Renee and I continued to communicate via Fax and email to get my grant materials written and keep the postdoc planning going. We rarely needed to talk on the phone, so I was surprised to receive a call from France while at work in the lab one day. The caller identified himself as Guy Vassort and he was Renee’s Unit director. He informed me that Renee’s oldest son had died. A motorcycle hit him as he was crossing the street. Obviously Renee would be taking a significant amount of time off and he or she would be in touch with me if and when the plans for my postdoc with her changed.

Renee had told me a fair amount about her kids as well as her husband, and I was profoundly saddened for her and her family. A twelve-year-old just should not die. It was now about 5 months before I was to leave for France, so I wasn’t worried about my job with her, but I really felt for their loss. I felt an overwhelming need to do something. But what could or should I do? I asked my French teacher, Flavie Laurant, what was traditional as far as expressions of sympathy in France and she suggested a handwritten card, on blank parchment paper using a quality ink pen. She said that a personal note was much more important than a purchased card.

So I purchased some fine card stock and a pen that would write well on parchment and drafted several letters, in English. I showed them to Flavie and she said they were all nice, but did not have a favorite. I sent the card to Renee at her work address, the only address I had for her.

Meanwhile, I increased my efforts to find a postdoctoral position after France and advised those potential bosses of the situation with Renee. Many of them were able to be flexible such that I could start after the postdoc was finished, assuming Renee would still welcome me, or arrange for me to start earlier if things fell through with Renee. Most people were extremely accommodating with these extenuating circumstances. I was assured of some opportunities in nearby Michigan if that were to be necessary.

Ann too felt deeply about the loss of such a young life. We talked about the possibility of having to stay in Lansing, or elsewhere in the USA. Although the idea of moving to France was intimidating to her, she knew how much it meant to me. We decided to let providence take the lead and to give Renee time to get past this tragedy. Whatever small inconvenience this might cause us, it was miniscule compared to its effects on Renee’s family.

About this time a good friend from Susquehanna University, Tom Banks, invited me, and guest (AKA Ann) to his wedding. I knew his future wife, Celeste, albeit not well. I was not going to be in the wedding party, just a guest with a date, but I felt it was important to go and planned to bring my photo album with some pictures from those days with me (to share some old memories and scandalous stories with Tom’s bride). Tom was always a ladies’ man in college, so we had lots of stories to tell about him.

On the Friday morning before the weekend of the wedding, I met with an enzyme expert to discuss how I analyzed some of my data. She was quite concerned about my choice of mathematical algorithms because there were three or four different ways that the analysis could be done. This was a subject I knew well and I explained that I was using what I thought was the most commonly used method. She strongly encouraged if not admonished me to repeat the analysis of all my data using a minimum of three different methods. She would be away for two weeks starting next Tuesday, so the only time she would have time to review my work would be Monday morning. What she was saying took me by surprise. I would have to work on the lab computers all weekend to get the information she wanted by Monday. Otherwise I would end up dangerously behind my schedule for my thesis submission. I had to make a difficult decision but there was really no choice. I cancelled the trip to the wedding and got to work.

Unfortunately when I called Tom to advise him of this, he was not in and his answering machine was full. I kept trying to get a message to him, but also had to make sure my Ph.D. project was going to get done. Ann was disappointed, but she understood how myopic and focused I was, as many graduate students are when it comes to our degrees. The degree and the work towards that degree become all-encompassing.

Ann was incredibly supportive in this sudden emergency and offered to help if she could. She and I spent much of the weekend in the lab on two different computers. I was analyzing data and she was working on the format of my thesis. I was so conflicted about missing the wedding for my thesis, I never did reach Tom, or write to him afterward, to explain why we missed his wedding. At our college reunion several years later, I apologized and finally explained it to him. He was gracious as always when accepting my apology.

I finished analyzing the data late Sunday evening. Ann had gone home and I looked at it disbelievingly. Hours of work, letting down a good friend and incalculable personal turmoil had produced a result. The new math didn’t change my thesis results to any significant extent. It only reinforced my original data and interpretations. It was ironic that I missed Tom’s wedding for the sake of my thesis, yet my thesis was not changed by that work.

As I have since learned, hiccups always occur when doing research and/or writing a thesis. Making those corrections seemed so important to me then, and what I remember now is I missed a friend’s wedding. I am not attempting to judge whether skipping the wedding was a good or bad decision. I made the decision based on the priorities and time I had at that time. Obtaining a Ph.D. is full of personal sacrifices, and missing Tom’s wedding was one that I had to make.

Because those extra calculations were so personally costly to me, I included them in my Ph.D. thesis even though they were redundant. I explained in my thesis that the extra calculations were done in an abundance of caution to enhance confidence in the numbers I was reporting. I also added a couple of figures based on those calculations, and those figures, too, were somewhat superfluous. But every time I open my Ph.D. thesis and see that additional data, I remember and regret the wedding I missed.