Lost opportunities
John E. Peterson, Special to the Gazette
Thursday, March 5, 2009
I SUSPECT that we all have things happen to us which make us think it will be fine when it comes to fruition. Just indications that an event we will like will happen. Such things have happened to me. I would tell you about a few of them, if I had my way.
I had collected soil samples, from which I could isolate myxobacteria, several times in Mexico. It had been in the northern deserts, however. This time I was going further south and, then, into Mexico City. So I wrote to a professor down there whom I knew. He had spent a semester at the University of Missouri.
He said it would be great for us to see each other. And he said further, since I would be there, would I give a talk about my research at his university. I said I would be delighted to do so.
The possibility never materialized. The students went on a three-day strike and the university closed. It had nothing to do with my talk, but I, obviously, could not do it. I have spoken in Sweden, England, Australia, South Africa, Canada and all over the U.S. Too bad I did not get to add the Mexico possibility to my list.
Another non-materializing possibility involved coaching. Though I had not intended to do so, I coached basketball and baseball at Jackson Junior College in Michigan for four years. Teaching there was my first job back in the late 1940s right after I got out of the Navy. I had some coaching success and even had one basketball team in the national tournament.
I got a couple of requests to coach at four-year colleges. I turned those possibilities down because I wanted to get my graduate degrees and teach biology. I have always been glad those possibilities never materialized.
I long have been sorry that this next possibility never materialized. In the late summer of 1983, I was informed that I had been selected to be one of 15 microbiologists to go to China. We were to visit pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. I was selected, I suppose, because my research had been supported by pharmaceutical companies and I had contact with several.
Well! I had two problems. We had just returned from four months of travel. We had traveled all over Australia for three months while I collected soil samples from which I isolated my myxobacteria. And we had visited New Zealand, the Fiji Islands and Hawaii. So I was somewhat traveled-out.
Also, it was going to cost me about $5,000 to go. Because of all that travel, I was a bit short of money. Consequently, though my colleagues all thought I should go, I turned it down. I made a mistake in not letting that possibility materialize. If I had it to do over, I would certainly go, if I had my way.
Another possibility. I made my decision to go to Emporia about the first of December 1970. At the end of that December, the chancellor of the University of Missouri announced that he was going to an Arizona university as president. A man who was high on me became the Missouri chancellor. He one day implied that I might have been his vice chancellor if I were not leaving. That possibility might have been fun.
This next experience was not really a possibility, nor was it really expected to materialize. It was just a fun event, however, and I would tell it, if I had my way.
Back in our Columbia days at the University of Missouri, Merle was very active in the League of Women Voters. She was on the state board and president of the local LWV, but her biggest activity in my opinion, was this.
She had a TV show on which she and another woman would interview state representatives and senators. It was so prominent that state officials asked and almost begged to be on it. It was a Sunday afternoon show.
So! When Merle was doing her show, I had to keep an eye on the kids. This one afternoon, we were out at the Stephens College lake, a place to which we often went to relax and have fun. On this afternoon, it happened that the husband of Merle’s partner on the show that day was also out there with his kids. He was a chemistry professor at the university.
As he and I chatted and laughed about our situation as child-watchers, we decided that we ought to form a men’s auxiliary of the LWV. All sorts of men’s groups had auxiliaries for their women. Why should the LWV not have one for their men?
Of course, we never did that. It was not a real possibility and it never materialized. It has, however, always stuck in my memory as a fun possibility.
There, then, are some of my possibilities which never materialized. Life is such. It still is a good life, if I have my way.