Some Personal Reflections

M

y studies in physics and engineering at the Iowa university, the work in the Physics Department’s Cosmic Ray Laboratory, and our family life were inextri­cably intertwined and all-consuming throughout the seven and a half years that I was there. That was the most exciting period of my life and had more to do with shaping my professional future and person than anything else that happened during my entire life.

Family life

When I entered the university in early 1953, Rosalie and I began our new experience with daughter Barbara, who was approaching her first birthday. Sharon was born in June 1953, at the end of my first semester of study. Son George came along just eight days before the Explorer III launch, and daughter Kathy arrived just as I was receiving my Ph. D. diploma.

For the initial months, we managed the Ludwigheim family farm near Tiffin while Dad and Mom were in Des Moines for his participation in that year’s session of the state legislature. I commuted the eight miles to the campus. When my parents returned in the early summer, Rosalie and I moved our growing family into Finkbine Park.

That home for four years contained a very small living room, a miniscule kitchen with a small table for dining and homework, a bathroom with a minimal shower stall, two small bedrooms with diminutive closets, a rather large storage closet for all the things we could not cram into the living spaces, and a single oil-fired space heater in the living room.

In spite of the rather austere living conditions, life there was, overall, enjoyable. Our neighbors were also struggling students, most with children who were about the

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same age as ours. We sometimes referred to our little enclave as “rabbit village.” Our common financial and living conditions, plus our shared common purpose, resulted in a strong bonding and sense of community. We count some of our neighbors there among our closest friends yet today, even though their interests and training were in completely different fields and they took up postgraduation work in all parts of the country.

Our initial rent of $35 per month included electricity, oil for the space heater, and gas for the kitchen range and water heater. By the time I ended my undergraduate work in 1956, the monthly rent had ballooned to $50.

One year into my graduate work, in the summer of 1957, I signed up for only a three hour research load to allow more time for my satellite design work. The light summer academic load meant that I was no longer qualified for married student housing, so we rented a small two-bedroom house on Rochester Avenue near Iowa City’s eastern edge. It had a small combined living and dining room into which our 9 by 12 foot rug exactly fit. Fortunately, the house had an unfinished full basement. Although initially unsuitable for other than our washer and dryer, it had great potential. Its walls and ceiling were still covered with a thick layer of grime from the days when the coal bin was in active use. I hosed off the worst of it, rented a paint sprayer, and encapsulated the walls and ceiling with a thick coating of paint. I also rewired the basement to make it safer. A study area was delineated by a bed sheet hanging from one of the open joists. With a desk fashioned from a hollow-core door and set of wrought-iron legs, I had a comfortable place for study somewhat removed from the noise and confusion of the family and our tight living quarters upstairs. Our initial monthly rent there was $65, seemingly a princely sum at the time.

Rosalie worked just as hard as I did during our university years. Obviously, she carried the major responsibility for our household. In addition, she worked as a nurse’s aide at the University Hospital for a two year period. While she worked the night shift during the first of those years, she would come home after work to prepare breakfast, take care of the children during the morning, and feed them lunch. Then, when she put them down for their naps, she would get a short rest. After the children woke, she took them to our neighbor Charlotte Boley, who watched them until suppertime approached. Then Rosalie would collect the children and prepare supper. During most of that year, she felt that she was floating in a daze.

That regimen was too hard for her to sustain, so she moved to a shorter 7:00-11:00 PM evening shift during her second year there. During that era, she prepared the children for bed before leaving for work, and I watched them and put them to bed while I studied until her return.

Near the end of our university epoch, Rosalie worked for about two years at the First Presbyterian Church, where we were members. On five evenings each week,

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she oversaw the youth lounge, where students gathered from the nearby campus. On Sundays, she fixed evening meals for them.

We had one extended break from the campus routine during my student years, when we spent the summer of 1954 with Rosalie’s parents in Corvallis, Oregon. Her father managed radio station KRUL at that time, and he offered me a position as chief engineer for the summer. The FCC First Class Radio Telephone Operator’s License that I had earned just before leaving the Air Force qualified me for the position. When we arrived in Corvallis, I discovered to my surprise that the position also entailed working a shift as radio announcer—an interesting situation. My voice was well suited to radio, but I knew that, being a relatively nonverbal introvert, I lacked the proclivity for extended extemporaneous chatter needed by a radio personality. That had been borne out by my experience with amateur radio, where I enjoyed building the equipment but disliked rambling on the air about nothing in particular. At the radio station, I dreaded the on-air unscripted tasks such as conducting chat shows.

As mentioned earlier, we did take shorter family vacations from time to time. With everyone in the family enthusiastically embracing tent camping, most of those vacations involved trips by car to various locations, with camping along the way and in the parks that we visited. Those gave us complete breaks from our normal daily lives at a cost that we could afford.

Rosalie and I carefully protected certain family activities. With few exceptions, break­fast and the evening meal (supper in midwestern rural parlance) were carefully guarded family affairs at the dining table. A review of my notebooks and journals confirms that Sundays were nearly always preserved for church and family. That included many Sunday afternoons with my parents and other family members at Ludwigheim. On other Sundays, we went on drives, visited a nearby park for a picnic, or engaged in some other family activity.

In retrospect, my family did not receive as much of my day-to-day attention as might have benefited all of us. Overall, however, the children received good guidance and loving care and developed a strong sense of responsible behavior. Interestingly, none of them followed my lead into the physical sciences. Rosalie, who eventually realized her lifetime goal to become a registered nurse, appears to have had a greater influence in setting their life’s directions. Two of our children became nurses, one a medical doctor, and one a Ph. D. animal virologist.