Biochemist Running Outside the Box

By Larry DeVault

This book describes many of the Pharmaceutical Engineering processes that allowed HPLC manufacturing for the first successful scale up breakthroughs.

For: Pharmaceutical Chemists, Engineers,
Barbershop Quartet Singers, and
Actors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728363561

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

THE CHILD, BEFORE

BECOMING A BIOCHEMIST

It was another hot summer day: steamy, muggy with blazing sun and no clouds; a typical West Virginia Dog Day, perfect for baseball or softball, which ever ball you could find. We spent all summer trying to get enough kids together to play. But today we had tents set up in the ball field, and most of us were hiding from the sun. We were reading old comic books or looking through piles to locate one we hadn’t read yet. The field was barely large enough to play softball. We always lost the ball in the neighbor’s garden. He would threaten to keep the ball, but usually gave it back.

There were several of us there that morning, all from a five block

radius. Those kids that bordered the field included Caleb Tarrelton,

Johnny Thomas, Philip Hopewell, Richard Meredith, and their

older brothers or sisters The field had ruts in it from times when

gardens had been planted. No gardens were there in ‘45

Around noon, Johnny Thomas, Robby and Jackie Manley decided

to take a bike ride. I was too lazy to go home to get my bike, and

so I kept on reading. When we rode around the hills in West

Virginia, we were careful to pick out streets that were mostly

on the level. We probably rode fewer miles over the route.

Today started out just like all the other vacation days before

school started again, but today would never be the same again

after the bike ride. Today we learned how fragile life is and how

quickly things taken for granted can change in an instant.

They all rode out together, the bikers. It was quiet for reading, and I don’t remember how long they were gone. When they came back, Johnny Thomas was gone. They said his shirt got caught in the chains of the power drive on the street cleaner. The chains carried Johnny under the wheels and the wheels ran over his head and crushed it like a melon. At first I thought they were pulling another prank, telling a story to see us react, but then I saw fear in their eyes and I knew it was true. I was glad I hadn’t gone with them.

I remember the day Johnny died, but I don’t remember the gruesome scene itself, because I stayed in the tent and read another comic book. The rest of us got our bikes quick, ‘cause we had to go check out the scene. We had to go over to where Johnny was lying under a white sheet on the sidewalk in front of Jay’s Market. Every kid had to see for himself that Johnny was dead. All we could see was the stark, white lonely sheet covering the form of the body.

We didn’t notice or hear the traffic noises or think about the next thing that would have to be done. Johnny’s father would have to identify the body. Someone would lift the sheet and someone would lower the sheet again and, in between, someone, Johnny’s father, would have to look at the body and see him lying there on the cement sidewalk. What we were thinking of was all the ways we could have changed the day’s events so Johnny would still be alive–how the bike ride might have been after lunch, when the street cleaner had done its work, or how we could have played a game of kick the stick instead of taking the bike ride, or that the route they took being one of a thousand different streets and not the one where the street cleaner rode. We were ten years old then, and we probably all knew about death. We all had been to someone’s funeral before–most likely a great grandparent, or an old aunt. But kids didn’t die. We all knew kids didn’t die.

We grew up during WWII. We knew people were dying over there in the war. Some fathers were in the war. But that was over now. My cousin, Steve, told