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fellow named Joel Alstein of whom we are extremely fond.
He is an electronic engineer, who, years ago, began
writing papers for scientists who developed things and
couldn't write them in terms that the public could understand.
He could do anything, even write a technical paper or he can
take a technical subject and put it in everyday language.
That':s been his forte, but he's also the public relations man
for a big Japanese computer firm.
P: What does Nancy do?
L: Nancy is an assistant professor of statistics in Harvard College,
that's the undergraduate part of Harvard. I believe it's
associate bio-statistician in the Harvard School of Public
Health, and has retained her maiden name, it's Dr. Nan McKenzie
Laird, she took it back after her divorce.
P: Angus, as you look back over your long and very rich life, do
you have any regrets?
L: No, I've thought about it a good many times. I know of one
regret. I was a substitute teacher when I was still in
highschool. It was out on this turpentine place that my father
owned and I was sent out there to teach the school while the
teacher was having an operation. There was a little girl in
school who was eating a raw sweet potato and she would keep
gnawing on it. I'd ask her to put it up, and finally I told
her to throw it out the window, and she threw it out the window
and cried. And I wasn't old enough or sensitive enough, I was
about seventeen years old, to know that that girl was hungry.
I should have recessed the school and gone over to the commissary
and gotten something and fed her. That's one of the regrets in
my life. There are a few things I would have done differently,
I guess. I might have felt a little bit differently about
the university when I left if I'd had a more balanced view of
things. I didn't like the way Tigert ran the university. In
four years we didn't have a faculty meeting there, and I was one
that thought there should be greater faculty participation in
the administration of a university. I have some thoughts about
that and some knowledge about some of those things. You couldn't
see a copy of the budget on campus; it just wasn't allowed. During
the war years I could see the budget up here. I could see it
very easily in two or three places. I'd go to the Board of
Control office. I could go to the state library and see copies
of the budget at the universities. And saw who got raises and