Adventures in Serendipity

By H. R. Kaback

This book is a mixture of Kabacks life and his development as a scientist, both of which involve numerous serendipitous events. Thus, the title Adventures in Serendipity. For readers who may not be scientists, most of the science described can be scanned superficially or skipped altogether, as an equally important aspect of the book is to emphasize that there is more to science than just science. Also to be emphasized, if a good fairy appears with a magic wand and offers you the choice between being smart or being lucky, always pick lucky. But put your heart and soul into it whatever you do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514483060

H. R. Kaback

H. R. “Ron” Kaback is a distinguished professor in the Department of Physiology, as well as Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, and a member of the Molecular Biology Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). His interest in research began at Haverford College in the 1950s when a crazy idea led to the development of bacterial membrane vesicles as a model system in which to study active transport at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Once bitten by the creative aspects of biochemical research, he pioneered the development of the modern field of transport, focusing on a specific membrane transport protein, the lactose permease of Escherichia coli.

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TEENCHY, ELIZABETH, GEORGE AND JOSHUA

As described briefly in the Preface, I was 16 years old when I cut in on a friend and asked 15-year old Teenchy Schreibman (Fig. 1a,b) out on a date, and we have ‘gone steady’ ever since. Teenchy’s given name is Mollie, but she was in the middle of three Mollies when she was born into her close-knit family of aunts, uncles and cousins. Since she was a small newborn, her uncle nicknamed her Teenchy, derived from Teenchy-Weenchie, a Philadelphia expression for tiny. It is also probably relevant that Teenchy has a sister Ruth, who is 10 years her senior, and there was also another sister, Isabel, who died of Blue-Baby Syndrome (Tetralogy of Fallot) at age 4, a year before the surgical cure for the syndrome was developed. I mention this only because Teenchy was clearly a replacement baby and was raised essentially as an only child who was even more than the apple of her parents’ eyes. I do not know why or how this led to the development of a truly exceptional woman, but one thing most certainly rings true—without Teenchy, I doubt that I would have succeeded professionally or in life.

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As an athletic kid who was also high school president, I must have looked good on paper, but like most teenage males, I was quite insecure. Although I don’t remember having any admiration for my father and was basically afraid of him, I was relatively close with my mother who played the piano, read books, collected antiques and favored my relationship with Teenchy. However, as I have implied, my parents’ relationship was based upon mutual dislike, and they argued constantly over my father’s gambling and his womanizing. A good example would be on a nice Sunday afternoon when the Hill Pharmacy was the only open store with a soda fountain; we were the only Jewish storekeepers in the neighborhood. My younger brother Michael (then Mickey) and I would be forced labor behind the soda counter slinging ice cream or making sandwiches along with one or two African/American employees when my parents would start screaming at each other despite the crowd in the store. If you ever felt like disappearing down the drain in one of the sinks, this was it!

I severed my relationship with my mother in 1956 when I was a sophomore at Haverford as a result of injuring my knee playing football. The injury required surgery, and as I was recovering from anesthesia in Bryn Mawr Hospital, I received a telephone call from my mother who was hysterically screaming something about my fiancé and her family (Teenchy and I were engaged by this time) and insisting on calling off the engagement. It turned out that Teenchy had been at the hospital for my surgery and was in the room waiting for me to awaken fully from anesthesia when my mother arrived two hours late. Teenchy made the mistake of asking her why she was late, which must have caused her to feel guilty—she was habitually late—and this led to an outburst of rage. From this point on, I felt that I had to protect myself emotionally by avoiding any entanglements whatsoever with mom.

Teenchy and I married on June 9th, 1957 at the end of my third year at Haverford, and we lived in a lovely apartment in Bryn Mawr near the College. Since we had to eat, Teenchy left Penn State and matriculated at Harcum Junior College to become a medical technician and earn a salary. Not only did she become highly proficient as a technician, but in typical Teenchy fashion, she worked up to the day she delivered with both Elizabeth and George. During this time, I was a medical student or an intern and was spending whatever spare time I had either working in the lab, where I became obsessed, or playing tennis, which also became an obsession, and Teenchy did everything else and in addition read about a book a week (as she has done since I’ve known her). If it has not already become clear, I should emphasize that I have an obsessive personality. As a result, I am unable to do anything partially, and either I do it reasonably well or I don’t do it.

Elizabeth was born in 1961 at Fordham Hosptal in the Bronx during my third year in medical school, George was born in 1963 at Jacobi Hospital when I was an intern in Pediatrics, after obtaining my MD from Einstein in 1962. I then spent a year as a graduate student/postdoc in Adele Kostellow’s lab in Physiology, and I was fortunate enough to go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, rather than Vietnam. We rented a small house in Bethesda and purchased Keeji, a beautiful black and silver German shepherd. Elizabeth was enrolled in nursery school, and I delivered her every morning on the back of a motor scooter where I had her bound to me by means of a heavy belt. In the winter, she arrived at nursery school with very red cheeks, and I was told that many of the other parents called me a mad man. Joshua was born in 1965 at the Bethesda Naval Hospital across Wisconsin Boulevard from NIH.

