One night, police pounded on our door, dragged my father and me (all of eleven or twelve years old) out of bed, put us up against the wall, and frisked us. They were looking for a drug dealer named Frank Russo. They left without saying anything like “sorry,” further degrading my opinion of the police. Around the same time, a parish priest came to the door and told me to tell my parents that since they hadn’t been married in the church (they’d been married in a civil ceremony), that they were living in sin.
I promptly told him where to go.
By an early age I’d already developed a skeptical attitude toward authority figures such as teachers, doctors, police, and priests.
And yet, even with my attitude, when the organizations were well-run and rational, I could thrive in them. My time at Mary E. Curley Junior High in Boston (grades seven through nine), were among the best years of my life, until graduate school. It was a source of great pleasure and satisfaction when the students in my class said to the teacher, “Don’t ask us the answer. Ask Ruscetti.” Combined with gym class, basketball, public library study sessions, Saturday morning movies, Congressional Church Sunday school, and Sunday evenings in Christian Endeavor, a good refuge was formed for this young man.
I still remember the two teachers (Mrs. Fodale and Mr. Cannon) who wanted me to apply after eighth grade (a year early) for the entrance exam to Boston Latin High School, because they thought I was so advanced. However, it was a long streetcar ride away and my mother refused, saying I was too young to take the trolley. Later, I took a similar entrance exam at the end of ninth grade and was admitted to Boston English, ironically riding the same trolley, only a year older. Meanwhile, at our apartment building I oversaw planting, pruning hedges, and shoveling snow, resulting in a monthly reduction in our rent.
Years later, when rock and roll artists Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul Simon sang about what a waste of time high school was for them, I couldn’t have agreed more. Homework had to be done during school study periods, because neighborhood bullies would target you for taking too many books home. My favorite high school teacher, a math teacher who for some reason had been dismissed from teaching at the US Naval Academy, taught a fascinating course in navigation and meteorology. Sadly, another favorite, Mr. Ruggiero, died young of leukemia.
I was fourteen years old when the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957. America changed overnight as we were terrified that the Soviets were going to beat us in the space race. The US government got the education it wanted. All students had to participate in military drills at my high school and know where the fallout shelters were located. We believed the evil Russians were going to destroy our perfect country.
The worst of my high school experiences was the complete absence of any useful guidance counseling when it came to college applications. With little money available, I assumed that living at home was the only option. So, I originally applied to just Boston University and that other university across the Charles River. A representative of that university told me that the Italian quota was filled. Boston College was not an option for me. Anyone who has seen the Oscar-winning film Spotlight knows the school’s toxic influence on Catholic Boston.
One of the best things that came out of the 1960s social unrest was that the elite WASP schools were forced to open their enrollment to most everyone. Another thing which greatly irritated me was later learning there were scholarships donated by wealthy high school alumnae, available for Dartmouth and Bowdoin, for which I would have applied, if I’d been told. How could I compete if I didn’t even know about the opportunity?
Boston University was both a cultural shock to me and a disappointment. As a result of being shy and from an all-boys high school, an aunt had started a family rumor I was gay. I mistakenly registered for a freshman composition class in the School of Nursing. I was the only male in the class, leading to plenty of blushing. For the qualitative analysis lab final, in which we were supposed to determine the chemicals inside the test tubes, I was mistakenly given test tubes with the answers already written on them. I turned it back in for a new set of test tubes.
One science professor stated that he gave an A to God, B to the smartest student in the class, and a C to everybody else. When I complained, he said I should be happy with my B-. The organic chemistry professor graded on a downward curve, so my 95 average became a B+.
So much for the lunacy of academic grading.
Petty dictators were everywhere you looked.
There were some great college memories as well. I watched Gale Sayers of Kansas score his first collegiate touchdown to beat BU, 7-0, attended my first American Football League (AFL) game, Denver at Boston, and I saw Faye Dunaway, the future Oscar-winning actress, at a BU theater event.
Most of what I learned came from my summer jobs. Through my dad, I got a job at the South Station railroad station slinging hash. I learned serving customers was not going to be my forte. Then I worked for the state of Massachusetts on a crew repainting crosswalks and center lines. Occasionally they’d go to a house of ill repute on their lunch hour, where I had to wait outside because I was underage. I didn’t fit in there, either.
My uncle, Bill Wildberger, was a family hero. He was the first non-Harvard graduate to become chief resident at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Later, he was the mental health director for the state of Iowa and got me a job during college at the state mental hospital in Woodward, Iowa. There was a hepatitis outbreak the first week on the job, meaning I had to perform X-rays, draw and run routine blood tests, run the pharmacy, and assist the pathologist when she arrived from the state medical school. It was hectic and nerve-wracking.
But for the first time I thought I could see how I could make a difference.
It was appalling to see how inborn genetic errors could cause such pain in people. I sympathized deeply with these people, although they often terrified me. Many times, security had to come to my rescue because the patients would try to assault me while I was attempting to draw their blood.
