A Walk Through Time

by George Russell Knerr, III

Created: Summer 2010

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This document was written

for present and future generations of

George Russell Knerr III

in the hopes of imparting

some historical information

and words of wisdom.

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Interviewer: Russ, can you begin by telling me about your life history, particularly those parts that you either remember most or feel are the most important?

 Russ: I was born in 1953 in St. Louis, Missouri, son of a salesman and a housewife. My father’s name is George Russell Knerr Jr. I am George Russell Knerr the III. I go by the name Russ; when I was little my parents called me Rusty. My Dad was ‘old Russ’ and I was ‘young Russ’. My mother is Marilyn Knerr, but she goes by Marty. I have a sister who is two years older than me, Virginia(Ginny) Mayfield. My family lived at 428 Fieldcrest Drive in Webster Groves, Missouri for about 10 years. My dad had been transferred there with a company called AMP Inc., where he ended up working for 40 years.

 When I was a kid, my sister and I played with Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Erector sets and board games like Sorry, etc. In Webster Groves we went to the St. Louis Zoo alot and Grants Farm, which is where Budweiser kept their Clydesdales, and we went ice-skating. My grandparents lived in Coral Gables, Florida for awhile and we would visit them in the winter. I remember when I was somewhere around 5 years old, I bargained with my mom that I would quit sucking my thumb if she would give up smoking – and we did! My mom says I was a wonderful son and hardly ever a bit of trouble…

 Overall, my mother taught me how to respect women, be polite, and taught me manners. We moved to Camp Hill from St. Louis in the summer of 1962 before school started. I was in 4th grade and Ginny was in 6th. Camp Hill was really our home and where my parents grew up and met each other – in high school. We lived at 846 Wynnewood Road. I went to Schaffer Elementary School in Camp Hill. During high school (at Camp Hill High School) I had several interesting jobs for extra cash. I drove a medical supply truck all over the state of Pennsylvania. I also worked for awhile at a cemetery etching tombstones and actually attended funerals, helped to bury caskets and place tombstones. I lived in Camp Hill with my parents until I moved away to go to prep school when I was about 17 years old. I went to Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania for 11th and 12th grade. This was a prep school for college. It gave me an opportunity to be independent and make my own decisions (good and bad) at an early age. It was a challenging experience. The academics were a lot more rigorous than high school.

 I became interested in Spanish when I went to a prep school – during my last two years of high school. There I had a roommate, Mike Helffrich, whose family lived in Spain, and I went to visit him in Spain twice. I saw their lifestyle, which was very exciting, and made a lot of very interesting friends. That’s when I realized it was a lifestyle I could enjoy, and that’s how the whole thing started. I also received a recognition award in Spanish at the prep school and that was more incentive.

 I went to college at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania in 1971. I started out in Liberal Arts but that’s where I received my Bachelor's Degree in Spanish. During college I had made another trip to Spain for Spring Break. While there, I was arrested and thrown in prison for drunk and disorderly behavior for 14 days. I had to stay in prison until Mike Helffrich’s dad got a lawyer to get me out. The whole thing happened just around the time the Spanish Premier was assassinated (in the post-Franco period). During those days the police had a quota of people they had to arrest. We were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, and my friend Bill Potts had gotten belligerent. While in prison they shaved my head for fear of lice, and I remember the only book I had to read was Doc Savage: Man of Bronze “The Submarine Mystery.” I must say I read that book many more timesthan I wanted! In the end, I made it back safely, and then graduated from Bucknell in 1975. My first job out of college was at Sea Pines Plantation, a resort on Hilton Head Island in SouthCarolina. I worked on the Hospitality staff at the Front Desk and as a bartender for major golf tournaments at the resort. I worked there for 6 months. It was fun but I wanted to find a better job.

 I went back to Camp Hill where I did bartending at the local Camp Hill Country Club where we had been members for many years, and also tended bar for private parties. I got a job interview at Hershey’s Chocolates in Hershey Pennsylvania and then went to work for Hershey’s in Houston, Texas selling chocolate to grocery chains. One of the side benefits of the job was meeting other sales reps on Friday afternoon for a beer and to trade products, like chocolates for beer or Johnson & Johnson products (like aspirin). My sister Ginny used to like to come visit and eat chocolates out of the hall closet until she was sick to her stomach. I worked there for a couple of years. But I realized that’s not what I really wanted to be doing. I always wanted to work in international business in Latin America and my goal at that time was to go to an international business school. I decided to go to the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird). So I worked at Hershey's for a couple of years and then got accepted to Thunderbird in Phoenix, Arizona in the spring of 1979.

 And that’s how I met my wife, Lynn. I met her on my first day there. I offered to carry some boxes for her at the post office on campus and teased her about her last name (Casebeer). I remember there was something immediately about Lynn… there was some chemistry. She was kind of special. We had both been Spanish majors in college, and we were in the same program at Thunderbird. Lynn told me that when she first met me she was surprised because it was the first time she had ever met a Spanish major who wasn’t a total nerd and was handsome too! During the summer of 1979, we ended up going to Guadalajara together. We were there for a summer abroad program as part of the Thurnderbird international program. We attended the Universidad Autonoma down there, which was great; it was a lot of fun.

