Delores

Brief Bio:

Delores is a scientist and a member of the Baptist Christian church. She values family and community and is devoted to worship and serving the Lord. Her memories span her birth in Germany, transitioning to her parents’ home in South Carolina during the years of school busing and segregation, and her growing confidence and work in science and research.

***

My Dad was a military man at the US Base in Nuremberg, Germany, and that’s where I was born. From Germany, we went to California where my two younger sisters were born at either the Oakland or San Francisco Army Base hospitals. With my older sister, there were four of us girls growing up together. I remember being in kindergarten in California and doing a bit of 1^st grade before my Dad was posted back to Germany.

I did most of my elementary school at the Bases in both Bad Hersfeld and Hanover. I remember going on trips by the Rhine River, seeing magnificent castles and big red barns, walking to school, wearing coats with the season change to winter and playing in lots of snow. We also went to Berlin and saw the barbed wire between east and west Germany. We would look at the East German guards and my sister and I would point our fingers and say, “Look at him! Oh, oh, he moved.”

With Base life, we would go to movies and stand at attention when the national anthem was played. There was one time when I was 5, I remember my father stopping the car as we were driving into the Base, getting out and standing at attention because Taps was being played.  Ta-ta-taaa, Ta-ta-taaaaa.

All these memories were a fascinating part of my early experiences and education. Although we were living within an American environment, we also would go on field trips and have dinner with a couple of other families outside the Base. Our school had football teams. I didn’t play but we would get into debates with the local kids saying they weren’t playing real football and that we played football. Of course, it was American football and they were playing what they called fuzzball which we knew as soccer. We would get a chance to interact with local kids when we went out or when Mum went out to shop for meat and things. I can’t remember where exactly these conversations with the local kids took place as our outings were limited. Maybe there were also German kids around the base. I didn’t learn the language very well compared to my sisters because we were only taught simple phrases at school. I think of those times now and feel we weren’t being politically correct and had a limited and skewed view of culture. I wish I had learned more from those experiences.  

Mum was “stay at home” as she couldn’t get a job in Germany while Dad was at the Base. But she was able to work when we came back to the US. It was 1969 or 1970 when we came back and we finished school in South Carolina near the home city for my Mum and Dad. Both my grandparents were there too. My older sister and I found it a difficult experience adjusting back from life in Germany. I remember more about what she was doing as I felt like a weird kid, quiet and introverted. My younger two sisters were still young and seemed to transition back more easily.

Yes, I do remember feeling the difference coming back to the US.

Some other experiences in Germany stand out in my memories. In the military, everything is organized by rank; officers lived in housing which was better and in a different area within the Base and since our Dad was enlisted, we lived in the working-class area. There was also an officers’ club while enlisted men had their own club; the club was where you went to eat, and they also had a bar. So, officers’ kids lived in a different part of the Base, but we all went to school together. I remember this incident where we were seated around a long desk with chairs pulled up on both sides, maybe it was our Arts and Crafts class. That was when I had my first experience with racism, at that elementary school at that US base. We were all sitting together at this desk and this new kid in class told me that I was really, really, black. And the other kids looked at him and said, “How can you call her black when you are black?” I remember that he had lighter skin and his hair texture was a little different, but he was clearly Black. I remember thinking how it was like people in India with different castes and different skin colors, and how he had the strangest look on his face to hear “How could you call her black when you are black?”  He must not have been aware of that himself.

I also remember another young girl with blond hair who lived in the building next to us at the Base. Manuela would play with us and with her sister who was a little black girl and we would say “No, no, she is not your sister.” Their German Mum had married an American Black soldier, but we were not familiar with inter-racial children and we didn’t connect that that was really her sister.

Another time, I might have been 8 or something when this happened. This girl had a hose and was pouring water on my foot, and she said “Look, the color of your foot looks better with the water.” Maybe it did make my skin look lighter. I became more conscious about kids and people around having lighter skin and that they thought it was more desirable. I don’t remember it bothering me and it’s only now on thinking back that I remember these incidents. Also, during elementary school, my sister and I traded comic books. I was really into cartoons and I don’t know that I really focused very much on the color issue.

I was always a good student but sometimes I’d get written up for daydreaming. I’d sometimes get a C and that would feel horrible, to get a C in English or writing or something. School was a place I didn’t mind going to, I liked school. I was introverted and fine with people I knew. It was fine if I talked to some one, but I didn’t mind if I didn’t talk to anyone.  

