Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Iris was fascinated by Bardeen’s research on the transistor and the theory of superconductivity, so we suggested that she interview him for a story. We also reminded her that Bardeen was eighty-one years old, and if she wanted to interview him, she should do it soon.

  She immediately contacted Bardeen and interviewed him over the phone many times and at length in his office. Her story was published in January 1990, a year before he died. The article was reprinted by several University of Illinois publications to memorialize his life.

  Because of Iris’s science background and her tenacious research, she was able to write an accurate, passionate article about him. Bardeen was well known for being quiet and modest and not showing much emotion in public. But Iris told us she found him warm and kind. Perhaps Iris reminded him of his own granddaughter.

  Iris had interviewed many of Bardeen’s former students and postdoctoral researchers in the physics and engineering departments on campus, including Nick Holonyak, a physics and electrical engineering professor. Iris told us that she had gained insight into physics—which still intrigued her even though she had not taken a physics class in many years—from Holonyak, who in turn appreciated Iris’s passion for learning and her talent in science writing.

  Holonyak, Bardeen’s first graduate student, later invented the light-emitting diode used in digital watches and pocket calculators. After Iris’s article was published, we ran into Holonyak a couple of times on campus, and he told us how much he enjoyed talking to Iris. Later, he told us that he had followed Iris’s career and read her books. Iris always felt lucky that she had grown up in an academically rich community such as Champaign-Urbana.

  In late September, my brother Bing called us from his Manhattan office to tell us about a two-hour special called “China in Revolution, 1911-1949” that would soon be shown by PBS. My father, a witness and survivor of that period of Chinese history, was interviewed for the special. When we got a tape of the program and gave Iris a copy, she showed a lot of interest and told us that some day she would like to interview her dad and me about our family history.

  Three weeks after the PBS special ran, my mother called me from New York. She said she had coughed out two pea-sized blood clots from her throat that day. My brothers and sisters were all alarmed and urged her to see a doctor immediately. The doctor told her she had a tumor in her lung that could be cancerous.

  The diagnosis shocked our whole family. I took time off from work and flew to New York to help out my mother. On November 27, my sister Ling-Ling and I accompanied her to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital for a biopsy. The doctor found that the tumor was indeed cancerous, but that the cells originated from her breast, not from her lungs. That was actually good news, because there were drugs to stop the growth of breast-cancer tumors, whereas lung cancer was much harder to treat. After the biopsy, the doctor decided against removing the tumor and prescribed cancer-fighting drugs instead. For a while, we were relieved there was a cure for the tumor, but we knew that my mother’s breast cancer had metastasized to other organs—a bad omen for her overall health. I came home from New York exhausted.

  Then Iris called us from a public phone booth down the stairs from her office with more bad news. The Tribune, she said, was not going to hire her after her internship was over at the end of December. This was a big setback. She had been hoping to land a job at a major newspaper to establish her journalism career. Her dream was dashed. We asked her whether the Tribune had hired any of her fellow interns. “Yes, they did,” she replied weakly. I could hear the humiliation in her shaky voice.

  Shau-Jin and I talked to her for a long time, and she began a self-examination of her work and her life. She told us that in the newspaper industry, she would be limited in what she could write. She also realized that she was not the kind of person who liked taking orders or being at the whim of whatever was deemed newsworthy at the time.

  Shau-Jin told her that in any profession, you had to work your way up from the bottom. “You cannot be a general the first day you enter the army,” he told her. “You have to work first as a foot soldier.” But Iris was exceedingly ambitious and impatient. During this phone conversation, Iris told me: “You know, Mom, I’m not the kind of person who is willing to conform in a corporate setting.” She admitted that she was too independent, too individualistic, and didn’t really enjoy being part of a team.

  She told me about some of her confrontations with her editors. One time, she said, her boss had asked her to call members of a family whose loved one had just died tragically. She told the editor she had tried several times, but the family refused to be interviewed. Not showing much sympathy, the editor asked her to try again. So Iris picked up the phone and dialed the phone number, in front of other colleagues. She handed her boss the phone and said “You talk to them.” He, of course, was not happy. But Iris told us that she felt the family had a right to grieve in private. That, she said, was more important than getting a quote for a story.

  There were also issues in her social circle and within standard “office politics.” Iris, for example, didn’t like to gossip behind other people’s backs. She said she found it meaningless and a waste of time.

  Still, Iris was heartbroken about not being offered a job at the Tribune, as there were other parts of her work there that she truly enjoyed. I comforted her and said “We learn lessons from our mistakes. There will always other opportunities.”

  Iris was quite blue for days. But she got over it and was soon back to her old self. She urged us to come to Chicago to visit her while she was still living there. She said she would move back home soon and regroup and figure out what she wanted to do.

  Two days later, she phoned and said the Tribune had called her in the middle of night after a jet had skidded off the runway at Midway Airport because of freezing temperatures. She immediately drove to the scene so she could interview people to get the full story.