 When we first arrived in Guadalajara, we had looked at some houses to rent but we had not decided on one yet. So we were staying at a small hotel where some American medical students were staying as well. Lynn started feeling very, very sick. It started to get pretty bad, and we were worried, but we didn’t know any doctors, or even how to find a doctor for her there. I started asking some of the medical students down there about it, and they said, “It sounds like dysentery.” I remember this one student pulled out his medical books and said “Well, it might be this… it might be this… and oh it might be this… but if it’s THIS, botulism… well, you’re a goner!” You can imagine that was a very scary time for us, and trust me, since then, we’ve had our share of experiences with doctors and we’ve learned there are much better bedside manners than admitting things like that to a patient! But going through that experience meant we got to know each other very well, and quickly. Overall,we had a really good time down there in Guadalajara. It was a good experience for us. We enjoyed the culture, and we loved the house we lived in. We always thought it was really funny that there were dogs out on the entrance roofs at the second story level of every house barking at people in the street. We had a favorite restaurant where we got grilled steak and scallion onions.

 We got to know our next door neighbors as well, a local Mexican family. We met so many great people there - like our housemate, Amaury Gallisa, who was the best man in our wedding and who we still see from time to time. There was also a couple, Caroline and Bill Starbuck, who are friends of ours still to this day. Another person we met was Dave Ford, who was quite a character. We gave him the award at the end of the year for learning the most Spanish. He actually went down to Guadalajara speaking hardly any Spanish, but he would go everyday to the Central Market and listen to people. He would try to talk to them! All of us who went to Guadalajara knew some Spanish and we all got better while we were there, but he literally learned Spanish while he was there. It was amazing, and we still keep in touch with him.

 After Guadalajara, we went back to Phoenix. I finished my program one semester before Lynn did in December 1979. When I graduated we kind of left it that we would still talk to each other but since we knew we were both going to get jobs in international business, we didn't make any commitment. But then we kept talking to each other on the phone all the time. I realized it was ridiculous – we couldn’t be just long-distance friends – there was too much chemistry. Finally in February, I went to Colorado when Lynn was visiting her family. I proposed to her there in Estes Park. Lynn graduated on Friday, May 16th. We drove from Phoenix to California that day, and made it to the wedding license office with half an hour to spare before they closed for the weekend – and we needed the license for our wedding on Sunday! That was a big deal! We got married in Encinitas, California that Sunday, the 18th of May in 1980 (the same day Mt. Saint Helens erupted in Washington State).

 Lynn’s mom, Joan (Toni) Laverty lived in Encinitas at that time so Lynn drove out to California several times during that semester for wedding planning. We had our rehearsal dinner at the Sea Lodge in La Jolla, and as a side note, my grandmother, Ruth Martin, fell down and hurt her hip when she fell out the back of the double-sided elevator at the Lodge. That was pretty traumatic - but we managed to proceed with the dinner and had a nice time with everybody doing some pretty funny toasts. I remember one rather humorous toast about Lynn and I being like the “glue that holds the universe together” <>. Then the next day, we were married at St. Andrew’s Episcopalian Church in Encinitas, California. We had about 75 people at the wedding, followed by a reception at Lynn's mom’s house in Encinitas. We then had our honeymoon night at the Sea Lodge in La Jolla, and the next day, we went back to Lynn's mom’s house, packed up all the gifts, and took off to go back to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania!

 I was living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for work. So once we were married, we drove back to Harrisburg. My job was with an international company, but it was a domestic position. It was an electronic connector-type business, and it didn’t work out too well because my father was also employed at the same company (AMP Incorporated). It is a large multinational corporation, but there was a policy against nepotism. I wound up getting another job in Rochester, New York at Sykes Datatronix, so Lynn and I moved there.

 We did not live in Rochester very long though and then we moved to San Francisco. We hated the weather in Rochester. There was a lot of snow there, and I remember one day in particular that I made up my mind to leave. We had been in Rochester for almost two years and we were in an apartment that did not have garage parking. I went out to get the car and it was snowing again. It was kind of a slushy snow, and I was out there scraping off the windshield. It took me forever and then I opened the car door to get in.

 As soon as I did, a city bus sped by and I was completely sloshed with street snow and slush. It got all over the inside of the car too. I came stomping back into the apartment and said, “That’s it, we are leaving!” And really within weeks, I got transferred to a sales position with Sykes in their San Francisco office.

 I worked for a few companies in the computer industry after working for Sykes. One company was Grid Systems. They made the first “ruggedized” laptop computers, used by the military. (They are no longer around; purchased by Radio Shack and faded away). I also worked for a company called CCI (Computer Consoles Inc.). My sales territory included Hawaii, which sounded great until I realized that I got to see the airport, the taxis to my hotel, and conference rooms. After that, a company called Teradyne then hired me to do international work in South America selling telecommunication products to the countrywide telephone companies. My territory included Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and that was my first big breakthrough in the international world, which was very exciting. During that time, Lynn worked for several computer companies, including Apple Computer in Cupertino, California.

 We first lived in Menlo Park, and then we bought our first house in Cupertino. Our apartment in Menlo Park was a funky two bedroom on the second story of a small complex of three apartments. We had shag carpeting, two balconies, an unusual kitchen with a round, corner sink and a giant walk-in closet. We lived a few blocks from Stanford University and Stanford shopping center, and around the corner from the local psychic (somehow we just never made it there!). We lived there with our kittens, Blackie and Spot, who used to bring us, with great pride and prancing, flattened “road-kill frogs” and camellia buds as if they were the most magnificent gifts.