Coming back to the States, my older sister and I had been on the base in Germany, so we weren’t very Southern.  We first went to Orangeburg and then moved to our new home in Columbia, South Carolina, which belonged to my mother. It was our family home for 46 years.   We lost that house in 2015. That was sad.

It was interesting coming back to the US, to South Carolina. My memories there are of a volatile period. I was continuing elementary school and I wasn’t as conscious as I am now, about issues with segregation. School was integrated on the Army base but here, there was a lot of conflict, tension, and a lot of fighting. I remember being bused to school every day. I was about 8 years old when we came back and the Middlefield school was a predominantly white school while Atlas Field school was closer to our home and predominantly Black which is where I made some of my lifelong friends; Joyce and Sharon are still friends from 5^th grade.

One of the things that was particular to Black schools and most of the Nation back then was that we had to say the Pledge of Allegiance while facing the Flag of the United States. These days, no one says it in part because of that line, “One nation under God.” There were lawsuits in the ‘60s because of the Vietnam War protests and the reference to God. Also, at school assembly, we would sing a song and do devotion which is saying something from the Bible. The assumption was that most people in the country were Christian and everybody else was an oddball or would conform. Also, we would always have to say “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer” from Psalms 19:14 in the Old testament.

We would memorize everything. I still remember the songs, a lot of the Old Testament, and some of the bible verses during that devotion period.  

For most of my early life, I was going to church. On the Base, it was with soldiers at a Christian church and the pastor was normally a white guy and the sermon was normally him talking. It was casual. Back in the US, our church was steeped in the Baptist tradition, particularly the black Baptist tradition. The pastor adhered to a cultural presentation, where there was the scripture being read, he would give examples, then there’d be a part when he was exalting, what they called the Whoop and what people call “whooping.” When you see popular movies with Black people, you would see those preachers being impersonated and that was very popular back then.

All these years later, I still go to Baptist church but while I have my membership there, I don’t restrict myself. I go to lots of different churches and sometimes with friends who may go to Episcopalian or Methodist Church or with my father who goes to African Methodist church.

I’ve probably been a bad member at my Baptist church recently. When I get stressed, I sometimes like to go to the other churches where I like their bible study, or the Episcopalian healing service or something like that. I had a friend who was fighting cancer and I went to the healing services with her, standing in solidarity in prayer with her. Sadly, she passed away.

I was 11 and in elementary school in Columbia when I got baptized at our Baptist church. When you get baptized, that’s when you formally join the church in the Christine faith, it’s the immersion in water and professing Christ as your Savior. At that time, culturally or ritualistically, I couldn’t tell you that I had some kind of an epiphany; it was just the expected thing to do as part of growing up in our family.

Later, I think that it became more personal and real to me. I was 36 when I joined my first church outside of my childhood church that I had attended with my mother. Because I made a choice to worship and serve the Lord, church wasn’t a chore it felt like a natural thing to do. 

It’s unclear when I actually gravitated towards science. Math and science were always intriguing subjects and when math got tough and complicated, I told myself to just focus on the formulae and get through it. In Junior High School, I didn’t join science clubs or anything like that. But I had a notion that I was supposed to go to medical school and become a doctor. That might have been the expectation of my mother.

When my parents got divorced, it wasn’t a good one, it was 1975. My mum didn’t have alimony but had child support, and getting a scholarship was important. When everyone turned 18, that all went down, so money was really tight.

I don’t remember a formal commitment to science until I went to college with a scholarship from the Biology department. I had started doing research as part time work in a lab and really liked it. I was at South Carolina State College, now named South Carolina State University, in Orangeburg about 45 minutes away from Columbia. As far as faith, the traditions that you have at home with your parents, they get tested when you’re in college and away from home. Finding a church to go to was something I had to do. When I could I went with my Dad since he lived and worked in Orangeburg, and other times, I went to one that was within walking distance of my college.

My freshman year, I asked the Department head if I could get a job and he said “No, you’re a Freshman, not in your first year.”  Now, it was a small campus and I would walk around in the afternoon and walk through the buildings. And one day, I saw people signing up for work, and particularly, this guy who was a Freshman.  The Dupont company had given grants to the school and students who were exemplary and maintained a 3.0 GPA were given jobs as Dupont Scholars. I went back and said to the Chair, “I thought you couldn’t have a job if you were a Freshman?” and so he had to quickly back up and give me a job because I had caught them allowing it for someone else. 

