Driving West and a stop at Grand Canyon

Our family had already driven west many times by the year 1984. We started in 1972, when we drove to Dodge City, Kansas, to visit Dean's family and to pick up my Father and Kai, who had just arrived in the states. Then in 1975, 1978, and 1981 we, the whole family, drove to the west coast and then flew to visit our Taiwan home, and, in 1981, also visited China mainland. We tried to take different routes for each trip so that we could visit as many states in the USA as possible. In the summer of 1984, on another trip to the west coast, we tried to visit more national parks and stopped first for a longer vacation at the Grand Canyon. For the first time, we each rented a horse for a horse back visit of the canyon scenery.  The pictures below were taken to remember that experience:

We then stayed there for a couple of days, just to see the great scenery there (see pictures below). We enjoyed the whole trip very much! The only regret we had was that we were too hot to try to hike   down to the bottom and not strong enough to carry enough water for the hike!

 

Watauga Dam(2)

During the time that the dam was being repaired in the year of 1983, and the water was draining slowly, we were seriously considering to buy a piece of property on the lake. The owner of a large piece of shore property (which you can see on the whole right side of the third picture of the previous blog) did a survey and cut out six acres of land with some shore front.  We bought the land together with a cabin and our kids went there with us to identify the markers on the land and the power line to the cabin. Steven was stepping on one marker in the first picture below and you can see the power line in the second picture.

 

 Later we built a permanent dock to replace the old floating dock on the land. You can see that we had many good get-togethers on the dock beside the shore:

Watauga Dam (1)

In 1983, Watauga Lake was drained for repair work. We, the whole family,  went there for a visit. This beautiful lake was our favorite place to take our friends to visit, to picnic,  to swim, and just to walk around!  We had been many places around this lake, as it is very large, and it takes quite a bit of driving time to go to the places we enjoyed for different reasons. We had heard that there used to be a town at what was now the bottom of the lake. So we drove there one day and were able to see what had been the bottom. With a lot of other people we walked to see the original town of Butler. These pictures show what we saw:

Clearly, it was hard to imagine that there were people who used to live there. A total of 761 families were moved to higher ground by the TVA, and a new town, Butler, was created. A temporary road was made (see below) so that we could visit the old town, now buried under the water.

 

The new town (see below)was now at the beginning of  the this road. After the dam was completed in 1948, Watauga Lake was created using the water from the Watauga River!

We visited Tao-Shi-Lin

There are not many things that happened in my life before my teenage years that I can remember clearly. This story about Tao-Shi-Lin is, however, an exception. Tao-Shi-Lin is the sister of my best friend Tao-Tze. I met her when I was 12, and she was close to 10 years old. We only met each other when I occasionally went to visit Tao-Tze at their nearby home. Sometime, when she was close to sixteen years old, I heard that Tao-Shi-Lin had run away with an American soldier stationed in Taiwan. This was very unusual at that time and in that place. For a young girl from an educated family to meet and fall in love with a foreigner, and then to run away with him, was unheard of!
Of course, Tao-Tze's family did not want to talk about her very much and we only knew that she left for the USA with this GI. In 1983, I found out where she lived. It was in New England, where Janice's family lived and, believe it or not, our family went to visit her there. We had a picnic dinner with her family at their home, which had a swimming pool. We took three pictures together, and the visit ended before we realized it!!! Overall, this story had, to me, a strange beginning, and, as it developed, it remained very unusual and strange. However, she appeared to be happy with her life.

Student Pictures in my Office

There were four student pictures in my office during the 35 years of my teaching at ETSU. I moved to many different offices during those years, but the pictures were always the same ones. I will let you know in this blog something about them. They were close to my heart and I was the only one knew who they were and why their pictures were in my office. Jane Adams was the first of my graduate students at ETSU. She was working full time at Tennessee Eastman Chemical Company when she decided to work with me in the evenings for her graduate thesis in the Chemistry Department. I tried to be with her when she started her thesis research at night. It was a very difficult task to start and terminate chemical reactions at night after her full time work in another town. She worked on the decomposition of Oxalic Acid reaction in Dioxin. It was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry and it was also part of my first publication while I was at ETSU. Later she became the first female president of the local ACS section before I was elected!

The next picture is of Tony Ellis. He was the first undergraduate student who selected me as his research professor. It took some courage to make that decision as the students had no idea how research could be started, and there was no requirement to take research as a chemistry major.

The next two pictures were added to my office wall slightly later, but they were there almost three decades. The first picture below was of Sharon E Campbell who exchanged it from one of her alone, after she had her baby with her husband, Brain Campbell. She was in my General Chemistry class, and later asked me to give her away at their wedding - a request which I was happy to oblige!

The final picture is of Jenny Fox, whose thesis was co-directed by my best Jewish friend and co-worker, Boris Franzus. After struggling with her first thesis topic, she chose to work in the area where Boris and I were collaborating. Boris and I published quite a number of papers together over the years. Jenny Fox was the first and, perhaps one of the best, representatives of that collaboration!

