Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Iris had read many feminist books; she was influenced greatly by Betty Friedan. She told me she shared the same view as Friedan. She felt that there had been a lot of injustice for women in the society of the past. We had a number of discussions whenever we touched on women’s issues, and I shared her views. From very early on, she had been aware of all this, and she did not want to fall into the trap that most women fell into. She had a strong desire to have her own identity. She was ambitious and determined to have a career of her own.

  Iris’s second year in college ended in May 1987. As early as January, she had already started to look for a summer job. She told us that she had met a classmate, James, in her computer science class. James had worked in a computer company in suburban Chicago the summer before, and he was going to work in the same company the coming summer. James was nice to Iris and said he could introduce her to the same company. The company, called Microsystems, was located in Hoffman Estates in suburban Chicago. So, on one Saturday in January 1987, Iris asked us to take her to Chicago. She was introduced by James to the head of Microsystems for an interview. Several weeks later, Microsystems accepted her application for a summer job as an intern. She was very excited and immediately started looking into summer housing near the company. She posted an advertisement on the bulletin board of her dormitory. Very soon she got a call from a student in her dorm whose family lived in Palatine, Illinois, which was close to Hoffman Estates. Her family had an extra room for rent. Iris never thought she would have such good luck and was amazed that she could resolve everything in such a short time.

  This was the first time that Iris left home to live independently for a paid job. She was very excited about it. She was paid $300 a week for forty hours. For overtime, she was paid more. After working at Microsystems for ten weeks, she was able to save a net of around $1,400. She deposited her paycheck each month and showed me the bankbook proudly.

  This summer job for Iris at Microsystems was supposed to involve writing software for the company, but very soon they discovered that Iris was also a good writer—of words. Iris found that the manual for teaching employees how to use the software in the company was badly written and not easily understood. Because of Iris’s complaint, the company asked her to improve the manual. She made sure that she understood the whole system first, and then she rewrote the manual as if she had never used a computer before. She worked hard and wrote fast. She finished the first assignment on schedule. The president of the company was very impressed and asked her to do another manual. She was able to finish the second manual before the summer internship ended. Iris showed us the thick manuals she had helped to write when she got home. The company loved her, and the president wrote a superb recommendation for her and told Iris that they would welcome her back any time and would guarantee her a job after her graduation.

  During her ten weeks at Microsystems, she also enjoyed her life with her co-workers. She showed me the pictures she had taken at a party at the president’s home where she was swimming in the pool and laughing wildly. She was no longer the same shy girl as before; she was very happy and got along with everyone.

  On August 7, Iris finished her job at Microsystems. Two weeks later, she moved back into her ISR dormitory and started her junior year at UI. She had made up her mind that she wanted to transfer to the Journalism Department. She had found that her love was writing, and the job in Microsystems had given her the confidence that she could do it.

  One more thing that firmed up her decision was the magazine Open Wide, which she was able to publish in August 1987. Throughout her sophomore year at UI, alongside her coursework, she was publicizing the Illini Literary Society, which she had founded, and asking for contributions of original works for her magazine. She met a number of literary friends from different departments at UI and finally the first issue of Open Wide was published—financed by the UI office for student activities.

  In this first issue of Open Wide, Iris wrote one poem titled “End of the Mirror Tunnel.” The poem reflected her impatience and restlessness:

  . . . .

  I was searching for the world

  Where anything=possible

  Where infinite ends as

  parallel lines kiss

  and time is a rolling wheel

  Where

  Life is a hologram

  shifty, swirly rainbow of

  infinite possibilities

  infinite dimensions

  infinite way for intuition to see it

  . . . .

  She still had so much to learn, to know, and to experience. It seemed as if she was always racing against the clock to learn something new or experience something different.

  When the new semester started in the fall of 1987, since Iris had decided that she was sure that she wanted to transfer into journalism, she went to the dean’s office and talked to him again. This time, he agreed with Iris when he saw she was so determined. Iris told him that she loved writing and that she had been able to write two technical manuals for a computer company in ten weeks over the summer. She told him that she wanted to combine science and writing, and felt that journalism training would help her in her future science-writing career. The dean was convinced. For the formal transfer to the Department of Journalism, Iris had to wait until the spring semester of 1988, the second semester of her junior year.

  Once Iris had determined that she was going to be a student of journalism, she did not wait. She threw herself full force into the field. She immediately went to the office of the Daily Illini, or DI for short, the official student newspaper on campus. She talked to the editor and introduced herself to the staff there. Most students working in the DI were journalism majors. Iris told them she would like to write for the DI and told them that she would be a formal student of the Department of Journalism the next semester. She also showed them that she was the founder of the Illini Literary Society and published the magazine Open Wide. People seemed to respect her once they learned that she came from a double major in math and computer science. Iris joined the DI as an important contributor.

