Samuel Philip Marynick, MS, MD: a conversation with the editor

Dr. Sam Marynick is one of the stars at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC). He was born on August 6, 1945, in Dallas, Texas, and he grew up in the same city. After participating in several sports, he was introduced to golf and in high school became a par golfer and captain of his golfing team. He also was an outstanding student, an Eagle Scout, and a participant in numerous community activities. He graduated from the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1967, with a bachelor's degree awarded cum laude. He received a master of science degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, with high honors the following year. At Tulane, he decided to become a physician and was accepted at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and graduated in 1972. After internship and a 1-year residency in internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, he received a fellowship in endocrinology at the Reproduction Research Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland, where he remained for 3 years. He then returned to Dallas and became a member of the BUMC staff in the endocrinology division, and he has been at BUMC ever since.

At BUMC he has held several positions, including co-director of the Collins Diabetes Center, medical director and director of laboratories of the Baylor Center for Reproductive Health, director of the clinical research program of the Baylor Research Institute, program director of the Baylor Center for Reproductive Health, and program director subsequently of the Texas Center for Reproductive Health. For a period at BUMC, he was the Ralph Tompsett Professor of Internal Medicine. He has been selected as outstanding teacher and outstanding attending in internal medicine at BUMC. He has been listed in the Guide to America's Top Doctors, D Magazine, and Texas Monthly during all of the years of the present century. For 10 years, Dr. Marynick was chairman of the institutional review board for human protection at BUMC and also a member of the medical board. Despite an extremely busy practice, he has continued to publish in medical journals and present at medical meetings. He is married to Sharon Eck, and they are the proud parents of three offspring, all of whom appear to continue the Marynick standard of excellence in all that they do. Dr. Marynick has a spectacular capacity for friendship, and it was a splendid pleasure to discuss his life and activities. An edited version of that discussion follows.

William Clifford Roberts, MD (hereafter, Roberts): Dr. Marynick, I appreciate your willingness to talk to me and therefore to the readers of BUMC Proceedings. We are at my home on September 3, 2009. May we start by your talking about your early life, some early memories, your parents and siblings, and what it was like growing up in Dallas, Texas?

Samuel Philip Marynick, MS, MD (hereafter, Mary-nick): The day of my birth, August 6, 1945, was the day the first atomic bomb was used in Japan to try to settle World War II. At the time of my birth, my father was in the US Army in Burma, China, and my mother was here in Dallas. I almost didn't get delivered at the hospital because my mother's brother—Uncle Sam Barnes—couldn't figure out which tie to wear to the hospital. I lived on Oak Cliff Boulevard with my grandmother, my mother, and my two older sisters. We lived there for the first 2 years of my life. My father returned from the war (Figure 1), and when I was 1½ years old he left the family. (I didn't meet him until 1977, when I was 32 years old.) My older sister, Betty June, who was from my mother's first marriage, contracted pneumonia at age 16 and died at Baylor Hospital. That left in our household my mother, grandmother, and sister, who is 2 years older than me, and my mother's sister, Laurissa Barnes Heck. They bought a home at 2550 Kingston Street, and we moved there when I was almost 3 years old (Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Teophil and Sam Marynick, 1946.

Figure 2.

Phyllis and Sam Marynick at 2550 Kingston Street, 1949.

Kingston Street was a wonderful place to grow up. The people in the neighborhood were friendly and supportive, and the neighborhood was very quiet. Two gentlemen on the next block, Mr. Paul Snider and Mr. Billy Yarbrough, had been US Marines and both fought in the South Pacific. The man across the alley, Mr. Haney Spencer, worked for General Electric and maintained the cooling systems on banana boats. These gentlemen were mostly self-educated. Mr. Yarbrough was from Sweetwater, Texas, and had been a receiver in high school for Sammy Baugh. After the war Mr. Yarbrough became a fieldworker/lineman for Dallas Power & Light. Mr. Snider custom finished interior walls and put fabric on them. He was an artist. Mr. Spencer was an engineer at General Electric. Down the street was Mr. Truett, who drove a street car, and his wife, who grew orchids in their backyard greenhouse.

Bobby Ballard, who was a few year older and lived a few houses up the street, taught me about baseball when I was around 4 years old, though I had been playing ball since the age of 2 (Figure 3). The neighborhood boys and I played sandlot until I was a teenager. It was fun because there were no adults around and the umpiring was done by consensus. The kids playing sandlot baseball ranged from 4 to 15 years of age. Each team would choose players, play a game, and then choose up and play another game. It was delightful.

Figure 3.

Playing stick ball at 2 years old.

We had several large creeks close by. Coombs Creek, which started at Weiss Park, ran through the Stevens Park Golf Course. It had a wonderful swimming hole near Plymouth Street. That was one of my favorite creeks. We had the Five-Mile Creek out on Kiest Boulevard, which was the best fishing creek, and then we had a creek that ran down Clarendon Drive and into the Dallas Zoo. We could put our bikes in the bush, get in that creek, and walk 5 miles to the zoo. The zoo director, Pierre Fontaine, would let us help feed the animals, mainly the birds and other relatively harmless animals. Sometimes we would get to help bathe the Indian elephant. Later, in the Boy Scouts, Pierre Fontaine was the sponsor who signed us off on our nature, reptile study, and insect study merit badges. His office was small, about 20 × 20 feet. He was always sitting in that office.

Roberts: Where is Kingston Street located?

Marynick: It is one block south of Clarendon Drive and west of Hampton Road. Inwood Road crosses the Trinity River and turns into Hampton Road. We were about the next to the last house and on the city border. You could look out and see gravel streets and pasture, and essentially we were on the edge of the country. Periodically, rat snakes, rattlesnakes, raccoons, and skunks would come into our yard.

Roberts: Did you kill any rattlesnakes?

Marynick: I would catch them and then take them to the creek bottom and let them go. Generally, I took them out to Five-Mile Creek, which was further out.

Roberts: Were you afraid of snakes?

Marynick: Yes, I was, but I was careful.

Roberts: What was the biggest one you ever caught?

Marynick: A little over 6 feet, an eastern diamond-back rattlesnake caught around 1965. I captured that snake with a snake-catching device, a piece of aluminum conduit about 6 feet long with a noose on the end. It's a padded noose so you don't injure the snake. Because I had a friend who had gotten bitten by a water moccasin, I stopped handling poisonous snakes and reverted to using the pole. Water moccasins are like alligators. I once thought I was going to tame a baby alligator that I had gotten right after it had hatched, but it didn't work out. I was at Tulane graduate school at the time, and I took the alligator to the New Orleans Zoo. The keeper was amused that I thought I could tame it.

Roberts: How long was the alligator when you took it to the zoo?

Marynick: About 2 feet long. It would bite anything. It would eat you out of house and home—constantly hungry.

Summers were pretty laid back and peaceful until I was 8, when the Cub Scouts that I was in formed a baseball league. Mr. Bill Yarbrough was our coach. There were practices and discipline, and he put the players in the best positions that he thought would win games. That was my first year in organized baseball. I played in sandlot games in the afternoons and in the Cub Scout League in the evenings. We had a wonderful team. One player on our team, Jerry Minor, ended up playing professional baseball. Our team won the league championship, and I was chosen to play in the all-star game (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Cub Scout all-star baseball game, 1954.

Roberts: What position did you play?

Marynick: I was the pitcher. Pitching is fun. You take on the batter, try to make him swing at bad pitches, and generally, but not always, get him out. I played baseball for Mr. Yarbrough until I turned 10. He told the manager of a baseball team in the midget league about me. He thought I should try out for their team. They were called the Dallas Roundtable and were sponsored by a group called the Dallas Knights of the Roundtable, which was composed of Dallas-area businessmen. I went to their tryout at Kidd Springs Park. About 250 kids tried out. We were divided up, with 10 to 15 kids per group. The running, batting, fielding, and throwing took about 2 weeks. I went 3 or 4 days a week for 2 weeks and then they picked their roster. In the first intrasquad game I played, when they were down to around 25 players, I hit two home runs and a double and was picked for the final team (Figure 5). I played centerfield because I was pretty fast. Our team won every game until we got to the play-offs, and then we got knocked out the first round.

Figure 5.

Dallas Roundtable Baseball Team, 1955 (top, second child from left).

Roberts: Where were the play-offs?

Marynick: At Tietze Park on Skillman Street. One of my best friends, Mark Robinson, was the catcher on the team. One of the pitchers, Allen Clements, became a life-long friend. Allen was an all-American at UT and then played major-league baseball. This team was my introduction to real competition. The next year we had to try out again even though we made it the year before. My friend Mark got cut in the final round. I played centerfield the whole time.

Roberts: How did you hit?

Marynick: Pretty well. I generally had a batting average around .500 or a little higher.

Roberts: What order did you bat?

Marynick: Usually third. At the end of my second year as a Roundtable player, my average was around .600. We made it to the final game in the play-offs. In the final game we were leading, and in the last inning our third baseman threw a ground ball into the stands. It would have been the final out. The next batter up hit a home run and the game was over. We lost 3 to 2. It was a lot of fun.

The following year when I was 12, I went from the midget league into Boys Baseball, Inc., and was on a team that was still in existence when my sons were playing baseball—the Dallas Rebels. Around 100 kids tried out for the Rebels, running, throwing, batting, and fielding until the roster was reduced to around 20 players. All three of our pitchers the year I played on the Dallas Rebels team subsequently played professional baseball. I was the batting practice pitcher. There were no pitching machines, so I pitched a lot of batting practice.

Roberts: You must have really been fast.

Marynick: I always moved slowly but when a ball was hit, something happened in me. I could tell by the sound of the ball on the bat and the way the hitter swung where the ball was going and how far it was going to go, so I just took off. I never claimed that I was fast, but I could get to the ball quickly.

I also played football. I have pictures from the time I was about 4 of me pretending to be Doak Walker, the all-American at Southern Methodist University (SMU), in his number 37 jersey (Figure 6). I was ready to play anytime anyone wanted to play. I played on the elementary school team and also on the Oak Cliff Ponies, the Oak Cliff team for 11- and 12-year-olds. They played teams from Lancaster, Lewisville, and other cities around Dallas. We tried out for the Ponies at a field that is now part of the Wilds of Africa at the Dallas Zoo. There was a wonderful field at the base of the hill on Marsalis Avenue called Thomason Park, and it was where the American Legion Baseball and the Oak Cliff Ponies Football Club played. My friend, Allen Clements, told me that I needed to try out for the Oak Cliff Ponies. Allen was their quarterback. I tried out for the Oak Cliff Ponies as a receiver. Once again, a large number of kids tried out for 23 positions. We had a wonderful coach, Bill Austin (Figure 7).

Figure 6.

Playing football, 1950.

Figure 7.

Oak Cliff Ponies Football Club, 1957 (number 78 in the first row, fourth from the left). Bill Austin, the main coach, is standing in the center of the picture.

Bill had me playing center and middle linebacker. His philosophy was that if we didn't get the ball snapped on the correct count, we would never get started. Plus, if the other team jumped off side I could snap the ball real quick to Allen and we would get 5 yards for little work. If the other team lined up in a certain formation to rush, I had his permission to change the blocking assignments as center. As middle linebacker, I would see the formation the other team came up with and I would call the defensive set for that. I also was the team's place kicker. My mother came to the games but said she couldn't watch. This was the last year that she signed the permission slip for me to play football. The next year she refused, and that was the end of my football career.

Roberts: Where did Bill Austin play?

Marynick: I have no idea. He was pretty cerebral. The next summer I joined another Oak Cliff baseball team, the Cubs, mainly because the Rebels moved their base of operation to far North Dallas and it was impossible for me to get to the practices. The Cubs had their games and practices close to home. The practices were at Sunset High School, so I could ride my bike.

Roberts: Did you still play centerfield?

Marynick: For the Cubs I managed in the course of a season to play every position because other players got hurt, went on vacation, etc. I pitched probably every third or fourth game.

Roberts: When you weren't pitching, you played centerfield?

Marynick: Mostly, but I played all other positions too. The players on the Cubs were the coach's kids, so to speak, for he had none of his own.

Roberts: You were 13?

Marynick: Yes. When I was 12, my friend Dwight Brock, also 12, invited me to play golf on Christmas Eve at Stevens Park. Dwight had been playing golf since he was around 9. He had some old clubs and balls so we often hit golf balls in front of his house. I had never been on a golf course. I played baseball when I was 13, but my heart was in golf. I would always get in 18 holes before baseball practice and before most baseball games. I was 13 the last time I played organized baseball in the summer. I played at Greiner Junior High School in the ninth grade when I was 14 but did not play after that time until college, and I took up golf full-time. There were local tournaments sponsored by The Dallas Times Herald, a local Dallas newspaper that no longer exists, where players moved from one public course to another. Based on one's qualifying score, one was placed in the bracket to start match play. Hundreds of kids played in these tournaments.

Roberts: What was the age?

Marynick: From 8 to 18. The city championship tournament was huge. There were different age brackets and skill brackets within each age bracket.

Roberts: How many matches did you have?

Marynick: It depended on whether you won or not. To win your bracket, you had to win five, six, or seven matches. I never won more than four matches.

Roberts: When you were playing 18 holes before baseball practices, what was your best handicap?

Marynick: I was close to a scratch golfer at 16. The professional at Stevens Park, Wylie Moore, kept our scores and told us what our handicap was. When I was 15 or 16, I would shoot under 70 about as often as I would shoot over 70. My handicap was a zero or plus one.

Roberts: What was it about golf that caused you to take to it so rapidly? You obviously were a good athlete in baseball and football, but you gave them up for golf?

