Volume III
When I set out to write this essay, I thought my recollections could be contained in an essay of maybe six or eight pages. But as it has turned out, my recollections have now reached a total of three volumes. I believe that I have spent as much time as I wish to spend on this project, and so this will tend to be the final volume. Or if I can’t sleep well, by recalling other remarks, there may be a fourth volume. We will have to see.
When I enlisted in the American Air Force, which was then under Army control, I wound up at the base in Coral Gables, Florida in 1942. The purpose of the base was to teach me and my fellow citizens air craft maintenance with the thought that we would end up being Aerial Engineers. This was war time and the school, called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute, had so many students that they put a second shift on to accommodate us. The instructor that we had knew just about all there was to know about aircraft engines and he spoke in a country fashion. I was not turned off by his manner of speech because I suspected that he really knew what he was talking about.
Working the second shift in darkness was a bit of a problem. The instructor warned us about walking into airplane propellers. In this case, the propellers on the engines were called “club propellers” which would not move the engines forward. They were simply attached to the end of the drive shaft to imitate what a real propeller would do.
Nonetheless the instructor warned us that we were working in twilight and if we backed into an aircraft propeller, it would make “hamburger meat out of you.” The story about hamburger meat has stuck with me for the 68 intervening years and I have yet to answer the question about whether it was a tautology or a simple redundancy. The instructor made his point so clearly that it has remained in my mind for 68 years. Every instructor at all levels of education should strive to achieve that level of endurance.
The next quotation came from a native of Newark, New Jersey who was accustomed to the political battles that took place in that town. His name was Tom Eadone. Tom ran a limousine service that I used for all of the years that I was traveling abroad. Tom and the driver that he hired made sure that I never missed an airplane because of their failure to arrive at my house. On one occasion, Tom said to me, “Any politician who spends more to get elected than the job will eventually pay him, is not to be trusted.”
This brought to mind the story of Meg Whitman’s campaign to become the governor of California. Newspaper estimates at this point suggest that she has spent of her own political capital something on the order of $140 million. The California governorship certainly is not going to be a profitable one for Meg Whitman. If I lived in California, I would make certain to vote for Jerry Brown, the former governor, on the grounds that Eadone’s rule should not ever be violated.
Another remark that was made to me came from Donald Zoerb, who was my instructor for the four years that I took his drafting class at Clayton High School. Mr. Zoerb was a wonderful teacher and I never missed any of his classes. On a day when I did not have drafting, I skipped school and went to downtown St. Louis. My recollection is that I witnessed a performance at the Garrick Theatre which was then a burlesque place. One way or another, the school found out about my skipping school and imposed some sort of penalty. When Mr. Zoerb found out what had happened to me, he remarked very dryly, “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” That remark was made to me around 1938 or 1939, which gives it a lifetime of something on the order of 70 years. I always remember that the wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. I am indebted to Don Zoerb for imparting this piece of wisdom that I have obviously taken to heart.
I would prefer now to end this essay with some remarks about glaucoma. I hope that these remarks are not a downer, because by the time I am finished I think that you will notice a clever remark made by a 92-year-old Missourian who now resides in New York City.
The Carr clan has long suffered from the effects of glaucoma. It made my father blind just as it made my elder brother blind. And so for the last 50 years, I have visited a good ophthalmologist in an effort to stave off blindness. When I was transferred from Washington back to New York, there was an ophthalmologist here in Short Hills named Richard Robbins. Robbins treated me for a while, although it became clear that the pressure in my left eye was so great that I had to have a trabeculectomy. This procedure involves cutting open a trap door in the eyeball to let the excessive pressure escape.
Robbins had suggested that the trabeculectomy ought to be performed by a fellow he knew named Ivan Jacobs. Jacobs and I never were playing from the same page but nonetheless I went ahead and let Jacobs perform the trabeculectomy. But before the operation I had inquired of Robbins whether or not he would permit such surgery to be performed on himself or his own family. Robbins assured me that he would. That was an incorrigible mistake, because Robbins barely knew Jacobs.
Shortly after the operation began, I could hear Jacobs saying, perhaps to a nurse, that there had been a choroidal hemorrhage. I knew that the choroidal hemorrhage meant the end of my eyesight.
That was in the left eye and significantly the operation took place on April 1st, 1994. Remembering that date is essential to understanding the remark made by my fellow Missourian.
The hemorrhage was followed by a series of examinations by physicians in various hospitals in New York and Philadelphia, but in the end it meant the demise of my left eye. And when that happened, I bid goodbye to Richard Robbins and began to patronize a fellow in Summit, New Jersey named Eric Gurwin. After I left the care of Richard Robbins, he was found to have fondled some of his female patients. He hired the best criminal attorney in northern New Jersey. He avoided jail time but in the process he lost his license to practice ophthalmology. This was a heavy blow to Robbins. As a matter of interest, in the several years that Robbins treated me, I can assure you that he never once was guilty of fondling of my precious body.
