[Ed. Note:I decided to kill off all of my pseudonyms. In case it is not clear, “Tragic On Purpose” is a play on “Tragic Accident.” Yes, I know, any joke you have to explain isn’t funny.]

Five members of Paul Schindler’s imaginary family died tragically last week of old age, irrelevance and of no longer being needed. They ranged in age from 40 to 56, and not been seen in public since the 1980s.

Since they were all the same person, there are no survivors, except for distant cousins, Detwiler of the Tribune and sportscaster Harry Viderci. Services were held inside Paul Schindler’s head. In lieu of flowers, just laugh.

They were preceded in death by J. Klein “Buster” Fedang, but not by much.

The eldest, Gene Paul and Paul St. John, were born in the summer of 1969, when, in violation of Oregon youth labor laws, Gene and Paul worked at two different radio stations: Gene Paul played progressive rock on KVAN radio, while Paul St. John was a talker on KLIQ and KLIQ-FM.

At least one KLIQ caller argued with St. John, claiming that his last name was pronounced “sin-gen.” St. John quickly and dishonestly claimed “Saint John” was his family’s Americanized pronunciation. Moments later, he lied again when another caller said St. John sounded a lot like Gene Paul over at KVAN; St. John promptly lied about it, saying they were two different people.

Harrison Klein was Eugene Oregon’s Godfather, naming him the  in the spring of 1972, just in time for the taping of the  New Eugene Oregon Show. Oregon passed away, unknown and unlamented, a few weeks later. Like Athena, Reginald A. Stuart-Smythe was born from a forehead… in this case, that of Paul Schindler. Smythe was the God of avoiding a rule at The Tech against having the same byline appear twice on the same page. Many was the time that Paul Schindler, P.E. Schindler, Jr. and Reginald A. Stuart-Smythe shared a page in the Arts Section of the newspaper. Gary S. Paul was born in the 1980s, when Edwin Diamond forgot Gene Paul’s name, and went for the first thing that came into his head. Gary S. Paul wrote numerous articles in AdWeek, including interviews with Stan Freberg and LA Morning DJs Ron Engleman and John London.

If you want a normal obituary, go somewhere else. The Internet is full of them. Or check out Tom’s excellent Wikipedia Entry. This is just my personal take on a great man and a great musician—even if he was a Harvard grad (1946).

Tom Lehrer was the soundtrack of my life. My parents loved That Was The Week That Was (TW3), when I was 11. Since we had one TV, when they watched it, I watched it.

I was precocious, so I understood nearly all the satire since I read the newspaper every day. From that and TV I knew of Sherriff Clark in Birmingham, using a fire hose on demonstrators. “Sherriff Clark and Lena Horne are dancing cheek-to-cheek” was, thus, my favorite line in National Brotherhood Week.Best rhyme: its fun to "eulogize" those people "you despise." you-la-jise  / you-desp-ize. And to top it off, an internal rhyme. An internal rhyme in a single word! Rhyming "eu" with "you."

There were 50 TW3 episodes from 1963-1965. I feel certain I watched all of them. My parents bought, probably, the 1976 release That Was the Year That Was. I wore it out.

Things heated up once I went to MIT. I joined WTBS (now WMBR) immediately on arrival in the fall of 1970, a mere five years after their broadcast of Tom Lehrer's Subway Song, composed in 1944 and sung by the composer on WTBS in 1965. A rarity, because its hyper-local content made it meaningless to listeners out of The Hub Of The Universe (talk about Humblebrag; that was Boston’s self adopted name for itself). Everyone at the station was a fan, and busting their buttons about what was probably the first broadcast of the song.

Fans also abounded at The Tech. The special favorite was The Vatican Rag. Everyone on the staff knew the lyrics, and my friends John Hanzel (Catholic) and Norman Sandler (Jewish) had a dance routine they performed to the song, usually accompanied by them singing it a capella. The often performed in the newsroom, and they performed it at my wedding as well. It’s no wonder, then, that I used the music for a love song.

During his half-century of withdrawal from the public eye, Lehrer granted one or two interviews and performed once or twice. He made himself relatively hard to find, and since he preceded the Internet age, there wasn’t much to go on. But, a diligent search by a talented researcher (modesty forbids) discovered that throughout his wanderings, including his years at UC Santa Cruz, he had maintained his undergraduate address. I knew he did not respond to fan mail, but I sent him some anyway, shortly after I wrote my song. Since everything reminds me a story, and the story is always about myself:

August 3, 2022
Tom Lehrer
11 Sparks Street
Cambridge, MA

Dear Mr. Lehrer,

First let me thank you for a lifetime of entertainment. Also, I salute your unusual and magnanimous decision to release your music and lyrics into the public domain. I imagine you hoped for, or even expected, something like a love song set to the tune of Vatican Rag.

That’s the windup; here’s the pitch. I’d be pleased and honored if you’d take a look at my performance of When Your Hand Is On My Knee.

Finally, a little gratuitous background. I met you once when you came to MIT Student House in 1971, at the invitation of your student Cathy Buckley. I couldn’t get into your seminar, as it took me three tries to pass Calculus.

Two years ago, at age 68, I started writing love poems to my wife of 42 years. After she read When Your Hand Is On My Knee, she asked me to set it to music. Usually, I pay a Welsh freelancer to do that. He’s been the Sullivan to my Gilbert a dozen times.

I was just about to pay him for a new tune, when a bell went off. I’ve been singing Vatican Rag since the 70s, and suddenly realized the poem essentially fit.