Marynick: I think it was the people that I was with. My golfing partners and teammates were simply outstanding (Figure 8): Thomas Jefferson Tennison tied with Tommy King as top high school student. The principal of Sunset High School, H. S. Griffin, refused to have two valedictorians. Tommy King won the flip of the coin and was the class valedictorian. Tommy King went to Rice University to study physics. Tommy Tennison went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and got a bachelor's degree in general studies and a master's degree in electrical engineering. These were two of the golfers I spent a lot of time with. Dwight Brock, who had introduced me to golf, got a PhD in statistics from SMU. Another fellow on the team, Tommy Herron, got a PhD in English. As we played golf, Tommy Herron quoted Shakespeare. He would miss a shot and say, “May a pox fall on that ball.”

Figure 8.

Sunset High School golf team, 1962 (far right on the front row, directly below Tommy Tennison).

My partner in the competitions during my sophomore and junior years in high school was Joe Stubblefield, whom I had met at the Brandon Avenue Methodist Church when I was 3 years old. Joe got a master's degree in architecture from UT. He was the best man at my wedding and my sister's third husband. I was the best man in Joe's first wedding. Regrettably Joe died of lung cancer a couple of years ago. His life's work was to restore and preserve the missions around San Antonio. He finished architecture school and moved to San Antonio to work with an architect named O'Neal Ford and then spent his life working on the missions and other projects around San Antonio and in South Texas. David “Bumper” Jones was Allen Clements' biggest competition for quarterback of the Oak Cliff Ponies Football Club and is standing next to Allen in the picture of the Oak Cliff Ponies (Figure 7). Bumper also loved golf and was on the high school golf team. He got his bachelor's degree in architecture at the University of Oklahoma and then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his master's degree in architecture. Bumper is now a professor of architecture at UT Arlington. He and Joe were inseparable friends. They always talked about architecture. These were the people I was surrounded by. One other fellow in my wedding was Don Couch, who earned a master's degree in engineering from Georgia Tech, but Don didn't play golf.

Roberts: How did your other nongolf friends and coaches in junior high and high school, knowing that you were such a good all-around athlete, react when you gave up baseball and football for golf?

Marynick: I was a late grower. I was only 5 feet 2 inches tall when finishing the ninth grade. I didn't start going through puberty until around 16. Coach Denny kept me on the ninth-grade baseball team at Greiner Junior High School because he liked the way I ran bases. He would leave me out of the game and I would pinch run as needed. I would be inserted on occasion by Coach Denny for defensive reasons. When I spoke to Abe Barnett, the baseball coach at Sunset High School, he told me I was too small and he wouldn't keep me on the team. That helped steer me to golf right away. I was also the last player cut on the ninth-grade basketball team at Greiner Junior High. The basketball coach whose last name was Reed had been a professional golfer. He strongly encouraged me to stick with golf because very few basketball teams needed a 62-inch guard.

Roberts: When you reached full growth, how tall did you become?

Marynick: I eventually got to be 5 feet 10½ inches.

Roberts: What was your usual weight?

Marynick: About 185 pounds, and probably 90% muscle. By the time I went out to play college baseball my size was not an issue. Probably the only reason I made the team at Sewanee was because I could pitch batting practice, which was fine. I enjoyed being on the team.

Roberts: When growing up, although you didn't have a biological father around, you had the male coaches who helped steer you?

Marynick: That's probably right.

Roberts: When you lived on Kingston Street, you lived with your mother, your aunt, your grandmother, and your older sister. What was it like being the only male at home?

Marynick: Both my mother and aunt had to work. They were up at the crack of dawn. At 7:00 am, they walked two blocks to catch the street car that came down Brandon Avenue. Mother was a bookkeeper at Dallas Tailor & Laundry Supply, where she worked until she was 70 years old. Her sister, my Aunt Laurissa Heck, worked for the Department of Agriculture in the federal building in downtown Dallas, and she did that until she was required to retire at 65. My grandmother cooked breakfast for my sister and me. She was there all day. She cooked lunch and had dinner ready by the time my mother and aunt got home from work about 5:00 to 6:00 pm.

Around 1953, when I was 8 or so, Mother got an automobile—a Nash. Then Mother and my aunt could sleep 30 minutes later in the morning because they didn't have to catch the street car. Mother drove my Aunt Laurissa to her office and then drove to Dallas Tailor & Laundry Supply. Mother would generally work later than my aunt, so my aunt would ride the street car home and arrive around 4:30 pm. Grandmother would make a shopping list every week and we would take a small wooden wagon down to the A&P, which was about two blocks away, and do the grocery shopping.

We had a piano. When I was 8, my sister and I started taking piano lessons, and when I was 10 the piano teacher, Mrs. Roland Reynolds, gave me my choice of piano or baseball. She said there wasn't time for both. What a terrible thing to do to a 10-year-old boy. So I chose baseball! Mrs. Reynolds was very demanding but nice about it. Her husband, Roland, was a professor of pathology at UT Southwestern Medical School. I was able to teach their son Randy how to catch reptiles and amphibians and how to make a terrarium. My sister stuck with piano. She would practice 4 hours a day, some days more. Dr. Van Katwick, professor of piano at SMU, had what he called “his girls,” four piano players who would tour around the area playing concerts, and my sister became one of the four girls. She played the piano well. She went to Oberlin College with the idea that she might become a professional pianist. Once she got there, however, she found out that some of the other students were better, and she decided to be a historian.

I was constantly reminded by the four women of the house that I was the man of the household (Figure 9).

Figure 9.

Laurissa Heck, Phyllis Marynick, and Ruth Marynick at the Hall Cemetery in Lone Oak, Texas, 1972.

Roberts: What did your sister do later?

Marynick: She was valedictorian of her high school class and played on the tennis team and was an outstanding debater. She graduated from Oberlin College and was married her junior year at Oberlin to David Palmer, who also graduated from Oberlin College. They went on to Ohio State University, where he received a PhD in philosophy and my sister received a PhD in history. After they earned their PhDs, he and my sister were able to find positions teaching at Fredonia, the State University of New York near Buffalo.

Roberts: What is your sister's name?

Marynick: Phyllis. Their marriage lasted a few years. After they divorced my sister accepted a position at Mount Holyoke College as a history professor, where she stayed until 1977 when she was offered a history professorship at George Washington University. She's been there ever since—32 years.

Roberts: Was your home growing up a pleasant environment? Was there much harassing?

Marynick: Not really. Grandmother was a benevolent dictator. She called most of the shots.

Roberts: You mentioned that you all sat around for dinner. Do you remember what the conversations were like at dinner?

Marynick: They were quite variable. I remember a fair amount of what was discussed.

Roberts: Like what?

Marynick: Politics, the economy, religion, family members. We have an interesting family. My grandmother had 12 brothers and sisters, and she had five children. Her brothers and sisters, my great aunts and great uncles, would drop by periodically.

Roberts: Most of them lived in Dallas?

Marynick: No, they lived all over. Aunt Lula lived in Marshall, Texas, and she would periodically visit; Aunt Florence Bratton lived on a ranch near Brady, Texas; Aunt Irene Traweck lived in Matador, Texas; and my grandmother's oldest child, my Uncle Sam, by then lived in McAllen, Texas (Figure 10). Uncle Sam was the secretary/treasurer of McAllen Youth Baseball, and I spent part of a summer in McAllen after the Cub Scout league had finished and before school started. I got to play on the Rotary team, and I was 4 to 5 years younger than all the other players on the team. There were rules against playing down but not against playing up. It was a lot of fun. We laughed because I'd never heard so much Spanish in my life. I learned how to speak Spanish that summer and then forgot it.

Figure 10.

May Lawler Barnes with her sisters Lula Bell, Florence, and Irene in Marshall, Texas, 1958.

Roberts: What was your house like?

Marynick: It was a peaceful place. Everyone had their work to do and each knew what they needed to do. Someone asked me about studies and grades, and I never did know what would happen to me if I brought home a poor report card so I just didn't bring one home and neither did my sister. We had no trouble with the academic part.

Roberts: In junior high, what was your class standing?

Marynick: I was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.

Roberts: What about high school? How many were in your graduating class in high school?

Marynick: Probably 600 students.

Roberts: Do you have any idea where you stood?

Marynick: I was in the top 10%. I wasn't valedictorian.

Roberts: How many played on the golf team?

Marynick: There were 20 to 30 members on the team, and up to eight would play in a tournament. My sophomore year, which was my first year in high school, I played as the sixth or seventh man. My junior year I was second, and my senior year I was first. I probably wasn't the best golfer on the team. The best golfer was Chip Stewart, who was a sophomore, but you had to beat the person ahead of you in a challenge match to get ahead, and Chip could not get past Tommy Herron, so he never did challenge me.

Roberts: Did you practice every day?

Marynick: Yes.

Roberts: And practice meant what? Was there a golf course close by?

Marynick: There was Stevens Park Golf Course, 10 minutes from the high school. I would work all day to get all my homework done. My next-to-last period class was over at 2:45 pm, and I could put all my books in my locker and head to the golf course. I would practice golf, generally until dark, and then I had a range set up at home where I would practice from dark until 9:30 or 10:00 at night, when my mother would come and tell me that I needed to stop.

Roberts: What did you mean that you got your homework done by a certain time?

Marynick: Most students at the lunch hour would have lunch and then go into the yard to visit. I would have lunch and then sit there and do homework and get it done so I didn't have to take any work home.

Roberts: Were you a fast reader?

Marynick: Slow as could be. But once I read something, I had it. My wife says that she is very jealous of that. I'm a slow reader and a poor speller. Our elementary school class was part of an experiment in sight reading. We were never taught phonetics. It took the Dallas Independent School District a couple of years to figure out that the new system didn't work. There were a lot of kids in my class who were very poor spellers and readers.

Later, Professor Joseph Ewan at Tulane University realized that I needed tutoring in English. Although he taught history of science and scientific writing, he taught me a separate course on the side in phonetics and grammar while I was working on my master's degree. I took my regular coursework and then he and I would either meet in the morning or afternoon or both and I would get an assignment in a primer he gave me, like the 1892 English primer, that had chapters and exercises. I learned that when I was 22 years old. That's helped me immensely.

The other person who helped me immensely was Dr. Jim Willerson, whom I worked with in Boston in the summer of 1971; afterwards, Jim came to UT Southwestern. We would write a medical paper, and he would spend hours with me going over sentence structure, punctuation, and word organization. I actually was supposed to be a cardiologist but it just never worked out. What a wonderful man to spend several years of your life being taught by. When I was at Parkland, he was my attending for several months.

Roberts: How did you go to Boston that summer?

Marynick: Brian Williams, who was the dean of students of UT Southwestern, was a friend of Charlie Sanders, who was the chief of the cardiology catheterization lab at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Brian Williams mentioned to Charlie that I needed to go to Boston to study cardiology. Charlie said fine, send him on, and we'll make him an acting intern.

Roberts: How far along were you at that time?

Marynick: That was after my junior year in medical school in 1971. I headed to Boston, and it was spectacular. Jim Willerson would meet me at 6:00 am in the cardiology library ready to go over the most difficult electrocardiograms from the day before. He and I had an hour together every morning going over electrocardiograms, and then I would go to the cardiology office and get a list of the consultations for that day. I would spend the morning working up the patients, go to the noon internal medicine conference, and in the afternoon go on rounds with the attendings and present the cases. I almost never left the hospital until 7:00 or 8:00 pm, and I was due back at 6:00 am to see Jim Willerson, who appeared to never sleep. He has the energy of the Eveready Bunny. Half the people in the cardiology group at MGH, it seemed, were Texans. It was a really neat summer.

I spent a lot of that summer in the office of Dr. Paul Dudley White. During days when attendings were off, I would go over to Beacon Street to Paul Dudley White's office and watch him seeing and examining patients. He would then discuss the case with me. He discouraged me from being a cardiologist. He thought that neuroendocrinology was where it was going to be. The breakthroughs were going to be phenomenal in neuroendocrinology, and he thought cardiology had pretty much been fleshed out. He was 78 years old at the time. He didn't see the tremendous expanse in knowledge that would come in cardiology. His advice was one reason I decided to work in neuroendocrinology when I had a chance. It was great to get to know him. Then in 1972, when the Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association were held in Dallas, I chauffeured Dr. White around in my car.

Roberts: When you were growing up on Kingston Street, there wasn't excessive money in your family?

Marynick: There was very little money.

Roberts: Everyone was frugal? Did you have chores around the house? Did you work anywhere else to earn money?

Marynick: I had a push mower and a yard service. Every week, I mowed the yards of two residents across the street. When others called, I did their yards also. That's how I made money for extra things. Mr. Crow, who ran the Sunset Theater at the intersection of Kingston Street and Hampton, paid me to deliver circulars for what was going to be showing at the movies. I got a penny a circular.

Roberts: What was your house actually like? Did you have a room of your own?

Marynick: No, I didn't. The house had a living room/dining room combination, a kitchen/breakfast area, a bathroom, and three bedrooms. Probably well up until I was a teenager, my grandmother and I shared a room. My sister had the front bedroom, and my mother and aunt shared the middle bedroom.

Roberts: I gather it meant you folks didn't take a vacation as a family.

Marynick: Not early on, but later when I was 9 my family started going to Estes Park, Colorado, in the summer. The baseball coaches, however, said that wouldn't work for me! So Mother, Aunt Laurissa, and Phyllis went to Colorado, my grandmother was dropped off on the way to Colorado at her sister Irene Traweck's in Matador, and I would move in with the baseball coach for 2 weeks. These coaches that I played for had a goal to win the championship. We would start working out in February. Tryouts would be in the winter or early spring for a season that started in April. They planned on our playing until August. Most leagues ended by July 4th, but these guys' goals were to be playing after the 4th of July. They wanted to win everything, and the teams I was on usually played into August.