 When we made the decision to buy our house in Cupertino it was one of the biggest decisions we had ever made. I remember finding Lynn crying in our walk-in closet one day before closing because she was worried about the huge commitment! But we were both working at good jobs and making enough money to justify buying vs. renting. Our house at 945 Stendal Lane was an Eichler design, which is very open with lots of floor to ceiling windows, a central atrium, radiant heat flooring and a great backyard. It was very exciting to have a home of our own. We lived there for almost 8 years and had fun adding a pond with koi for our cats (and the neighborhood raccoons) and doing many other home improvement projects.

 So after Teradyne I received a really nice offer from a Computer Sciences Corporation. I eventually became a sales manager in Spain, Portugal, and France, and worked under the European office in London and that was very exciting. I was out of the country probably three weeks out of every month, and it was hard being away from Lynn and later when our baby daughter was born. While working for CSC, Lynn transferred to the San Diego, California sales office with Apple Computer. Since I could base my work from anywhere, the transfer worked out great. We moved into a house at 5157 Bristol Road in the neighborhood called Kensington near San Diego. We had bought it as a rental property a few years previously. We bought it from Lynn’s mom and it had belonged to her grandparents before that. Shortly after we moved in, we decided to remodel the house to add more space. A few weeks after we started the remodel, we discovered that Lynn was pregnant with our daughter Katy.

 Our daughter Katy was born on April 9, 1990 at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, California. It changed our lives for the better and brought such joy to us. Lynn went back to work when Katy was four months old, but I continued to work out of the house while trying to watch Katy. We eventually hired a nanny to help, especially with all the traveling I was doing. Later in 1991, when Katy was one year old, Lynn quit working at Apple. They were having cutbacks anyway, so Lynn got a severance package the day before we bought our new house in Del Mar at 2431 El Amigo Road. Although we loved the Bristol house, the remodel was very difficult. The contractor ripped us off and things weren’t finished properly. This made our decision to move to a neighborhood in a better school district a lot easier. Lynn’s mom lived in Del Mar and we really like the area. We found an ideal house only a few blocks from her. The house was not in great shape when we bought it but we’d just been through a remodel so we figured we could fix it up. The best part was the proximity to the beach and Lynn’s mom, as well as the 20 or so rose bushes in the big backyard.

 I had a melanoma in 1979 (right after I met Lynn) and since then had been trying to keep up with getting my moles checked. Many had been abnormal. In 1994 or so, I had a mole on my right cheek which didn’t meet any of the typical criteria for a melanoma, but had been bothering me when I shaved. So this made us pretty concerned. Lynn thought I ought to just get it removed. It turned out it was a malignant melanoma, which was removed with a process called Mohs surgery. This is when they remove the mole and temporarily cover the wound until the pathology report comes back that all the margins are clear, then they sew things back up or keep going if they didn’t get all the cancer. (They got everything the first time…supposedly).

 In 1996, right after Lynn and Katy had come over to join me in Spain for Thanksgiving, Lynn noticed a lump on the right side of my neck. It looked kind of odd, so I went in to get a biopsy right before we left to go to Texas to my sister’s house for Christmas. We were there maybe two days before Christmas when they called us and told us that we needed to come back fast and get surgery. We had a difficult time getting our minds around this, plus we didn’t want to wreck Christmas for everyone so we waited to tell the family. It was a pretty traumatic Christmas. That was the beginning of all of the medical issues that we have had to live with. The prognosis wasn’t good at that point. The doctor gave me a year to live.

 So that was the end of my work career, right around 1996. I retired at that time due to the accelerated rate of the melanoma. I had to have a surgical procedure called Radical Neck Dissection and then during a second recurrence in the same spot and a more extensive surgery, the doctor nicked my vocal cords. Then they had to take a lot of muscle out of my neck, so I couldn’t carry a briefcase anymore. Plus I was very weak, and at that time I had started chemotherapy too. I completed high dose Interferon for a whole year – I remember calling it “flu in a bottle” because every week, every time I would get the shot, I would be sick. So I was pretty much sick for a year. But I remember Katy helped me take the shots. The nurse trained her how to give the shots. Little did we know that Katy and Lynn would need to help me through so much in the years to come.

 Although it would take too long to mention everything here, suffice to say, it has been tough on all of us. But we have been able to keep going and make the most of the time we have had together. I have included a document in the back of this, which we call the “Readers Digest Version” of my medical history. It kind of gives you an idea of all I have been through medically.

 But I need to acknowledge the special people that have been more than helpful all along the way; such as my nephew, Lynn’s twin sister’s oldest son, Billy. Billy stayed with Katy for almost four months while I got treatments at the USC Medical Center. Because he was willing to stay with Katy, who was about 15 at the time, it allowed Lynn to come up and stay with me. That would have been impossible without his help, so he was a critical person along the way. He gave up three months of his life and moved out here from Colorado to stay and help care for Katy. He was so selfless and generous! Another selfless and generous person was Mike Price, who was with me during my Interleukin-2 treatment at UCSD Medical Center. Mike would stay overnight with me, giving Lynn a break. Lynn could then go home to be with Katy and could get some sleep. Mike was pretty amazing because the treatment I was going through was very tough. Most people wouldn’t be able to even stand there while I was going through it; it was very hard to watch. But Mike had nursing training and he could handle it; especially when there was hallucinating and I was trying to pull out IVs and stuff. It was intense, and he was with me at a point when most other people wouldn’t have been able to do so.