The only response I expect or hope for is to bring a smile to your lips.

I’d be shocked it you were interested, but my other efforts are at schindler.org/b4

Sincerely, Paul Schindler

Richard Parker in January 1980 at my wedding. He died July 4, 1986, age 34.

The Richard C. Parker Memorial Lecture

[This is Columbia’s Description of the Richard C. Parker Memorial Lecture. If you have his CV, or a good obit, please send me a copy.]

This lecture is part of an annual tribute to Richard Parker, a former Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology.

Richard arrived at Columbia University in 1983 after undergraduate training at MIT, did his doctoral work at California Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. He established a laboratory, began independent research on transformation of cells, joined in teaching of the department courses, and started training several doctoral students. All this he began despite having been diagnosed, several years earlier, of having lymphoblastic T-cell lymphoma. Richard spent nearly three years in our department, and he was a brilliant, dedicated, dependable and outspoken colleague. Richard fought his disease for six- and one-half years, which unfortunately took his life on July 4, 1986.

Richard was especially dedicated to graduate education, and before he died he asked his department chairman, Dr. Lucy Shapiro, to do everything possible to support graduate training at Columbia. As a result, the department established the Richard C. Parker Memorial Fund for graduate training. This fund is used to sponsor, each year, a seminar by an outstanding scientist. The speaker is selected and hosted by the graduate students of the department, and spends the day talking with the students.

In addition, the Richard C. Parker Graduate Student Award was established, which is presented each year to a student who has accomplished outstanding and innovative work.

END OF LECTURE DESCRIPTION

Richard’s Publications

“The Isolation and Characterization of Linked delta- and beta-Globin Genes from a Cloned Library of Human DNA” Richard M. Lawn, Edward F. Fritsch, Richard C. Parker, Geoffrey Blake, & Tom Maniatis 1978, Cell 15, 1157.

[This paper has been cited 591 times which means that it is original and important]

“Detection of a contaminant cell culture line by restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns of mitochondrial DNA” Grossman, Lawrence I. and Parker, Richard C. and Watson, Robert M. and Chandler, Sarah E. W. and Teplitz, Marlyn (1977) Detection of a contaminant cell culture line by restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns of mitochondrial DNA. Nucleic Acids Research, 4 (5). pp. 1267-1271. ISSN 0305-1048.

For more, check Google Scholar.

Richard’s PhD thesis at CalTech: I. Methods for Restriction Endonuclease Studies of DNA Structure.  II. Restriction Endonucleolytic Characterization of Animal Mitochondrial DNAs and Human Globin Genes. Thesis by Richard Carl Parker Submitted Nov 20, 1978.

Here is an excellent layperson’s description of Richard’s work.

What I know of Richard

I know he deserves more of a memorial than the lecture and a few scientific papers. When you search for his name on Google, you should find out that he was a warm, caring, loving human being and a brilliant scientist, snatched away from us way too soon at age 36. I know a number of scientists in the field who believe he would likely have been under serious consideration for a Nobel prize, had he lived.

Richard Carl Parker arrived at MIT in the fall of 1970, and graduated in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in Course VII―Biology/Life Science. He worked in the lab of Dr. David Baltimore, a Nobel winner whose work Richard explained to me, and through me, to millions of readers of UPI stories on the day of Baltimore’s award.

Richard lived at the Chi Phi fraternity in Boston’s Back Bay while at MIT. He was in MIT’s Experimental Study Group and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

We met in Edwin Diamond’s class, and became fast friends. He worked for and with me at the student newspaper, The Tech, albeit not very often; he was too busy with class.

He attended my very small wedding on Jan. 1, 1980. We played squash together regularly while he was at UCSF, because they had a rare (on the West Coast) squash court.

I don’t know a lot about his childhood. His parents were the late Lenore (Duboff) Parker and Dr. Paul David Parker. His sister is Judith Parker of Los Angeles.

Richard and Chess

As a child in Brookline, Mass., he played chess at a competitive level.

———

According to the New York Times, June 7, 1970 (between high school and MIT):

A FOUR‐MAN student team from Brookline, Mass., won first place in the recent 1970 U. S. High School championship at the Hotel McAlpin, New York. Scoring 22½ game points during the eight‐round event, Brookline topped its nearest rivals, Bayside, Queens, N. Y., and Roosevelt, Des Moines Iowa by a half‐point.

The individual scores on the winning team were: Walter Faxon, 6‐2; Joseph White, 6‐2; Peter Keretsky, 5½‐2½; Richard Parker, 5‐3.

There were 48 teams with 560 players from all over the nation

————

According to the Boston Herald, Jan. 11, 1970:

Regular readers know that I teach for several
 reasons; because my mother, my wife, my sister-in-law and
several
of my best friends teach or taught. Because I was the product of a
fantastic, free public education through grade 12 and a scholarship
education at MIT, and felt obliged to give something back by becoming a
good teacher myself. And because I had a teacher at college who changed
the course of my life and dozens of the lives around me, Edwin Diamond.
After my parents and my best high school teacher, Dr. Patricia L.
Swenson, Diamond is the person  most responsible for my being
the
man I am today. It has hard to believe he was been gone for 13 years,
snatched from us at the tender age of 72.

I was asked by one of his daughters to create a page about him;
she was kind of enough to allow me to point
to my tribute, the formatting of which I spiffed up on the
occasion of new anticipated traffic.

If
I can touch half the number of student lives with one-tenth of the
force that Edwin did, I will be a huge success by anyone's standard,
but especially by my own.