At the Lab, I washed the glassware, made culture media and poured them into dishes on which they grew the organisms. The lab was studying a fungus and this bacteria, Agrobacterium tumifaciens, which transforms fungus. They would put the fungal spores on the media plates and observe them growing and study them using scanning electron microscopy.  I’m not sure what exactly they were looking for, perhaps morphology or whatever. But at the time, there was an actual fungal disease attacking the crops in South Carolina and maybe they were looking for a treatment.  SC State is an HBCU, a Historically Black College and University; it used to be like an A&T, an agro-technology school as they were teaching black people to be farmers. You still have HBCUs like North Carolina A&T in North Carolina focusing on those areas. SCS didn’t achieve A&T status but it did have a division dealing with agriculture and the grants were connected to farms in the state.

I didn’t do any of the microscopy work other than washing the dishes, plating the media, scattering dirt on the media plates and growing the fungus. I remember that I had to make a little grid on the plates to grow the fungus. There were soil samples and maybe they were looking at the different species to determine from the spores the different types of fungus in the farms and using microscopy to score the actual types of fungus. While I didn’t do any of the heavy-duty science, I had to cut pieces of paper to make weight boats with the weighing machine to make the media. I remember reading things on the pieces of paper about the fungus and how it was affecting the crops, the tomatoes and the soil. I had another part-time job that summer working with the county of Orangeburg and in my sophomore year, I continued doing the fungus lab work.

During that time, I heard about an opportunity through the Career Center for summer internships and co-op study to take a semester off to work at a company. I had some friends, but I think I was more of a follower and not a go-getter. One of the Dupont scholars, there were about 8 of us back then, said she had signed up for one of these summer Co-op jobs. So, I followed her and applied for an internship at Procter Gamble. I was selected for an interview and that was a big turning point for me. I was just following her but they picked me for an interview.

I called my Mum, feeling excited and all freaked out, and said, “I have this interview tomorrow with this company, what do I do, what do I say?”  My mum had a business degree from Allen University and worked in a business after coming back to the US from Germany. She knew me well even though she didn’t know about science. And I remember she said, “You sell yourself. You talk about what you’ve done in your life.” She really boosted my confidence before that interview.   

I went for the interview and I said, “This is what the lab is studying, I pour the media and I scatter the fungus spores and soil on the plates. I don’t do any of the analysis or the microscopy but this is what they are studying to figure out the problem with the crops here.” I found that I was able to talk about the science even though I was just a sophomore and the youngest person interviewing among those juniors and seniors. Well, I got the job. I worked at Proctor Gamble that summer and for the following two summers when I was a Junior and Senior and also after I graduated. It was a good experience! I did very well and got invited back. This was a big thing that boosted my confidence.

Going there in the summers, I met people who liked me. I still know someone who worked there and happens to be working at the same University where I now am. We developed a lifelong friendship from back then and we also found a church together to go to. It was important for me, and, also for her, to be connected to a church since we were there every summer for three years. There was an incredible choir with young men and a great group that we associated with, mainly women Southerners even though there were women from all over the country.

In college, there was an instructor who really pushed me to be more assertive and be proud of myself. She was a microbiologist and a really good teacher. In her class, we had experiences like in the movie, Paper Chase; she would call you out and you would sweat bullets. After tests, she would call out those who got As. I hadn’t had my name called out and then one day, she gave this really hard test and it was time for her to call out the As and she called out my name and I was the only one with an A for that test. And she said, “It’s about time!” She’s passed away now.   

I worked for a guy called Harvey while I was at Proctor Gamble which was another good learning experience with different people.

During those years, my Mum would come up to visit. That’s also when for the first time I went to a racetrack.  My Mum is a very adventurous person. We were in downtown Cincinnati and a bus called River Downs came by and she just hopped on the bus and that’s how we ended up on the racetrack. My Mum also encouraged us to be around our Dad even after the divorce. He moved back to Orangeburg from Columbia because of his Mum and that’s where he focused his attention. You learn when you get older to forgive, that you can’t judge, and you need to move on. My Dad was very proud, particularly that I went to school at SCSC.  My Grandmother worked there in the past, one of my Aunts and a cousin were students at the college. They were SCSC fans and went for all the homecomings. I spent a lot of time with all of them while I was in college.

When I was finishing at SCSC, a recruiter came and told us about graduate programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She was originally from South Carolina herself and I thought to myself, “If she’s from here, I too can make it in Bowling Green.” And that’s where I did my Master’s.

In terms of church, it was probably an empty period since I was in a different area of the country. I had traditionally mostly gone to Black churches versus Bowling Green was a mid-western town and the Black churches were in Toledo, a good half hour away. I don’t remember going to a church all the time I was in Ohio. 