Iowa was a dry state and Woodward had no movie theaters or even bowling alleys. Once I asked some of my female coworkers what there was to do for fun in the area. They answered, “watching the corn grow!” Apparently, a shy city boy needed an education.
Iowa didn’t seem like the place for me, either.
My final job during college was repairing railroad tracks in the blistering summer sun. It was backbreaking work. I was the one summer hire who made it through the entire summer, a source of immense pride to me. (My father had gotten me the job, so I couldn’t let him down.) After the summer, my dad said in his laconic fashion, “There are two ways to make a living. With your back or your brain.”
I’ve often wondered if I made the right choice.
The working men usually seemed more honest than most of the professionals I’ve encountered in my career. However, my father also told me that several times he had wanted an opportunity to take a test to become a freight yardmaster, but he was refused the opportunity because it was assumed an immigrant could not pass it. Finally, he was allowed to take it and passed, receiving several commendations for his yardmaster work over the years. He warned me to do my work better than anyone else: “Let them find something to complain about, but not the work!” Like many sons, I have tried to emulate my father’s virtues and avoid his flaws.
Through the years, I have talked to many people from poorer backgrounds in urban settings who had to commute to college, as I did. I recognize now that it was not commuting per se, but the claustrophobic home environment of so many that was the problem. Despite being belatedly accepted to the University of Virginia Medical School after being wait-listed, I decided I needed a change. I have always admired my brother and sister, who made well-adjusted lives out of such chaos.
My solution?
Join the Air Force.
Probably not a wise choice for a young man who in first grade vowed not to obey mindless authority.
The militar
y was quite a learning experience. Two lessons which stand out are: First, the dangers of small men in positions of power; and second, war is the most unfair and idiotic of the many foul endeavors in which man participates. Basic training was barely tolerable with the constant screaming of the drill instructor.
It reminded me of home.
Half of my basic training group had Boston accents and the other half were North Carolina tobacco boys. We could barely understand each other. A good percentage of our flight squadron was ordered to Montgomery, Alabama to attend medic school.
None of us could remember stating that as a choice.
Montgomery was not a good place for a Yankee like me to be in 1965. Every store owner had a rocking chair and a rifle. Southern boys usually had enough munitions in their car trunk to conquer Mexico. Every time we went out to eat, the southern farm boys ordered for me so I wouldn’t get shot. One day in class, the instructor asked if anyone knew how to run a Model E Ultra-Centrifuge.
No hand went up, so I raised mine, thinking that I’d used centrifuges before. How could this one be much different?
But this one looked unlike any I’d ever seen and took up half a wall. Thanks to blind luck and pushing the right buttons, the centrifuge performed smoothly. Next thing I knew, my personal folder was stamped “ESSENTIAL TO SPACE PROGRAM.”
New orders shipped me to Lackland Air Force Base, the main US air evacuation hospital for injured soldiers in San Antonio.
Early in the space program, it was discovered that the red blood cells of the astronauts lasted only ten days instead of the normal twenty-one. They wondered if that was going to be a long-term problem, thus complicating any planned trip to the moon. The answer turned out to be no. In a few weeks, the red blood cells recovered their normal life span.
But it started my long career fascination with hematology, thanks to instruction from Dr. Chuck Coltman, Dorothy Grisham, and others. Knowing some friends who did not make it back from Vietnam, I’ve often wondered whether science saved my life.
I needed to get up at five-thirty in the morning to draw blood from the injured soldiers and had to finish before going to the mess hall for breakfast. I missed many a breakfast before officially reporting to work at seven-thirty. Some would forget to do their blood requisitions, discard them, and others were not that good at the task. Of course, those of us who completed our assignments started to get a bigger portion of the workload. Drawing blood from napalm victims (our own troops often had napalm bombs accidentally dropped on them) on the burn wards was the absolute worst.
After lab classes, the remaining time was supposed to be devoted to research endeavors. But the major in charge kept finding more and more for me to do, like preparing and changing solutions for dialysis patients.
Again, there can be so many petty dictators in life.
On weekends, I would be part of a team (which I later supervised), which would draw four hundred units of blood to be sent to Vietnam. Habitually tired, I’d often fall asleep in hematology lab class. One day I was asked if I thought I could teach the class better and got in trouble because I could not lie and thus said “Yes” as I walked up to the front of the class and was rudely sent back to my seat.
The major in charge also thought my hair was too long, so he could often be found prowling around the lab, surprising me to check my hair length. Apparently, the length of my hair was critical to the success of our war effort in Southeast Asia. To humiliate me further, the major would often have military police escort me to the base barber shop, so that as many people as possible would see me walking through the halls under military escort. It was just like being back in elementary school where the teachers would inflexibly try to make me stop writing with my left hand or like that night being thrown up against the wall because the police thought my dad was a drug dealer.
