Charles
G. Winter
Little Rock, Arkansas
Editor’s note:
The best write-ups are
those done by the classmate. This
is one of them. I decided not to shorten it.
“The fall after we graduated, I enrolled at
Juniata College, majoring in chemistry.
I received a good education there, but was an
indifferent student since I was learning a lot of
non-academic things!
During this time, I met my future wife, Betty, who
grew up in Maryland and graduated from Manchester High
School. We
married shortly after I graduated.
Since 1958 was a recession year, I volunteered for
the draft, entering alternative service as a research
technician at a lab at the University of Michigan. This lab was funded by the U.S. Army to
study human stress.
After completing my 2-year obligation, I entered
graduate school at Michigan in Biological Chemistry.
During this time, Betty and I had two sons (David
and Douglas), so we left Michigan with both a family and a
Ph.D. in 1964.
During a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in
Physiological Chemistry at Johns Hopkins Medical School,
we had a 3rd son, John.
As I completed my fellowship at Hopkins, my mentor
became Chair of the Biochemistry Department at the
University of Arkansas College of Medicine, and offered me
a junior faculty position there.
Little Rock is a medium sized city, a good place to
rear a family, so we moved here in 1966 (37 years later,
we are still here).
My job was to teach medical and graduate students
and do research in my area of expertise, the movement of
molecules across cell membranes.
The position also enabled me to travel around the
world periodically and to establish friendships and
collaborations with other scientists in my field.
In
1978, I also spent a stimulating 7-month sabbatical at
Harvard University. I was appointed acting chairman of the
Biochemistry Department in 1989, and my career shifted to
an administrative path.
Shortly thereafter, I was asked to chair the
building committee to design and construct a 155,000 sq ft
research building.
This led ultimately to another assignment in 2002
to build a 2nd 141,000 sq ft research building,
which we will complete in January.
In 1994, I was appointed Associate Dean for
Research in the College of Medicine, a position I still
hold. I plan
to retire in June, 2004; even though my career has been
gratifying in many ways, I’m really looking forward to
retirement. Betty has been retired from bookkeeping
for a property management firm for several years.
We will enjoy spending more time with our 3
grandchildren.
Our oldest (unmarried) son, David, works for
Fidelity Corporation in Little Rock doing computing for
banking firms around the world.
Our 2nd son, Douglas, is married, and a
partner in a Little Rock Veterinary Clinic. He and Angela have 2 children, Melissa,
11 and Benjamin, 8.
John is engaged to marry (another Angela) and has a
daughter, Shannon, 7, by an earlier marriage.
He does computer networking for a credit card
clearing bank in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.”
(continued)
Page 2, Chuck Winter
“Our major hobby is
genealogy research. Betty is related to nearly everyone in
York
County (she descends
from Michael Danner, a prominent early settler in the
Heidelberg Township, who had innumerable descendants).
Many of her cousins can be found in Manheim and
West Manheim Townships even today!
My mother was a Crouse, an especially numerous
family in the Littlestown area.
I have many Zepps, Krumreins, Witmyers, Witmans,
Mays, etc. in her line.
My father’s line is more challenging: he emigrated
from Scotland in 1923, settling eventually in Hanover.
The joy of this is that we must go to Scotland
periodically to research his antecedents.
My nearest living relatives in his line are in
Canada, where my father’s sister immigrated at about the
same time.
Betty and I like to travel, especially to Europe.
Besides Scotland, our overseas travel has included
England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark,
Sweden and Norway.
We are planning another trip to Switzerland,
Germany, Holland and Belgium next spring and part of the
time spent there will be genealogically related.
My other hobby is golf, but I’m not very good at
it. Betty has
too many hobbies to enumerate, and she’s better at them
than I am at golf.
Another major hobby is feeding the cat on demand.
We spend a lot of time at soccer and basketball
games, cheering on grandchildren.
In fact, believe it or not, I spent 10 years as a
Babe Ruth League baseball coach when my kids were growing
up.
With regard to volunteer work, most of those
efforts focus on our church, Grace Presbyterian in Little
Rock. We have
both served on the Session (church board) numerous times
and have taught Sunday School and sung in the choir for
many years.
You asked about the education I received at EHS.
It was clearly very good, and prepared me for the
academic aspects of life.
I don’t deem it deficient, except for the lack of a
calculus class before starting college: I had to compete
with students from York High who had high school calculus. I wouldn’t say that it was better or
worse than today’s public high schools: there are bright
students today who are Merit Scholars and clearly getting
a very good education in Little Rock.
Finally, you asked us to wax philosophical,
something you should never ask old goats to do!
But since you have:
We graduated from high school during a time of
growing optimism in American life.
The economy was generally good and job
opportunities were expanding.
We were not confused by the enormous number of
career choices facing today’s graduates.
If one were willing to make the effort, the growing
population practically guaranteed success in some field of
endeavor.
Society was generally conservative (our parents survived
the depression and were in some cases just leaving
subsistence agriculture), and distractions like drugs and
exotic lifestyles were not generally apparent.
We therefore were focused and not particularly
rebellious.
It was an ideal time to move into young adulthood.
I think today it’s more challenging.
Materially, life is easier today in many ways.
But the modern lifestyle requires more income to
sustain, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots
is clearly growing.
America needs a large middle class to function
effectively as a representative democracy.
I worry that our children and grandchildren will
live in a much more economically and socially stratified
society, much like that which our ancestors left behind in
Europe. Each
generation must solve its own problems, and I doubt that
you or I can do much about this one except that we still
elect our leaders.
The one advantage we have is that our generation
still gets out and votes!”