 There are various other family members and friends that have played an important role. Like our niece, Lynn’s twin sister’s daughter Lynnie, who gave up a lot of time to drive me to various appointments and treatments. She would give her time to be with Katy and be with me, like an expert caretaker. There was also our friend and neighbor, Paul, who drove me to many, many appointments. He helped Lynn during times when she could not get me in and out of bed or I was having a seizure. Lynn wouldn’t always know what to do, and Paul would come right over, or be there early to make sure we were okay.

 They’ve been there every step of the way. Plus members of the family were amazing – my mom’s positive attitude and her belief that “You will survive this…” made such a difference. She was also making sure we were alright financially. It was not easy trying to pay all those bills! Lynn’s mom has also done a lot for us financially, which we’ve always been grateful for. My dad was also always calling to make sure I was okay.

 Then there have been so many people that supported us in countless other ways: bringing over food,or just calling to make sure everything was okay. It has been an amazing experience. Of course I wouldn’t want to have to go through it again, but having those friends there made it possible for us to survive. We couldn’t have done it alone! Their generosity and kindness has been priceless. I will admit, at first it was hard to ask for their help. But over the years, at some point, it becameeasier. Although there were points when I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I have to ask for help again…” But our friends and family just continued to come through; it was pretty amazing. It made the bond between us all closer than ever. When you go through any kind of hardship, it seems to strengthen not only yourself, but other people. It seemed to strengthen our relationships because we went through something difficult together, and it does feel like they’ve all gone through this with me and Lynn.

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Russ, are there some times that you felt particularly alive in your life?

Yeah, that’s a good question. One time that stands out as feeling really alive was when I left my job at Hershey’s Chocolates and went to graduate school. I never really liked that job at Hershey’s and I was so excited about going to graduate school. Then once I got there, I met Lynn, and that was the icing on the cake. I felt very excited and so alive during that time because I was starting a new chapter in my life. I also felt very much alive after each surgery or treatment – hopeful of having beaten the melanoma again. I also really enjoyed bike riding. I used to love riding road bikes, and even did five or six Century rides.

 Is a Century ride when you bike for 100 straight miles, in one day?

Right. It takes about 8 hours to do. I was doing them in the Santa Cruz Mountains, between San Jose, California and the city of Santa Cruz.

 So you are not only riding for 100 miles, but 100 miles up and down in the mountains?

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Oh, and I liked to play golf. That was a hobby. I played golf even when I was young. My parents were members at the Camp Hill Country Club in Pennsylvania a few blocks from our home. I played Little League baseball with my dad too. My dad was the baseball coach. It was stressful because it was hard to live up to his expectations as the coach. Later I was a coach for Katy’s girls’ softball team. I was effective as a coach in a different way than my dad. I didn’t have all my vocal cords then because of the surgery, so I had very little voice when I was coaching. That meant I couldn’t yell for the girls’ attention. I would have to get Katy to call all the girls over to tell them something. But that was actually pretty good. It was a real team effort because they would actually have to get quiet and really listen to what I was saying. The softball was also a big bonding experience for Katy and me. I tried to attend all of her games, even when I was on chemotherapy. It was that important to me.

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What would you say are the most important roles you have played in your life?

The role of a husband and father, definitely. I’ve also been lucky enough to mentor a lot of people. Some people have said they have learned from me and grown from me – and I didn’t even realize it. This illness has given Lynn and me some very true friendships too. Going through something like this, and having friends that go through this with you, the friendships become even more sincere. And then at the UCSD (University of California San Diego) Melanoma Support Group, there were people that said learning about my illness helped them. Like the other day, a lady at the group who has Stage IV Melanoma said she thought she was a goner. But when she heard about me having been in Stage IV for seven years, she thought, “Well… maybe there is a chance for me too.” She said she left feeling very hopeful.

 Then I worked in a computer lab at Katy’s school (Del Mar Hills Academy of Arts and Sciences,formerly known as Del Mar Hills Elementary School) and did PTA there. People there still seem to remember me even though Katy hasn’t been at that elementary school for years. So it seemed that I made some impression while I was there…

 Do you have a sense of what it is about you that seemed to make an impression on people?

I just sincerely liked helping, and liked the kids at the school, and it reflects back on me I guess.People also say I have a calming influence. I am definitely a very mellow guy. Doctors have even worried because my heart rate is like 45 all the time. Nurses have asked, “Oh, are you a marathon runner?” Of course I haven’t been able to do that in 16 years, but I am just a very low-key person. I guess my personality gives people a quiet place to be.

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Are there specific things that you would want your family to know about you or things you want them to remember?

Just that I've seen myself as an honest person, and a kind person. Someone who tries to do his best.I always tried to be honest and fair in my sales with customers, and I tried to consider the needs of the other person. I even left one job because I didn’t feel like the product was good enough for my customers. The engineers were trying to sell me on the product, but I found out it didn’t work as advertised. I was supposed to sell that product in Spain, and it just felt unethical. Sometimes I think the stress of selling that product contributed to this cancer. It was very stressful to not be able to trust the company you work for. This happened to coincide with the cancer onset and I quit working for that company. It felt like a relief to quit that job anyway. Looking back, going through times like that built my strength of character. I tried to carry that into my marriage, into raising our daughter, Katy, as well as dealing with my illness.

