When I worked for Addie McMenamin at the alumni office in the late '50s and early '60s, Occidental College was featured in Time magazine.  The headline of the story was "The Little Giant."  John promptly pointed out that was an oxy=moron.

Although I moved to Indiana after graduation, I never lost touch with Addie and John, who convinced me finally to stop calling him "Dr. McMenamin."  We exchanged Christmas greetings through the years, and, whenever we visited my daughter in Oceanside, we would get together, originally at their home but later at Mimi's.  It was a special delight for me to extend the membership in my small branch of the McMenamin Fan Club to include my husband, daughter, and son-in-law.  At my 50th Oxy reunion in 2012, I shared photos from our latest brunch at Mimi's with the biology majors and passed on to them the messages John had entrusted to me.  

What a rich and beautiful life he lived, always with a twinkle and a quip.  He made the world a better place.  I will miss him until the day I die.

 

Being the sons of a biologist meant that Stu and I did not have the traditional dogs or cats as pets.  Instead, we had a chuckwalla (named, surprisingly enough, Chuck), two kangaroo rats (Red and Rocky), an Antelope Valley ground squirrel (named Q.T., short for Quick Turn), a Belding’s ground squirrel (named Petie, short for Petronius) and a desert tortoise (named Basil Metabolism)

We always loved to take Chuck outside to mosey around the front lawn eating dandelion flowers.  Basil spent his summers wandering around Norris Hall of Science at Oxy, and spent his winters somewhere in our back yard.

The two ground squirrels were very tame, being born at Oxy.  Q.T.’s mother came from a trip to Paiute Butte east of Lancaster (as did Red and Rocky).  Petie’s mother came from the Oxy research station just outside Tioga Pass. 

Petie had two siblings, the “twins,” who were taken care of by the biology secretary at the time.  Once when she went on vacation, John brought them home so we could care for them.  John said that she left only one important instruction, namely that they could not miss seeing George of the Jungle.  We didn’t believe him, but the next time it was on, we set their cage on a table near the T.V.  The minute the George of the Jungle theme song came on, both squirrels stood up and held on to the front of the cage and watched the entire show, barely moving.  Unbelievable.

Since Petie was from such a high elevation, each fall he would bulk up, move his cotton nest from the corner of his cage to his running wheel, lower his body temperature and go into hibernation.  He was the perfect pet to care for during the winter.  A couple of winters, there was a hot spell in January or February.  Since Petie’s cage was in an enclosed porch, the heat made him think that it was time to come out of hibernation.  But he only made it part way out.  He was still fat and cold to the touch.  These times, I let the neighborhood kids hold him.  When they asked why he was so cold, I told him that we keep him in the freezer during the winter.

John was a great fan of palindromes.  As his first palindromic year, 1991, approached, he set a goal to live at least until a second palindromic year, 2002, for a number of reasons.  First, naturally, was that 2002 is a palindrome.  Second was that the sum or his age and that of dear friend Tim Sanders (also born on April 1) would be more than 150.  Third, in the late 1980s it was predicted that 2002 would be the year that Social Security expenditures would exceed revenues (after which it would be all downhill).  In 2002 when celebrating his success on living in two palindromic years, John remarked how lucky we all were, since anyone born after than 1991 would have to live for at least 110 years to live in two palindromic years.

One of John’s favorite palindromes came from Jack Smith, a columnist in the Los Angeles Times, who wrote about the palindromic Yreka Bakery, whose sign was a triangle with each letter in “Yreka” being successively larger, the B being the largest letter, and the letters in “akery” being successively smaller.  After the bakery closed, a subsequent business in its location was the Yrella Gallery, also a palindrome, whose sign was triangular in the tradition of the Yreka Bakery.