Two stories related to Teenchy’s pregnancy with Josh are readily memorable. The first is a vision of her in the last month of the pregnancy mowing our lawn with a gigantic belly. I believe Teenchy gained an average of 40 pounds with each pregnancy, and she never broke 100 pounds before her pregnancy with Elizabeth. In other words, seeing her mowing the lawn while pregnant was quite a sight. The second story has to do with Joshua’s delivery at the Naval Base and with Teenchy as a patient who only wanted to be anesthetized during the delivery. So I thought it was uproarious when I was told shortly after she was admitted to the Obstetrics Floor that a resident was trying to hypnotize her. Then after admitting her to the ward, I had to register her officially with the administration. When the sailor on duty asked for my rank, I could not provide it (although I was officially in the Coast Guard, few if any of us at NIH felt that we were really in the Armed Services). Therefore, I had to go home to retrieve my wallet with my official ID card that stated my rank. When I returned with the card stipulating that I was a Lieutenant Commander, the poor fellow behind the desk snapped to attention and briskly saluted me. I am sure I was the first person he had run into who did not know he was an officer, let alone a Lieutenant Commander.

After two years, I had fulfilled my Selective Service obligation and transferred into the US Public Health Service at NIH. We bought our first house in the newly built Woodley Gardens neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland, and I commuted to NIH on a small motorcycle via Route 70S, which no longer exists. This was also when we began our tradition of having Golden Retrievers as pets. During the past 50 years, we have had two males most of the time, and we still own two, as does Elizabeth. We bought the house with a mortgage from the Veterans Administration, and I will never forget the administrator saying that I would have gotten a better deal had Vietnam been considered a hot war. I could just imagine him telling this to a veteran who lost a limb or was otherwise seriously injured.

In 1970, we moved to New Jersey where I was to work at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology for the next 20 years, and we lived in a very beautiful house in the tiny community of Glen Ridge, which is between Bloomfield and Montclair. Our backyard overlooked the New York City skyline, which was readily seen when our many trees shed their leaves in the fall and winter. By this time all three children were in school, so Teenchy matriculated at Montclair State College (now Montclair University), first at night school to obtain her BA degree. She later switched to day school and obtained a MA in reading. All of this was done while raising our kids, preparing meals, taking care of the house, paying bills, etc., thereby allowing me to obsess with my science and play tennis whenever/wherever possible.

One short self-effacing story tells it all. One Saturday, I was playing tennis on Herb Weissbach’s home court when the people who lived next door to us in Glen Ridge were putting in a swimming pool right under our bedroom window. At the beginning of the last set, Herb’s wife René came out hurriedly to say that Teenchy was on the phone because the vibrations from next door had caused the ceiling in our master bedroom to collapse, and the heavy plaster had almost hit her. I asked if Teenchy was okay, and when René said yes, I told her to tell Teenchy I would be home just as soon as the set was over. I still have not lived that one down.

After graduating from Glen Ridge High School, Elizabeth matriculated at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, and prior to medical school she was a research assistant in Sam Silverstein’s lab in the Department of Physiology at Columbia University Medical School. She then matriculated at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I had the great pleasure of hooding her at her graduation ceremony from Einstein in 1988. She completed both an internship and residency in internal medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. She also completed a fellowship there in heart failure/heart transplant. Dr. Elizabeth finished a second fellowship in cardiology at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, and she currently practices cardiology there.

George became distinguished early on when he won the New Jersey butterfly swimming competition in the 10 and under class. Only two kids were in the competition, and George’s opponent was disqualified because of his kick. George received a trophy, and this became a funny story for years thereafter. As a freshman in Glen Ridge High School, he was part of a doubles team that got to the finals of the New Jersey State High School Tennis Tournament, and I was certain that he would become a very good player once he learned to control his temper (he smashed many a racquet). But alas, once the tennis season was over, he never practiced. In any event, after graduation, he matriculated at Hofstra University on Long Island, where he received a BA degree. He then went to Yeshiva University where he earned a Masters in Sociology and became a truly committed psychiatric social worker in the Bergen County School System. George is married to Joshena Green, and they have three children—Sara 23, Lena 19 and David 13 at this writing. They live in a lovely neighborhood in Denville, New Jersey. Although there are 2500 miles between us, we try to make transcontinental visits as frequently as possible.

Our third child, Joshua, was only 39 when he took his own life in the early morning hours of May 31st, 2005. As an anesthesiologist, Josh knew well how to put himself down by setting up an appropriate IV drip. He had suicidal thoughts since he was 5 years old, and I am convinced that he suffered from a genetic defect in a neurotransmitter reuptake protein or a neurotransmitter receptor. He had been seeing a psychiatrist and taking anti-depressants for most of his life, and we spoke about suicide many, many times. The day before his death, Teenchy and I both spoke to him independently, and he sounded somewhat down, but certainly not suicidal. This was a terrible loss! Joshua was a fine physician, had a great sense of humor, which he used to hide his depression, and his friends and colleagues, thought very highly of him. Beneath the humor, however, everything was black; nothing made him happy. At least he found peace. Josh was buried in Philadelphia on June 6th, 2005, the day after my birthday and three days before our wedding anniversary. The finality of his death is certainly the most painful experience of our lives.

THE PATH TO SERENDIPITY

As a student at Overbrook High School—I was School President when Wilt Chamberlin of basketball fame was a freshman—I did okay academically as a ‘Mechanical Arts’ major, which meant that I took four academic courses along with mechanical drawing and a shop class. But my major interest was in football, where I was a quarterback, with a secondary interest in baseball, where I was a catcher. Between the shop courses and the athletics, I knew many of the African/American kids in the school, and by the time I was a senior, I was captain of both the football and baseball teams. This prompted my white, Jewish