  My maternal instincts took over. I remember thinking that the life of a reporter must be hard. I imagined her driving in the darkness in the early-morning hours all by herself in subzero temperatures with a strong wind blowing and ice and snow all around. Iris had lived a sheltered life with us in Urbana all her life. Shau-Jin and I immediately made up our minds to visit her as soon as possible.

  Eleven days before Christmas, we drove to Chicago to see her, despite the frigid temperatures. Her small apartment, in a high-rise in the fashionable downtown district, was minimally furnished since she had been living there only a short time. It seemed as if she only went there to sleep. Nothing in the kitchen showed that she did any cooking. The rice cooker I had bought her was still brand-new without any sign of use. I was disappointed. I could not imagine someone being so busy that he or she couldn’t find the time to cook and eat properly. But Iris told us that she didn’t have time to even think about eating. She was totally dedicated to her professional life.

  A few days later, Brett also went to see Iris. Unfortunately, while he was Christmas shopping, something caught in his contact lens and he developed an eye inflammation and had to go to an emergency room. Iris later took care of him in her apartment. He decided it would be best to go home to rest, so on December 21 he took Amtrak but was stranded for hours when the train broke down because of the extreme cold. Iris, meanwhile, could not come home for Christmas; she was assigned by the Tribune to work over the holidays. Besides, she told us she needed to be alone anyway to figure out what she wanted to do after she left the Tribune.

  Late on Christmas Eve, when I called her, she told me she was lonely. I tried my best to cheer her up. But it was difficult to find the right words. It made me sad, thinking about my daughter spending Christmas alone in a big city, and I thought about our family’s joyful Christmas celebrations of the past.

  Iris told me she had just walked down Michigan Avenue to get a good look at the night scene. She knew it might be a while before she could walk down the avenue again in the cold of winter.

  She was f
reezing, but she still enjoyed standing next to a building, tilting her head back, and watching the skyscrapers shoot into the sky. She enjoyed the trees along Michigan Avenue that sparkled with tiny bright-yellow lights. The streets, she said, were jammed with people with big shopping bags filled with gifts. She told us she would miss Chicago. As she walked the city streets, assaulted by the wind and cold, she imagined I was roasting a duck in the kitchen, Dad was making steamed Chinese bread, and Michael was poking at the logs in the fireplace. She said she missed all of that.

  I told her we would see her on New Year’s Day when she moved back to Urbana. Yes, Iris said, she wanted to come home and start over.

  Starting Over at Twenty-Two

  On January 2, 1990, Brett went to Chicago to help Iris move her stuff back home. By this time, Iris had decided to go back to school instead of looking for a new job. We agreed with her, saying that a higher degree would increase her chances for job opportunities.

  Iris was a person of action. She immediately went to the U of I campus to look into the possibility of academic enrollment. It was too late to enroll as a degree student, but she could enroll as a non-degree student for the semester. She decided to enroll in the Department of History. She was also actively looking for an apartment on campus. She insisted that she wanted to live on campus rather than at home, which would be more convenient for her. She wanted to be more independent. We promised to support her one semester financially and gave her time to ponder what she should do next.

  Within several days, she found an apartment on Stoughton Street; it was within walking distance of the campus. She was lucky, because the apartment was a sublet and she got a discount on the rent. On January 9, she moved in and started to be a student again.

  Iris was happy to return to the familiar campus. Many of her friends were still there—and besides, she and Brett could now see each other every day.

  After Iris had met Brett in 1988, she’d never dated anyone else, although many men were always pursuing her. When Iris was working at the Chicago Tribune, she told us there were always some professionals or businessmen on trains or buses who tried to initiate a conversation with her and gave her their cards and telephone numbers. Iris said she had a stack of cards an inch thick!

  Iris and Brett had been talking about marriage for some time. Brett asked Iris to marry him on the day after Thanksgiving, 1989, at the same spot where they first met in October 1988. On January 13, 1990, Brett and Iris went to a gift shop and Brett bought a diamond engagement ring for her. So, Iris was engaged to be married. We were not surprised at all and took it as a natural turn of events.

  Several years later, Iris told us that one of her friends, who was Jewish, asked her whether her parents would be against her marrying a non-Asian. Iris told her friend that there was no barrier whatsoever from the parents on both sides. Her friend commented, “You are lucky. My parents want me to marry a Jew!” Indeed, we had no objection to who Iris would marry as long as the person was sincere and honest and really loved her.

  Before Iris met Brett, during discussions about dating and marriage, we had told Iris that usually a successful marriage involved two persons with similar cultural backgrounds. Shau-Jin and I were hoping that Iris would marry a Chinese-American or an Asian-American if only so he could relate to her experience as a child of immigrant parents, but Iris told us that she had not had many chances to meet Chinese-Americans—and besides, in her dreams her boyfriends were always white Caucasians. She added that this probably was influenced by the books she read and the movies she saw. We were convinced that it was up to her to decide.

  When the university semester started, Iris told us she was taking a number of courses in history and philosophy. She was serious and studying hard. The termination of her intern position at the Tribune had not deterred her enthusiastic spirit and passion in pursuit of her dream. Actually, the setback further enhanced her determination. She was quite confident. I never doubted that she had potential. I believed in her. I knew that she would achieve something one day.

