BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2001 CONTENTS
Email 2001
David Lavrin
Date: Saturday, August 25, 2001
Subject: Re: Dorset Events
Thanks for the e.mail about the Sept 15 event. Being 5,000 miles away in Arizona
I won't be able to attend - but one of these days my visit to England may be
synchronised. These, the dog days of summer when we have the almost only time of
both heat and humidity, we are walking around in temperatures of about
110-degrees F (over 40C for you modern English! They tend to be traditional here
in the wild west). Not having been in contact with Clayesmore for so many years
I have lost track of what happened to many of the masters. I note that you are
having a Scadding exhibition. I owe so much to Scadding, who provided a room of
rest and peace when I needed it, and was always the nicest person one could ever
meet. It is too much to hope that he is still alive, though I suppose it is
possible. Could you give the news about him and the other masters, such as
Spinney, Verrinder, Appleby, Moore. They were all such good teachers and I owe
much to them, although I lost track years ago.
David Lavrin (42-48)
Date: Saturday, August 28, 2001
Subject: Re: OC Society
Dear Nick:
Thanks very much for the update. I will certainly check the website more
frequently, and hope one of these days to be able to come to a meeting, or go to
the school. I am sorry about the "evangelical members of the school
council" pushing Scadding out. He was a wonderful and very tolerant person,
and many of us, the quieter and less gregarious students, owe him, and Appleby,
a great debt for providing a safe and quiet haven when we needed one. Also,
Scadding's books on medical topics gave us a lot of straight, if somewhat lurid,
information about the birds and the bees in an age when our parents and the
school were not very capable. Remember that we were a very monastic organisation
then. There is something to be said for that in being able to concentrate more
on learning than sex. I have always wondered how the school manages to keep the
raging hormones in reasonable check now that it is coeducational. I have no
doubt that they manage, and would certainly not recommend going back to an
all-boys school.
News of myself and my family. After leaving Clayesmore I took a degree in
chemistry from the University of Nottingham. Subsequently I attended Harvard
Business School (a disastrous mistake; I am not businessman - but I did meet my
wife there). I then obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of
California, Berkeley, and did research on immunological factors involved in
mouse breast cancer, both there and as an assistant professor at the University
of Illinois. I then worked on immune factors in mouse leukaemia with members of
the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which I joined as a
program officer in Cancer Immunology. For about 10 years I ran the cancer
immunology study section, which saw to the review of grant applications in
cancer and basic immunology. I then joined the National Institute on Ageing, and
did similar review work of grant applications in the basic biology of ageing. I
retired about 6 years ago, when my wife, a historian originally from Cuba, who
works on the role of women in Latin America, became a professor at Arizona State
University. She is currently on sabbatical leave for two years, having been
given a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. We have two children, Cecilia, a
lawyer in the Washington area, and Andrew, a computer specialist, also in
Washington.
Phoenix, at 1000 ft and in the desert, is about as hot as Dubai in the summer,
up to about 110 degrees, and our latest move is to buy a cottage about 80 miles
north, at the foot of the massive Mogellon Rim, where it is much cooler and
among the pines. We are at 5,000 ft and the Rim, which constitutes the edge of
the Colorado Plateau and which stretches for about 200 miles, is a sheer
escarpment that rises almost vertically about 5 miles beyond our house to about
7200 ft . So we will be able to have cooler summers. For the remaining 9 months
of the year the climate around Phoenix is just about idyllic, and we like it
very much.
If any Old Clayesmorians are around the area, we would be very happy to see
them.
David Lavrin (42-48)