Roberts: How did your team do for the most part?

Marynick: The first season I ever played where we were close to a losing season was in college. As a youth ballplayer we had seasons where we would be 37-1, 35-2. The last year I played baseball, we played nearly 40 games. I only remember losing a few games over quite a few years, generally the game that eliminated us from the play-offs.

Roberts: How many at-bats would you get during those 40 games?

Marynick: Three or more a game, so 160 to 200 for a season. We played lots of ball and then there were the sandlot games, but no records were kept for those. But they were lots of fun. So I had hundreds of at-bats over the years.

Roberts: You were on the move all the time?

Marynick: I was up at 6:30 am and going until 10:30 pm.

Roberts: You would go right to sleep when you got in bed?

Marynick: Yes. I would be tired.

Roberts: How did you and your mother get along? What kind of person was your mother?

Marynick: My mother was a very thoughtful but somewhat timid person. She had been married twice, and neither marriage lasted very long. She was very good with mathematics. When her first marriage ended she was studying mathematics at SMU. After the divorce she had to work for a source of income. She worked in the bookkeeping department at Sanger-Harris Department Store. When I was about 3 she was given the job as head bookkeeper at Dallas Tailor & Laundry Supply. She was there for 35 years. They had a mandatory retirement age of 65, but when she turned 65, they changed it to 70. At 70, Mother took a trip to Europe, and after getting all of her flowerbeds and closets straightened out, she was bored. She came to my office and took care of my books from age 70 until age 87 (Figure 11). That 17-year period I really got to know my mother. She was always supportive.

Figure 11.

Ruth Marynick keeping the books at 3707 Gaston Avenue, 1992.

Although we had little money growing up, we were able to take piano lessons and play sports. My Aunt Laurissa periodically would buy us clothes and furnishings. When I was 10 years old and had made the Roundtable baseball team, I had a terribly old ball glove from the 1930s that my aunt's friend, Mr. Harris Earl, had given me. One day she looked at my ball glove and said that it wouldn't do. We went to Cullum & Boren, a huge sporting goods store on Elm Street, and she said we were going to get me an appropriate baseball glove. While the gentleman behind the counter was showing us multiple gloves, my aunt paused a moment and then asked him to show us the glove that Mickey Mantle used. He pointed to it on the shelf. That glove in 1955 cost around $65. I used that glove until my sophomore year of college, and then Coach Shirley Majors said that my glove was falling apart. I told him my glove was fine. He said I wasn't listening and that I needed to come by his office and look at a catalog to order any glove that Spaulding had. I went to the athletic office and I picked out a Rocky Colavito Spaulding glove, and the University of the South purchased the baseball glove for me. I loaned my Rawlings glove to Joe Stubblefield, who took it with him to UT at Austin and then to San Antonio, and Joe played ball with that into his 50s when he gave it back to me. It was so beat up I didn't recognize it. That glove purchased in 1955 participated in ball games into the 1990s. It was a wonderful glove. The Rocky Colavito was a great glove too. My mother had a “can-do” attitude, so I always felt that I could do whatever needed to be done.

Roberts: It sounds like your grandmother was not so quiet?

Marynick: She was a woman of few words but was thinking all the time. She was interesting for a lot of reasons. She was the daughter of a Confederate officer who had moved to Texas after the Civil War because he wasn't comfortable remaining in Tennessee, and Texas was a new frontier. He was a scholar educated in Greek and Latin, so he started a small private school in Lone Oak, Texas, and ended up marrying one of his students, Fredonia Laurissa Morris. He was 38 and his wife was 16. They had 13 children. He thought that every child should have a college education. My grandmother was sent to Grayson College in Whitewright, Texas, where she earned a bachelor's degree in general studies and graduated in 1892. She became a schoolteacher and received the general excellence medal as the first person in her graduating class at Grayson College.

Roberts: Your grandmother, mother, and sister were all number one in their class?

Marynick: My mother was in the middle of her class. When she was 15, my grandfather, her father, who was an ordained Methodist minister, died suddenly from coronary thrombosis. He and Grandmother married in 1900 in Lone Oak, and then they moved to Wapanucka, Indian Territory (means beautiful valley). They had a bank, an insurance agency, a farm, and a ranch (Figure 12). Grandfather served on a federal grand jury in 1927 in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. He died of the coronary coming home on the train from the grand jury proceedings. My grandmother, who was a schoolteacher, was left with a ranch, a farm, a bank, and an insurance agency, which she managed to lose in 3 years. She was not a business person! That's when the family moved to Dallas because my uncle Sam Barnes had received his degree in accounting at SMU and was working for Republic Bank. He told my grandmother that he would get her a place to stay and get the other children in school. My mother started Sunset High School as a junior student. My Aunt Laurissa was number one at Wapanucka High School. Nonetheless, Mother was very bright in mathematics.

Figure 12.

Samuel Laird Barnes and his assistant at the Barnes Bank, Wapanucka, Oklahoma, 1920.

Mom was always so busy working she never saw me play a round of golf until I was playing in the Byron Nelson Pro-Am in 1979 and she came and walked 18 holes with me (Figure 13). My playing group included Don January, who was a Sunset High School graduate. I played well that day. We finished third in the pro-am. I thought I had played well and was so proud of myself until my wife said that every time Don January hit the ball it sounded like a canon going off and he could really play. Mother had a stroke at 87 years old and really wasn't able to keep the books after that. She lived until she was 94½ (Figure 14).

Figure 13.

Byron Nelson Pro-Am Tournament, Preston Trail Golf Club, 1979 (second from the left).

Figure 14.

Ruth Marynick on her 90th birthday with Sharon, Ashley, Laird, Phyllis, Sam, and Mark Marynick.

Roberts: What was your mother's name?

Marynick: Ruth Dart Barnes. She was born in 1912 and died in 2007.

Roberts: What was your father's name?

Marynick: Teophil Marynick. He was first-generation Polish-American. He was born in 1902 and died in 1985 (Figure 15). My sister had a great desire to meet her father, but I believe she wasn't brave enough to do it by herself. One of my grandmother's brothers, Martin, worked for Dallas Water Utilities and was probably a casualty of World War I. After spending time in the trenches in France, Martin was never the same, but he was a very nice man. Uncle Martin lived about five blocks from us. He had five sons, and they were farmers in Arkansas before moving to Dallas. One son, Tommy Lawler, was a career army officer and was the officer in charge of the American troops when they went into the Dominican Republic during unrest in the 1950s. When Phyllis told him she wanted to find our father, it took him a short while to give her his location. My sister started writing to our father. He lived in Norfolk, Virginia. At that time, Phyllis was in her new position at George Washington University and I was at the NIH, so she arranged for us to drive to Norfolk to spend the day with our father. We picked him up at his house and went to visit historic Jamestown. We had a nice visit. It was a very enjoyable day.

Figure 15.

Teophil and Ruth Marynick at the conclusion of World War II.

To some degree I think the time he spent in China during World War II took a toll on him because he would periodically comment on how much death he had seen and that no one should have to experience what he had experienced. At the end of the day, he wanted to reconcile. My sister, a very nice lady, said to him, “What do they do in the army to deserters?” I think that was possibly the last time they ever communicated. I kept the communication open, mainly with my father's second wife. In 1985, while planning to come to Texas, my father had a coronary and died suddenly. He never made it to Texas. On the day we visited him, I got my inheritance, which is a Samurai sword that had been presented to him by a Japanese officer when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II. The Japanese didn't want to surrender to the Chinese, but they found some Americans stationed in China and surrendered to them instead. My father said the Chinese wanted to kill all Japanese because of what the Japanese had done to the Chinese.

Roberts: When you were walking up to your father's house in Norfolk and saw your biological father for the first time, what went through your head?

Marynick: I'm not sure anything went through my head. I was curious to meet him and discuss things with him. He took us out to the shop in his garage; it was organized like I would organize one. He loved to tinker on cars, fix broken lawn mowers, etc.

Roberts: Do you do that?

Marynick: I try but not as much as I did in the past. I now hire someone who does that sort of work for a living.

Roberts: What did your father do?

Marynick: After retiring from the army he did a lot of different jobs. He became very active in the Presbyterian Church. In the army before World War II, he worked at the army umpire school. The army apparently had a lot of inservice baseball players, and they had an umpire school. He umpired into his 60s.

Roberts: How long was he in the army?

Marynick: From the time he was 16. (He evidently didn't tell the truth about his age!) He entered as a noncommissioned officer but worked his way up to be a colonel. His not retiring from the army after World War II was one of the big bones of contention between my mother and him. I understood that he had promised her that when the war was over he would retire, but when that time came he just couldn't retire. (One constantly moves while in the army.)

Roberts: Did your mother ever talk about your father?

Marynick: Not a whole lot. She never said anything negative about him; she just didn't talk about him. He sent support for us until we turned 16.

Roberts: When growing up, was your family religious? Did you go to church on Sundays or Wednesdays?

Marynick: Every Sunday morning I woke up to the radio playing hymns of praise because Grandmother loved the radio. We would listen each morning during breakfast. During the week in the afternoons, we would listen to the radio serials. The Methodist church was about three blocks from our house, and we were there every time the doors were open (Figure 16). The church had a baseball team, and when I was a teenager I played on the men's team. They also had a basketball team, and generally we won the Oak Cliff Church League championship.

Figure 16.

Brandon Avenue Methodist Church Sunday school, 1955.

Roberts: You went to Sunday school and church?

Marynick: Yes. Mother was in charge of the high school section of Sunday school.

Roberts: When you finished high school, you had no choice but to go to college?

Marynick: When my sister asked me where I was going to apply to college, I mailed her a list of colleges. In her reply she had put a line through every university or college I had listed and had written out to the side “not acceptable.” In its place she drafted her approved list of colleges.

How I got to the University of the South is a funny story. When I was in the fifth grade in Lida Hooe Elementary School, I was 10 years old and the music teacher was Ms. Manton. She had married the minister of the Oak Cliff Presbyterian Church. She came into class and introduced herself as having been trained at the Juilliard School. (I did not know the Juilliard School.) She put a record on of the Vienna Boys Choir singing Benjamin Britten's “Ceremony of the Carols,” and she told the class we would be presenting that at Christmas. My friend, Mark Robinson, leaned over to me and said that she had to be crazy. At Christmas, however, we presented four concerts of Benjamin Britten's “Ceremony of the Carols” to sellout crowds. It is a wonderful piece of music. We had her for 3 years and we did complex pieces.

At junior high school we had two choir teachers, Ms. Brown for eighth grade and Mr. White for ninth grade. If you didn't know these people better, you would have thought that they were possessed. They wanted us to rehearse for hours and present four concerts (fall, Christmas, Easter, and end of school). In the ninth grade, Ms. Louise Stuckey, the Sunset High School choir director, came to Greiner Junior High School to have auditions for the high school choir. Ms. Stuckey wanted the blue ribbon at the upcoming fall high school choir competition. As a sophomore, I sang first tenor in her choir. Every year she did an operetta. I ended up being a sailor in HMS Pinafore, which requires studying the music, memorizing the script, rehearsing, and practicing, and we always gave a Christmas concert and an Easter concert. Our senior year we performed the musical Plain and Fancy, where I was a farmer. By the time I was a senior, Mr. White from Greiner became the director and took Ms. Stuckey's place. He wanted to surpass everything she had done with bigger, grander, greater pieces.

The spring of my senior year, the Sewanee Glee Club (University of the South) made a tour and came to Dallas. The Sewanee Glee Club presented a concert at Sunset High School. The music was spectacular. I was invited to a reception to meet the members and director of the glee club. I wanted to go to college on a golf scholarship, but I wasn't of age to make that decision, and my mother said that wasn't going to happen. Sewanee was on my sister's approved list! The Glee Club wanted me to come to Sewanee and sing. What do you think happened? That's how I got to Sewanee.

Roberts: Did you get a scholarship?

Marynick: I got a wonderful academic scholarship, and I also got a job waiting tables at Gailor Hall serving family-style meals. I became a member of the Waiters Guild, which basically was room and board.

Roberts: You served every meal?

Marynick: Three meals a day.

Roberts: Your tuition was paid by the academic scholarship and room and board by the guild?

Marynick: About 75% of tuition was paid by scholarship and room and board by waiting tables. The Waiters Guild was almost like another fraternity. My sophomore year I got a job working in the laboratory cleaning glassware and making solutions, and my junior and senior year I became the head lab tech. When I finished my sophomore year, Dr. Charles Foreman invited me to his office and asked me to be his laboratory assistant to manage his laboratory and get all of the projects ready for experiments (Figure 17). It paid well. I took the job.

Figure 17.

Dr. Charles Foreman with Sam Marynick, 1997.

Roberts: Did you continue in the Waiters Guild all 4 years?

Marynick: Yes. That was fun. I would get up at 6:00 am to wait tables from 7:00 to 8:00 and then head to class. I served lunch from 11:45 until 12:45 and then went back to afternoon activities, either labs at 1:00 or baseball practice, which started about 2:30. Dinner was at 5:00 pm, so I had to be back to Gailor Hall by 4:45.

Roberts: How did it come about that you played baseball? You hadn't played in over 4 years.

Marynick: At Sewanee you had to have a certain number of physical education (PE) credits to graduate, either PE class or some sport. My freshman year I took golf for one semester, but I wasn't doing well with my studies, and it was suggested that I give up the golf. So I resigned. But to get my PE credits, I joined the band and played clarinet. This counted as PE because marching was required. My freshman year I played in the intramural softball league. I was selected a softball all-star. One of the varsity baseball players working in the Waiters Guild, Dick Sims, suggested I come out and play varsity baseball. He was a catcher. In February of my sophomore year, I started working out with Dick Sims and tried out for the team and made the last spot, pitching batting practice. The coach, Shirley Majors, was a spectacular man. He had a great appreciation for his players, and Coach Majors and I became good friends. I had not played organized baseball since my mid teens. And I got PE credit. I did not play my last year. I mainly worked and studied and was preparing to start graduate school.

