Late in 1994 we were living in Omaha, Nebraska, and I was working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. It was a great job in a fun place. It was kind of ironic, because not too many years before, I had been making fun of my brother, Rob, for being “stuck” in Nebraska while my family was feeling smug during my postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech in Pasadena. I think he had the last laugh when my best job offer in 1991 came from another Nebraska institution, bringing us about an hour from him.
In 1994 a younger friend from my postdoctoral days mentioned having visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on a job interview. He knew our roots were in Madison, and Rochester was a lot nearer to Wisconsin than Nebraska. With two young daughters, the distance (eight hours in a minivan, playing the same audio or video tapes over and over) was a challenge. He mentioned that the Mayo Clinic had a surprisingly large research program (that neither of us had ever heard about), and that they were generous with their resources.
For some reason, though I was plenty happy in Omaha, I sent a copy of my resume to the Mayo Clinic. Specifically, I sent it to Dr. Larry Miller, who was heading a committee seeking to build a new research team of scientists interested in gene therapy. Mayo Clinic was calling the program “Molecular Medicine.” That was kind of humorous, since practically all biomedical scientists are engaged in “molecular medicine,” but this was my first experience with the Mayo Clinic tradition of giving a fancy name to something that is actually not so fancy.
Dr. Larry Miller was a charming physician-scientist with a thick moustache. He worked in gastroenterology and did research. Dr. Larry Miller wasn’t really sure how they were going to recruit their team of “Molecular Medicine” experts. The initial strategy could be summarized as “one-at-a-time.” It later turned out that this strategy was inadequate, and a more successful strategy involved recruiting British team leader Dr. Steve Russell, who anchored recruitment of an impressive international group. But we get ahead of ourselves.
Dr. Larry Miller was trying to get the first scientist or two to sign on. I remember looking at the highway map one evening in Omaha, trying to figure out where Rochester was. It was only about 3 hours from Madison, and Laura and I were enchanted to see that it lay on Highway 14, a curving route that wandered through La Crosse and eventually became University Avenue, the main street in Middleton, Wisconsin, the Madison suburb where we had grown up. Quaint.
Dr. Larry Miller arranged to meet me at the airport for a visit. He had a nice car, and impressed me with a beautiful pastoral drive through the country for about 10 miles before we burst into downtown Rochester and found the Mayo Clinic. Rochester is a lot smaller than Omaha, Nebraska, and this also felt quaint. Dr. Miller pointed out along the way back to the airport (also through the pastoral country route) that he lived in a lovely wooded area, near the famed Mayowood Mansion. This provided another inviting introduction to Rochester.
I wasn’t convinced that “Molecular Medicine” was exactly the right fit for what we did in my laboratory research, but I remained intrigued with some of the very generous aspects of Mayo’s employment package. I agreed to visit a second time.
Dr. Larry Miller again met me with his nice car, we drove the lovely agricultural route into Rochester, and we had a bunch of meetings. On this trip Dr. Miller took time to drive me around town a bit, and I saw some attractive neighborhoods. Toward the end of the time, Dr. Miller kindly took me to his home for a snack, and a view of a beautiful pastoral valley, framed in his picture window.
“Just look at it,” he said, gazing at the green farm fields and a new sub-division sneaking into the valley. “They told me this would be farmland forever…now look at those houses down there.”
I could tell from his tone that he was just slightly disgusted about the suburban sprawl, so I steered the conversation to his nice custom home, and whether he had deer in his yard and things like that. Soon it was time to head back through the farmlands to the Rochester International Airport.
I think there was a third trip to Rochester, and I met with a different set of scientists seeking to recruit a new faculty member to the more traditional “Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.” This turned out to be a better fit. Dr. Eric Wieben helped with the recruitment, but I think Dr. Larry Miller continued to do most of the shuttling to and from the airport. I thought that was very nice, if slightly weird.
To make a long story short, we decided to move to Rochester. I remember one evening when we made the final decision about whether to sell our house in Omaha. I even had to call the Mayo Clinic administrator, a Mr. Ames Putnam (I love that name), to confirm that there really was a job offer waiting for me. The whole thing seemed pretty informal, and the Omaha move seemed pretty irrevocable.
Two particularly humorous episodes were associated with the actual process of moving to Rochester. The first involved driving my research group from Omaha in order to get their impressions of this Minnesota city where I had decided to relocate. The goal was to convince as many group members as possible to sign onto the move and maintain lab momentum.
We arrived one summer afternoon in a caravan of cars. It was about 100 degrees. We drove up Highway 63, the Broadway of Rochester. We passed the international airport, and I then realized (for the first time) that Highway 63 continued straight, whereas Dr. Larry Miller had always gone a “different way” that wound through the countryside. I didn’t think much of it until I started to behold the true character of south Broadway heading into Rochester. This route conveyed a singularly unimpressive and somewhat seedy message about Rochester—a string of discount motels, muffler shops, a tattoo parlor or two, a bar or two. . .or three. There on the right was a large scrap metal yard. One could see Mayo Clinic buildings in the distance, but my students were preoccupied with silently surveying this dumpy welcome to Rochester. I could swear I had never seen this city before. I think I even said that out loud with a kind of lame laugh.
I was stunned. Dr. Larry Miller had steered clear of this blight through all of his cleverly-orchestrated tour guiding. Well done, Dr. Miller, search committee chairman.
I had already accepted the job.
I was starting to seriously think about back-tracking and looking for the Dr. Larry Miller pastoral route into town, hoping it might erase the increasingly negative impression my students were receiving.
Then I saw it. Just when I had hoped that we had passed the worst of south Rochester, it appeared on the skyline to our right. No, it was not some flashy Mayo Clinic research building or some restored classic historic structure from the era of the Mayo brothers. I actually didn’t know exactly what it was except that it was tall, suspicious, and nobody had mentioned it during all our recruitment experiences in Rochester.
As we drove closer it became clear that my eyes were not playing tricks on me. One of the students groaned. There before us stood perhaps the largest “ear of corn effigy” in the continental United States (actually in the world). I was a factory water tower painted with some serious attention to detail.
Two thoughts hit me simultaneously. What had motivated some Rochester company to commit this corporate graffiti against an innocent water tower? More to the point, was this civic embarrassment the reason that Dr. Larry Miller had so carefully and consistently steered his nice car through the lovely Rochester countryside, conveniently dodging south Broadway and this monstrosity?
I wondered if anyone had actually ever been successfully recruited to Mayo Clinic after accidentally seeing this thing.
I imagined some Mayo Clinic recruitment policy manual instructing on processes for avoiding the “corn effect” until an unsuspecting recruit had agreed to terms.
Amazingly, most of my lab group members found enough at the world famous Mayo Clinic to overcome the “corn effect.” It was close though.
The other humorous and slightly uncomfortable moment came a month later after the move was complete. I met Dr. Larry Miller in the hall and small talk was exchanged. He asked the oft-repeated question:
“So, whose house did you buy?”
This query, innocent enough, implied that most thoughtful new Mayo Clinic recruits would purchase from among the lovely historic residences near the Mayo Clinic, the so-called “Pill Hill” district. Homes were practically handed down from physician to physician through the years. “Whose house?” was a simple way to phrase the question tactfully.
I mentioned to Dr. Larry Miller that, in fact, we had purchased a new home under construction, and made some modifications as it was being completed.
“Where?”
“Oh, down on the southwest side. Actually it’s not far from…"
It then came rushing to me all at once. Our new home in our nice new subdivision looked out on what remained of a cornfield and up toward a pleasant wooded hillside…
…where Dr. Larry Miller’s house looked down on us.
12.20.09
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