Page 12 - Dad's St Jude Projecy

do the genes, and recombinants are produced. All of this is ancient
history now, but it was a big deal at the time.

I came to St Jude Hospital about a year after the doors opened,

bringing with me a wife and five children (later to increase to seven).
Colleagues at Yale who didn't know Allan Grano ff told me that I
was crazy to leave the intellectually stimulating and career-building
east coast for a mid-south backwater. But there were several things

that drew me there: the excitement of getting in at the beginning of
the development of a new research institute in a department
dedicated to virus research; a credible promise by the first Director
of St Jude, Donald Pinke!, that I would have complete scientific

freedom; the scientific reputation and humanity of Allan Granoff;
and the fact that we were both working on the same virus. And
things turned out remarkably well; for me personally, for the
institution, and for Allan.

Allan's generosity

All ofus behave paradoxically at times, but Allan's paradoxes were
especially endearing. On the one hand he was extremely generous;
on the other, extremely frugal. My wife and I arrived in Memphis in
late June, 1963, with five young children, including a three-month

old baby, to begin our new life. Allan met us at the airport on that
sweltering summer day in an enormous station wagon and brought
us to air-conditioned quarters at St Jude, where we waited for our
furniture to arrive.

I began work as Allan's postdoctoral fellow, continuing my research

on the molecular biology ofNDV. After a couple of years, I made
progress, and Allan decided to leave that topic entirely to me. He
even transferred his NIH grant to me, tiding me over until I was able
to obtain independent funding.

Allan's frugality

His frugality came out in the way he ran his department. His stated
philosophy was that you could have anything you wanted, space,
people, other resources, as long as you earned it, which meant going