Cherish the Exception: Navigating the Confluence of Faith and Science

CHERISH

THE

EXCEPTION

Navigating the Confluence of Faith and Science

A MEMOIR

John Allen Resko

Cherish the Exception

Copyright © 2015 John Allen Resko.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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All biblical references are from:The New American Bible (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1970).

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5482-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5481-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902075

iUniverse rev. date: 07/16/2015

CONTENTS

About the Cover

Preface

Chapter 1 The Dark Days of Transition

Chapter 2 Lady Luck

Chapter 3 The Big Lake

Chapter 4 Beaufort

Chapter 5 The Land Grant College

Chapter 6 Thesis Seeds

Chapter 7 An Important Decision

Chapter 8 The Final Curtain Call

Chapter 9 The Emotions of Completion

Chapter 10 The Great Salt Lake

Chapter 11 Holding Hands and Dreaming

Chapter 12 Was This a Golden Opportunity?

Chapter 13 The Scientific Jungle

Chapter 14 An Unexpected, Game-Changing Event

Chapter 15 Another Part of My Curriculum Vitae

Chapter 16 The University of Oregon Medical School

Chapter 17 A Wild-Goose Chase

Chapter 18 Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico

Chapter 19 The Cycle of Life

Chapter 20 The Great Society

Chapter 21 The Division of Reproductive Physiology and Behavior

Chapter 22 Bundles from Heaven

Chapter 23 Not Following Blindly

Chapter 24 A Chance to Go Home

Chapter 25 Reconstruction

Chapter 26 Greater Involvement in Graduate Education

Chapter 27 East Coast Experiences

Chapter 28 Marquam Hill

Chapter 29 Serious Business

Chapter 30 El Presidente

Chapter 31 The Study Section

Chapter 32 Nalbandov’s Death

Chapter 33 Those Who Stoked the Fire

Chapter 34 The Third President

Chapter 35 The New Department of Physiology

Chapter 36 The Decade of the Nineties

Chapter 37 Sexual Orientation of Sheep

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ABOUT THE COVER

THE COVER, WHICH SHOWS AN aged cypress on the rugged coastline of the Monterey Peninsula facing south, is a replica of a photograph taken by Rebecca (Resko) Cain in March 2010. This photograph was copied with the owner’s permission.

To those who believe that which they cannot see

PREFACE

CHERISH THE EXCEPTION IS A continuation of The Gates of Saint Charles, in which I described my struggle testing the waters of a religious vocation. But this struggle ended precipitously on a warm September day in 1957. On that day, I walked through the gates of Saint Charles into a world that I was ill prepared to confront. I had not made clear plans for the future, and I did not possess the financial means to carry out any plan. I decided to follow a most basic instinct of likes and dislikes and clung to a special interest of mine: a curiosity about animal life.

The uncertainties of these days were overwhelming, but they did not do me in. I swayed but did not fall. I survived. I did not know how my interest in biology would turn out, but I decided to give it my all. I met many people who took an interest in me. They gave me small jobs, recommendations, advice, and even comfort when I needed some fluff.

I had to reeducate myself if I wished to succeed in science. Fortunately, I met Professor John McClean at Villanova University. He advised me on the courses that I would need to succeed and encouraged me to go on for an advanced degree. The class schedule at Villanova was difficult, but I understood that if I wanted a career in science badly enough, these were courses in which I would have to excel. The only restrictions that would be placed on me would be the amount of talent that I might have and how hard I was willing to work to achieve the goals ahead.

Even before I experienced the thrill of my first discovery in the laboratory, these undergraduate science courses provided many pleasant learning experiences, as well as a challenge in perseverance and physical endurance.

During this time of academic self-flagellation at Villanova, I worked for United Cerebral Palsy of Philadelphia as a student aide in one of their homes in Overbrook. The home was administered by a refugee from academia named Annafreddie Carstens. Miss Carstens, as she was known about the house, treated me well. In this job, I was little more than a helping hand, someone to oversee the residents in the evening hours. For my services, I received room and board, a hearty lunch packed for me each day, and a small monthly stipend. This job served me well in my transitional year after leaving the seminary.