Can you tell me some more about your daughter Katy?

Well, first I should mention that her birth was predicted. Lynn and I went to a fortune teller, and she said, “I see a ‘baby being’ in the future.” Lynn and I had been married about 10 years, and we were at a point where we thought, “If we're gonna have kids, we should do it now” because we were both getting older. But we were going back and forth on it. So hearing this fortune teller say that got us both thinking! And then, about a year later, Lynn was pregnant with Katy. So that was pretty amazing; not that I always believe in that stuff, but the prophecy was fulfilled.

 Overall, Katy and I have a very special connection. A very fun thing that was important in terms of bonding with Katy was participation in the Indian Princesses. The organization was sponsored by the YMCA, and involved alot of camping out. We went to places like Camp Fox on Catalina Island and Camp Mataguay near Warner Springs. It was very fun and involved primitive camping out. We had a tribe of about 15 dads and daughters from Del Mar, along with approximately 100 tribes from all over San Diego County, and no moms were allowed. I’m sure they wanted to be flies on the tent walls to hear the conversations, but it was just for dads and their daughters. Indian Princesses was a little different than Girl Scouts because we were allowed to drink on those outings, whereas Girl Scouts strictly prohibited drinking. Plus we weren’t required to have any special training, whereas the Girl Scouts required rigorous training. (Katy also did six years of Girl Scouts – Lynn was the leader of their troop). It was very fun, and it was a way to meet other friends for Katy, and I was able to meet other dads.

 I still have some very good friends from that group. We bonded in setting up the campsites, cooking meals, and telling stories – especially at the campfire after the girls went to bed. Katy and I did that for about five years. Our tribe’s name was Shoshone, and my name in the tribe was Running Dog. Katy’s tribal name was Eagle Eye - because she saw everything. One of our friends was named was Talking Bull, so it all was a lot of fun.

Sounds like you really cherished that time, and were there other shared interests between you and Katy?

Yes, Katy and I share an interest in music, and we both play guitar. She plays electric guitar, I play classical guitar but I really like guitar and music. We both really like to have dogs around too. I still remember when Katy was maybe 5 years old, she watched the 101 Dalmatians movie. Afterward she said, “Someday I am going to go live on a farm with dad and have 100 dogs, and then mom, you can live next door and come visit!”

Katy had one favorite dog as she was growing up - Jake. He was a Labrador Retriever mix. Jake was Katy’s favorite dog, but overall, the family’s favorite was Sparky. Sparky was the first dog we had after Katy was born. There were a lot of dogs available at that time because Operation Desert Storm had just begun. I remember we went to the dog pound to look for a good dog, and Sparky walked up to Katy and licked her on the face. Both Lynn and I thought, “Well, this is the dog we want!” She ended up being a great dog. Katy and I are also introspective and calm. I should also say that she is definitely a good mom. If you would have asked me six months ago if Katy was a good mom, I am not sure what my answer would have been. But I can say confidently now that she has turned out to be a great mom. Now it just seems natural for her.

And do you have a sense that in some way you’ll always be with Katy?

Yes, because she’ll never move out of the house. <> But seriously, I just sense that very strong connection between us whether it's in the house or out of the house. I don’t know what it will look like when she does finally move out of our house, but Ialways sense there will be a very close connection between us. You see, growing up Katy became a very important motivator for me in this fight with cancer. I would set goals, like wanting to see her graduate from elementary school. I wanted to see her get through junior high; all the major milestones. I wanted to be around for those moments and so in a way, she kind of pulled me through this; she got me through a lot of tough situations.

And now I have been able to see one of the milestones I never expected with Katy – seeing my granddaughter! Sixteen years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer, they told me I would have one year to live. So I didn’t expect to see Katy grow up and become a mom herself. But she just had our first grandchild; baby Charlotte Russell Hernandez - born on May 6, 2010. She’s five months old now, and it's just been an amazing thing. She can even recognize her Pop-Pop (that’s what Katy called my Dad and what my granddaughter will call me) and smile, it is so much fun! Sometimes itmay seem like the timing wasn’t the best for Katy, and we weren’t sure about all the circumstances, but it has just been great. Charlie, as she is called, has just been a wonderful gift to us. Now she gives me a reason to survive even longer.

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Do you have hopes and dreams for your loved ones in the future?

I hope they have good health. I would also want them to be financially secure. I hope they can do the things that they would like to do without being trapped by circumstances like money, or a lack of education, or bad choices.

I just want them to develop into the best they can be. And I hope they have good friends, and the means to feel accomplished in school or in a career. I hope they have good, happy relationships too. Being able to share their lives with people they love, and being taken care of. I also think it is important to get the right education to be able to do what you want in life. Hopefully they have a job that they really like and then grow from there into who they are and what they want to do. It is important to find a job that's not only financially rewarding, but can be fun. Hopefully you find a combination of those two so that your work can be rewarding in both ways and can keep your momentum up. Like Lynn and I, we liked our jobs, and the people we worked with, so we had some really good experiences in workplace. But we were frugal and saved money, and we were careful about what we did with our money. But because we had jobs that paid pretty well, we were able to take some vacations and travel and do some things that we wanted to do. Plus you never know when you're going to have something like a major illness or an accident. So you need back-up to be financially safe and sound. We never really got credit card bills, and we didn't live on our credit card. Lynn and I joke that “Credit cards are not your friends!”