You may not believe it, but I did spend most of my time in the service trying not to get in trouble. Wounded servicemen were always increasing in numbers. General William Westmoreland (in charge of the US effort in Vietnam) was always saying at commander call (a required meeting for all enlisted personnel) that the casualties were going down. He’d talked about there being “light at the end of the tunnel,” but we always joked that the light was a train coming to run us over. I consider General Westmoreland to be one of the biggest liars in American history.
And sometimes it seemed the hypocrisy knew no limits.
On the parade grounds, we tried not to smile at a Purple Heart ceremony where the soldiers had been injured when the Viet Cong blew up a whorehouse where the troops had been engaged in a little “rest and relaxation.”
Or being ordered to spend everything left in the budget days before the fiscal year ended so we would not lose it in next year’s budget.
I tried not to be dismayed when a black enlisted man and a white lieutenant nurse went to a movie with me on base, and then the next day he had orders to go to Vietnam, and she was sent to Thule Air Base in Greenland.
When the MASH television show came out in the 1970s, depicting the absurdities of life at a military field hospital near the front lines of the Korean War, I thought, I’ve been there. It’s no surprise it was one of the most popular television shows of the decade, and its final episode was watched by a reported 125 million viewers.
After it became clear that the lower red blood cell survival rate of our returning astronauts was just a transient problem, and the red blood cells would eventually rebound to their normal twenty-one-day survival rate, I received orders to report to Oxnard, California.
However, my orders were mysteriously cancelled.
The only option was to plan my escape. But what to do?
Science or medicine?
They are not the same thing.
My choice was science. I reasoned that if I were lucky enough to discover something useful, it would help people long after my death. At the time, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) graduate school stipend was $2400, while an Andrew Mellon fellowship, usable at any school department that had an Andrew Mellon professor, was $3,200 a year. An extra $800 dollars a year was a lot of money to someone who made only $1,300 in almost four years of service. And there was an opening at the University of Pittsburgh.
So I took the money, which was the legacy of Andrew Mellon, the former oil and steel tycoon, who I’d later come to realize was one of the most evil and powerful men to ever live in America, and headed to the University of Pittsburgh. I flew standby in my uniform, not having any money on me, because I needed to physically appear at the university to get my first check. I remember explaining all of this to the bell hop at the Webster Hall Hotel when I checked in, telling him I was broke and could not give him a tip.
He grinned and said, “We’ve all been there, son,” and closed the door to my room. I never gave any thought to what lay ahead of me; I was happy to escape the senseless suffering of war.
The allure of science, of discovery, of doing something useful, was tantalizing.
CHAPTER TWO
Protest and Pittsburgh
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s main stumbling block toward freedom is not the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who prefers ‘order’ to justice.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The times they are a changin’.
—“The Times, They Are a-Changin’,” Bob Dylan (1964)
The day I arrived in Pittsburgh at the end of August 1968, having dropped my bags off at the hotel, I rushed to Langley Hall (the arts and sciences building of the university). I didn’t even bother to change out of my uniform.
The halls were mostly empty, but I was able to find the departmental office and pick up my check.
By chance I ran into Dr. Lew Jacobson, a young, newly minted assistant professor. He would become my PhD advisor, as well as a lifelong friend. We must have talked for an hour that day. I told him about my experiences in the Air Force, we discussed the ongoing riots at the Democratic
Party Convention in Chicago, pick-up basketball, and graduate school life. As far as where I might want to live, he suggested the Shadyside district, just about fifteen minutes from campus, and I quickly found an apartment in that neighborhood.
The first year of graduate school was a rush of academics and performing my duties as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate biology class. In my naïve idealism, when a female student said, “I’d do anything for an A,” I replied, “Try studying.”
When Richard Nixon was elected over Hubert Humphrey in November 1968, by appealing though a southern strategy to white supremacists and the law and order, pro-war crowd, I was crushed. I had truly believed as Bob Dylan sang, that the times were a-changing.
Years later, when it was shown that Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnamese peace talks to help win the election, along with Watergate and Nixon’s secret wars in Cambodia and Laos coming to light, I wasn’t the least bit surprised.
It set a pattern for imperial presidential misconduct through my lifetime. This is not a political statement. I was just observing a social progression toward an autocracy which bedevils us today. When Bob Dylan released a song in 2020 called “Murder Most Foul,” talking about the corruption that followed for the next five decades in our political system after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, I thought the old singer was still in touch with the times.
As fate would have it, several personal blessings came to me during these troubled times in the life of our nation. On February 2, 1969, at a graduate student party, I met Sandra Ickes, another aspiring scientist.
Meeting her felt like finding the missing part of my soul.
One does not get to my age without having a clear picture of his faults. I know I can be moody, uncommunicative, and judgmental. Yet the part many do not see is that it’s because I can imagine a much better world. Much of the time I have felt like a disappointed idealist. Others have described me with less kind names, and I don’t know if I can blame them.
But Sandra did not have my darkness.
Ending Plague Page 2