Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

  Chapter 18. The Lighter Side of Being a Graduate Student In nice weather, as noted earlier, I would often skateboard to and from the university. Ann drove to work, so sometimes I would get a ride with her and carry my skateboard as a means of local transportation. It was good exercise, and since [...]

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 [...]

Kathy’s wedding itself was a great day. I took lots of photos and did a great job as fourth best man; if I say so myself. During the service, after saying their vows Pete and Kathy had their backs to the crowd. I caught Kathy’s eye for a second and smiled, she smiled back and [...]

Anyway the conversation kind of slowed down after our reminiscing about Ward, so the guys gave Ann a big hug before we left, we were asked to give their regards to Pete and Kathy for their wedding and we finished our errands. When we returned to the homestead things had only settled down a little. [...]

The four of us reminisced for a while, while Ann learned many of my secrets. One of the stories that came up was how my deli and ambulance lives kind of collided one day. I lived closer to the deli than the owners and would often open the deli on weekend mornings. I was in [...]

My first after-school job was in the Katonah Deli and it is where I learned to do catering and a lot of cooking. The owners were John and Manny, and they had several regular employees that I always enjoyed seeing. They were usually there and if I hung out in the deli long enough, I [...]

 Chapter 17. Two More Weddings and a Tragic Death My sister Kathy was getting married to Pete, her longtime boyfriend, and both my brother and I would be in the wedding party. I would be “fourth best man” or “second to worst man” in the 6-man party (including the groom and 5 groomsmen). Ann was [...]

While editing my thesis Dr. Dillon would give me handwritten comments and I would make the changes and often expand the text to make things clearer. Then I gave the new drafts back to Dr. Dillon and the process would repeat itself. I kept the hard copies of all of the stages of my thesis, [...]

After my engagement epiphany, the rest of the day with Bill Jacobus passed quickly. I could hardly wait to get back to Ann, all the while galvanizing in my head how to pitch a move to Toledo to Ann, including how this would be a solid step in our relationship. I still had a one-hour [...]

I was focused on thesis writing, but there were other things I needed to do to secure my career track. I had to prepare for what I would be doing after my postdoc in France. Trying to line up a job over a year in advance is difficult at best. I needed to consider the [...]