How did you learn those important lessons about money?

I remember having a conversation with my father as a kid. We were driving in the car and one of our neighbors drove by in a really nice car. I said, “Why can’t we have a car like that Dad?” He said, “Well, we can have a car like that, we could have any car we wanted.” I didn’t understand it at the time, but what he was trying to say was that we could have any car we wanted if we bought it on credit. But he wanted to buy a car with cash because he believed that if you save up for something and buy it with cash, you own it. If you buy it on credit, the bank owns you. And if you are smart with money, you can do the things you want to do. Like we always wanted to go to England and Ireland so we took Katy with us a few years ago and did it. It was a hard trip for us financially and physically for me but we were able to do it, and it was an amazing trip. I'm not sure Katy really liked it that well, because she was a teenager at the time. But we would never have been able to do any of those things if we hadn't saved and been prepared.

What was so memorable for you about that trip?

My ancestors are from Wales so we spent a lot of time trying to look in the registry to find out about them. We wanted to know more about where they were from - but we didn’t have much success. We were searching for some very common names like Williams and Davies. That was the first time we really got interested in our past and genealogy. We took Katy and our youngest nephew, Jamie, with us. He is Lynn’s twin sister's youngest child and he's just the nicest kid. I remember we actually went to a place near Wales that had a castle called the Goodrich Castle - Jamie’s last name was Goodrich. We met a friend of ours there who lived in Wales, Marjorie Getgood, who Lynn’s mom had taught with in Costa Rica over 35 years before. She met us at this castle for just a few hours and we had dinner with her. It was very cool; we learned a little bit of history about the area, and since she was from Wales she could tell us about things we wouldn’t have otherwise learned. Plus it was fun to go and pretend that we were actually part of the very famous family lineage of Goodrich’s in the Goodrich Castle.

It was also great because I had worked in England for awhile and the company I worked for,Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), had headquarters in London. So it was nice to show the family where I worked and to see the sights of London together. It was just fun!

You seem to have a unique perspective of someone who has worked in different parts of the world. It seems as though you understand how the world is interconnected. More so than people who have never worked abroad, or who don’t speak other languages. For some people, it's very scary to go to the other parts of the world - but you don't seem to have that fear?

Oh, it was scary actually, especially at first. When I initially got my international position at Teradyne my first trip was to Medellin, Colombia, which is a scary place to begin with. It was the drug capital of the world at that time, and two days after I was there, there was a bombing in the parking lot of the hotel where I had stayed. The mayor of Medellin was assassinated. So I never went back to Colombia. Instead I chose to go to Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. They were all much friendlier places and I got to know people there. I developed relationships there that were much longer lasting and much more rewarding and I still maintain those to this day.

And do you see those relationships as being part of the key in overcoming any fear of traveling or working abroad?

Oh, absolutely. Once you have friends there, it can feel like “home.” Maybe home is a stretch to say,but it feels like you're connected there… you have friends there. Plus knowing the language and being fairly aware of the culture makes a difference too. In graduate school, they really focused on learning the cultural issues so that when you did business in a foreign country, you were aware of things to do or not do. I always remember one time when I went to Brazil to give a major presentation. In Brazil they speak Portuguese; they don’t speak Spanish. But I still went to Brazil, and I did my best to give this major presentation to a huge group of people in Portuguese.

That sounds very brave considering you didn’t know the language! How did you overcome your fear in that case?

Well, I was definitely shaking in my boots. I remember being very scared when I was doing it and I was stumbling over my words. But in the end, they gave me a standing ovation! They really appreciated my attempt at presenting in their language. I could have used a translator for it, but I think they saw that I had taken the extra step to learn their language as best I could. I can see why they applauded you! You were making the extra effort, and you were thinking about their needs above your own, and that doesn't happen very often. Yeah, I was always gung-ho about putting my training to good use. And there I had the opportunity to really use my international business degree, so I wanted to do the best I could with it. In all of that I learned one basic lesson. If you’re trying to do a job, just do it as well as you can. You know, just do it with 110%. When you do it, do it and excel. And I hope I've imparted that to Katy to some degree. I learned it from my father, so I hope it continues to get passed down. We came from a very strict German family and I think that principle ran through the entire family.

I also learned the value of following your passion. I know it can be hard sometimes, and it is important to remember that you don’t always succeed at everything the first time around. You just have to keep trying. I remember one good thing I learned from my job at Hershey’s chocolates was hearing about the founder - Milton Hershey. Milton was by all accounts a failure until he was about 56 years old. Can you believe he didn’t start Hershey until he was 56? Now it is a hugely successful corporation, but wouldn’t have been if he had given up. You can only lose if you don’t try!

So I guess you just have to keep hope, even when times are tough. It’s good to reach out to people who can help along the way too. Being connected to people is so important. With Lynn and me, it could have been easy to sort of pull away from society and people, but instead we found that by being more open and willing to build friendships – we gained a lot. The honor of having those friendships has meant so much to us. Like Amaury, who we went to graduate school with, and he was our best man at our wedding; he is still a very dear friend of ours.