In 1958, I accepted a two-year teaching assistantship at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These were happy years filled with new experiences both in science and otherwise. I continued to live from one small paycheck to another, and during my first summer in Milwaukee, I rubbed shoulders with the real working men of this country as a summer fill-in at a metal fabrication plant. The drudgery and difficulty of this job inspired me to appreciate the value of education. It was during this time that I met a lovely Marquette undergraduate in the medical technology program, but it would be several years down the road before we could begin to plan anything more permanent. I became hooked on the most basic aspects of science. After completing a master’s degree at Marquette, I was accepted into the doctoral program at the University of Illinois at the Champaign/Urbana campus.

Andrew V. Nalbandov served as the mentor for my doctoral thesis work. Nalbandov was the man on campus in the field of reproductive endocrinology. His primary appointment was in the animal science department in the School of Agriculture. In one of our first discussions, we decided the graduate courses that I would need to prepare myself for my future work. He knew that I was not from an agriculture background, at least academically; therefore, we decided to emphasize training in physiology. Nalbandov was a man of the world. He treated me fairly, even though I was a man of faith and he an agnostic. I finished the requirements for my doctorate in 1963. Shortly before this event, however, the lovely undergraduate became my wife.

I was not influenced by a recommendation of Horace Greeley—Go West, young man—but by Andrew Nalbandov, who said, Best you learn more about steroid biochemistry! I accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow in the steroid training program at the University of Utah, School of Medicine, in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful beginning for two newlyweds. The program was excellent, and we planned to stay two years.

Sometimes, even the best of plans cannot be completed. Our plan was interrupted by a phone call from Will Young to Leo Samuels, chair of the biochemistry department of the University of Utah, School of Medicine. Young had recently moved from the University of Kansas to start a new program at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center. Young inquired about the availability of someone in the training program with expertise in the measurement of steroid hormones who was willing to move to Oregon to join his research group. I did not pursue a second year of postdoctoral work at Utah because I was offered a job in Oregon.

This was my first real job offer. However, I had some concerns about its stability and the fact that Oregon was so far from our homes in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But the job market was tight, and many of the trainees in Utah were faced with bleak prospects of employment. I decided to accept the job in Oregon with a sincere attempt to work out the difficulties.

I arrived in Oregon on October 15, 1964. With the arrival of Christmas, I had set up a functional steroid laboratory and, in collaboration with my new colleagues, was able to quantify the concentrations of testosterone in the systemic circulation of nonhuman primates. It was an exciting time. It was not long after Christmas that I amassed a large number of collaborative arrangements with Bob Goy, Charles Phoenix, and their postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. These studies were designed to correlate systemic levels of steroid hormones with reproductive behaviors. The results of these studies were published over the years that followed.

My first technician was a middle-aged man (of Dutch descent) who emigrated from Indonesia to the United States. Jan Ploem possessed a strong work ethic and was loyal to me personally and to the program and its members. I could not have completed the volume of work over these years without his assistance. It was Jan who recommended that I hire Henry Stadelman as my second technician. After some training, Henry became an integral part of my research team with the same loyalty and commitment as Jan Ploem before him.

This initial success was marred by the unexpected death of Will Young in the spring of 1965. Bob Goy became division head, and soon Charles Phoenix was promoted to assistant director of the primate center. The years at the primate center, from 1965 to 1971, were happy and productive years. They were years that every young scientist should experience. My work was appreciated, and my career was nurtured by two special men of science, Robert Goy and Charles Phoenix. Although they came from different scientific backgrounds than I—from psychology and the behavioral sciences—they, as well as I, understood the value of persons from different backgrounds and training joining forces to solve scientific problems of mutual interest. Thus, we embarked upon and began to build a program, which in its broadest sense could be labeled Hormones and Behavior. More specifically, we wished to understand the hormonal underpinnings of sexuality during fetal life in long-gestation mammals. It was during this time that I began to appreciate a favorite maxim of Will Young’s: Cherish the exception—that is, experimental results obtained that deviate from the expected are often important and should not be shrugged off or always attributed to experimental error.

