Page 5 - Dad's St Jude Projecy

St. Jude Memories

By Dawn (Willis) Vincent

In January of 1963 I was working as a laboratory technician in the
Physiology Dept. of the University of TN Health Science Center
(UTHSC, I am using today’s terminology; back then I believe it was
UT Medical Center), when I ran across Gladys Sisco Bayes, an old
friend from Sigma Xi Science Honor Society at Memphis State

University, as the University of Memphis was known then. Gladys
was pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry at UTHSC and working as a
teaching assistant at UTHSC.

Gladys, who later worked in the Biochemistry Dept. at St. Jude (and

died in 2013) told me that the teaching fellowship paid her tuition
and also a stipend for living expenses and that I should look into it.
I was eager to do that, but what field of study should I pursue?
Definitely not Physiology, which required the “sacrifice” of dogs,

and I wasn’t so sure about Biochemistry, either. Reading over the
UTHSC catalogs, I decided on Microbiology as it seemed that rats
and mice were the only animals I would have to kill.

The Dept of Microbiology had a new Chair, Dr. Ray Womack. After I
had taken the Graduate Record Exams, he enrolled me as a teaching

assistant in Microbiology, and I entered graduate school in the fall
of 1963. Unlike most of the other grad students, my advisor,
mentor or “major professor,” Irving Slotnick, was not situated at the
University, but at the one-year-old St. Jude Children’s Research
Hospital. Dr. Slotnick didn’t have a teaching slot in microbiology

that fall, but I assumed that I would meet him one of those days.
Finally, after I made the highest grade on the first Biochemistry
exam, which was taken by 50 medical students and 6 graduate
students, Dr. Slotnick called me and reprimanded me for not

coming to talk to him. Needless to say, I turned up at St. Jude the
next day!

The hospital then consisted solely of the award winning “Star of
Mercy” design: a central rotunda that had a basement and second

story, and five extending “wings.” The woman at the front desk