Finding the right person to spend the rest of your life with is also really important. Somebody you can have a strong commitment to, somebody to love, and be very near and dear to your heart. Lynn and I have had such a strong connection for a long time. When we renewed our vows this year in celebration of our 30 years together, I really think that re-emphasized it to us. I mean, sometimes you go through life and you don’t really think about, “Wow, we’ve been together a long time!” But the vow ceremony made us kind of re-think it all and be grateful. So I hope that Katy and everybody else who reads this will have that kind of a relationship in their life because it's so critical.

________

Are there any words or perhaps even instructions that you would like to offer your family to help

prepare them for the future?

I'm not a good long-term planner and I wish that Katy would learn to be more of a planner than I was. I was reflecting back on my life and realized I kind of got here without a lot of planning. I found my success in spite of it, and I hope she would learn to plan. It's never too late to start planning! But I do see in Katy a trait that Lynn and I both have, maybe developed over the years of dealing with my illness, which is flexibility and adaptability. We have both been able to just re-adjust to so many things.

I also wish I learned how to be more assertive; not allowing people to push me around. I wish I’d done more of that. I would have liked to have learned how to defend myself at a young age. Not just for the sake of defending myself, but to have a sense of confidence where I could really deal with other people. I would have liked to be more confident with other people. I never learned that. It’s not that I'm scared of other people, it’s not that at all, but I could have been more confident, you know, just in everyday transactions with people.

So I wish I had been more assertive at some level; being able to push back when someone is being very assertive with you. I just think it gives an extra level of confidence that would have been nice to have. I think you can learn that in martial arts; so I would like to see the girls, especially Charlie, as she gets older, learn martial arts. It would be great to have a structured discipline that instills confidence and patience.

But in the end, I also think it is important to be kind and help other people. Both Lynn and I are like that. It is good to not think so much about yourself, but think about somebody else. Plus doing so usually turns out to be great for you because your kindness gets returned to you!

Conclusion:

I’d like to thank my kind audience for taking the time to read these memoirs. I hope you find them both constructive and entertaining. I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane.

______________________________

Interviews conducted by Lori Montross, Ph.D.

Psychologist

San Diego Hospice and

Institute for Palliative Medicine

Recordings taken on July 2, July 9, July 29, August 4,

August 25 and September 1, 2010

---------------------------------

APPENDICES

Russ’s Trivia Section:

I like to eat peanut butter and jelly toast for breakfast.

It seems like I have always had a dog.

My favorite meal is Swiss Steak (made by my Mom) or Pork and Sauerkraut.

I used to eat almost a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting (a long time ago!).

I always wanted to walk the Appalachian Trail and to see Scandanavia.

One of my favorite odd music characters is Tom Waits.

I like birds and bird watching.

I’m always humming the song that has been stuck in my head for more than 30 years. That song is

“More Than A Feeling” by Boston.

I decided to have a Mohawk when Katy cut her hair into a Mohawk (I let her do mine).

I used to let Katy chew on my chin when she was a baby.

I proclaimed that our family bird is the crow (long story – note below**).

Katy and I used to build sculptures out of garage junk.

My first car was a Buick stationwagon.

When I was growing up our family dog, Tessie, used to chew gum and laid on the glass kitchen table

to get cool in the summer.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.

My favorite foreign city is Buenos Aires, Argentina; domestically it is San Francisco, CA.

Wranglers are my favorite jeans.

** In December of 2003, I asked Lynn what she wanted for Christmas. She told me that all she wanted was something that every time she looked at it, she would think of me and smile. This is the picture I gave her. (I think she thought I’d give her a little statue or something). I figured since we had a lot of crows around our house, this would work. This postcard I made Lynn is still on our fridge to this day. (Katy now sports a tattoo of our family bird or her right arm).

______________________________________ 

MY MEDICAL ROAD

Date Diagnosis Treatment

10/1979 Malignant Melanoma, abdomen

Breslow depth unknown

- Wide excision

10/1994 Malignant Melanoma, right cheek

Breslow depth 0.97 mm

- Wide excision

01/1997 Malignant Melanoma, right neck

Lymph nodes

- Radical neck dissection, Green Hospital, La

Jolla

- High dose Interferon A (04/1997 – 03/1998)

01/1997 Malignant Melanoma, right calf

Breslow depth 0.93 mm

- Wide excision

- Interferon A (same as above)

05/1999 Recurrent Melanoma

Right neck, carotid artery

Right vocal cord paralysis

- Radical resection

- Radiation therapy

- Chemo (Vinblastin, Carboplatin)

- 06/1999 – 01/2000

- High Dose Interferon A

- 01/2000 – 09/2000

- Thyroplasty to medialize vocal cord, UCSD

Medical Center, San Diego CA

10/1999 Malignant Melanoma, left upper

arm

Breslow depth 0.39 mm

- Wide excision

09/2000 Malignant Melanoma, upper back

Breslow depth 0.28 mm

- Wide excision

09/2000 Malignant Melanoma, right arm

Breslow depth 0.49 mm

- Wide excision

09/2000 Malignant Melanoma, right chest

In Situ

- Wide excision

12/2000 Malignant Melanoma, left thigh

Breslow depth 0.2 mm

- Wide excision

08/2001 Metastasis to liver (1.0 cm) and

right femur (3.0 cm)