In 1971, Bob Goy accepted the position as director of the Wisconsin Primate Center in Madison, Wisconsin. He asked me to go with him to Wisconsin, but I declined and stayed in Oregon. I continued to collaborate with Charles Phoenix on the relationships of hormones such as testosterone to reproductive behaviors in nonhuman primates. When Harold Spies replaced Goy as division head, I collaborated with him but also continued to do my own work.

In 1981, I accepted a position as chairman of the physiology department at the University of Oregon, School of Medicine, in Portland. In the following sixteen years, I survived two presidents, six deans of the medical school, two budget cuts, three name changes, and the merger of the physiology department with the pharmacology department. Needless to say, my experiences as a professor and chairman of a medical school basic science department were exhilarating.

We settled into a little bungalow on a perfect three-quarter acre of land with seven blueberry plants (although one of them may be a huckleberry). A one-hundred-year-old Douglas fir towers over and shades a magnificent deck with a swing, and in late summer, seven multicolored potted begonias try to outdo one another for the praise heaped upon them by visitors and friends.

During this time, the lovely undergraduate medical technology student and I raised two children. At times, I battled with unreasonable clergy and one bishop but managed to keep my faith. I consider the latter as my most important achievement. All other achievements pale in comparison. At Christmas, we gather as a family (parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren) to celebrate the birth of the Christ according to the old traditions that my mother’s family brought with them from the old country.

CHAPTER 1

The Dark Days of Transition

Even This Will Pass

I PACKED A FEW BELONGINGS, spoke with the rector of the seminary, opened the Gates of Saint Charles, and proceeded down Wynwood Road to the Overbrook commuter train stop along Philadelphia’s Main Line. The rays of the afternoon sun beat savagely on my shoulders. Preoccupied, I stumbled on the rough pavement. I felt exhausted upon reaching the railroad station even though it was only a few blocks from the seminary. My thoughts were jumbled, and my gut ached, the first physical effects of my anxiety. I found a phone booth and called my sister Irene. It was almost instinctive to call her because of our close relationship. Of my five sisters, Irene was the most romantic, fun-loving, generous, and extravagant. During the previous four years, she frequently hosted Thanksgiving dinner for me and some of my classmates. My first taste of New England lobster was at her expense at the original Bookbinder’s restaurant in Philadelphia. She calmly accepted my call and seemed to understand. Thank God for that, because if she had not, what would I have done? She promised transportation to her apartment in Germantown.

In the interim, I plopped myself on the hard wooden bench beside the phone booth and mused. My thoughts centered upon the last few hours. I revisited the nine years that preceded this event. I soberly concluded that I was ill prepared for work in the world beyond the wrought-iron fence.¹

I made this decision alone. I did not consult faculty, friends, or family about it. At the end of a one-week silent retreat, after much thought and prayer, I faced a confrontation and enlightenment about the real substance of a religious vocation. Even though I had given it my all, I was not happy. I decided to leave behind all that I worked so hard to achieve with a clear realization of the difficulties and hardship that would follow. However, I was never so sure of anything in my life, up to that point in time, as I was on that day. I was still young enough (age twenty-five) to do something else, but just what that would be was not clear. Because I was so sure of the correctness of my decision, I did not wish to have someone talk me out of one of my finest moments.

Irene was surprisingly optimistic when I arrived at her apartment. Her boyfriend, Gerry, provided the transportation from the Overbrook station to Germantown; her roommate, Doris, provided many kind words of encouragement that evening. I will never forget them.

Irene was thirty-eight years old at the time. She shared an apartment with a woman, Doris Dale, a North Dakotan who worked for the federal government as did Irene. Neither she nor Irene had ever married.

Gerry, on the other hand, was a confident man of the world. He was born in New York City of Italian ancestry and possessed many of the characteristics that I usually associate with Italians. He liked to cook, dress well, and smoke good cigars. He spent some time during the end of World War II in the merchant marines. He worked for Drew Chemical Company, which serviced the boilers of ships transporting materials to the ports in the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas. Gerry was about the same age as Irene.

