Norman Waecker Interview

Interview with Norman Waecker
Date of Interview: March 19, 2004
Interviewer: Bonnie McCay
Transcriber: Rob Teeter
Date of Transcription: February 9, 2005

Q: Norm is visiting here from California. He is here to go to a reunion of the lightweight crew; he was on varsity crew for 3 years.

NW: This is the 30 year reunion of the varsity lightweight crew, class of 1974. That is 30 years, right? ‘84, ‘94, ‘04. Yes, it is. And the funny part about this is Steve Wagner, who was part of our boat; we called him “Pops.” That name may not mean a lot but if you look in your directory you'll realize that he is the head coach for the Rutgers crew team 30 years later.

Q: Oh, is that right?

NW: I haven't seen Steve in probably 25 or 30 years. But we trained together everyday down at the boathouse and rowed everyday, probably 7 miles per day for years training.

Q: You're here for the reunion. Is everybody coming?

NW: I got an email from several oarsmen, including Ted S. Pytlar and Bob Battaglia, who is also a graduate of 1974, and I think the original lightweight varsity crew will be here. Tomorrow is the annual crew banquet, and there's going to be a dedication of the new racing shell, for Mason-Gross, and the high point of tomorrow will probably be for the Rutgers student, if the river doesn't freeze over, we're gonna take out an “eight” [a racing shell] to row.

Q: Now when you were at Cook it was CAES, when you started, right?

NW: It was CAES when I started and Cook when I finished. We were the first graduating class from Cook.

Q: And you were one of two speakers at graduation?

NW: Yes, Natalie Rudolph was my co-speaker.

Q: Where did you live while at school?

NW: My last 3 years at Cook I lived at Heylar House, which is a cooperative living group. Heylar House--at that time we had approximately 40 people living at Heylar House, about 10 people from each grade. We all had jobs; my job was working for Dean Merritt. I can't tell you how many envelopes I stuffed, probably a thousand, but I worked for Dr. Merritt, but by my 3 rd year I could give directions to people on campus. So I wasn't too bad. But my last year I was house chairman at Heylar House. Heylar House is the only place in New Brunswick where you can get meat loaf made 40 different ways. Talking about that to my wife today, she shudders but it actually worked out nicely. We managed our house chores, we managed the house, we managed the meal plans, and we managed each other I guess you could say.

Q: What was your major?

NW: My major was chemical and cellular biology. I was one of those strange ones. We had a very small group, only 7 or 8 of us. Originally when I came to Rutgers I thought I was going to be a researcher; I thought I was going to work in biology, chemistry or some science, in a lab, and I really enjoyed that. But in that first year I decided that I really want to try or think about medicine. I really enjoyed science and biology and I love working with people.

Q: Are there any faculty who influenced you? Any that are memorable?

NW: My advisor was Dr. Strumeyer and he always encouraged me and he was a protein chemist and he taught me my biochemistry and it still serves me today. I think of Dr. Merritt who encouraged me, Dr. Locandro and Dr. Hamilton.

Q: Were you as much involved with the planning of the school as Natalie was? Any of the committees?

NW: The first year I started over at Livingston College , although my courses were over at CAES, and I actually met Dr. Merritt doing committee work. We were doing some kind of student awareness or planning committees, but that's how I learned about plans for Cook College . Cook College was being planned for a while and I had worked for Dr. Merritt, and I was also very good friends with Natalie. So I didn't have to go very far for information. When you see your friends everyday in class…it's not difficult…

Q: Were you involved at all in Ag. Field Day?

NW: Yes I was. I was involved. I know we would have tours set up and the Heylar House would be involved with setups. People didn't really want to go in and do experiments on a nice day…we couldn't compete with the beautiful campus outside. We would be involved as Heylar House.

Q: What were the key events you were involved with, or what were the key things you were involved with?

NW: Crew took up a large portion of my time, of course. Living with 39 other guys you would be helping them or they would be helping you. We kept busy. We were never too busy where we couldn't have our house activities. I think maybe that's where I learned my discipline, the physical discipline from crew, but then I had the mental discipline from my courses.

Q: So you had a tough schedule of courses being in pre-med…

NW: I thought it was going to be a good idea to take several of my courses over on Douglass campus because it's close. These were the smartest girls I had ever met. They were bright and so motivated that you really had to work pretty darn hard to keep your grades up. I enjoyed everything I did from my first animal science course to my high-level biology courses that you have to take.

Q: But at Douglass which professors did you have in the science classes? Was it Dr. Boikus?

NW: Dr. Boikus, bless his heart. He taught me my organic chemistry. That was by far my hardest course that I had at the university. The poor students would come out of there crying. He had the ability to take the most complex idea and simplify it down and put it on the board; it was the easiest thing, but when you went back to do it on your own you think ‘how in the world did he do that?' It was like magic. But I thought Dr. Boikus and his course was very well hard, very good, and prepared me for things to come in organic chemistry.

Q: One thing that Natalie and the others have told us is that it was really important when Cook College came along or when co-education was possible, that some of them had to be at Douglass and they had no choice.

NW: I think it did a lot for the school; it was more natural. Now I did my chemistry at Douglass, so it was always natural to me and it just made sense. But I think that it put the students more at ease, and it gave them social opportunities in addition to educational opportunities. And as you learn as you go on you need both of those skills. Maybe it's not the most important skill set, but it's close.