  The first article Iris wrote for the DI was on October 12, 1987. The title was “Pop Rocks, are they fun or fatal?” It was a well-researched Features article about a candy called Pop Rocks, which would sizzle and had a popping sound when put it in your mouth. Iris called me in excitement when I was in the lab. She informed me that her article had been published and asked me to read the article in that day’s DI. Our lab had a free copy of the DI, so I read it immediately. I shared in Iris’s excitement at seeing her first article published. The article was accompanied with a huge cartoon of a man with his mouth wide open and a blast of Pop Rocks!

  Pretty soon, Iris was writing concert reviews. On Friday, November 6, she told me that she was going to the Assembly Hall to listen to Whitney Houston’s performance. Frankly, we never took our children to any American popular music concerts. We usually listened to either Chinese folksongs or Western classical music at home. Iris loved classical music as well as popular movie songs, but I never would have thought she could write concert reviews. On Monday when I read the article “Whitney Houston Rouses Audience to New Heights” in the DI, I was surprised that she had written it so well.

  Iris had always loved opera, and she had been taking singing lessons in the UI Music Department. She had a very good voice. When I listened to her practice singing the aria “O mio babbino caro” from the Puccini opera Gianni Schicchi, it moved me to tears. She had asked the voice teacher to teach her this aria because she was inspired by the movie A Room With A View. We went to see the movie together, and both of us were quite moved by the music adapted from the Puccini opera in the film.

  Because Iris wrote concert and theater reviews and because she was doing volunteer work as an usher, one day she called me and said that she had a ticket for that night. She wanted to invite me to see the production of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro by the UI Department of Music. She knew I liked to watch opera too.
It was a memorable evening. At the end of the opera, I thought we were just going home, but instead Iris invited me to go to the Performance Center’s famous coffee shop to have a piece of her beloved chocolate cake. While she ate the chocolate cake, she talked about the opera. Not just the opera itself, but the disgusting feudal system described in the opera—the ancient European feudal privilege of a noble having a night with his servant-bride before giving her away to the groom. This was Iris: she always felt strongly about injustice whenever she saw it, even in a 200-year-old opera.

  One day Iris told us she had found out that there was a summer internship program sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). The internship was a ten-week summer training program for junior journalism majors for thirty or forty American domestic business magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Reader’s Digest. Usually one intern was selected from each university’s Journalism Department, one who was recommended by the dean or the department head. Then, if accepted, the student would be assigned to a participating magazine. Iris said this internship would be the best training for her, and she wanted to apply. The deadline was in December, for the following summer.

  In December, Iris had not yet been formally transferred to the Department of Journalism; that would not happen until the beginning of the next semester. Not only that, but the department head could only recommend one student from the department. Iris was worried that she would not be qualified; therefore, she called the ASME and asked if there was any alternative. Out of desperation, she went and talked to the head of the English Department. Iris had taken a number of courses in the English Department and knew several of the professors there. She had done very well in the English literature and rhetoric courses. Somehow, she was able to persuade the head of the English Department to write a recommendation letter on her behalf to the ASME. She sent off her application, together with her essay on why she wanted to apply for this internship and why it was so important for her.

  During this period, Iris was uncertain about her future. She was very ambitious, but also very impatient. During the winter break of her junior year, in January 1988, she asked us to give her a ride to Chicago to visit the Chicago Tribune. When we walked in the chilly air of downtown, she was continuously complaining. She lamented why we had to stay in Urbana rather than in a big city such as Chicago where there were more opportunities. She asked why were we so satisfied with our placid lives, staying risk-averse, and so on. This was the first time Shau-Jin and I had ever been upset with her, as we were surprised that she would say these things. She had never criticized us before, and even now I still don’t know what made her so unhappy at that time. Later, she did apologize to us, and now I think she had just been bursting at the seams to take the next step in her life and her impatience was getting the better of her.

  After her visit to the newspaper, Iris was able to persuade the Chicago Tribune editor to appoint her as their campus stringer for UI. In the second semester of her junior year, Iris not only wrote news and reviews for the DI, she also wrote campus news for the Chicago Tribune.

  On February 1, 1988, when I reached my lab, the students came up and told me that Iris had written a big fiction story titled “The Secret Admirer,” published in the DI Features section that day. The story was long and its title was in big type, with a drawing of a huge heart next to the article. It was a love story of college students living on campus. Now Iris was a frequent writer for the DI. She not only wrote news, theater reviews, and short stories; she reviewed books, too, which I know she enjoyed tremendously. At this time, all the students and colleagues in my lab knew that I had a beautiful daughter on campus who wrote for the DI. Some of the students told me that they enjoyed reading Iris’s articles and were eager to meet her in person.