This threesome provided me with the much-needed interim support at this time. They were wonderful. Never once did they grill me to discover the reason(s) why. Never once did they say it would be difficult. There was no advice. I instinctively knew that they would show me friendship, and as a matter of fact, that was really all that I hoped for at this time. I needed a place to stay for a short period of time to sort out my options. Irene invited me to do this, and I accepted her gracious offer.

§

IRENE CALLED MY MOTHER AND informed her of my decision. I was standing nearby. It was a difficult moment, but Irene, finally, came to the point; then she handed the phone to me. As I anticipated, Mother did not take the news gracefully. She called me the following day. She was distraught. Uncompromising, she could not appreciate or understand my point of view. She said, I am experiencing periods of darkness, and you will be sorry for what you have done. What my mother did not understand about the priesthood was that No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God … (Letter to the Hebrews 5:4).² These were trying times for me—no job, no money, no concrete plans for the future—but as I promised myself, there would be no looking back. I understood my mother’s response. It was pride. What would the neighbors think? She misinterpreted my motives, however. She was convinced that I had quit the seminary for a woman. It would have been counterproductive for me to try to explain to her why I was misplaced in the service of the church for other reasons.

During those first few days, I painfully searched to find the inner strength not to waver. The suffering that I endured I shared with no one. (For several months, I endured severe gastrointestinal problems, the diagnosis of which was the effect of severe stress.) To disappoint someone you love and to inflict, perhaps, irrevocable harm upon them might be a good reason to rethink one’s decision. It would have been so easy to retrace my steps and go back—that is, to become a priest, to satisfy my mother. But at these trying moments, even though I was tempted to do just that, the spirit filled me with understanding that I was dealing with the seeds of an unhappy priest. I wanted nothing to do with this temptation, the easy way out.

Others of my family were quietly supportive. My sister Mary said, Hold your head high; you need not be apologetic. My brother, the priest, understood as well as anyone. I think the rest of the family took a wait-and-see approach and did not say anything positive or negative to me during this time.

A few weeks after leaving the seminary, I was faced with a difficult task. I had to write letters to the bishop of Altoona (the diocese that sponsored my candidacy for the priesthood) and Fr. Basil (the pastor of St. George, my home parish) to inform them of my decision. My correspondence to both was short and to the point. I did not receive a reply from either.

During Thanksgiving vacation, I returned home. When I entered the house, my mother was seated in the living room. She did not come to greet me as she did when I returned from the hospital in Philadelphia a few years earlier—that is, with a hug and maternal tears. Instead, her silence and cold rebuff indicated to me that nothing had changed in the past few months. She was unforgiving. I felt sorry for her because nothing that I had done required forgiveness. I said, I am sorry if my actions offended you, but I did what I thought was right and honorable for me and the church.

Despite the emotions of the moment, I was able to understand the shock and, perhaps, the resentment that my leaving the seminary generated in my mother’s family. Only a few months earlier, I had served as subdeacon at my brother’s first Mass. A subsection of the seminary choir came to Patton to provide the music. Jesse Ferry, one of my classmates, sang a beautiful rendition of the Ave Maria at the offertory. My brother’s first Mass was, indeed, a gala event for my family and the town as well. I can imagine how important it was to anticipate a similar event for a second son two years later. Having said this, even though it would be difficult to convince many, my decision was more important than the anticipation mentioned above. I believe that there was an important spiritual reason, not known at the time, or even now, for the inspiration that I received on that warm September day in 1957.

Mother remained silent. I then knew that it would take years for our relationship to be restored. Perhaps, it would never be the same. This was an unfortunate and unexpected turn of events, which I had to accept without resentment. I had great respect for my mother and was determined to do whatever necessary to help her through this difficult time. Even this would pass.

§

IT WAS EARLY SEPTEMBER, AND the colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area had not yet begun classes. I had a good friend who lived in Philadelphia. I called him and discussed with him my interest in obtaining an advanced degree. I asked his advice on how to begin. He recommended Villanova University, which was located along Philadelphia’s Main Line, as a good place to begin.