Christmas Season 1982

Every Christmas Season was very busy at our home. We spent time, not only preparing to sing in the Civic Chorale Christmas Concert and for our Church's Christmas Music, but also attending several concerts just to enjoy the music! Other things, such as plays, TV specials, and theater events, all required us to make arrangements and schedule our time appropriately. There were also many events just before the season and immediately after the season, which kept us all very, very busy! The year 1982 was no exception. I would like to show you just a few pictures below which illustrate some of  the events we participated in before, during and after the Christmas season.

 The first two pictures are of the Christmas Party for Janice's colleagues at Milligan College:

                           

 The next two pictures include old and dear friends who visited that year: Boris and Betty Franzus and Bill and Ginger Francis

 

Janice and her good friend Prudy Zinser

                          

 Chinese Students with their relatives at our home

There were often some special programs in which our children were involved. This year it was Steven's turn!

 

Then we traveled to Winchester to see Janice's grandmother and we had meals with the Paul family in Massachusetts and with the Tangs in New York:

 

Father's Tomb Stone:

   

Believe it or not, Janice's mother later flew to Johnson City to visit us and we all went to pick her up at the airport. At that time, we could walk all the way to the plane to receive her! And my father was visiting us at the time too! We took a picture together to celebrate the rare occasion!

The Vietanam War - a TV Documentary Series

Tonight our PBS will broadcast the last episode of a series of 10 shows, part of the two week long showing of a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick entitled "The Vietnam War." Both Janice and I have been glued to our TV for the last two weeks, watching this prime time series. We were familiar with most of the facts about what happened in the first ten years of my life in the USA. But these same facts shocked us more this time and we learned much more about how naive and ignorant we were about the events when they occurred. We were so busy with school and our newly formed life together, and with looking for jobs, that I only wrote once about that time on this blog (see http://anordinarychinese.blogspot.com/2011/11/demonstrations.html). We both feel now that we did not pay enough attention to our government and to what they were doing. I was so grateful about what had happened in my life up to that point, and I was feeling so thankful for the opportunities opened in front of me, that it was impossible for me to watch and comprehend what was happening. You can see the conflicting emotions now in my thoughts! I recall a quote by one of the people interviewed during the film to the effect that his was the last generation to believe that the government told them the truth. That belief was certainly shattered when we learned of the actions of five presidents of our country during the war years. Burns and Novick have done all of us an enormous favor in researching and creating this film. We must resolve to pay close attention to what is going on in Washington and demand accountability from our leaders.

The Wedding of a Chinese Faculty Member

Most of the faculty members at ETSU were married by the time they become a faculty member because they were the "older" people in society. However, in the Fall of 1982, we attended the wedding of a Chinese faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine at the newly established Quillen Dishner College of Medicine. Dr. David Chi's wedding was in the Veteran's Affairs chapel. Both Janice and I were there to attend the wedding and we later went to the reception as well. Even though we did not know David very well, we wanted to show our support for a fellow Chinese! 

You only have your eighth grade once in your life!

It was just about one year before the start of Margaret's eighth grade. She was telling me that she only had one time to experience her eighth grade and she hoped that my consideration to go to Germany for one full year as an American Fulbright Fellow would be terminated. Indeed, that was a year that we had a full schedule. Ed had accepted a job in Florida and he and Judy bought a house in Lakeland. Not only did they live close to Disney World and Epcot Center, they even had discount tickets for many nearby attractions, such as Sea World, and Universal Studios, etc. Starting from that year, we visited them many times. Their house had a swimming pool, too. The pictures below were all taken  when we enjoyed our holiday vacation days there.

Stockroom Personel

One of the very important jobs for the Chairman of the Chemistry Department is to make sure that the stockroom is well stocked at all times, not only for the experiments done by students in different classes but also for the experiments being conducted by faculty. The specific solutions needed for each of the lab classes must be prepared properly before students arrive. We might have as many as four to six labs going on at the same time. Therefore, we had many student workers trained for each lab so that all students could be served in time to finish their experiment within their allotted time. The full time lab staff consisted of two people in 1982. They were Mrs. White and Mr. Jones. The person overseeing the lab was Dr. Ron Orcutt, who was also the radiation officer for the whole university. The American Medical Society required that such a position be filled before they would certify approval for the new ETSU medical school, the Quillen and Dishner College of Medicine. Dr. Orcutt was one of the few people on campus who was qualified to serve in that capacity. This arrangement, by which Dr. Orcutt had half of a position in Chemistry and the other half in the Medical School, benefited the Department for many years! At Thanksgiving time, the stockroom people hosted a dinner to share with both faculty and students who worked in the stockroom. The following pictures were taken at such gatherings:

 Mrs. White is in the center

 Mr. Jones is center left, sitting

  Dr. Orcutt is on the right side