In a conversation with John a while back, he was commenting on the vast amount of information now at anyone’s fingertips through the internet.  One of the examples he used was that the Yreka article on Wikipedia quotes Mark Twain’s belief that Yreka was accidentally named when a newly painted canvas sign with the word BAKERY on it was stretched out to dry, and a stranger read it from behind, seeing all the letters but the B, and thus assumed that the town’s name was YREKA, a name that stuck.  Wikipedia also discusses the Palindromic nature of the Yreka Bakery and Yrella Gallery, and says that an ad for the bakery in 1863 was “spell Yreka Bakery backwards and you will know where to get a good loaf of bread.”

John loved stuff like this.

One of John’s (and Addie’s) favorite journalists (along with Charles Kuralt) was Los Angeles Times journalist Jack Smith.  In response to a column in 1974 in which Smith mused on his recent observation of a butterfly attacking a bird, John wrote a letter containing the following:

For more than forty years I have retained a vivid boyhood memory of the sight of a butterfly "attacking" a bird…I talked to my colleague, Dr. Patrick H. Wells, who is currently studying the life history and behavior of monarch butterflies.  He reports that in the breeding season a stimulated male will attempt to mate with any available female by pouncing on her in flight.  If no female is available, however, the contact may be made with another moving object such as a falling leaf.

With this information in mind, I suggest the hypothesis that the reported interactions of butterflies and birds are isolated incidents of misplaced amorous behavior by male butterflies.

Since interest in this phenomenon results largely from our anthropomorphic judgment that it is irrational for butterflies to chase birds, we could carry the anthropomorphism to an extremity by musing on the bird’s reaction to the encounter.  Arriving back at the flock, my blackbird might have said "You’ll never believe what happened to me as I was flying over Hollywood today.  A hyper-sexed butterfly tried to rape me!”

Jack Smith responded with the following note to John:

Thank you for your thoughts on butterflies chasing birds.  I am persuaded that your theory is correct—that what we have here is misplaced amorous behavior. 

Having been guilty of misplaced amorous behavior on a few occasions myself, I’m surprised that I didn’t think of it first. 

I don’t know whether I dare impose another butterfly-bird column on the patient readers, but I am going to keep the McMenamin hypotheses close at hand, in case.

Jack Smith did in fact write another column, first quoting much of John’s letter, then a letter from Robert Michael Pyle from Yale, who suggested that his observation of an Admiral butterfly attacking a gull could be a “courtship chase.”  The column ended with the following:

I suppose it's a controversy that may rage on quietly for decades in the scientific journals.  As far as I’m concerned, though, the evidence is in.  McMenamin, Wells and Pyle can call it what they like.  I call it rape.

And like so much of what we learn from scientific observation, it just proves what we’ve known all along.  A gull can’t be too careful.

Given John's love of puns and his sense of humor, he absolutely loved this.
     

My grandfather as all of you well know was an amazing person.  I was always greeted with great enthusiasm, a sparkle and great big grin.  The thing that amazed me the most was his constant drive to learn and perfect new things, and they say you cant teach an old dog new tricks, well who ever said that never met my grandfather. To pinpoint one exact memory or story is difficult for me as there are so many, but he has passed on some very important lessons.
1) Life is made of moments- live every one of them
2) Do not be afraid to try new things
3) Be an observer, appreciator, and adventurer of nature
4) Appreciate those you love and who love you
My grandfather set the standard for how to live life to its fullest and he set the bar high.  

John always enjoyed telling the story of the time he was on a live, local TV science show for children.  He showed and discussed several types of sea creatures, such as a star fish and a sea urchin.  When he picked up the abalone, the show's hostess said "You all know what this is boys and girls--I'm sure that you've all had a bologna sandwich." 

This made John speechless, which was hard to do.

It all started when John "decided" to give up his car and stop driving.  Each weekend we would go out to get supplies.  He preferred CostCo for some things, Frazier Farms for others, and Ralphs for the final items.  One day when we were planning our excursion, John said "you know, I've never been to In-and-Out Burger."  And that was the start.  We proceeded to lunch at In-and-Out serveral times, Subway, Wendys, Carl's Jr, MacDonalds, and El Pollo loco.  His favorite meal:  Cheese buger with onions from In-and-Out, sweet potato fries from Carl's, and root beer from anywhere.