess I had fencing matches with Mr. Stasheff and needless to say he beat me handily. Of course, when Mr. Stasheff was a student at Columbia University he had been on the fencing team..
I did service in the science department by helping the head of the department, Mr. Benjamin Koenigsberg, set up demonstration experiments. I helped put out a science newsletter for the science classes at Bryant High School. It was sometime during 1936 that Mr. Koenigsberg suggested that I might be interested in attending a meeting of high school science newsletter editors at the American Institute of New York City. The American Institute was located in a building across the street from the Grand Central railroad terminal. Dr. Gerald Wendt, a former college chemistry professor, was the director of the institute. The first and subsequent meetings took place on Saturdays. A Science Writers club was formed and at monthly meetings eminent science writers would meet with the club members. An invitation to a preview of a show at the Hayden Planetarium before it made its debut for the public was made possible by the American Institute for the members of the science writers club. Needless to say I accepted the invitation and I certainly was impressed by the presentation.
A major project of the club was the publication of a science magazine which would be distributed to all the high schools in New York City. The magazine was named the Amateur Scientist and the Editor-in-Chief was Morris Davis, Junior Astronomy Club, American Museum of Natural History. I do not recall ever meeting Morris Davis. I became an assistant editor for the field of chemistry. The assistant editor for biology was Arnold W. Ravin of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. I met with Arnold Ravin sometime in the decade of the 60s. He was now a world renowned geneticist and a professor at the University of Rochester. He also survived as a bomber pilot during World War II. Two issues were released in 1937, May and June. As I went to night school during my last term at Bryant High School I was able to spend much time during the day at the American Institute. I was involved in laying out the pages of the magazine and this taught me a lot about the process of getting the individual pages ready for the printer. Those were the days when typewriters were used to prepare text and one can say that scissors and paste were used to lay out page contents. The American Institute also sponsored science fairs at the New York City Museum of Natural History. During the spring of 1937 I was employed to be one of the representatives of the American Institute at the science fair. I think the job lasted five days.
Besides acting as the assistant editor for chemistry, I had an article in each of the issues published. The article in May was entitled The Glacier Priest. Father Hubbard, was a Professor of Geology at Santa Clara University and he was known as the “glacier priest.” I was able to interview Father Hubbard and learned much about his exploration and photography in Alaska. The issue in June was entitled Cosmic Rays. I believe that the Amateur Scientist did not last very long after the original gang of science writers went off to college.
A number of members of the science club became friends. Carl Koch, the art editor of the Amateur Scientist was an avid photographer but he had physical difficulties due to hemophilia. All Carl had to do was bump into something and he would hemorrhage. I am sorry to say our friendship did not last long as Carl fell down a stairway while at the Rensselaer Polytech Institute. He died after surgery as the bleeding could not be stopped. Not many years later, a blood factor was found which could ease the problems of a hemophiliac. David Rigler and I maintained a friendship for a number of years until we drifted apart. David had a summer job at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. Carl Koch and I used to meet David at the amusement area of the fair. I had a camera as far back as I can remember so I joined Carl and David in taking pictures in the amusement area at night. Carl was at a parachute jump ride when a Vanderbilt couple were stuck at the top of the structure. Carl took many photographs, however, he was so excited that he forgot to remove the plate in front of the film pack he had in his Voiglander camera. Another amateur photographer sold his pictures to a newspaper for a good price. Harold Klein (called Chuck) was also a photographer for the Amateur Scientist, and was a good friend for many years. Stella Bodner, who was from Haaren High School, was the Secretarry of the science writers club. Stella and I went to several plays together. After my first year at college I had a date with Stella in New York City and we spent New Year’s Eve at Times Square where we were mobbed by the crowd. When Stella moved to Pontiac, Michigan and I went to the west coast, we stopped communicating.
After taking a history course at night during the spring of 1937, I was awarded a diploma by Bryant High School. It was during my attendance at the night school that I also took typing. Inasmuch as I had no typewriter at home I could not practice touch typing and to this day I still type using only several fingers. I just never had the patience to spend the time needed to practice and learn touch typing. My membership in the American Institute science writers club had a lasting impact on me and I considered a career in science writing or journalism, however, the drive to become a biochemist and discover the secrets of life was overwhelming at that time.
During my high school days I did not spend much time doing school work. I did get good grades in subjects of interest and not-so-good grades in other subjects. However, I did get good grades on the state Regents examinations and it was those grades that eventually led to my acceptance at the university of my choice. As I wanted to get away from home to go to college and I was so excited about becoming a biochemist, I hunted for colleges which would offer biochemistry as an undergraduate major subject. There were very few schools that did this and the University of California at Berkeley was one of them. An acquaintance at Bryant High School and I applied for admission to the University. To this day I have a vivid image of the day I received a post card in June of 1937 from the University of California at Berkeley I hurried to the store to let my father and Mary know that I was accepted as a student for the fall semester. My friend who also applied was accepted; however he backed out.