  From February to May 1988, Iris, as a campus news stringer, sent numerous campus news articles about UI to the Chicago Tribune. The news ranged from a story about the new collections in the UI Library to the supercomputer UI would purchase for the school. But the most sensational news was that a female first-year UI veterinary student, Maria Caleel, was murdered on March 6, 1988. That day, Iris called us early in the morning, which was unusual because she was usually a night owl and seldom got up early. She said in a shaking voice that she had just received a call from the Chicago Tribune, and they had asked her to gather information on the slain student. We were also shocked, since Champaign-Urbana was a relatively safe town. Iris told us that she was going immediately to work on the case and she wanted to borrow our car. Her devotion and passion as a journalist had already been demonstrated. The article on the murder was published on March 8 in the Tribune with her name as one of the contributors at the end of the article. Many years later, the killer of Maria Caleel still had not been found. Maria’s father was a prominent Chicago cosmetic surgeon, and her family had offered a huge reward for any leads to find the killer, but so far the case had not been solved. Years later, Iris still sometimes mentioned the case of Maria Caleel.

  On April 19, Iris called us in excitement because she had received a letter from ASME telling her she had been awarded the summer internship. More significantly, she was assigned to Newsweek! She was so happy that she almost screamed. She later told us that two students from UI were accepted by the ASME internship, one from the Department of Journalism and the other, Iris, from the English Department. Iris told us later that it might break a record, since it was very rare for two students from the same university to be accepted by the ASME in a single year. It was a very pleasant surprise to me that she had been assigned to Newsweek, one of the two hottest and most desirable magazines, a dream internship for anyone. When Shau-Jin told one of our Chinese friends that Iris had been awarded a summer internship at Newsweek, our friend repeated twice “Newsweek?” with the suspicion that he was hearing it wrong.

  Iris was able to get the summer internship with the ASME not by chance, but through hard work. During the application process, Iris was demonstrating her ability in writing and her passion in journalism. By this time, she had published many articles in the campus newspaper, plus she was a campus stringer for the Chicago Tribune. The Department of English recommended her because of her excellent classwork, her dedication, and her eagerness to learn. She had a goal, and she worked hard to reach it. She was very persistent; this was her strong trait. And, most important, she was not afraid to try to beat the odds.

  On June 5, Iris flew to New York City for her ten-week internship. All the interns lived in dorms at New York University. She shared a room with another intern and had the opportunity to talk to many other interns assigned to other magazines. She said that she and the intern who was assigned to Time magazine got the most attention from their peers. Iris was assigned to the Business section of Newsweek and got to know the writers and editors of the magazine and gained firsthand experience on how the magazine was published.

  On June 14, she sent us a postcard of a picture of the famous New York waterfront skyline with the words “I Love New York.” In her message, she wrote:

  Hi, Everyone!

  I want to say Happy Father’s Day to Dad! I’m doing very well in New York and I have met other ASME interns as well as the ones at Newsweek and Time Inc. Everyone gets along amazingly well because everyone has very similar interests. I’m going to be reporting and fact-checking at Newsweek, and I might get a byline. The New York Times gave me a personal tour to see the paper yesterday, and they were very friendly and want me to write for them. I miss you all and I’ll write back. Love, Iris

  Iris called us regularly and told us about her life at Newsweek. She told us that writing for a magazine as opposed to a newspaper was very different. Newsweek only published once a week. The staff did not write simply to fill space; they picked and chose stories out of a pool of ideas. Very few ideas were chosen and published. And a few of the reporters were also writers. It was difficult to get a byline at Newsweek unless you were one of the few writers. Iris told us that she did her best to sug
gest many ideas to the editors, but only one of her ideas was accepted. Unfortunately, the idea was killed even before it started when they found out that the story had been reported in a newspaper a year before.

  In spite of all this, Iris told us that she learned a lot and that the experience was one she could not have gotten in journalism courses. She was delighted to be treated as nicely as one of the staff members working there. There were fringe benefits at Newsweek too, she said. Every Friday, the business department went to dinner on the expense account because they worked so late. She was treated to lunches and dinners at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and many Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue restaurants.

  In the last few weeks of her internship, Iris tried to speak with several Newsweek editors to seek their advice on her career. On July 4, Iris called to tell us how wonderful it was to see the splendid fireworks explode in the sky, illuminating the images of the New York skyscrapers. How exciting to live in a big city, she said. She told us she wished to live in a big city like New York after she graduated—and besides, she said, New York was the center of the publishing world!

  In New York, Iris also visited Gong-Gong and Po-Po at Confucius Plaza. Not long after Iris got to New York, Michael and I flew there for my father’s ninetieth birthday. Iris came to join us for the big occasion.

  While Iris was doing her internship in New York, she also visited the New York Times and talked to the editor about the possibility of becoming a campus stringer for them. They were convinced and gave her the opportunity. When she retuned home, during her senior year at UI, she had submitted campus news to both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. This was another common trait of Iris: she never missed any chance or opportunity she thought might help her reach her goal. Iris submitted UI campus news to the Times very frequently. The editor of the Campus Life section of the Times used her news pieces one after another; but finally he told Iris that he could not use her pieces anymore, otherwise the readers would think the Campus Life section of the New York Times was specifically for the University of Illinois!