Roberts: Were you able to play recreational golf much?

Marynick: I would represent the fraternity every year in the fraternity golf tournament, and we did very well. We finished second every time.

Roberts: What fraternity were you in?

Marynick: Sigma Nu.

Roberts: College was the first time you had lived away from home? How did you get to Sewanee, Tennessee?

Marynick: Initially my mother and aunt drove me to school. My mother came to Sewanee three times: to drop me off my freshman year, to pick me up after my sophomore year, and to attend my graduation. Generally, I would borrow a ride to or from Sewanee or ride the Greyhound bus.

Roberts: How many students were in the college? Did you apply to other colleges?

Marynick: There were around 500 total students. About 150 were in my class. I did apply to other colleges—Oberlin College, Southwestern in Georgetown, Texas, and Trinity in San Antonio—but once the Sewanee Glee Club came to Dallas, that was it. One member of the Glee Club, David Martin (“Sweets”), from Selma, Alabama, had a younger brother, Mark, and Mark and I became wonderful friends at Sewanee. We had many adventures together.

Roberts: Was there alcohol in your home growing up?

Marynick: Rarely. Maybe on holidays, a little spiked eggnog. Grandmother didn't like tobacco or alcohol, but every night she had Mogen David kosher wine “for her kidneys—medicinal!” Mr. Phillip Wolfe, who worked with my mother at Dallas Tailor & Laundry Supply, also owned a liquor store, so he would keep Grandmother supplied with her kosher wine. She never had to buy it. It would just show up magically.

Roberts: When you and your mother arrived at Sewanee, Tennessee, and saw the beautiful campus, what was your reaction?

Marynick: I had never seen it before and thought I had gone to heaven. I practiced with the Glee Club. During the qualifying round for the golf team I shot a 72. The coach was so excited I was there.

Roberts: By that time were you fully grown?

Marynick: I grew 7 inches after I got there. I was 5 feet 3 inches when I entered college.

Roberts: You grew in your freshman year?

Marynick: Freshman and sophomore years.

Roberts: How did you decide what to major in?

Marynick: I always wanted to be a biologist. What discouraged me was that you had to have 3 years of French, German, or Russian to get a science degree, plus 2 years of chemistry and 2 years of mathematics. I wanted just to take biology. As a freshman I took general chemistry, English, French, history, and calculus. I had some spectacular teachers. My calculus teacher was Nemo Tucker. Nemo had been the tutor for Chiang Kai-shek's children and was a descendant of the George Washington lineage. Nemo Tucker wanted to know what you knew so he would never give a 1-hour test. He would give an over-the-weekend test. He would put the test on the blackboard in Walsh-Ellett Hall and on Saturday or Sunday you could go and take the test, sign the honor code, put the test in his desk drawer, and walk out. If you later thought of something you missed, you could go back and work on your test some more. You couldn't take your test out of the room. It was the first time I had ever had a test like that.

Conversely, in chemistry I had a German fellow, Dr. T. Felder Dorn. Dr. Dorn's test had to be finished in 50 minutes because when 10 minutes was left he would come into the room and announce what time was left and then walk out. The same happened at 5 minutes. So if you hadn't finished in those 50 minutes, you couldn't concentrate after that point.

When I was playing college golf, I wasn't doing very well in my studies except in calculus. Dr. David Camp, who was chairman of chemistry and who I had for chemistry lab but not class, called me into his office one day and told me it wasn't looking good. He understood I was a pretty good golfer and I could probably play 4 years if I didn't flunk out. I think that I was near to failing in three of my five subjects at mid term. I was able to relinquish my spot on the golf team and started studying all out. About this time I befriended a fellow named Banks Clark from Crosett, Arkansas. Banks was a junior chemistry major. He was our student lab instructor and saw that I was struggling. He was also a Sigma Nu, the fraternity I had pledged. He showed me what I needed to do to survive, and he became my “time manager.” When they were going to yank my PE credits for being off the golf team, he told me to send for my clarinet from home and join the band. He had been at Sewanee for 3 years and knew how the system worked. He guided me through. Banks eventually got a master's degree in engineering and has worked all over the world. He taught me that a problem might not be able to be solved today, but put it aside and come back to it later.

Roberts: Where did you live? In a dorm?

Marynick: Students lived in a dorm or in a private home at Sewanee. The first year I was in Cleveland Hall; the second year, Cannon Hall; and the third and fourth years, Malon Courts Hall, which is on lovely Lake Finney. Every morning I could wake up and look out the front window to see what birds had come in during the night. Dr. Bates, my freshman French instructor, was always out there with his binoculars birding in the morning.

Roberts: Sewanee was an all-male school when you were there?

Marynick: Yes.

Roberts: How did you arrange social life? How did you meet ladies as a student?

Marynick: We really mostly studied all the time. Periodically, we would either head for Nashville or Atlanta. Sewanee had party weekends several times each year and would import the ladies and have a concert.

Roberts: The fraternity or the school?

Marynick: The school and the fraternities. I was a member of the German Club, which had nothing to do with Germany. The German Club's function was to arrange party weekends. We would generally try to get a top-billed act—Otis Redding, the Sherrells—to come to the campus and present a concert. As a member of the German Club, I was involved in working with agents and managers to arrange this entertainment, keeping track of the money, and inviting the performers.

Roberts: You were a bookkeeper?

Marynick: I was a fraternity bookkeeper and a German Club bookkeeper.

Roberts: How did you get into the German Club?

Marynick: I never figured that out. I was asked to join to work on the concerts. Sewanee is a very small place, so everyone knows everyone.

Roberts: You are a very sociable guy.

Marynick: Someone grabbed me and said this is what you do. I really laughed because I think about the time Otis Redding came. He was a very nice man and he drove up in his Cadillac. As he was performing, he would take off his jewelry and throw it out into the crowd, but he had plants in the audience, so they would catch his cuff links or other jewelry. When the perfor-mance was over they would bring the jewelry back to him. As we were settling up I told him he should be pitching for the Dodgers because he could fling a cuff link halfway across the room and a guy would put up his hand and catch it. The Chaplains came to play at the Sigma Nu fraternity house. They were all theology students from Vanderbilt University. To say there was a lot of alcohol drinking at Sewanee would be an understatement. I never participated much in that, so I was still sober at 3:00 am. I made the band breakfast in the fraternity house kitchen, paid them their fee, and then locked the place up and went back to my dorm. By staying sober I got to meet so many nice people and helped so many inebriated people.

Roberts: Drinking was in the fraternity houses?

Marynick: It was everywhere.

Roberts: You could drink alcohol in the dorm too?

Marynick: Not overtly. Some people actually had stills in their dorm. They were making home brew.

Roberts: You graduated in 1967. How did you come out? The class size was about 150 or so?

Marynick: I think I was 23rd.

Roberts: Your first semester you had a low batting average?

Marynick: I was actually able to bring it up to a 2.7 that first year.

Roberts: What did you end up with as a grade-point average?

Marynick: About a 3.3. Getting good grades was very hard at Sewanee. In our physics class there was not a single A. These were not dumb students. The physics professor, Eric Ellis, was from Syracuse University. He wanted a bell-shaped curve for test scores. He gave one physics test that could be completed in 1 hour and the mean score was around 92. So more than half of the class made an A, and it just caused this man to have a meltdown. From then on our physics tests were given in Convocation Hall, which was the old library hall, after dinner in the evening, and there was no time limit. Dr. Ellis would pass out five or more pages of questions. No slide rules were allowed. The average student would start the test about 7:00 pm and would finish between 11:00 and midnight. Many students would work until 2:00 or 3:00 am. He got a bell-shaped curve, but he made the test so hard no one could make over a 90 on it. The next year they offered general physics for science majors and general physics for nonscience majors; very few students showed up to take the physics for science majors.

Roberts: After college, how did you decide to get a master's degree?

Marynick: While at Sewanee I majored in biology, and one of the projects I took on was to try to figure out all the issues that related to the breeding of salamanders on the university domain. What was it that caused these animals to come out on one night as opposed to any other night for breeding and then disappear for a year? When they come out for breeding, the male and female have this intricate dance where they intertwine. The male lays this spermatophore, which is a small mound of gel with a little head of sperm on the top, and then the female sits down on that mound of gel and her cloaca snips off the top part so she internalizes the sperm. She lays eggs in a small clump in standing water. This egg and sperm clump is a fraction of the size of a marble, and overnight the eggs are fertilizing and drawing in water so that the next morning the egg mass is larger than a bunch of grapes and about 100 eggs have been fertilized. My question was, “Why is it just one day?” Professor Harry Yeatman kept and is still keeping track of the particular day for salamander egg laying, and it isn't always the same day of the year (Figure 18). This question still remains under evaluation.

Figure 18.

Dr. Harry Yeatman and Sam Marynick, 1997.

I was offered a scholarship to Tulane University to study environmental biology, so I headed to New Orleans. I felt we could use amphibian reproduction and study how well the amphibians reproduced in water of different qualities and relate successful reproduction to reasonable water quality. Dr. Fred Cagle (1915–1968) was a wonderful biologist and also a vice president of Tulane University. I was to study under Dr. Cagle. When I got to Tulane I was actually in the PhD program. Shortly after I arrived, Dr. Cagle had a coronary and died. Thus, my main reason for being there was gone, but by then I had befriended Professor Joseph Ewan, who had helped me with my spelling and punctuation. He told me that all was not lost; just complete a master's degree as quickly as possible. He said that I was actually in the wrong place and should be in medical school. I said that I was going to be an environmental biologist. He told me I wasn't listening.

I took the MCAT and applied to UT Southwestern Medical School. They invited me for an interview, and I interviewed with an elderly physiologist, Dr. Lackey. Dr. Lackey at the end of the interview asked if I was coming to Southwestern or not. I told him I needed to think about it. He said, “Look, I'm not getting younger and if I die, you will have to come back for another interview.” I could see that I was going to be able to finish my master's degree and come to UT Southwestern. I left New Orleans in June. I was required to take 12 hours of English before I could start medical school, so I took 2 years of English in 3 months at UT Arlington while also working.

Roberts: Why did you have to do that?

Marynick: I had only had 1 year of English in college, so I needed 2 more. The first day of class at Arlington, the teacher noticed my schedule and the number of classes I was taking and was not sure that I could handle the academic load. I had read many of the books that were required reading, so it wasn't as hard as it sounded. It was a lot of fun being with younger students studying English.

Roberts: When did you have time to read a lot of books?

Marynick: As part of going through life. I have a special picture of my Aunt Anna Mae Barnes Parks, who was a schoolteacher in Dustin, Oklahoma (Figure 19). She married Will Parks. As children, my sister and I were sent to spend part of the summer with Aunt Anna Mae in Okemah, Oklahoma. Part of Anna Mae's summer ritual was going at noon to the local library. I read and read and read, and it became a habit with me and my sister.

Figure 19.

Sam and Sharon with Anna Mae Barnes Parks at the Lawler family reunion, 1975.

Roberts: How old were you the first summer you went to Okemah?

Marynick: I was 5 or 6. Her husband, Will Parks, owned and ran the funeral parlor in Okemah, as well as the cold storage, the hardware store, and an ambulance service. He was always on the move, but he married a woman who had a calming influence on him.

My mother's younger brother, Brunner Barnes, a chemical engineer named after one of my grandmother's professors at Grayson College, a Dr. Brunner, would help me with my high school science projects. We would build these contraptions under his carport and see if they would work, like counter-current towers where dirty gas would go in at the bottom and come out clean at the top. The dirty liquid was going into the top and would then take different fractions off at different levels in the tower. We would make these towers out of Plexiglas and run them using a vacuum cleaner blower and an old washing machine motor. Even after he retired Uncle Brunner read Science every week. Uncle Brunner built refineries all over the world. I have a wonderful picture of Uncle Will Parks and Uncle Brunner Barnes at one of the Lawler family reunions (Figure 20).

Figure 20.

Will Parks in his usual bow tie sitting next to Uncle Brunner Barnes at the Lawler family reunion, 1975.

Roberts: Did you go up to Okemah, Oklahoma, every summer?

Marynick: Probably three or four summers. I looked forward to the visits because of the library time every day and a wonderful swimming pool.

Roberts: You would go to the library at noon. How long were you there?

Marynick: Throughout the heat of the day, up to 4:00 or 5:00 pm.

Roberts: What did you like to read?

Marynick: Everything. A lot of Mark Twain. Aunt Anna Mae would direct me. She had two daughters older than I was; Martha became a librarian and Francis became a PhD clinical psychologist.

Roberts: Did you have family reunions?

Marynick: We always meet once a year—come rain or shine. Family members would come from literally all over (Dallas, Houston, Austin, or the ranch at Brady). The reunion tended to move around.

Roberts: Do you still do that?

Marynick: Every year.

Roberts: How many people show up?

Marynick: Last year about 70 people showed up.

Roberts: What did your wife think about that the first time you went?

Marynick: Not only does my wife come, but her mother came as long as she was alive, and both of her brothers and their families come. The food is great and the camaraderie is spectacular.

Roberts: Who does the cooking?

Marynick: Everyone brings something. The saddest was when my Aunt Laura died because she made her lemon angel food cake. People would fight over it.

Roberts: You decided to go to medical school late. Going to medical school didn't occur to you while you were at Sewanee?

