Karen Lindsay and Lexi
93836pb
93836pb
Karen Lindsay Lexi Mothers day 2009 Courtesy Lindsay Leveen
San Francisco, CA
web site
current work Project Director for Genetech ? TPA
hobbies
Biography
I came back to San Fran for Thanksgiving 1985 and met my wife Karen at the Fog City Diner the night before Thanksgiving. It was her birthday November 27, 1985. I was the date of one her friend?s named Nancy. Nancy and I had been dating but I could not get serious and still had a lingering blond and a few other girls I went out with, so Nancy decided I was not the marrying type and told me to get lost. I asked Nancy for Karen?s phone number which she reluctantly gave to me. I called Karen a day or so later and said I was her birthday gift from Nancy. Karen and I started dating and by May 3 1986 we were married. We eloped to Reno and got married in the Reno courthouse. Karen is third generation born in San Fran and her maiden name is Cohn. Within two weeks Karen moved to Paris with me.
I worked on a billion dollar acquisition of a competitor but the work was really boring as hell. As soon as Karen fell pregnant I quit the job and we headed back for San Fran and started a company called It?s a Gas in my garage. Alexis our only child was born in 1987. I still have that company that has earned a royalty on a helium balloon kit for parties. I got sick of being on my own in a small company and yearned for science once more as business was not my true passion. So let?s go back to the beginning of life after KDHS.
Do you guys remember Mr Urinovski (Pissy) our science teacher. He had studied Chemical Engineering at MIT and told me in matric that chemical engineering would be good for me. Poor Pissy died a few years after that in a car crash. I opted to go to the commandos rather than waste a full year in the army so in 1970 I started at wits in Chem E. Got the BS Eng Chem degree in 1973 one of only four to graduate in the four years. I was still 20 when I graduated and then enrolled for a MBA at wits bus school. We were the second class to go through the program that was new to wits. Got the MBA in 1975 and immediately immigrated to the US November 1975. My Dad was a US citizen so I had no hassles immigrating. I was awarded a fellowship at Iowa State to study thermodynamics in a grad program in Chem E. Got my MSChE in 1977 and started to work in Pennsylvania in the area of cryogenics. I stayed in PA till 1982 when I came to San Fran and started working at Liquid Air. I was married to Meryl (still a good friend of Karen and mine) in 1980 and we came to SF together. Meryl and I were not suited to be married but were suited to be great friends so we split up in 1983. Meryl has PhD (Harvard) and a MBA from Wharton but is now an artist doing Jewish art here in the Bay Area.
You heard the middle so now the last twenty years. After starting It?s A Gas, I convinced Intel that I could design and manage the projects of building their state of the art semiconductor fabrication facilities. I was given this chance in 1989 and until 1995 I was the lead project manager for what became the leading edge semiconductor factories in the world. I became an expert witness in this arena and in 1977 Llyods of London and the now defunct AIG asked me to be their lead expert witness in a half billion dollar claim for a semiconductor factory fire in Taiwan. I spent a lot of time from 1996 till 2004 in Asia (over thirty trips).
Unfortunately Karen has not been blessed with good health and she has a hard time traveling. She came with me a few times but it made no more sense to travel to Asia and in 2004 I gave up on high tech as most manufacturing is now in Asia. I got very interested in Sustainable Development in 2002 and wrote a book that is now translated into Japanese and used as a University text in Japan. I never published the book in English. In 2005 I started my worklife in biotech at Genentech now Roche.
I love Karen dearly and I spend all my free time with her as she now is suffering from many years on steroids, pain and anti inflammatory meds. She has chronic inflammatory bowel disease and is constantly in pain and has had numerous surgeries. I learned how to deal with illness by being by her side, so when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer last fall, I handled the surgery and recovery very well by having witnessed Karen and her numerous surgeries and illnesses. Interestingly I took acupuncture the day before surgery and am convinced this put me in the right frame of mind for the surgery and recovery.
Our daughter Alexis is also a Chip of the Old Blocks. She eloped and married Chris three years ago when they were both 18. They are happy and in college together. She will graduate in philosophy and he in computer science next May and will return to the bay area. Karen and I are blessed with a great kid and our son in law is a welcome addition to our very small family. I kid you not Alexis is one smart person and she is wise for her years. Having a chronically ill mother and a father who travelled as much as I did for work molded her independence. There were times we worried she was going astray but she has her life together . Thank God she is in good health and did not inherit our weird askanazi illnesses. It was a miracle that Karen could bear a child so we stopped at one and she got our full attention, love and meshugas.