  Iris was not only taking non-degree courses; she was also in the process of applying to graduate school. She felt her true love was writing and publishing. She wanted to be a writer even more than a news reporter. After the Tribune episode, she realized that she wanted to be her own boss. I never asked her how many universities she applied to, but I knew she had applied to many. Later she was awarded an assistantship from the Johns Hopkins University writing program, a one-year master’s program. At the time, I was focused on my own research, and I had obtained good results, so I had my own research grant proposal to worry about, too. It was a nerve-racking time for us both. Professor Cronan told me that my title of “visiting assistant professor” would be changed to “senior research scientist” because I could not be “visiting” too long; three years was the maximum, according to department regulations.

  Iris told us that she had talked to Professor Lillian Hoddeson of the Department of History, who was originally a physicist and a colleague of Shau-Jin’s in the Physics Department. Hoddeson later joined the History Department because her area of study was the history of science. Iris told Professor Hoddeson that she was interested in writing a biography of John Bardeen. Iris’s article on Bardeen was published in the Chicago Tribune in January of that year. Iris proposed to Hoddeson that she had a lot more material on Bardeen and was interested in continuing the project by interviewing and conducting research on him. Iris said she could expand the materials into a book. Hoddeson thought it was a good idea, but in order to support the project she suggested that both of them needed to write a proposal and apply for a grant. This was just one of Iris’s ideas at the time.

  Professor Hoddeson indeed wrote the grant proposal on a biography of John Bardeen; but when she received the grant, Iris had been already awarded an assistantship from Johns Hopkins University and gone to Baltimore. Nevertheless, several years later, in 2002, Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch published the book, titled True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen. When the book was out, we met Hoddeson one day when we still lived in Urbana. She told us that she felt that the book should have been written by Iris. She praised Iris and said she was truly a good science writer! It was very humble of her to say that; her book on Bardeen was excellent, according to Shau-Jin, who read the book.

  The time Iris spent at the U of I campus in the spring of 1990 not only gave her a chance to take the courses she wanted to explore, but also enabled her to talk to a number of professors in various departments. Many of our professor friends from the departments of Physics, Microbiology, and Electrical Engineering, who knew Iris, told us that they found Iris pleasantly curious and her questions intriguing. But among all of them, Professor Robert Reid of the Journalism Department had given her the most encouragement. Iris shared Professor Reid’s belief that a good reporter should be a good writer—and Iris was determined to become a good writer, and her acceptance into the MFA at Johns Hopkins was the first step.

  With the spring break approaching, Iris wanted to visit her grandparents in New York. She always loved seeing them, but this time she wanted to introduce them to Brett, as she and Brett were now engaged. The year before, when they’d visited La Jolla, Brett had met Ye-Ye and Nai-Nai when we drove them to Los Angeles. Iris loved big cities and New York was one of her favorites. Therefore, we decided that the whole family would visit New York over spring break. Po-Po and Gong-Gong were very happy to see them. My mom smiled all the time and could not close her mouth. It was one of the happiest days for her, both because she got to see the grandchildren and because now she knew that Iris, her favorite granddaughter, was engaged. Iris, Brett, and Michael also took the chance to tour the Statue of Liberty and to see a Broadway show—a must for Iris, who loved the entire spectacle of a Broadway performance. They had a wonderful time in New York.

  Once Iris learned that she had been awarded a place in the Johns Hopkins University writing program, which would start in the fall of 1990, she was
busy fulfilling the necessary requirements for the fall term and for her teaching assistantship. The program also had a foreign-language requirement, either German or French, and Iris chose French. Because she had been awarded an assistantship, her tuition was waived, and she intended to obtain the degree within a year, meaning she had to pass the foreign-language requirement at the beginning of the program. When the semester at the U of I ended in the middle of May, she moved to French House on campus, where only French was spoken; English was not allowed. I still remembered that when Iris was at Uni High and did not pass the French exam, she’d dropped French and taken Chinese as an easy way out. Now because she was determined to get a degree in writing from JHU in a year, she devoted three months to intensively studying French and living in the French House. She passed the French proficiency test when she arrived at JHU and thus fulfilled the foreign-language requirement for the degree, showing that once Iris was motivated and determined to do something, she would work hard to reach that goal.

  June 16, 1990 was my fiftieth birthday, which happened to be on a Saturday that year. Michael came home from his summer job in Chicago specifically for the occasion. Shau-Jin sent twenty red roses to me. Professor John Cronan threw a big birthday party at his house in the evening. All the people working in the lab were there, and Brett and Iris came too. Betsy, Professor Cronan’s loving wife, baked a big birthday cake for me. That morning a family portrait was taken in a professional studio, and that portrait has hung on the wall of our family room for all the years since. It is the formal family portrait we took before Iris got married. In the portrait, both Iris and Michael look innocent and full of joy, and Shau-Jin and I could not be happier.