RF Ablation - Liver

- 09-02-01

Radiation – right femur

- 09-26-2001 – 10-15-2001

Chemo (Tamoxifen, Temodar,

Vinblastin, Carboplatin)

- 09/2001 – 03/2002

03/2002 - Clinical trial, Dendritic Cell Vaccine

Hoag Cancer Center, Newport Beach CA

03/2003 Brain mets (2)

Liver mets (6)

Pelvic floor mass (3.0 cm)

- Gamma Knife, Scripps Hospital, La Jolla CA,

03-21-2003

- Temodar

05/2003 Brain mets (2)

Liver mets (8), increasing in size

Pelvic floor mass (4.3 cm)

- Gamma Knife, Scripps Hospital, La Jolla CA,

05-20-2003

- Temodar

10/2002 Right distal femur (5.5 cm) / fracture

Right medial thigh mass

- Radical excision, right distal femur

- Total knee replacement, right knee

- Radical excision, right thigh

Green Hospital, La Jolla CA 10-11-2002

08/2003 Liver mets (14)

08/2004 Left skull met (1.4 cm)

09/2004 Brain met (1) - Gamma Knife, Scripps Hospital, La Jolla CA,

09-21-2004

10/2004 Tumor, left Iliac wing (4 cm)

Left skull met (3.0 cm)

Subcutaneous tumors, left chest

and left flank

- Radiation – left hip , Scripps Hospital, La Jolla

CA

10-12-2004 – 10-29-2004

- Thalidomide

10-15-2004 – 12-25-2004

12/2004 Onset of intestinal bleeding, anemia

Pelvic floor mass (5.0 cm)

01/2005 Small bowel mets (3) - Small Bowel Resection, Scripps Hospital, La

Jolla CA, 01-21-05

06/2005 Subcutaneous tumors, left chest

(8 cm) and left flank (10 cm)

- Resection, Scripps Hospital, La Jolla CA,

06-20-05

10/2005 Systemic treatment required.

Monitored lesions included skull,

liver, mesenteric lesions, pelvic floor

mass

High dose Interleukin II, USC Norris Cancer

Center, Los Angeles CA 10/2005 – 12/2005

- 30% shrinkage systemically

03/2006 Diagnosed with Hepatitis-C, Gtype

1B

Viral count – 92,300 as of

12/15/2007

None

02/2007 Tumor, left iliac wing (5.6 cm),

Penetrated bone cortex

Resection of tumor, repaired with bone cement

4/2007 Left skull bony lesion and

mesenteric abdominal lesions

increasing in size

High dose Interleukin II, UCSD (unsuccessful)

7/2007 Spontaneous remission of Hepatitis-

C

Viral count < 10 IU/mL as of

07-17-07

8/2007 Left skull bony lesion and

mesenteric abdominal lesions still

increasing in size

Chemo (Carbo-Taxol)

12/2007 Left skull bony lesion onset of

symptoms

Radiation therapy (unsuccessful)

03/2008 Regrowth of parietal skull tumor Left Parietal Lobe Craniectomy, UCSD Thornton,

La Jolla CA 03-26-08

04/2008 Brain seizures, confusion, slow

speech

Treated with Keppra, resolved

Date Diagnosis Treatment

06/2008 Re-growth of iliac tumor Chemo (Carbo-Taxol-Avastin)

10/2008 Iliac tumor non-responsive to chemo Left iliac tumor resection & packing with bone

cement, Mercy Hospital, San Diego CA

10/2008 Right knee pain from previous

replacement

Right total knee revision, Mercy Hospital, San

Diego CA

01/2009 Growth in mesenteric tumors High dose IL-2 treatments, 01-2009 thru

03-2009

02/2009 Brain tumors (2), right parietal & left

frontal lobe

Treated with Trilogy stereotactic radiation, UCSD

Thornton, La Jolla CA, 02-2009 (unsuccessful)

07/2009 Hospitalization at UCSD Thornton

for severe seizures caused by regrowth

of right parietal lobe tumor

Went on Hospice for care after returning home

07/15/09 Right parietal brain tumor causing

severe seizures and left side

paralysis

Treated with Gamma Knife, Scripps Hospital, La

Jolla CA

07/2009 –

12/2009

Ongoing seizure activity Treated with Keppra, Topamax and Decadron

11/2009 Re-growth of left iliac tumor causing

pain

Treated with CyberKnife to shrink tumors,

Scripps, Vista CA

12/2009 Performed osteoplasty to fill shrunken tumors

with bone cement, UCSD Thornton, La Jolla CA

04/2010 New brain tumor, left gyrus Treated with Gamma Knife, Scripps Hospital, La

Jolla CA

04/2010 New tumor left superior pubic ramus Treated with CyberKnife to shrink tumors,

Scripps, Vista CA

04/2010 New tumor left iliac wing Temodar (three months)

08/30/10 Tumor growth: hip and pubic ramus Peg Interferon – low dose to treat HepC in hopes

of rebuilding immune system to fight melanoma

11/05/10 HepC in remission; tumor in hip continues to grow; Hospice will help Russ focus on quality

of life and pain control.

4/15/2011 Russ moves on from this world after a long battle.