Page 14 - Dad's St Jude Projecy

it!" Then, a year or so later, he would proudly announce that he'd
unloaded it on a St Jude employee for $2,500!

Another paradox, the biggest of all, was Allan's public praise of

laziness while privately working very steadily and efficiently. In the
early days, Allan, recently widowed, had three small children to care
for. He had to be both father and mother to his children before he
met and married their new mother, Faye, in Memphis. In those days,

the other four basic science chairmen would burn the midnight oil
while Allan spent his evenings at home with his children. If asked
whether he wasn't working hard enough, he would say, "Those guys
are crazy. They may be staying up all night, but are they

accomplishing anything? I think it's phony." And, in fact, they
weren't accomplishing as much as he was.

Allan justified his unconventional (for a scientist) work patterns by
proclaiming laziness as a virtue. His axioms: "Anything worth doing
shouldn't require much effort." (No matter what the task, writing a

paper or a grant, achieving something in the lab, running a
department, to Allan it all had to be "easy". "It's e.a.s.y," he would
say.) Administration? "It's only common sense." Were you
overburdened with work and had deadlines you were struggling to

meet? "It's easy. No matter what it is, the work always gets done" (as
if it had a consciousness and a will of its own). But he was right, the
work always got done.

Those remarks exemplify his inspirational wisdom and humor.

Rarely a day went by when he didn't have a new joke to tell. He
often enjoyed the joke so much that he'd start giggling while he was
telling it. (Sometimes, you'd catch him walking down the hall
giggling, and you knew he was remembering a good joke.) Many of
Allan's best jokes had an ethnic quality that he skillfully exploited

to enhance the effect. Especially enjoyable was his injection of
Yiddish terms and inflections into everyday discourse.

• "I may be a scientist, but he's a scientist!"
• "Again, your cultures are contaminatea?!"

• "Now you're thinking with your tuckas (buttocks)!"