One
day in August of 1936 Katie invited me to go with her on some
errands downtown. As we were driving, she turned to me and said,
"Fred, I've noticed that you are very quiet lately. Is
something wrong?"
I said "Yes, I realize that I have been quiet. I've
been very depressed for the past week or so. I know that in a
few more weeks I am starting my third year at Western and I have
no interest in going back to school. I can't imagine why
I feel this way."
"Well, if you promise not to laugh at me, I can tell you
how you can rid yourself of that feeling."
"I can guess. You will want me to go to a fortune teller."
"Fred, I know you don't believe in such things, but I promise
you that even if you pay no attention to what she says, when
you leave her house your depression will be gone."
I turned to her and said, "Now that in itself would be a
good scientific experiment. I would be willing to see if that
is really true."
A few days later she called to say
that she had made an appointment for me to have a card reading
with a Mrs. Smithson. When the time came, she picked me up and
we drove to the Smithson house in one of the poorer neighborhoods
of Kalamazoo. When we knocked, Mrs. Smithson greeted us at the
door. She asked Katie to take a seat in her living room and escorted
me through a beaded drape into her reading room. There she seated
me at a small table no more than twenty inches square on which
was a deck of playing cards. She took a seat at the table immediately
to my right. and without further ado, began talking as she placed
each card face up on the table. She told me:
"You like to do everything exactly
right. You are not pleased unless everything is 'just so.' "
Then as she continued to lay down each card she spoke rapidly
about things I would encounter in my life and suddenly I realized
that I could not possibly remember all that she was saying and
I would need to concentrate to remember anything that seemed
important. She continued
"You will live to a relatively
old age." "You will lose someone close to you in your
family. This is not someone living in the same house with you."
Another card ·····"You
will lose someone very near and dear to you. It is an accident
- not a car accident but something very violent. I see everything
thrown in every direction. Like a building explosion. And you
are right there - right where it happens. I don't understand
why you are not killed." Another card ·····"You
will work on a new kind of power - like diesel power - but they
haven't invented this yet." Another card ·····"You
will suffer a great loss. I can't tell what it is but someday
you will understand what I mean." "You will spend much
of your life in the East - but not in the Far East."
There were so many more things that she told me that I could
never remember afterward. She went through the whole deck or
at least most of it. To say the least, I was stunned. I thanked
her and we left. As we got into the car, Katie asked "Well,
Fred, how do you feel? Do you still have that depression?"
The depression was gone. But so was my 'doubting Thomas' attitude
regarding the reality of the spiritual world.
Now, as I think back on that experience
of over seventy years ago, I am awestruck at the reality of it
all. As it turned out, my grandmother died almost two years later
after a short pneumonia-like illness on December 31, 1937. It
was only a week after her 80th birthday. The second death she
had predicted was far more devastating for me. This was the death
of my mother, which I describe below. It happened almost three
years later just as the fortune teller had predicted and, as
she said, it is a wonder I was not killed also. Indeed, I would
have been sitting right next to the boiler that had exploded
but instead decided to leave for home to study for exams. The
tragedy happened less than a half hour later.
Another prediction that came true was
that I would work on a new type of power that had not been invented
at that time. It was almost eight years after that date, while
working in Niagara Falls for the duPont Co. that I was selected
to take part in the Manhattan Project, the secret project to
develop the atomic bomb. In the summer of 1944, as newly weds,
I and my wife Irene left Niagara Falls and headed out to Richland,
Washington to take part in this wartime effort. This experience
changed the course of my career. During the following two decades,
I was to pursue a career in nuclear power reactor engineering.
The discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of the atom by
slow neutrons, was first announced in December of 1938 with the
appearance of the journal paper by Strassmann and Hahn. It was
not until the middle of 1939, six months after the appearance
of the Strassmann-Hahn paper, that Enrico Fermi came up with
the idea that it should be possible to create a nuclear chain
reaction by inducing the cascading production of slow neutrons.
It was this insight that led to the realization that it was possible
to produce an atomic bomb and which made possible the creation
of nuclear power reactors. But, this was almost three years after
this fortune teller's prediction. How could she have known that
I would be working on this new type of power that at the time
had not even been discovered?
Her prediction that I was to spend
much of my life in the East, but not the Far East, also was on
the mark. Seven years later, in 1943 while working at duPont,
I met my future wife, Irene, who was of Greek descent. It came
about that I worked in Athens from 1963 to 1965 where I served
as a UN consultant to the Democritos Nuclear Center. Furthermore
from 1980 to 1988 I worked in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, another
middle eastern country. Much of my later life involved taking
annual summer trips to Greece, which continued up through 2008.
How could this fortune teller have known events that were to
take place over the next 70 years of my life?