I wish you all could meet Karen and learn from her what it is like to be ill from the age 13 and on. She can teach you how great life is even if your body forsakes you. She is beautiful and has dark black hair. She has more bionic parts that the million dollar man yet she welcomes me home each night with a smile and great meal. Steroids may have swollen her body but they have brought her to her mid fifties. My very best friend in the world besides Karen is Sam James. What a mensch!! We are blessed that he and Bathea live nearby. Sam gives Karen advice on her meds, her pains, her prosthetic knee. I was blessed to have met Sam in Grade 2 and he has been my friend ever since.
Our screwed up medical system has meant we have spent our life savings on hospitals, drugs, doctors, and insurance. But the money we have spent on Karen?s care and now my care in the last year is worth spending all over again just for the joy of being with each other, being alive, and now FBing with you all.
One last point. The words of Hillel Im ein ani li ???. Are the introductory words to the last chapter in my sustainability book in Japanese. Yes a PhD thermodynamicist in Japan translated Hillel and now some university students in Japan have heard of Hillel and his famous words. Regarding being green and it?s place in tikkun olam remember im ein achshav ein matai. One last last point. Terry you were the tortoise and I was the hare for the first few years after KDHS but now you are all caught up. I am so proud of you. Tell that lovely wife of yours who was my high school dance date that she is blessed.
I am of the Cohen tribe so I bless you all. Kein yehi ratchon
93837p Lindsay daughter Lexi Mothers day 2009 Courtesy Lindsay Leveen
93839p Lexi and husband Topher Courtesy Lindsay Leveen
For me the thread and the renewed frienship is beyond therapeutic it is fundamental. I left RSA when I was 22 and have never really been at home anywhere else. Of course I made a life for myself, Karen and Lexi and love my family like nothing else in the world. I even taught the words and expressions of our boere taal and s african english and Karen and Lexi often use them as we chat. Sam James and I remained so close and that the thread between him and I is wide and strong.Yet I felt a void in my life. The void of having left my parents and brother in the old country. The void of being a transplant and not a native. The void of intimate familiarity with the geography, people, and customs. I visited as often as I could but it is not the same. America has been good to me but S Africa is my home. It is where got my bearings and got my moral compass and my compass to navigate the trials and tribulations of life. I have tried to fill the void with science, blogging, book writing, lecturing, being an expert witness, and travel to just about everywhere except OZ and NZ. I have been to every state in the US except Alaska. I have been to Sarawak and Singapore. I have lived in Paris. But I am from Joburg and Joburg is from me.I so wish I could come to the reunion but it is just not practical and perhaps would hurt more than help. I live the reunion each moment through this thread. Perhaps I do not want a physical renunion as a date on the calendar as I then know it will come and it will go, just like each of the many visits I made to see my folks. It was never the same even though we hugged and kissed and told each other we enjoyed the visits. Visiting was heart wrenching and leaving was always painful. I would cry in the departure lounge of Jan Smuts. I was mad and am still mad that I could not stay where I was born and I was never at peace being a foreigner. My grandmother would talk of Russia, that horrible cold and persecuting place, as home. I could not understand why she said this as a kid. I now know her reasoning.
This thread is a perpetual and lasting reunion. It is in all dimensions of space and time. It is not about a place, a date, the food, the music, the weather. It is not a barmitvah or a coming of age. It is not a simcha. It is the fundamental essence of our lives and being. It is the connection to a time and place where and when we belonged. We belonged to the time, we belonged to the place, we belonged to each other. It is like the two parallel lines that meet at infinity. It is like warping space and time and creating a force of attraction. Just like objects with mass create gravity we are pulled by this fundamental attraction.
I listened to perhaps five hundred sermons that Rabbi Isaacs gave in Cyrildene shul. I wish he could have and he would have made this sermon. It is my sermon on the mount so to speak. It is my way of saying to you all that we are all joined by ionic and covalent bonds just like atoms in a molecule. The force of attraction is fundamental and even though time has robbed us of parents and other loved ones, we are still standing in this thread shoulder to shoulder like we stood in assembly. We may still even chuckle when one of us farts