Marynick: My goal at Sewanee was to make a higher grade in every course than all the premedical students. I didn't do it all the time, but that was my goal.

Roberts: Of the 150 students in your class, how many went to medical school?

Marynick: Around 15.

Roberts: Who gave you the idea to go to Tulane for the master's degree?

Marynick: The NIH actually. That was one of their designated centers for the study of environmental biology.

Roberts: You applied to the NIH program?

Marynick: I applied to both. I had to be accepted in the graduate school at Tulane, but NIH paid the bills.

Roberts: While you were there the man you went to study with died. Who took his place?

Marynick: An American Indian and a nice man, Dr. Harold Dundee.

Roberts: For your master's degree you had to take a certain number of courses? You also did a research project?

Marynick: Yes, both. Joseph Ewan, the professor who taught the history of science and scientific writing, gave tests that you would take home and that required you to go to the library. He wanted to see what you found. Later, when I was at NIH in my final year, Professor Ewan was invited to the Smithsonian Institution to give a series of lectures on historical botany. I spent 3 days with him on this occasion, and my wife and sister got to know him also. By then, I had come full circle—finished medical school, internship, residency, and fellowship. Professor Ewan gave me spectacular guidance.

Roberts: During that year you applied to several medical schools or just UT Southwestern?

Marynick: I promised Professor Ewan that I would apply to at least one medical school. The tuition then at UT Southwestern was $352 a year. UT Southwestern was the only medical school I applied to.

Roberts: Did you tell Dr. Lackey, who interviewed you at Southwestern, that you would come?

Marynick: Yes.

Roberts: How did you like New Orleans and Tulane during the year you were there?

Marynick: I had a wonderful year. I worked at a top-notched place with wonderful people. I learned so much so fast. I learned that once the female salamander mates, she can store sperm indefinitely in a suspended state of animation in a little organ called a spermatheca and then when the correct day comes the next year she does not have to mate. She can lay her eggs and fertilize them using reactivated sperm from the spermatheca. She only has to meet up with a male once during her entire reproductive life.

Roberts: How long do they live?

Marynick: The dusky salamander that I was studying probably lives about 7 or 8 years, and they start reproducing sometimes by their second year. I had a dusky salamander in captivity that laid fertile eggs for several years in a row until our electricity went out when we were on vacation one summer and I lost all my salamanders. I had them at home in a terrarium in a bedroom. The environment has to be right or the female won't lay any eggs.

Roberts: Once you were back in Dallas for medical school, where did you live?

Marynick: In an apartment just south of Cedar Springs. I had two roommates: Don McCullouch, a financial guy, and Bill Freeborn, a cousin of a girlfriend from high school. Bill trained in urology and has since retired. We distributed the duties of the day: McCullouch would cook, I would clean up, and Freeborn would set the table.

Roberts: How many classmates did you have in medical school?

Marynick: 105.

Roberts: Did you have any surprises entering medical school? How did it strike you?

Marynick: I thought it would be incredibly difficult. But it wasn't difficult compared with Dr. Camp's organic chemistry class. I enjoyed medical school. I learned a lot. The teachers didn't ask for more than was possible. I enlisted in a PhD program under Dr. Costas Kastritsis, a PhD geneticist. The PhD committee called me in and wondered why I wanted a PhD. They said that I could do everything I needed to do with an MD degree. I answered, “I don't guess I need a PhD, do I?” They were going to require me to retake some of the coursework that I had previously taken at Tulane. I decided to withdraw from the PhD program when I was a sophomore in medical school.

Roberts: As you rotated through all the different subspecialties, did you have a hard time deciding what you wanted to do after medical school?

Marynick: My first surgical rotation was my last rotation in medical school. By that time I had already committed for a medical internship. Otherwise, I might have gone into surgery. I had the next 5 years committed by the time I was halfway through my senior year of medical school.

Roberts: Did you enjoy surgery?

Marynick: I thought it was great. I arrived at the Veterans Hospital in March 1972. The place had been decimated by the draft. They were short staffed. I essentially got to run their hyperalimentation clinic. I got to first assistant on carotid endarterectomies and abdominal aortic aneurysm repairs because they were short staffed. I thought the Veterans Hospital rotation was spectacular.

Roberts: Who had a major influence on you during medical school?

Marynick: Probably the most fundamental influence was Dr. Dan Foster. I ended up having him every time I turned around, on the ward as an attending, during afternoon conference, etc. He and I visited a great deal about all sorts of things. I found him to be wonderful, kind, and thoughtful, but demanding (Figure 21). There was Dr. Don Seldin, and he was omnipresent. I loved to go to morning report with Dr. Seldin because I could read about the cases I would present in the Parkland library during the early hours of the morning. An Addisonian patient came in once—with dermal pigment, diarrhea, and hypovolemia with tachycardia. I presented the case to Dr. Seldin like it was a run-of-the-mill Addisonian case. Dr. Seldin asked me if diarrhea was part of the presentation of Addisonian crisis. I said, “Yes, sir.” He asked, “Who taught you that?” I said, “Thomas Addison.” He said, “Addison has been dead 100 years.” I said I knew that, but I had read his article in the book Classic Description of Diseases, and his initial description was reproduced in that book. He just laughed and thanked me. That was probably my peak as a medical resident in morning report (Figure 22).

Figure 21.

Dr. Daniel Foster.

Figure 22.

Parkland Memorial Hospital internal medicine housestaff, 1973 (bottom row, fourth from the right).

Roberts: You decided to stay in Dallas for your medical residency?

Marynick: After the summer I spent at the MGH. Dr. Alexander Leaf, chief of medicine at MGH, had basically implied to me that if I applied for internship at MGH, they would take me as an intern but they normally just took the man or woman who was first in the class from UT Southwestern. The number one in our class, Joe Davis, and I were invited to interview for internship at MGH (Figure 23). I asked my friend, Charlie Sanders, about it, and he agreed they were going to try to take two Southwestern students. I listed my first choice as MGH, and Parkland was my second. The morning of matching day, I got a call from Dr. Brian Williams, the dean of students, to come to his office. He told me that he had just spoken with Alexander Leaf and that I was not going to match at MGH because they had 14 internship slots and they gave 7 to Harvard students; if they allowed me to go there, it would cut into their Harvard number. It probably worked out best for me to be in Dallas because my mother-in-law had developed breast cancer and was undergoing treatment at Baylor Hospital and needed our help.

Figure 23.

Dr. Joe Davis, number 1 in the UT Southwestern Medical School class of 1972, and Sam Marynick head to Boston for interviews, 1971.

Roberts: What was internship like at Parkland beginning in July 1972? You were on call how often?

Marynick: I think we were there for 24 hours every third day, plus 12 hours the next day, so 36 hours straight. One generally slept 3 of the 36 hours. Then you got to sleep in your own bed for 2 days and then you were back on again.

Roberts: What time were you generally able to leave the hospital those 2 days?

Marynick: Probably around 6:00 to 6:30 pm.

Roberts: You had to be at the hospital at what time?

Marynick: By 6:00 to 6:30 am.

Roberts: After your internship you had another year of residency at Parkland Hospital?

Marynick: Correct.

Roberts: Were you thinking about a subspecialty during those 2 years?

Marynick: I had done reproduction research for years, so when it came time for our class to have reproductive physiology lectures during our junior year, I was asked by a PhD in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, Dr. Penti Setteri, to give some of the lectures regarding reproduction physiology. I was able to give a couple of lectures and help make the quizzes. Dr. Sitteri talked with Dr. Gene Wilson, and they both encouraged me to go to the NIH. I didn't even know what the NIH was exactly. I submitted an application for the Public Health Service to be a clinical medical officer at the NIH.

I spent several days at NIH doing interviews during my senior year of medical school. I interviewed with Vincent DeVita, who was the director of the National Cancer Institute. We had a really nice interview. I also interviewed with Harry Kaiser at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and then with Dr. Mortimer Lipsett, at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Reproduction Research Branch). All three people wanted me. I thought that I needed to work for Mort Lipsett, who was very thoughtful, and I knew his right-hand man was Dr. Griff Ross, also from Texas, and Dr. Lynn Loriaux was in charge of the clinical training (Figure 24). The other thing that impacted this decision process to work at the NIH was that the military was still drafting physicians to serve in Viet-nam. I think entering the Public Health Service in 1972 diminished my possibility of being drafted, as I was now an officer in a uniformed service.

Figure 24.

Dr. Griff Ross, Dr. Lynn Loriaux, Dr. Mortimer Lipsett, and Dr. Sam Marynick at the National Institutes of Health, 1976.

Roberts: You went to the NIH after your first year of residency?

Marynick: Right. Before I left Dallas I thought I was going to do 3 years at NIH and then go back and do another year of residency. But Dr. Seldin informed me that I was really finished with their program and residency training. They had discussed it and didn't see how an additional residency year would be of significant benefit to me. They would certify for me to sit and take the internal medicine board exam at that time.

Roberts: Where did you live in Bethesda, Maryland?

Marynick: We bought a little house on Ewing Drive. It had been built by Robert Linderking, an architect who built ships for the navy. There were more storage cabinets in this house than you can imagine.

Roberts: How far was that from NIH?

Marynick: About a 20-minute walk.

Roberts: How did the NIH strike you?

Marynick: It was spectacular. I felt like a duck in water.

Roberts: Most people went for 2 years. You went for 3?

Marynick: Correct.

Roberts: Did they encourage you to stay on?

Marynick: We had that discussion when I was interviewed, and Dr. Lipsett told me if I came to their institute I would have to agree to 3 years. I asked him why, and he said that I wouldn't understand until halfway through the third year. He was right. Some of these concepts are very difficult to grasp. What he was talking about were syndromes of the congenital adrenal hyperplasias, which about halfway through the third year started to gel in my mind after taking care of these patients for 2½ years. The third year, basically, I served as an attending on the ward and spent most of the other time in research. The third year was a wonderful year. I was asked to stay on at the NIH after my third year of fellowship on a series of 1-year contracts to continue the work in which I was involved. I had reached an agreement with Sharon that I would leave NIH after 3 years, and that is what I did.

Roberts: While you were at NIH, what did you decide you wanted to do?

Marynick: I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I loved clinical medicine. I wanted to do both clinical medicine and research. I probably kept that goal through the first 4 or 5 years after I left NIH. But it slowly became clear to me that if you were a clinician you really had to give all your time to your clinic. I was not able to keep that many balls in the air at the same time.

Roberts: When you came back from NIH, did you go directly to BUMC?

Marynick: Dr. Zaven Chakmakjian basically took me on as a colleague and gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted to do in the endocrinology laboratory. BUMC had a wonderful endocrinology laboratory at that time. We set about doing some very good things. I had an antibody to human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) that Griff Ross had made that would detect 1 milli-international unit per mL of hCG, so we had the most sensitive hCG test in the country, and it was very helpful in following conditions such as choriocarcinoma and other tumors that made hCG. We set up a quick estradiol assay so that I could start doing ovulation induction in women who needed gonadotropin ovulation induction and monitor that. The first child from this technology at BUMC was born on my birthday in 1979. She has just delivered her first child, and she sent us a picture of her beautiful new daughter. We set up a sex hormone binding globulin assay so we could assess the free fractions of androgens in the patients we were seeing, and then I was providing patient care. The days were full seeing patients and working in the lab.

Roberts: Were you on salary then when you first came?

Marynick: I was on salary for clinical work and I never received a salary for laboratory work. The time I spent in the lab was my time.

Roberts: I guess you were always interested in reproduction?

Marynick: Right.

Roberts: Did you think about going back to Parkland while you were at NIH?

Marynick: I actually had applied for a cardiology fellowship at MGH.

Roberts: While you were at NIH?

Marynick: Yes. It was going to be 2 or 3 more years in Boston, which is very cold in the winter. My wife has cold urticaria and Raynaud's, and she was about 6 months pregnant and the snow was about 2 feet deep outside. She informed me one day that she would not be going to Boston. I called Dr. Edgar Haber, chief of cardiology at MGH, and told him my predicament. He said not to worry; he thought they could fill the slot.

Roberts: You already had the slot?

Marynick: Yes. That was my understanding. We came back to Dallas.

Roberts: What did your colleagues at UT Southwestern think when you joined BUMC?

Marynick: They have always been very thoughtful of me. I don't think it would be an unreasonable statement to say that I'm a good friend of Dr. Dan Foster. He is a wonderful man and teacher. You teach a lot by the way you comport yourself.

I have great respect for the individuals who trained me at UT Southwestern Medical School and Parkland Memorial Hospital. The individuals who influence me are numerous. One especially memorable rotation was the several months that I worked with Dr. Joe Goldstein as my ward attending physician (Figure 25). Joe Goldstein is a spectacular clinician.

Figure 25.

Dr. Joseph Goldstein.

Roberts: You have received several teaching awards at BUMC. You have kept your investigative work going pretty well for someone who has a very busy practice.

Marynick: I always try to measure something and try to have an insight that may not have been had previously.

Roberts: How does your practice work now? How much of it is in the reproductive area versus thyroid versus diabetes?

Marynick: It's probably 30% to 40% reproduction and the rest a host of other endocrine problems. The average patient arrives generally having seen one to three physicians without a resolution of the issue. My referral practice is with difficult to diagnose and treat endocrine and reproduction problems.

Roberts: I always thought endocrinology was the most intellectual of all medical specialties.

Marynick: An endocrinologist is essentially a chemist.

Roberts: I think heart disease is the easiest medical subspecialty. Hemodialysis has hurt the intellectual atmosphere of nephrology, in a way.

