In a few days I’ll sit under the big white tent and watch a few hundred Reed seniors walk across the platform and accept their diplomas. It will be a proud, happy moment for the graduate, their family, and all of us at Reed. Then, hours later they will drive away from campus, heading off into a new life. Maybe a job, more school, or just testing the waters for what to do next.
All of this takes me back to my own college graduation in 1976. It was a sunny day in Pasadena and even as I accepted my diploma I was already thinking ahead to Madison, Wisconsin, my future destination. I wasn’t really interested in a ‘summer vacation’ (I had come down with a case of senioritis in the final quarter of my senior year so that had felt like vacation enough) and I was eager to get into a real research lab and start on my life’s work: being a professional organic chemist.
A few weeks later when I arrived in Madison I began interviewing possible research advisers for summer projects. I wasn’t thinking about dissertations just yet and I gravitated to a sharp-thinking synthetic chemist, Prof. Ed Vedejs, who was investigating the synthesis of (Lord, I hope I get this right) macrolide rings via a ring expansion that relied on [2,3]-sigmatropic rearrangements of allyl sulfonium ions. I was given the job of reducing naphthalene via a Birch reduction in liquid ammonia to a bicyclic alkene, a reaction that I could get to work, but never cleanly. I forget why we wanted the alkene.
As I struggled with sodium metal, liquid ammonia, and other foreign materials, my three lab mates, Cyd, Pat, and Greg (all second- and third-year grad students in the Vedejs group) struggled with their own projects and, yet, somehow helped to prop up my sagging spirits with the daily idle chit-chat of the lab.
Prof. Cynthia McClure, Chemistry, Montana State U., 1953-2014
Cyd (Cynthia) McClure was the only woman in the lab, and if I recall correctly, the only woman in the entire Vedejs group. She was a force of nature. Tall, and crowned with hair that grew in great waves and cascaded down to her shoulders (roll on, Columbia, roll on!), and a Texan to boot. Her hair flew outwards as she spun around the lab doing this and that. But even larger than the hair was Cyd’s expansive personality. When she had something to say, it came out fast and in torrents. In the male bastion of organic synthesis, it was a special pleasure to share lab space with a woman who was so UN-repressed in her dealings with colleagues and so wildly enthusiastic about her work.
Cyd took this enthusiasm with her wherever she went. She left Wisconsin for a spell, but returned to finish her Ph.D. in 1985. From there it was off to Cambridge, UK as a postdoc from 1985-7. Eventually she rolled up to the front door of Montana State University where she became a professor of chemistry and won several grants and awards: American Cyanamid Academic Awardee, 1990; Procter and Gamble University Exploratory Research Program Awardee, 1991-94; National Science Foundation Career Advancement Award Recipient, 1994-96; Cox Family Award for Creative Scholarship and Teaching, Montana State University, 1999. I’m not sure, but I think she even paid us a short visit at Reed in the early 90’s.
I didn’t keep up with Cyd, but like so many folks I always imagined that old friends like Cyd would always be somewhere out there, ready for a chat, a beer, or a laugh. Today I learned, once again, how foolish such imaginings can be. Life marches steadily on.
This morning I received an email informing me of Cyd’s death earlier in the week in a Montana hospice. She had been battling frontal lobe dementia for years and the disease had finally claimed its due.
Cyd, Thanks for everything. Rest. Love, -Alan