So now I am under the care, since April 1st, 1994, of Eric Gurwin of the Summit Medical Group. Obviously I had only one eye at that time but I did all that I could to protect its sight. In my eyes, Gurwin is a hero because he tried everything to preserve the sight in my one remaining eye. There were good days and some bad days in his treatment but I knew that Gurwin was determined to do all he could to preserve the sight in my right eye.
In 2005, the pressure in my right eye began to mount and we tried every conceivable drug that was available on the market to control the pressure. To give you an idea, the pressure in the right eye should be at 20 or below. That means that the glaucoma is being controlled. When the pressure exceeds 20, it is called uncontrolled glaucoma. In my case, the pressure in the right eye regularly was in the 40 degree range and toward the end it was on the order of 50. It was at this point that Gurwin said to me, “You better go see Katz.” Katz is a surgeon who works at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. He is widely known for his work on glaucoma.
I got along famously with Dr. Katz. We talked sports and a little of his family history as well. It turned out that Dr. Katz’s father was also blind from glaucoma and that he himself has the disease. I hope that his outcome is better than mine. Nonetheless, Gurwin’s advice that I had better go to see Katz was well founded because Dr. Katz soon concluded that the only way to save whatever sight I had would be a trabulectomy on the right eye. For all intents and purposes, I was largely blind at that point. When I reported to the Wills Eye Hospital for the operation early on the morning of October 31st, 2005, I arose from the cart that was to take me to the operating room to use the men’s restroom. Howard Davis, my old friend, has asked me what the last thing I ever saw was. The last thing I ever saw was the commode in the restroom at Wills Eye Hospital.
Dr. Katz had just about completed his work on the trabeculectomy on the right eye. At the end of the operation, another choroidal hemorrhage occurred. While heroic efforts were made by all of the staff at the Wills Eye Hospital to save some sight in that eye, their efforts were largely in vain. Now remember that this happened on October 31st, 2005, which, incidentally, is Halloween.
There were many trips to Wills after the trabeculectomy in the hope that some sight could be regained in the right eye. But that was not to be the case. Dr. Katz and the people at Wills did everything within their power. I have nothing but praise for them. However, somewhere along the line, after the second episode, I had a conversation with my long-time friend Howard Davis, who is even four years older than I am. Howard reviewed the case and came to a conclusion. He reasoned the left eye was lost because it had been operated on on [sic] April 1st, 1994 and the second eye was lost due to an operation on October 31st, 2005. Reason led him to believe that the first operation took place on April Fool’s Day and the second operation took place on Halloween. Mr. Davis’s counsel was that I should no longer permit operations on my eyes on holidays such as April Fool’s Day and Halloween. I accepted his advice even though I knew that I had no more eyes to operate on. Two is the number of eyes that is specified for each human being and, by submitting to operations on April Fool’s Day and on Halloween, I had put them greatly at risk.
In the final analysis I have nothing but praise for the work of Dr. Jay Katz in Philadelphia and Dr. Eric Gurwin in the Summit Medical Group. I owe those two people thanks for preserving whatever sight I had for as long as it could possibly last. My advice to all of you is, “Don’t submit to eye operations on either April Fool’s Day or on Halloween.”
This concludes my recollections of remarks that were said to me or about me. I am certain that there are many more remarks that will have to remain unrecorded in this essay. But all things considered, for 88 years I have had a fairly respectable life. I have tried to enjoy it all and mostly I have tried to apply a sense of humor to the remarks that were made about me. And there were some lessons that I have remembered. I remember, “You don’t get paid for thinking,” and “If you stick your tail in an airplane propeller, it will make hamburger meat out of you.” All that I can tell you is that it is worth the wait of 88 years to gain those vital pieces of information.
So I leave you with the thought that I have taken from my longtime friend, Nathanial Fritz, a phrase-maker in his own right. At this point, old Nat would have said, “On with the rat killing.” After sober reflection, I cannot improve upon the sentiment of what Nat Fritz has said. And so for now, I will adjourn my thoughts on “He said, she said, they said.”
E. E. CARR
October 3, 2010
Essay 502
~~
Kevin’s commentary: along with an extremely vulgar sense of humor, I inherited Pop’s terrible eye genes via my mother who also has them. So while this advice doesn’t serve Pop so well anymore, I’ll be sure to pass it along to mom and keep it in mind myself.
On a bonus note I got to figure out where on with the rat killing comes from!! So many emails and essays make marginally more sense now. I wonder if Pop knows where Nat got it from?