Marynick: I will tell you a funny story. At Parkland Hospital I did a 2-month nephrology rotation, and Dr. Allen Hull was the head of clinical nephrology. Dr. Hull had two fellows at the time, Drs. Dewey Long and Tom Parker, and two residents. The nephrology pager went off almost nonstop 24 hours a day. My pager went off at 3:00 am, and my Maltese puppy howled to the moon. The pager went off three or four times each night. The nephrology rounds started at the Pancake House on Mockingbird Lane near the Mockingbird Dialysis Center usually at 5:00 to 6:00 each morning. Cases would be presented, and we would go to the dialysis center to check the patients on dialysis and then to Parkland Hospital, Methodist Hospital, or St. Paul Hospital. It was as intense as any of the 2-month rotations during the residency, with the possible exception of Dr. Jay Sanford's infectious diseases rotation.

At a gathering at the end of my residency at Parkland, Allen Hull came up to Sharon and me and said that he would like for me to think about coming back and doing a nephrology fellowship with him when I finished at NIH. My wife smiled and said to Dr. Hull, “Dr. Hull, I'm sure Sam is honored with your offer. I will tell you that if he comes back to Dallas to do a nephrology fellowship, he will be married to a different woman!” Nevertheless, nephrology at Parkland was spectacular, and I learned a lot about the kidney. One of my true heroes is a nephrologist, Dr. Jim Knochel, who was at the Veterans Administration Hospital and later at Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He knew so much about so many things, and he was eager to help you learn and to discuss difficult patients. At the VA Hospital, Dr. Knochel let me work in his lab doing research while I was there on clinical rotations.

Roberts: When did you get married?

Marynick: During the summer of 1969, after my freshman year in medical school (Figure 26).

Figure 26.

Sharon and Sam Marynick on their wedding night, Perkins Chapel, Southern Methodist University, 1969.

Roberts: You were 24 years old?

Marynick: Correct.

Roberts: What was your fiancée's name?

Marynick: Sharon Eck.

Roberts: How did you meet?

Marynick: In December 1966, a lifelong friend, Marilyn Mullholland, knew I needed a date for the Christmas dinner at John Ward's house. John was a good friend at Sewanee and had dated my sister in high school. I called Marilyn to see if she would go to this dinner with me, but she already had a date. But, a sorority sister was staying with her. Marilyn indicated that her sorority sister had a problem—“one long ear.” I told her that it was just a dinner. I went to pick Sharon up and she answered the door pulling on her ear. At the time, Sharon was an elementary education major at SMU. We went to the dinner together, had a good time, and that was the end of that.

I started dating a lady who was an artist studying at UT, and we got pretty serious. She went to France to do a Fulbright fellowship and wrote me a letter saying not to wait on her to come back because she may never come back. So again, I ended up needing a date for John Ward's Christmas party and called Marilyn, who told me that Sharon was still in Dallas and would be interested in going out with me again. I called Sharon and she agreed to be my date. I drove down to Greenville, Texas, to her mother's house to pick her up for the dinner. She had become a flight attendant for American Airlines (Figure 27). I had thought she was going to be a schoolteacher. After that second date, we have been inseparable.

Figure 27.

Sharon Marynick, American Airlines flight attendant, 1976.

Roberts: What were the characteristics of Sharon that attracted you to her, even though it was a 2-year delay after your initial meeting?

Marynick: She was just a lot of fun to be with, very compatible, and easy to be around.

Roberts: Where was she born?

Marynick: In Mount Pleasant, Utah.

Roberts: How did she get to Dallas?

Marynick: Her father was a sprint champion in South Dakota and a football star at Washington State University. In the US Air Corps he was a colonel and instructor and after the war he wanted to move out West and start an air transportation service. When Sharon was 2, her father's plane crashed in Utah and he was killed. Her mother was pregnant at the time and already had a 2- and 4-year-old and moved back to Greenville, Texas, where she had family.

Roberts: You and Sharon actually had similar backgrounds in that your father left and her father left under different circumstances. You married in 1969. Do you have children?

Marynick: Yes, we have three children. Ashley was born at Georgetown Medical Center in 1976, Laird was born at BUMC in 1978, and Mark was born at BUMC in 1983 (Figure 28).

Figure 28.

Marynick family portrait, 1999.

Roberts: What do they do?

Marynick: Ashley is an investment banker with JP Morgan in London. She is on maternity leave right now, having recently given birth to our second granddaughter, Emily. Our first granddaughter is Hannah, age 2 (Figure 29).

Figure 29.

Emily and Hannah Williams in their special hats, 2009.

Roberts: Who did Ashley marry?

Marynick: She married Lee Williams. She was a defender for the women's soccer team and he was a defender for the men's soccer team at Harvard University. They both were 4-year soccer players in college (Figure 30).

Figure 30.

Lee, Hannah, Ashley, and Emily Williams in Greece, 2009.

Roberts: What does he do?

Marynick: He is a bond trader in London.

Roberts: What about Laird?

Marynick: Laird is currently in business school at SMU. He has a year left.

Roberts: Where did he go to college?

Marynick: He went to Haverford College on the mainline in the Philadelphia area.

Roberts: That is a wonderful school.

Marynick: Academically brutal is how Laird referred to it. But Laird does love Haverford College and the education he received there. Laird and Ralph Tompsett's grandson Ned played varsity baseball together at Haverford College for 4 years.

Roberts: What does Mark do?

Marynick: Mark was a football player in college but got injured in his sophomore year. He finished college in economics at Harvard University and then decided he wanted to go to medical school. He and Ashley decided that he should take science courses at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and he spent 2 years taking basic science at Sewanee and lived in Sewanee with Ms. Betty Foreman, the wife of the late Dr. Charles Foreman, for whom I was the laboratory technician. Mark applied to several medical schools and was accepted at St. George's University Medical School in Grenada. Mark is undecided about going to medical school because he has now taken an interest in business.

Roberts: Do they speak English in Grenada?

Marynick: Yes. It's an amazing medical college. It has a global feel to it. Their goal is to train physicians to send out all over the world.

Roberts: Which way is he leaning, do you think?

Marynick: I'm not sure. He would like to be a surgeon and he would be a wonderful surgeon. He has remarkable dexterity with his hands, and he is a wonderful artist and portrait painter.

Roberts: Tell him to go.

Marynick: I've told him that if anyone gave me a chance to have an MD degree, I would take it. However, Mark must make his own decision.

Roberts: What is your life like now? What time do you wake up in the morning?

Marynick: About 6:30 am.

Roberts: Where do you go?

Marynick: At 6:30 I get up and make my breakfast and my wife's. Then I generally work in my office at home or go to the hospital for early morning meetings. I work in my medical office until 6:30 or 7:00 pm and then go home. We have dinner and then I generally work at my desk from about 8:00 pm until midnight when I go to sleep.

Roberts: You usually sleep 6 to 6½ hours each night?

Marynick: Yes.

Roberts: Do you feel good with that amount?

Marynick: Yes.

Roberts: Where is your office?

Marynick: In the Barnett Tower, Suite 506, directly across the hall from the reproduction center. I see patients at both places.

Roberts: Who are your partners?

Marynick: The reproduction center was originally a partnership between BUMC, Dr. Mike Putnam, and me. In 2004, BUMC sold us its part of the center. Now the reproduction center is a limited partnership with me, Dr. Putnam, and Dr. Lilly Zhang, a PhD embryologist.

Roberts: When you say you go back to your desk from 8:00 to midnight, what are you doing?

Marynick: Reading papers and looking at charts and data, trying to figure out the various patient problems.

Roberts: All your patients have very complex problems?

Marynick: It seems so. I like to see a simple one on occasion.

Roberts: What about the weekends?

Marynick: It's highly variable. If there is a patient who needs to be seen, I'll go in and work Saturday or Sunday morning. If not, I generally work in the yard or do whatever needs to be done to keep the place going.

Roberts: What about at night? Do you have many patients in the hospital?

Marynick: I probably don't have a dozen patients a year in the hospital. Endocrinology is generally an outpatient practice.

Roberts: You are rarely called back to the hospital at night?

Marynick: That's correct. Maybe half a dozen times in a year.

Roberts: How much time do you take off a year?

Marynick: I take off every Thursday afternoon to play golf, and I generally hit practice balls on Saturday and Sunday afternoon for about 1 to 2 hours trying to keep my game sharp. I take vacation for probably 2 weeks out of the year. Occasionally, I sneak off for fishing a couple of days every once in a while (Figure 31).

Figure 31.

Mark and Sam Marynick and a 39-pound Warsaw Grooper, Galveston, Texas, 2009.

Roberts: What do you shoot now in golf as a rule?

Marynick: It depends on the course.

Roberts: Where do you play mostly?

Marynick: Mostly at Brook Hollow Golf Club, which is a very tough course.

Roberts: What's par there?

Marynick: 71. My good friend, Chip Stewart, whom I've known since he was 3 years old, and I often play and practice together. I really got to know Chip when I was a senior in high school and he was a sophomore. He and I partnered together to represent Sunset High School in all of our match play that particular year. His father, Earl Stewart Jr., was the golf professional at Oak Cliff Country Club, and Earl worked with me for a couple of years to try to help me hone my game.

Roberts: What do you shoot now as a rule?

Marynick: We had a tournament last weekend and they put the tees all the way back and let the rough grow up and put the pins next to the edge of the greens behind bunkers, and I shot 88. I occasionally will shoot in the 70s from the back, but it's difficult to play the whole course at 64 years of age.

Roberts: How far do you drive now?

Marynick: Probably 240 to 260 yards.

Roberts: What did you do at your peak?

Marynick: With the Fancy clubs, 300 ± 15 yards.

Roberts: What makes Tiger Woods so good?

Marynick: Many things. He has got a wonderful intellect, and he has had wonderful instruction. His father, Earl, who was an instructor for the US Army special forces troops, taught Tiger as a young lad and made Tiger tough. As I understand it, Tiger actually asked his father to make him tough. His father knew how to make people tough. What impresses me about Tiger Woods is he is gracious, thoughtful, has manners, and is incredibly good when the pressure is on. It's like when I asked Tam Mott, who played on the Highland Park High School football team with Doak Walker and Bobby Lane, “What made Doak Walker special?” Tam paused for a minute and said, “Well, he was the best tackler on the team, the best blocker, the best punter, the best place kicker, the best receiver, the best quarterback, the best running back, and other than that there wasn't a thing special about him!” The same is true of Tiger Woods in golf. Everyone thinks Tiger Wood is so long off the tee. No, he's average long off the tee, but he's an amazing iron player, has an amazing short game, and he is an amazing putter. He's in the top 5 not in driving distance, but in iron play, bunker saves, pitch shot saves, and putting. There is nothing flashy about the man.

Roberts: Do you read as much nonmedical material as you used to?

Marynick: All the time.

Roberts: What are you reading now?

Marynick: Guns, Germs and Steel and the biography of Rogers Hornsby.

Roberts: Do you have a lot of books at home?

Marynick: I would guess at least 10,000.

Roberts: Is your wife a major book reader?

Marynick: She reads all the time, every night.

Roberts: What does she enjoy?

Marynick: Everything—art, photography, design, etc. She is big into The Wall Street Journal, medical journals, and medical newspapers such as Endocrinology Today and Internal Medicine News. The joke is that I practice with the license and she practices without a license.

Roberts: Ten thousand books is a lot of books.

Marynick: A lot are in storage, and we have a garage full of books. There are many boxes of books in our garage.

Roberts: Do you ever go to the library and check out a book?

Marynick: I spend a fair amount of time at UT Southwestern Medical School's library and some at BUMC's library.

Roberts: If you read a nonmedical book, do you own it?

Marynick: Yes, generally, because they can be bought for almost nothing through Amazon. James Dodson's biography of Hogan, for example: the hardback cover price is sort of prohibitive but online one can get it from a used book dealer for $2.95.

Roberts: Do you buy any softback books or just hardback?

Marynick: Mostly hardback.

Roberts: You have an incredible memory. You don't ever forget anybody's name, do you?

Marynick: I don't remember a name very well unless I see it written on paper, and then I remember it pretty regularly.

Roberts: Do you and your wife entertain a good bit?

Marynick: Not a good bit. Our house is like a train station. People are always coming and going, and we never know who is going to come by. I guess people feel free to come and go as they please. We will set up something probably once a month with friends. But the majority of the time people just happen by.

Roberts: For relaxation, you play golf and work in the yard?

Marynick: I kill as many plants as I keep alive. I don't have a green thumb.

Roberts: When you take those 2 weeks off, where do you go?

Marynick: Recently, we have been going to England. We stay in London for 2 or 3 days and then I head to Scotland for a week to play golf, return to London for 2 or 3 days, and then come home (Figure 32).

Figure 32.

Royal Dornoch Golf Club, Dornoch, Scotland, 2007.

Roberts: Those Scottish courses are so hard because of the wind?

Marynick: They are challenging if the wind is up, so you have to figure out how to roll the ball on the ground. It is a whole new experience learning to play Scottish golf. The Scottish golf courses are beautiful courses to learn on.

Roberts: How did Tom Watson win so many British Opens?

Marynick: He is a spectacular golfer. I remember watching him in the Byron Nelson many times. He won the Nelson tournament twice, I think. He is very thoughtful, he is a Stanford University psychology major, and he plans ahead. I think it's miraculous that he could tie for the British Open at the age of 59 on a golf course that is over 7000 yards. Just amazing.

Roberts: Do you use a cart now or walk?

Marynick: I walk.

Roberts: What do you want to do the rest of your many years to come? You are 64 years old now?

Marynick: I want to work as long as my faculties will let me. I really enjoy taking care of patients and teaching reproductive medicine and endocrinology.

Roberts: Are you going to start taking off a little bit more than you do now?

Marynick: I'm sure I will, especially when the grandchildren get older. Hannah wants to learn to play golf.

Roberts: Your two boys are not married.