I didn’t do the thesis plan for my Master’s as I didn’t have an advisor who was a good mentor and I didn’t know how to ask for help. I did the non-thesis degree. At the time, there was an young lady from Ohio in the same group; she finished her degree and in 1985 or ‘86, she got a job as a research technician at the University of North Carolina. We kept in touch and during a visit back to Bowling Green, she said, “You need to come down, there are all these jobs down here.”  It was the mid-80s and there was a lot of funding from the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research. So, I left my car in Ohio and went with her. I put in 6 applications at UNC- and got 3 interviews for a technical job. I took one of them.

When I interviewed for my job, there was a black woman in the group who was friendly, laughing and was approachable and I said to myself, “OK, I like this woman” versus joining the other labs which worked on HIV/AIDS. I worked as a technician in that lab in the Department of Pathology for two years. And once again, I said to myself, “I can do this, I can do this PhD work, these people and this work doesn’t seem out of my reach.”

That’s how I ended up as a PhD student. I became friends with one of the people in another program and decided to start going back to church with her. I felt a lot more rooted during that time. 

I was a graduate student with a distinguished scientist who later was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology. There were a lot of people in the lab and I got to know them. I later ended up getting an NIH R21 award with another well-known scientist.

My PhD Advisor grew up in England but was agnostic. He liked to have Christmas parties and the groups would sing Christmas songs like Jingle Bells.  But it was weird, because when it came to “Hark the Herald Angel Sing, Glory to the Newborn King” and this reference to Jesus Christ, I remember that they mostly had mixed sentiments. People sang these songs but would say things like, “This is crazy, I don’t believe in a soul. I have become a scientist and now I know the truth.”  That’s where I feel that a lot of agnostic people, since I don’t know a lot of atheists, think they know it all. Their opinions never really changed me and actually I thought to myself that, “We know nothing.”  Perhaps in some ways, they’re going to have to have their own test in life. Back in the Middle East and in Europe, many great minds in science and theology were one and the same person. The mathematicians and others were also the religious people, they were educated, they read, thought and wrote. Gregory Mendel, the father of genetics, was himself a monk. I loved that and so I respectfully listened and let people say whatever they wanted. I had my faith and they had to live their own lives.

When I was going to the White Rock Baptist Church, the pastor talked about how to justify or to reconcile Christianity and how to reconcile the creationist theory against science; he said, “Well, both can be true, we don’t know how God did it, however he did it, he did it and I don’t have to worry about how he did it.” 

There were no debates about science and religion in the lab. I felt faith was personal. We had different life experiences and it came from their experiences and their families.  I remember one guy said, “I used to pray that I wouldn’t flunk a test, and then I did flunk one, so I thought God didn’t hear my prayer and I stopped believing.” I couldn’t understand that kind of rationale.

These days with my students, there is little discussion about faith. Some of my students who are Christian might make incidental comments or have some text in their email signatures which might include a Bible verse, but other than that, I go to class and teach and focus on science. The times when I get angry, I use my faith and tell myself to go in there with the love of Christ and to have it in my heart, without being angry or judgmental. For instance, I had a young lady who had challenges with my on-line class. She didn’t do any of the work and came to me with excuses about this and that happening in her life. I told her to go to Student Services for assistance and they told her, “We can be accommodating and give you time to make up the class work.” But I knew she was not going to do it. What she wanted was an Incomplete grade. I didn’t feel this student was taking responsibility for her actions. She wanted to graduate but she hadn’t completed all my course requirements for this final course in her program. I wrestled with this, “Should I have mercy on her?” I felt I had to handicap her to be fair to all the other students. I feel that some people try to game the system and I just couldn’t support that.

The University I’m now at has Christian music played at their graduation ceremonies but recently, at the last one, there was a Muslim Imam doing the invocation. I don’t know if I was comfortable with that as the people who built the school were Black and Christian. I believe their faith was why black people could endure the racism of the time.  So, I wasn’t in favor of all this political correctness. This is the faith of our community and I feel that if our community moves away, and makes it about money and correctness, we risk sinking into violence and drugs.

I have trained several students in my research program and you have different ones like someone who is Iranian and Muslim and you listen to them talk about their traditions, or someone who’s Chinese, someone who’s Christian, some who are not religious, but I’ve never gotten into deep discussion or debate with them. 

Back when I was a PhD student, I wouldn’t proselytize about my faith, but I remember one guy was having some chronic pain. I told him to come to church and we would pray for him. And he said, “Oh, would they let me?” People say that if you’re Christian, you should be able to “witness” and to proselytize by inviting someone to church or converting someone to Christianity. But it isn’t one of my gifts to promote my faith, God didn’t give that to me.

***