My father taught high school science. It is a story I have told in his own history here. His frustration at not having continued teaching led him to turn me into a baby scientist practically from the time I was born, with consequences I have talked about in other posts! Given his pedagogical bent, he would not let me spend summers just being a kid. Between my junior and senior year I received a grant from the National Science Foundation to spend the summer at the Rochester Institute of Technology studying organic chemistry. There are quite a few stories to tell from that summer. Between 10th and 11th grade he made me take an American history course at Coral Gables Senior High where I was attending. Unfortunately for me, the teacher was Jeffrey Rosinek, who was a member of our synagogue. Why unfortunate? Jeff knew my Dad. And I was a horrible child.

In those days the first letter in your grade was your academic performance. Never a problem for me. That summer, already leaning towards environmental issues, I did a paper on Gifford Pinchot, who created the United Sates Forest Service under Theodore Roosevelt. I got an A.

Jeff must have talked with my dad about his beliefs. Dad aways said:

“I do not care if you don’t get A’s, so long as you tried hard and did your best. And behaved!”

The middle number was effort. 1 obviously meaning you made a good effort, regardless of the result. Academics was effortless to me. I did not need to try. But a 3? Jeff knew what he was doing.

The F I must admit I actually deserved. I said I was a horrible child. You can imagine the result when that summer’s report card came home. By then I was too big for corporal punishment, which my Dad had never refrained from when we were little:

“Just wait till your Father gets home!”

Yeah, thanks, Mom.

Five years later Jeff ran for the Miami City Commission against David Kennedy, the incumbent. He lost. By then environmentalism was in vogue. He proposed to David that they appoint the Environmental Research Advisory Council for the City of Miami. David agreed. An article in Phil’s Press from the Miami Herald tells its story. It was advisory in name only because the City Commission did not even give us stationery, let alone any other resources.

By then I was teaching the Environment course at Miami Dade College, had two years in environmental research in the Everglades AND at 21 the Interior Department published a survey I had written on all that was known about pesticides at the time (an annotated bibliography).

He had an architect and a landscape architect (urban planning), an environmental law professor, and a politician, him. He needed an ecologist. I qualified with all the public notice I was getting. He called me and asked if I would join the council.

“Jeff, I have three words for you: A, Three, F!”

I did not let him struggle for long on how to respond to THAT, before I said: 

“Of course I would be honored to do it. Thank you.”

We ended up good friends. It was ALMOST worth my Father’s wrath five years before for that moment!