Marynick: Correct.

Roberts: You can expect a larger family?

Marynick: I hope so.

Roberts: Is there anything that you'd like to talk about that we haven't hit on?

Marynick: I think I was very fortunate to come back to BUMC in 1977 for lots of reasons, the most important being the people I have gotten to know over the last 32 years. Ralph Tompsett was a particular hero for me. My children referred to him as “Ralphie” (Figure 33).

Figure 33.

The children with Ralph Tompsett, Christmas 1986.

Roberts: He was a golfer too?

Marynick: Yes, he and I played every Thursday afternoon from the time he retired as chief of internal medicine at BUMC until he physically could no longer play. We played at the Sleepy Hollow Golf Club on Loop 12 South. Ralph and Jean Tompsett were at our house every Thanksgiving and Christmas, probably from 1979 until Ralph died, and then Jean came every holiday until she died. We would visit them periodically in Jefferson, Maine, where they had a summer home (Figure 34). When Jean died, her children invited several people to Ralph and Jean's home for a reception, and they told me to please go to Ralph's library and take any of the books I wanted. I left with two boxes of books. Ralph had a wonderful library. I have worked my way through most of those books.

Figure 34.

The children with Ralph Tompsett in Jefferson, Maine, 1985.

John Fordtran has been very supportive of me. He, Dr. Zaven Chakmakjian, and Dr. N. Y. Zachariah supported my work when we were figuring out the cause for the severe form of cystic acne. John Fordtran, I presume, was the reason that I was given the opportunity to chair the institutional review board at BUMC for a decade. Both the Boone Powells have always been supportive, and so has Joel Allison. Reuben Adams, when he was chief of obstetrics and gynecology, was always supportive. It's been a wonderful 32-year relationship.

When I left NIH, my mentor there, Lynn Loriaux, MD, PhD, basically said he had great expectations of me. Lynn is now chief of medicine at the University of Oregon Health Science Center. I have tried not to disappoint him. I remained very close with Griff Ross until his death. (He left NIH and became dean at UT Medical Center at Houston.) When I was at NIH, Griff had a specific antibody to hCG, and the solitary sheep in which this antibody was being made got pneumonia and was dying. The Hazelton Laboratory where the sheep was housed called Griff, who then called me at 3:00 am one Sunday morning because he couldn't get his lab tech or anyone else and he said that I had to go out to the Hazelton Laboratory with him and bleed the dying animal and process the serum because the antibody was irreplaceable. I went to the Hazelton Laboratory in Virginia at 3:00 am with Griff and bled the lamb dry, drove back to NIH, and spent all day Sunday processing the serum. My reward for that work was one vial of serum, enough to run 150,000 hCG blood level tests. Griff and I missed our planned golf match that Sunday. That's how you get to know people—by helping them when they need help.

Roberts: Did you ever run track?

Marynick: My nickname growing up was “turtle” because I always moved slowly. But in the seventh grade at the Lida Hooe School, they had tryouts for the track team, and I finished second in the 100-yard dash to Tommy Peebles, who later I believe lettered in track as a sprinter at Sunset High School. Mr. Easter, the boy's coach at the Lida Hooe Elementary School, said they would need to change my nickname.

Roberts: That reminds me of Jim Brown, the great halfback for the Cleveland Browns, who after a run walked very slowly always back to the huddle.

Marynick: I watched him play in the Cotton Bowl against Texas Christian University during his senior year at Syracuse. TCU upset Syracuse, and I believe the year was 1956.

I never set out to get involved with my children in athletics because I thought that wasn't my place. When Laird was 8, a bunch of neighborhood kids got on a baseball team and then some better players came along and the coach dismissed my son and his buddies from the team where they thought they would be playing. My wife got them to practice and on the team. Now they are off of the team and with no place to play and they were 8 years old. Sharon called me at the American College of Physicians meeting in New Orleans, and I told her to call the league director because he probably had some uniforms in a box that he would let us use and he would probably be happy to have another team in the league. I started coaching in youth league baseball and coached Laird until he was 18 (Figure 35). Every year I would try to find someone to take over as coach so I could withdraw from coaching, but the parents would get upset. My son finally said after 2 or 3 years to just manage the team without worrying about the fact that I was his father. He said I should treat him like I treat everyone else. I tried to.

Figure 35.

The Dallas Cardinals Baseball Club, 1996. Laird Marynick is second from the left on the first row, next to Andrew Embry; Sam Marynick is in the back row, far right.

Regarding my daughter's elementary school basketball team, in the crunch of the mid 1980s the team's coach was trying to save his business so he called me one day and asked if I could coach the girls. Ashley would have been around 8 years old. So I coached girls basketball for 3 years. It was great (Figure 36).

Figure 36.

Bradfield Elementary School Blue Mustangs, 1989.

And also there was a coach named Kennedy at the Bradfield Elementary School who called to tell me that I was going to be the Bradfield coach for my son Laird's third-grade track team. I told him that I didn't know anything about track. He agreed but said that I would let everyone participate and I wouldn't scream at anybody. I managed the Bradfield Elementary School track for my son's third- through sixth-grade class. Then Coach Kennedy called and said that I was going to coach a Bradfield football team. I again voiced that I didn't really know anything about football. Again, he said that I would let everyone play and not scream at anyone. I coached Laird's football team when he was 9, 10, and 11 (Figure 37). I've also worked with my younger son, Mark, in baseball, football, and track. But I never set out to get into coaching. I had a real joy teaching these kids about baseball, basketball, and what little I knew about football. Neither one of my boys stayed involved in Scouting. There just wasn't time.

Figure 37.

Bradfield Elementary School Blue Lightning II football team, 1989.

Roberts: You were an Eagle Scout. You became an Eagle Scout at what age?

Marynick: I think I was one of the older ones. I was 16 years old (Figure 38).

Figure 38.

Sam Marynick, Eagle Scout, 1961.

Roberts: I got 19 merit badges and foolishly stopped.

Marynick: I was still getting merit badges when I was 18 because I became a counselor at Camp Constantine. For 3 years I helped work in the nature area, and I didn't think there was a single picture of it until Dr. Elwood Jones sent me one (Figure 39). This picture was taken by my scoutmaster, Tom Bohannon, when he brought Troop 8 to Camp Constantine the summer of 1964.

Figure 39.

Sam Marynick counseling at Camp Constantine, Boy Scouts of America, 1964.

Roberts: How did you know Young Moon, a doctor of veterinary medicine, a PhD, and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver?

Marynick: Around 1984, there was an International Endocrinology Congress in Quebec City in Canada. It was 103°—the hottest day ever recorded in Quebec City. I was standing at a bus stop, sweating, and a nice Korean fellow who was standing by me said it wasn't normally that hot in Quebec City. He then noticed my golf shirt and asked if I played. I said I did and he asked if I was playing in the golf tournament the next day. I said I was. He said he would see that we were in the same foursome. We went to the golf club north of Quebec. Dr. Bill O'Dell, who was chief of internal medicine at the University of Utah and a scratch golfer, always won this tournament. This congress is held every 4 or 5 years. Bill O'Dell was in a group ahead of my foursome. When we get to the eighteenth hole, a par 5 that had a creek on the right and a lake on the left, my drive left me 235 yards from the hole. A rational golfer would lay up and hit a wedge and hope for a birdie. Someone came out in a cart and told us that if I birdied the hole, I would beat Bill O'Dell by one shot. Young Moon said to me, “Go for it. It will mean more to me to see Bill O'Dell lose than you can ever imagine. I'm tired of his winning this event every time.” After some hesitation I said, “Okay.” I took out a 1 iron and hit it 3 feet from the hole and made an eagle 3. It was a tremendous 1-iron shot, 235 yards between a creek and a lake. However, a fellow two groups behind us was a professional golfer and the husband of a scientist registered for the meeting, and he beat me by 2 shots. Some competitors said he shouldn't be playing because he's a professional. The tournament committee got out their rules and found the professional was eligible. There was nothing about spouses not being able to participate or anything about professional or amateur players. So this professional won the tournament, I finished second, and Bill O'Dell finished third. Young Moon and I have spoken or e-mailed one another almost every day since (Figure 40).

Figure 40.

With Dr. Young Moon following a golf tournament in Quebec City, 1984.

Roberts: Why did Byron Nelson quit playing at his peak when he was still such a young man?

Marynick: Because he wanted to have a ranch with cattle. The toll of what was expected of him was amazing—the same way the toll of what was expected of Bobby Jones depleted him. These were two men who if they did not perform at the top of their game and win the tournament felt like they had let down their constituency, and this pressure was physically very grinding on them.

I had the opportunity to meet and be with Byron Nelson on several occasions. The first was when I was 15 years old playing in the Oklahoma-Texas Junior Amateur in Wichita Falls, Texas. I was on the practice tee around sundown, and Byron Nelson had come to give the speech at the reception dinner that evening. He watched me hit a few shots with my pitching wedge and then he told me, “If you don't turn your hips just a little, you will never hit that shot consistently.” The second time was when I was a marshal at the Dallas Open PGA tournament at Oak Cliff Country Club when I was 18 years old. Nelson had come to help Gene Littler with his game. We visited for 2 days as I requested to marshal with Gene Littler so I could visit with Mr. Nelson as we walked along. The third meeting was when I was playing in the pro-am in the Nelson tournament at Preston Trail Golf Club in 1979 and we laughed when Byron realized I was the junior golfer from Wichita Falls and I was now a physician (Figure 41). And the last time was when the Westcott Pro-Am was in Byron Nelson's honor at Royal Oaks Country Club in 2002. We got to visit at dinner on that occasion. Lord Byron was a very nice, thoughtful, intelligent, and wonderful man.

Figure 41.

Sam Marynick playing in the Byron Nelson Pro-Am, Preston Trail Golf Club, 1979.

Roberts: If he had played with the current golfers, do you think he would have been better?

Marynick: In the spring of 1961, Arnold Palmer had won the Master's Golf Tournament, and he came to play an exhibition match at the Glen Lakes Country Club on Central Expressway. I had the pleasure to observe the golfers that day. The foursome was Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Dudley Wyson Jr., who had just lost in the finals of the US Amateur to Jack Nicklaus, and another whose name I can't remember. At the end of 18 holes, Byron Nelson had the best score. This was at a time that Arnold Palmer was dominant. Byron had a better score than Arnold Palmer. In 1961, Byron was 49 years old. I think he shot 2 or 3 under par. After the match was over Arnold Palmer thanked him for retiring.

The book The Match describes the match of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson at the Crosby Clambake at Pebble Beach around 1956, a decade after Nelson retired from competitive golf. Hogan and Nelson were both 44 years old. Eddie Lowery was Francis Ouimet's caddie at the US Open, held at the country club in Brookline, MA, in 1913, when Francis won. Eddie Lowery was 10 years old in 1913. In 1956 Lowery owned an automobile dealership in San Francisco and he had working in his showroom Harvey Ward and Ken Venturi, two of the best amateur golfers in the world. Eddie was bragging at dinner one night that he had two amateurs in his showroom that could beat any two golfers in the world. An Oklahoma businessman, George Coleman, heard that and asked Eddie if he wanted to put some money on it. Eddie asked, “How much?” I think the original bet was $25,000 in 1956. George Coleman went to Byron Nelson to see if he would represent him in a foursome. Byron said only if Ben Hogan was his partner. George called Ben Hogan to ask if he would play, and Hogan said if Nelson was his partner he would. So Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson played Ken Venturi and Harvey Ward at Cypress Point the next day in a match. When they left the first tee, there were four golfers, four caddies, Eddie Lowery, and George Coleman. By the time they reached the 18th green, several thousand people were watching. Hogan birdied the 18th green to tie the hole and win the match 1 up, and Hogan and Nelson were 15 under par and Venturi and Ward were 14 under par. Amazing! Hogan and Nelson were 20 or more years older than the amateurs they were playing.

Roberts: Sam, is there anything else you would like to talk about?

Marynick: I don't think so at this time, but let me think about it.

Roberts: Several days after the initial interview, Sam added a few more thoughts.

Early teachers

I am the product of the encouragement of many individuals. Waldrine Benton Gribble, my fifth-grade teacher, the great-grandmother of our first in vitro fertilization children, Cody and Casey Gribble, was probably the first person in my life who instilled in me the fact that I could just about accomplish anything I wanted to do (Figure 42). This was when I was 10 years old. Ms. Gribble was a wonderful teacher. She had traveled extensively and had many experiences that she shared with her students. My sister, Phyllis, who was in the grade ahead, was quite jealous of the teaching that Ms. Gribble was doing for our class and asked Ms. Gribble if she would take her on as a student. Although Ms. Gribble was a fifth-grade teacher and my sister was in the sixth grade, Ms. Gribble would give my sister homework to complete and return for evaluation.

Figure 42.

Mrs. Waldrine Gribble at Lida Hooe Elementary School, 1956.

Golf instruction

Another item that profoundly affected how I proceed through the day is my relationship with two professional golfers who made a major impression on me in the formative years, aged 12 to 17. Wylie Moore was the head professional at the Stevens Park Golf Course in Oak Cliff. Wylie was a no-nonsense person. He was very supportive in my learning how to play the game of golf. Not only did he ensure we had appropriate equipment, but he was insistent on appropriate behavior and good sportsmanship.

When I was 15, Wylie directed me to Earl Stewart Jr. at the Oak Cliff Country Club for a series of lessons on learning how to score. Earl was very similar to Wylie in that he had a standard that he insisted everyone around him uphold. At that time Earl's fee for a lesson was $20 an hour. I had saved $20 to pay him for my first hour lesson, but he refused to take any money. He would not accept any payment for the time he spent teaching me.