In a few days, we visited the Villanova campus. In 1957, Villanova looked like this: its location was attractive; the gray stone buildings, all alike, were constructed on rolling hills and connected by asphalt roads lined with hardwood trees. But what I was observing at that time was the result of 116 years of building and struggle by the Augustinians. In 1841, two Augustinian friars purchased a two-hundred-acre plot of land from an estate in Radnor Township (in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) on which they intended to build a school. The school opened in 1842 and was named the Augustinian College of Villanova after Saint Thomas of Villanova.

Saint Thomas of Villanova was a sixteenth-century Augustinian friar who became archbishop of Valencia in Spain in 1544. He led an exemplary life, serving the poor and underprivileged in the city, and became a model for other Spanish bishops to follow. He died in 1555, was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1618, and then was canonized by Pope Alexander VII in 1658.³

§

THE GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA APPROVED Villanova’s incorporation and the power to grant degrees in 1848. The seventeen years that followed, however, were rocky, and the school opened and closed four times because of riots, the shortage of priests, the Panic of 1857, and the Civil War. The school reopened in September 1865, never to be closed again.

When I arrived at Villanova in 1957, the school had been delivering quality education for 109 years from its inception. It was the oldest Catholic university in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Many of the faculty were priests of the Augustinian Order, but also, many lay faculty, especially in the sciences, were found among their ranks. The Augustinians are a monastic order whose members live according to the Rule of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–431). Throughout their history, the Augustinians have produced many prominent figures. To mention a few: two popes (Adrian IV and Eugene IV), Thomas à Kempis (who wrote The Imitation of Christ), Desiderius Erasmus (the Dutch humanist), Martin Luther (the instigator of the Protestant Reformation), and Gregor Mendel (the Austrian geneticist who discovered the principles of modern genetics) were members of the Augustinian order.

§

I STOPPED BY THE BIOLOGY department and met a tall, bony man working by himself in a laboratory. As it turned out, this tall, bony man was Dr. John McClain, the chairman of the department. McClain was friendly and helpful. I explained to him that I had a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, that I had taken some science courses but these were minimal, and that I wished to prepare myself for a career in biology or some related area of science. I said this to him because even from an early age, I was interested in animal life. Now I wanted to learn more. McClain suggested that I matriculate as a special student in courses that would provide me with a good foundation to achieve my goals. On that day, he set up a program for me that would prepare me for this possibility. He recommended two semesters of organic chemistry with laboratories; a semester each of comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, and basic genetics; second-semester physics; and a course on histological techniques. I decided to take McClain’s advice and began the first part of this schedule in the latter part of September 1957. Most of the students who registered for classes offered by the biology department were in premed or predental programs, but a few were interested in the science of biology per se—that is, preparing for an advanced degree, such as a master’s or PhD.⁴

The lecturer in the organic chemistry class was a priest who appeared to be very knowledgeable, but his exams were impossible. It was rumored that he used shelf exams obtained from the American Chemical Society. At times, I had difficulty understanding the flow of intermediate substances used in the synthesis of key compounds covered in his lectures. The one and only time that I sought his help, I knocked on his office door without an appointment. When I heard a voice from within say, Come in, I opened the door and found him sitting at his desk gazing at a yellow pencil, which he tossed from one hand to the other without interruption. He looked up at me and said, Why are you interrupting me, Resko? Can’t you see that I am busy? At least he knew who I was; I was not just a nameless face from a large lecture hall. He did answer my questions, nevertheless. The laboratory sections of organic chemistry were considered separate courses for which one received separate grades. The instructor was young, having received his PhD from Penn State University several years earlier. The lectures and laboratories from these two courses provided me with a firm background for the work that I would do later in my career in the general area of steroid biochemistry. John McClain’s schedule of courses that I would need proved to be valuable advice.

In comparative anatomy, Libbie Hyman’s textbook Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, the most obtuse science textbook that I have ever seen, was recommended. Although the subject matter was comprehensive, the book was physically unattractive, and the instructor taught the course from handouts. In the laboratory, we dissected cadavers of various vertebrate classes, one of which was the cat. I carried the cat in a plastic bag home with me on weekends so