May 1939: The Terrible
Accident that Killed Mother
It
was May 26, 1939. I had just completed the last class session
of my first year at the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate
School. It was Friday morning and my first exam was scheduled
for the following Tuesday. My three roommates were still in classes
so I had some time to study for my first exam before they would
be coming in for lunch. I opened my Physical Chemistry book and
began to read. An hour later when Kit, Harold, and Jim arrived,
all glad to be done with class work for another year, I realized
that I had been rereading the same paragraph for the whole time.
Then, I realized that my mind was not concentrated on study.
Suddenly, I felt that studying was not important and that I should
go home and that there I could concentrate better to prepare
for next weeks exams. I collected some books and a few personal
items in a small satchel and left, telling the room mates that
I would be back next Monday. It took only about 10 minutes to
walk to the highway south of the campus. Still holding my satchel,
I raised my hand to signal an approaching car for a ride. That
first car stopped and the driver offered me a ride all the way
to Kalamazoo. He was a friendly person and we had an enjoyable
conversation during the 100 mile trip. He stopped to let me out
only a few blocks from my house. I went in and left the satchel
and thought how nice it would be to surprise my mother with a
visit at her work at the Park Club only a few blocks away.
She was surprised and delighted to
see me and told me of the problems she was having because of
a new hot water heater that has been installed only a few days
previously. The plumbers had the steam relief line running some
twenty feet across the ceiling from the hot water tank to the
sink where mother washed the vegetables for her salads. After
we talked for a few minutes, mother invited me to sit down at
the little table next to the hot water tank and have some delicious
dessert that Mrs. Wester had prepared that day. I refused and
told her that I must start studying for my first exam the next
Tuesday. She said that was OK as she would be done clearing up
her work in another half hour and she would soon be home. I bid
her a good-bye and left for home. There I settled to studying
again and was unaware of the passage of time until the telephone
roused me. Joel told me he had been calling all over to reach
me. Mother was in a terrible accident and not expected to live
and he was on his way to pick me up to go to the hospital..
A few minutes after I had left the
Park Club, a party came in who all ordered steaks so the chef
fired up the big broiler in the meat kitchen adjacent to the
salad room. The new hot water system utilized the heat from the
broiler to heat its water and this time the small relief line
was insufficient to handle the large heat load from the steak
broiler. The bottom of the hot water tank ruptured and drove
the tank up through the ceiling, into the dining room, through
a large dining table, and out through the brick wall of the building.
The refrigeration piping to the walk-in freezer which passed
directly above the hot water tank was ruptured releasing anhydrous
ammonia into the walk-in freezer and the enormous force of the
explosion drove a heavy ice-making machine against the door of
the walk-in freezer.
At that instant, my dear mother was
in the walk-in freezer putting away some things. She was unable
to escape because the door was jammed shut. She was asphyxiated
by the ammonia gas and taken out only after some ten minutes
when the chef, counting personnel, realized she was missing.
He rushed back in and seeing the ice machine in front of the
door he used all of his strength to single-handedly move the
heavy machine to get her out.
At the hospital, she was placed in
an oxygen tent where she was kept alive for four days. I was
by her side when for a moment she opened her eyes and seeing
me, she slowly shook her head. On the fourth day, May 30th, while
I was sitting by her side, her breathing hesitated and the color
drained from her face. I knew that was the end.*
* Comment by Paul LaViolette:
The tragic explosion and resulting death of my grandmother Maggie
occurred the same month that Fermi first conceived the possibility
of the nuclear chain reaction, the insight that led to the atomic
bomb. Should this be regarded as just a coincidence? Or is there
a mystery and underlying order to life that we have yet to fathom,
the same mystery that allowed a gifted clairvoyant to foretell
the accidental death of my grandmother three years in advance
and to predict the involvement of my father in the field of nuclear
energy 8 years in advance. Just like the explosion that took
Maggie's life, the idea of the chain reaction and atomic bomb
which was born that same time was destined to claim many lives.
My father never associated these two events, and it is only my
own ruminations that have led me to consider this Jungian synchronicity.
It makes one wonder if there is a pervading consciousness that
links life's events, communicating through symbol and metaphor.
The events that led to my father's
involvement in the atomic bomb project were in a way part of
the general flow of events that surrounded the U.S. involvement
in World War II. He and my mother were two of thousands who had
participated in this project and the project would have proceeded
even without them. Furthermore it was a military strategy decision
whether or not to use the bomb and in what context. Nothing like
this had ever been done before and most of those working on this
project probably had no inkling of the kind of devastation this
weapon could cause until its first test at Alamogordo.
The fortune teller experience that
my father had was one that left the deepest impression on him.
I had heard him repeat it countless times when the conversation
at social gatherings would turn to spiritual or metaphysical
matters. For him it left a wonderment about life, and I can say
in my case too, having heard this story so often, it has left
for me the same wonderment. Perhaps this is one of the many sign
posts we encounter along our life journey that encourages us
to reflect inward and probe deeper into the mystery of things.
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