Boy Scouts

During my formative years I was continually involved in the Boy Scouts, and numerous Scout leaders, including Anson Van Slyke, Tom Bohannon, Bob Bohannon, Francis Suter, Harry Wagner, Art Weston, Wayne Mackey, Henry Jordan, Robert Nettles, Bill Yarbrough, and many other wonderful men were so helpful and encouraging to me in my scouting experience. Several of these men are in the picture taken after we completed a 50-mile hiking and camping adventure at Philmont Scout Ranch when I was 16 years old (Figure 43).

Figure 43.

Philmont Scout Ranch, 1961 (in the back row, second from the right, with the white kerchief).

Western US trip in 1985

In 1985, my mother, my daughter, Ashley, my oldest son, Laird, and I drove from Dallas to Vancouver and back. Sharon and the youngest child, Mark (2 years old at the time), flew to Seattle to meet us. We saw wonderful sights along the way. We spent a little over 30 days in the car. We saw Big Spring in Texas; Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, and Carrizozo lava flow in New Mexico; the Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon in Arizona; Mount Zion National Park in Utah; Lake Walker in Nevada; Lake Tahoe, Mount Lassen Volcano, and Redwood National Forest in California; and Crater Lake in Oregon. I gave two lectures in Seattle, Washington, to the Department of Dermatology at the University of Washington's Medical Center on the endocrinology of acne; in Vancouver I gave two lectures at the University of British Columbia Medical Center: one on the evaluation of patients with androgen excess and how that relates to cystic acne and the other on calcium homeostasis and parathyroid function. We then returned via Seattle, Mount Rainier, the Coeur d'Alene portion of Idaho, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Tetons, Kemmerer, Wyoming, and the Fossil Butte National Monument, where I rekindled my friendship with the curator, Carl J. Ulrich (Figure 44). (I had visited Carl in 1967 as a graduate student at Tulane University when he was unearthing the very large prehistoric gar fish fossil seen in this photo. We were interested in fish at Tulane, and I drove to Wyoming with Dr. Royal Suttkus, an ichthyologist internationally known as a gar fish expert, to see the discovery of this gar fossil out of rock.) From Wyoming we visited the Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area, one of the most beautiful places in North America (Figure 45), as well as the Dinosaur National Monument, the Rocky Mountain National Park, and Pike's Peak, and then we stopped in Matador to visit my Aunt Irene and Uncle Albert Traweck. During this trip, for the first time, I got to speak extensively with my mother about my father as we were driving late in the evening after the children were asleep; I informed her that my father had recently died from a heart attack.

Figure 44.

Carl Ulrich with Ashley and Laird at Fossil Butte National Monument, 1985.

Figure 45.

Sam, Laird, Ashley, and Ruth Marynick at Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area in Southern Wyoming, 1985.

My children still talk about this trip. It was a fascinating exposure for them to the western United States, and my mother had never seen the West either and thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Several times during the trip we camped out. That was quite wonderful at the Grand Canyon and then the Redwood National Forest.

Reproduction mentors

Another wonderful influence occurred in the summer of 1989, when I learned a great deal about human embryology from Dr. Gary Hodgen, whom I had worked with at NIH on fetal and maternal pituitary function in Rhesus monkeys. Gary had moved to the Jones Institute at the University of Eastern Virginia in Norfolk. They had a wonderful in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction program there. Dr. Hodgen was kind enough to let me come and spend significant time. I was given access to study and view the operative and laboratory procedures supporting their assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilization embryo transfer program. Later in the summer, I spent several weeks in Redondo Beach, California, with Dr. David Meldrum in his center for assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer and got some wonderful training on how to handle human gametes and embryos and how to transfer human embryos to the uterus. Dr. Meldrum has the most universal grasp of reproductive medicine of anyone I have ever known and remains a wonderful source of information to this day.

Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi at the University of Hawaii was most gracious to let me visit and study in his laboratory in the early 1990s. This scientist has helped remarkably in understanding all aspects of mammalian egg fertilization and embryo development. It was a joy to get to know and correspond with Dr. Yanagimachi (Figure 46).

Figure 46.

With Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1991.

Invited lecturers for the Dallas Area Reproductive Endocrinology Group

In the late 1990s, I was president of the Dallas Area Reproductive Endocrinology Group. The president has the opportunity to invite guest speakers quarterly to address these physicians. During my year as president, we had some wonderful visiting lecturers. I was the first speaker, and I presented the paper “Embryotoxins and antibodies to products of conception and how such antibodies adversely affect pregnancy.” We also had as guest during that year Dr. James Schreiber, who had been a fellow with me at NIH and is chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Schreiber discussed a paper on infusion of leukocytes and whether that benefited recurrent pregnancy loss in individual couples that were HLA concordant. David Meldrum came to Dallas and presented data regarding the theory of ovulation induction in the in vitro fertilization cycle and how it related to ovum quality. Finally, we had Senator Jane Nelson of the Texas Senate address the group on the politics of health care in Texas. Getting to know Senator Nelson has been an eye opener to me. This person is remarkably dedicated to helping the environment be supportive of medicine and of good medical care for the people of Texas.

The other reproductive endocrinology fellow with Dr. Schrei-ber and me at NIH was Dr. Bob Rebar, who is now executive director of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Dr. Rebar's schedule was such that he could not address the group during the time I was president. Bob and I have been good friends and remain supportive of one another.

The success of the reproduction center at Baylor is a reflection of the help of many thoughtful people, including Dr. Reu-ben Adams, Mr. Boone Powell Jr., Mr. Bill Carter, Mr. Galen Johnson, Mr. Fred Savelsbergh, Mr. Joel Allison, Ms. Betty Spomer, Ms. Jan Robinson, Ms. Sarah Gahm, Mr. Bob Hille, Mr. Glen Clark, and many other helpful individuals (Figure 47).

Figure 47.

Reunion of the Texas Center for Reproductive Health, 2009.

Trip to Cuba in 2001

The Haverford College baseball team received a cultural visa to travel to Cuba for their spring training in 2001. Games had been scheduled against several Cuban university teams. When we arrived in Havana, the Cuban officials did not know what to do with us because all the scheduled games had been canceled for political reasons.

We were allowed to leave the airport and go to our hotel in Havana. We stayed at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in the older part of town. We had a wonderful bus driver who had been a professional baseball player in Cuba, and it occurred to him the second day we were there that we could probably get permission to travel out into rural Cuba and play some local teams. We ended up about 80 miles west of Havana in the town of Santa Clara, and the Haverford team played the Santa Clara city team in a beautiful ballpark at the base of the mountains. It then occurred to the bus driver that there was an athletic complex in Havana where the Cubans develop not only baseball players but also athletes in other sports. At this facility is the Cuban baseball academy with several fields and several levels of expertise. We drove there and scheduled games for the next several days plus games against the Cuban medical school baseball team, then champion of the University League in Cuba. In the course of 14 days, the Haverford University team played 16 baseball games.

One game was at the Reforma Plaza baseball field against a team that was not from the baseball academy but was the Reforma Plaza professional team. This was essentially our college baseball team playing the pros. It was quite fun to see. A game was contested with a team of retired Cuban National Team players at the stadium in the National Athletic Complex.

I went with this group to be the physician, and my wife, Sharon, served as my nurse. Most of the medical problems treated were insect bites and bedbug bites. Everyone came home from the trip in good order.

Many of the Cuban people were fluent in English and very kind and thoughtful to us during the stay.

During our last morning at the Hotel Ambos Mundos, the lady who had cared for our room for 2 weeks asked if we would like to see Ernest Hemingway's room. Of course, we agreed. We were on the third floor, and one floor above us at the front of the hotel was a single room where Ernest Hemingway stayed prior to purchasing a villa in Cuba. In the room there still was a solitary single bed and a Royal typewriter and typing paper. The hotel never touched the room after Hemingway left.

Trip to the Galapagos Islands in 2003

A longtime patient, Judy Davis, had been taking tours through the Galapagos Islands for many years, and one year she told me her last trip would be the upcoming June and I would either need to go in June or forever miss going to Galapagos with her. When my youngest son heard I was going to Galapagos, he insisted on coming along, and then my oldest son insisted on coming along, so Judy and her relatives, Mark, Laird, and I flew from Dallas to Miami to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and then onto the Galapagos Islands, where we lived on a 200-foot-long boat for over a week seeing unbelievable natural history. It was like visiting the world before humans arrived. This trip was spectacular, and it was also informative in that we got to meet and visit with other individuals from all over the world as well as with the Ecuadorians, quite wonderful people (Figure 48).

Figure 48.

Sam and Mark Marynick on Isle Isabela, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, 2003.

BUMC colleagues

Many individuals at BUMC have had a unique influence on me. Although not particularly in the order of importance, Dr. Travis Barry, a retired Baptist minister, was very helpful in getting our reproduction center going and sorting out the ethical aspects of an assisted reproduction program affiliated with a Baptist institution. Also, Mr. Sparky Beckham and Mr. Fred Roach were very helpful. Sparky Beckham is one of the most knowledgeable, thoughtful human beings I have ever known. He has been very kind to me, and the same is true of Mr. Fred Roach and Dr. Travis Barry. In addition to Boone Powell Sr. and Boone Powell Jr., Mr. Bob Hille was always very encouraging and receptive to discussion, as were Mr. Bill Carter, Mr. Galen Johnson, and Mr. Glen Clark. Without the assistance of these BUMC administrators, my life would not have been nearly as productive.

When we got our reproduction center under way, Mr. Galen Johnson, Ms. Betty Spomer, and Ms. Janice Robinson were just wonderful in their support and help.

Also, I met with many different individuals regarding the ethics of reproduction medicine, but an afternoon that I spent with Dr. W. A. Criswell, the senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, was very helpful at the time in allowing us to structure our center so as to be compatible with the goals of BUMC.

During the course of my 32-year career, over 250 doctors and students in training have rotated through my office, including residents in internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, and surgery. I keep a list of individuals who trained in the office, and nothing is more gratifying than to have a physician who has previously worked in the office call to ask about a particular case that is a challenge. Dr. Joe Milburn and I have a continuing dialogue regarding patient care.

Practicing BUMC physicians

Finally, I want to say one thing about the physicians who practice at BUMC. These are an exceptional group of individuals. The two physicians who really encouraged me to come back to BUMC were Dr. Robert Sparkman, chief of surgery at the time, whom I got to know during a surgical rotation at BUMC my senior year in medical school. Dr. Sparkman and I began a correspondence that lasted from the time I was a senior medical student until the time of Dr. Sparkman's death. Some of my favorite letters that I have saved were penned by Dr. Sparkman.

Both Dr. Mike Reece and Dr. Sparkman encouraged me to come to BUMC, and I am thankful to both of them. Numerous other individuals in various specialties have been quite helpful to me, including Drs. Z. H. Lieberman, Miller S. Bell, John Preskitt, Ben Harrison, Joe Kuhn, Jessie Thompson, Greg Pearl, Rick Dignan, David Vanderpool, Matt Westmoreland, Byron Brown, David Arnold, Andy Small, Felix Peppard, Butch Derrick, Tom Newsome, Ray Lawson, Stephen Curtis, Richard Schubert, Wayne Burkhead, Kurt Rathjen, Alan Martin, Gary Tunell, Bill Sutker, Louis Sloan, Reuben Adams, Richard Joseph, James Boyd, Dennis Factor, Julian Carter, Kemp Strother, Bill Cutrer, Steve Harris, Dale Ehmer, Glen Heckman, William Devereaux, James Goodson, Evri Mendel, Bob Gunby, Anil Pinto, Mike Putman, Benny Scott, John Coon, Gordon Long, David Barnett, Bob Parks, Charlie Sessions, Norman Rice, George Race, Weldon Tillery, Karen Pinto, Nesrin Onur, Pete Dysert, Dennis Kay, Barry Uhr, Bill Berry, Eric Hurd, Andy Chubick, Richard Merriman, Dianne Petrone, Alex Limanni, Mark Leshin, Zaven Chakmakjian, Brian Welch, Raphaelle Vallera, Howard Heller, Marvin Stone, Bob Mennel, Barry Cooper, John Pippen, Joyce O'Shaughnessy, John Bagwell, Steve Jones, Pick Scruggs, Landis Griffeth, Stan Grossman, Mark Hamilton, Billy Oliver, Mike Highbaugh, John Emmert, John Binion, Paul Thomas, Morris Horn, Weldon Smith, Paul Madeley, Elwood Jones, Russell Martin, David Winter, Paul Neubach, Mike Emmett, Paul Muncy, Mark Armstrong, Dean Dimmitt, Chris Foster, James Otto, Kyle Lloyd, Jamie Gomez, Tom Dees, Cary King, Ben Merrick, Pepe Zamorano, Bob Allison, Mike McCullough, Joe Rothstein, Ken Killen, Tony Grand, Chuck Gottlich, Mike Donsky, Cara East, James Matson, Rolando Solis, Jack Hyland, Katherine Little, Dan Polter, Greg Hodges, Kent Hamilton, Dan DeMarco, Cathy Yaussy, Charlie Richardson, Mark Millard, Charlie Jarrett, Buddy Hurst, Charlie Shuey, Richard Wood, Bob Baird, Ken Ausloos, Larry Weprin, Mark Hardin, Les Porter, Mary Carlile, Mark Fulmer, Herb Steinbach, Pete Hildenbrand, Kutsi Onur, Claude Prestidge, Gary Gross, Alan Menter, James Herndon Jr., Troy Scott, Bill Hoffman, Steve Frost, John Ware, Mike Goldstein, Bob Schoenvogel, Myron Fine, and Ben Schnitzer. I'm sure I've left out many names, but I have been very fortunate to have so many wonderful individuals cross my path.