Jess Brewer's Life Story
- Cranbrook Class of 1963 --> Cranbrook Class of 1963 - Life Stories --> here
Let's see how condensed I can make it.
Born 6 Jan 1946 in Orlando, FL. Grew up in the water and barefoot in the orange groves hunting rabbits with a machete and my pit bull Tuffy. Got to know my dark side well. Came to Cranbrook in 1959 as a redneck, left as a poet and hurdler in 1963.
Took Physics at Trinity College (Hartford, CT) as a lark, switched majors to English, switched back, got a BS in Physics after all.
After graduating in 1967 I spent the summer doing research on "air pollution" (turned out it was really on chemical weapons; fortunately the conclusion was, "Bad idea!") and fighting a bum rap. At one point there was a warrant for my arrest for stealing a shipment of guns from the federal government. (No, but I sure lost a lot of respect for the law that summer!) For details, see Gliders, Glasses and Guns.
Went to Berkeley for a PhD to get credibility as a science fiction writer. Found out it was easier to get published in Phys. Rev. Lett. Got seduced by the thrill of being the first human to figure something out. (Missed the obvious caveat, "Who cares?") Picked up an MA in Physics in 1969 when it looked like I'd be drafted, but my FL draft board gave me an occupational deferment on the logic that my research was vital to national security. (No, but I wasn't arguing.)
Got married on 15 Aug 1969 to Suzanne Sharp, my college sweetheart. She went to Stanford, I to Berkeley, so we lived in San Francisco at first - a block and a half from the corner of Haight & Ashbury. In 1970 we wised up and moved to East Palo Alto (maybe not so wise, everything we owned was stolen there) and finally to Berkeley after Suzy finished her RN degree at Stanford.
Finished PhD in High Energy Physics (nominally; I was already doing chemistry and solid state experiments with muons, see my Website) and worked 6 months for the Univ. of Arizona (but never left Berkeley). Then I had to decide where to do my "serious" postdoc: three labs were just finishing construction of "meson factories" - LAMPF at Los Alamos, SIN near Zurich and TRIUMF in Vancouver.
I chose TRIUMF and have been in Vancouver ever since; now more than half my life, though it doesn't seem that way. I finally took out Canadian citizenship last year on that occasion.
Split up with Suzy in 1974 (no kids) and lived a fairly carefree bachelor life until 1980 when I married Pat Sparkes and our son Jed was born. Pat is the finest person I have ever known, with the possible exception of Ben Snyder. I feel like I robbed Fort Knox 23 years ago and no one has noticed yet.
Got a faculty position at Univ. of British Columbia in 1977, tenure a few years later and was promoted to full Professor in the early 1980's (I forget which year). Since then I have been working hard to convince my colleagues that I have reached my level of incompetence and they would be better off overlooking me as a candidate for administrative jobs. So far, so good!
Spent first sabbatical half (1982) in Switzerland at SIN (now PSI) and half (1983) in Japan at KEK; our daughter Rebecca was born in Tokyo. Interesting experience!
My mother got lung cancer in 1987 and took me on a world cruise (on the QE2) in 1988; we only made it to Mauritius and she had to fly home, a memorable ordeal; then she took aggressive chemotherapy and recovered for another good year, but died in 1989.
In 1987 I got in on the ground floor of research in high temperature superconductivity (HTSC) and in 1988 I joined the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR), an undeserved privilege that changed my life by virtue of hanging out with really, really smart people. (Ring a bell?) We are still working on HTSC today, and probably will be for decades to come. Condensed matter physics is as weird and exciting as "string theory", take my word for it. (Or if you'd rather not, let me know and I will explain!)
I rediscovered the hurdles in 1993 and made terrific progress for the first few years of my Masters career, culminating in winning the North American/Central American/Caribbean Regional WAVA Championships in 1996 (60.72 in the 400mH, which for M50 converts to 51.393 for a 25-year-old, so it was my best time ever!). That was a great year for me in many respects, but an Achilles heel kept me out of competition in 1997.
In 1997-98 I spent my 3rd sabbatical at Columbia Univ. in Manhattan and ran with the Central Park Track Club. I was Eastern champ indoors in the 60mH and the 400, but the high point was running lead leg on the winning 4x100m relay at the Penn Relays - 40,000 screaming fans in the stands! We ran better in the 4x400, breaking the old US M50-54 record, but we were 2m behind the winners and 1m behind the second place team. But it's better to lose to greatness than to win over mediocrity, as we all know.
In 1999 a DVT (blood clot in a leg) kept me from the World Masters Championships and in 2000 I had a pulmonary embolism which has me on blood thinners for life; but I rallied to take a silver medal in the Kamloops WAVA 200m just 6 weeks after the PE. Since then it's been on and off but never as good as in 1996.
In Feb 2003 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which brings me to today, 20 June 2003, in the midst of a 6-month stint of heavy chemotherapy (hard) and hormone therapy (relatively easy to take) prior to surgery sometime in October (probably). So this is a non-competitive year, but I'm staying as fit as I can; turns out hard workouts are the only time I feel normal!
Next year I'll be back kicking the sticks (and kicking butt) so watch out!
Well, yes and no. Chemo was rough; they overdosed me, as I predicted they would, since the dosage is based on an erroneous formula - tell me if you want to know more about that - and after my taste buds went haywire (the worst part - everything tasted like brine) and my fingernails fell off, my liver started to shut down so they had to stop the chemo early. It probably also contributed to my tearing the meniscus in my left knee (or was it the right?), which put me out of commission for a year, but it apparently worked on the cancer. Had a radical prostatectomy on 9 Oct 2003, recovered (from the "recoverable" effects of surgery) by Spring 2004, had my knee fixed in Aug 2004, lost the 20 pounds I had put on, got halfway fit by Summer 2005, came in 2nd in the M55-59 400m hurdles in the World Masters Games in Edmonton that summer, trained up for the M60-64 100m high hurdles and broke the Canadian record in April 2006. Then things went South. My record lasted only 2 months before I got creamed by a better hurdler in June 2006, so it never got on the books. Since then I've been slower every time I ran, really demoralizing. I'd like to blame it on the chemo, but probably I've just run out of steam temporarily. Working too hard.
So on July 1, 2008, I go half time - which means I take half salary in exchange for disappearing off the radar every year from 1 Jan to 1 May. No responsibilities whatsoever - pure R&R time. I'll be somewhere warm and cheap, fishing and writing that great SF novel. And, of course, getting back in shape for a run at the M65 300m hurdle record.
In 2005 Pat and I celebrated our 25th anniversary by getting married again - this time in a cute little church with lots of friends & family and a proper reception afterward at our house - see Retying the Knot. That was fun. We plan to do it again for our 50th.
Our kids are adults now and following their own original life stories; I worry, like any parent, but basically they are to be proud of.
OK you guys, I have set a good example (I hope). Your turns!