Q: Were you at all involved with the Green Print?

NW: I don't think so. No. I wasn't at that time.

Q: What was most valuable about Cook College for you?

NW: I think it opened windows and doors for me, it enabled me to take steps I wouldn't have otherwise taken had I not been exposed to the people and ideas and interactions you wouldn't ordinarily have in your life. I was surrounded by brilliant people. It made a big difference. Spending time with these people really brought out what I wanted to do. I'm not sure I would've known that otherwise.

Q: For the tape you should explain what you actually do do, although I will certainly write that up, but that you are in fact a specialist in infectious disease and pediatric medicine.

NW: I'm a Captain in the U.S. Navy, active duty for 25 years now, and I'm a pediatric and infectious disease sub specialist. I work at the Navy's largest hospital on the West Coast. I take care of all the children with pediatric infectious diseases west of the Mississippi, including the West Coast and the Far East, who come to the Navy. We train 40% of all the active duty military pediatricians in the Navy, my department has 24 residents and 25 faculty, 12 civilian pediatricians along with 6-8 nurse practioners. In the winter time it's very busy. We see as many as 36 per hour in the clinics; we currently are delivering 350 babies per month at our facility. And in addition to all that, we deploy people where the Navy needs them. For the war we deployed 500 people from the hospital.

Q: So you had started as a CAES student and then ended as a Cook student; what changes did you experience? You were right there at the cusp.

NW: When we said CAES, everybody knew what that meant, although no one could spell it, but then we said you're gonna graduate from Cook and no one knew what that was and you had to explain what that meant and you had to market your school. But it gave us a new entity, we sort of started a new era, it gave us a name and a label. At least my classmates were very excited about that, and then came the first graduating class, it was like the start of a new century. People still talk about the original class.

Q: Can you tell us a little about that first graduation?

NW: It was a beautiful day, it was a great graduation. I really enjoyed it. It was a pretty grass, very green, beautiful breeze, and my family was there, my dad and my mom. It was the last time my dad saw me at Rutgers . He passed away the following the year. My brother was there; he had graduated from Camden that same week. We had a BBQ. I remember we were trying to figure out the hats…tassel left, tassel right, and those sort of things. And then my friends would have their families there and they'd be smiling and then crying and then smiling and then crying and smiling. It was a very exciting day.

Q: Were you seated up at the head? How was that arranged? Now we have a wooden platform, a stage sort of thing, right above Passion Puddle.

NW: We were on a platform and we're up with the invited guests and the speakers. We were sort of sitting there and wondering why we were up there.

Q: And the ‘we' here is who?

NW: The ‘we' is Natalie Rudolph and myself. Natalie is a good friend of mine from school. She made me famous in the labs; she was an excellent lab partner. We took the same courses together.

Q: You did a joint commencement speech?

NW: Yes, we did. We did a joint commencement speech, which I still have to this day, believe it or not. It was based on “Future Shock”; that was the book of the time; that was the ‘1984' of 1974. We said some things, and I'll have to go back and look and see if any of those things came true.

Q: You told me earlier that you took turns…

NW: We did. We did.

Q: How did that work out?

NW: It was very interesting. I can't tell you how many times we rehearsed this. I was sure we weren't going to get this right. Natalie would say 5 or 6 lines and then I would say 5 or 6 lines and it would go back and forth. As the talk went on, we would say less and less. She might say 2 lines and then I might say 2 lines. And then at the end we would say it together. Which was a very interesting way to do it. So we practiced that and my lines were my lines and her lines were her lines, but they were moving to the same point.

Q: I've never seen that happen.

NW: I wonder if Natalie still has her copy. That would be interesting.

Q: How long has it been since you've seen Natalie?

NW: Years. It's been years. Probably at least 10 years. Although, I get cards from her every year. She's married and has a family. She's a very successful person.

Q: I certainly enjoyed meeting her.

NW: Those years, sometimes they're like yesterday. It's amazing.

Q: Those are the days when time seemed like it would never move on.

NW: Yeah, during finals it was like when will this ever be done. And then all of a sudden it's over.

Q: I guess the curriculum hadn't changed by 1974 much. You were still under the old curriculum anyway. You didn't have to deal with the new requirements.

NW: I'm not sure if I know it anymore. We had a standardized curriculum. We'd have animal science and plant science and we would have biology, math and physics and it would be standardized. You would then pick among the humanities.

Q: You didn't have any of the infamous area 8 courses part [of] the new school?

NW: No, I don't even know what the area 8 courses are.

Q: When I came in, I was brought in to teach these interdisciplinary courses to try to work on the theme of man and the environment.

NW: You'd be pleased to know that I took art appreciation. I learned a couple things. It was a difficult course for me, but I did take that. I had a couple other cultural anthropology courses taught at Cook. I can remember Professor Bill Ross taught that course, he was only here 1 or 2 years. He was very good.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for people that we might want to interview? Natalie is certainly someone we would want to.

NW: Natalie is certainly very active. Someone else would be….I can see their faces, but not recall their names. I'm sure some names will come back to me tomorrow when I see them. But I think some of the people at Heylar House that I lived with would be interesting to talk to 30 years later.

Q: One more thing…let me close this off…. Thanks so much Norman , I really appreciate it.

NW: You're welcome.