The Weighty Word Book!

 Doug Writes Books!

   

 

     

    The Weighty Word Book is immensely popular in schools, mainly because kids and teachers alike have so much fun with it. There are about three volumes and each of you have your copies and so do your parents.  You might want to go get your copy right now and read one of the clever entries.  

    Paul, Doug, and Elissa all taught in the English Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder.  Paul and Doug were long time friends. I'm not sure how the idea to write the book came about, but they each took a letter, then chose a pretty complicated word, then created a story that would end up with a final sentence that used the word for the very first time. It was always a pun or a play on words that could make the reader groan, but it was clear that the reader would never forget the word.

    Here is the description on the Amazon site:

[The Weighty Word Book] will appeal to kids who want to sound as smart as they are. It offers a clever, funny way to introduce new words into the vocabulary. . . . There's one word for every letter of the alphabet--wait until you see what they do with dogmatic, juxtapose and zealot."--The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado)

"Each of these twenty-six short stories takes an elaborate, circuitous path that leads to a 'weighty' one-word punch line. . . . It's a creative and humorous approach to vocabulary building, and a natural lead in to having students create their own tall tales with multisyllabic conclusions."--School Library Journal

For example, the word "Bifurcate," which I'm pretty sure Doug wrote.  It's about twin sisters, Josephine and Kate, who did everything together, except for the one year they didn't. For their travels, Josephine chose Luxembourg, but Kate chose Iceland. So when their friends came to see them off at the airport, and realizing that the sisters were going in two different directions, they had say one goodbye for Josephine and a "separate bye for Kate." So when something or someone divides into two parts, just think of the two sisters and you'll remember the word "bifurcate." Get it?

    As you know, Doug was a great teacher, so he did the rounds of the schools,  talking  about the book, reading from the book, answering questions from the students. When your cousin Kristi  (she is my niece, the daughter of my sister Karol) was teaching in Beaumont, Texas, she asked Doug to visit her classroom as well as the whole school, where her twin daughters, Anne and Clare were also students. He received such a warm welcome there. Just look,

Doug and Anne Leonard, his niece, at her school

Doug signing books at Kristi's school in Beaumont

    When your cousin Andrew Newmiller (my grandson)  was in the third grade in Austin, Texas, much to his surprise, his teacher began reading The Weighty Word Book  to the class. As I recall Andrew talking about it, when Andrew announced that his grandfather wrote the book, I think the teacher was somewhat dubious. Andrew then proceeded to call Doug to ask him which words he had written stories about. I talked to Andrew a few days ago. He's now 34 years old, so he didn't quite recollect which words were Doug's, but his mom Julie (my daughter) and I pretty much agreed that "bifurcate" was one of them. 

    I still get royalties (money for the sale of the books) each year. So go ahead.  Go grab your book and have some fun!

    

Great Grandma Katie and Doug, Part 2

 But Where are the Wedding Pictures?

Anniversary Celebration at the Gold Hill Inn

   As you learned in Part One,  just as Doug and I began seeing each other,  I accepted a job as an English professor at Southern Utah University in Cedar City.  That was in January 1989. Why did I do that? Quite simple. I was finishing my doctorate and living on the salary of a part time graduate instructor at the University of Colorado.  The position that opened up was a tenure track position, much more money and a real job. I was in need of both. 

    Doug and I had a long talk about what my move would mean for our relationship that was only just beginning.  Here's what we decided. I was 49 years old and Doug was 51. We had found a deep connection with one another this late in our lives. While we didn't make any real commitment at first, we did promise that we would keep in touch with one another until the summer, when I would return to Boulder to finish my dissertation before heading back to Cedar City for the fall semester.  So we wrote letters back and forth to one another. Email hadn't quite caught on at that time. 

    Summertime came, and I headed back to Boulder, where André, who was 11, and I rented a room in the house of a professor at CU. Doug and I then started seeing each other quite often. We went to plays together and took hikes and played with André, who had just gotten his first skateboard. We went for ice cream, because that’s what families do, although I don’t really like ice cream. I worked hard on my dissertation, and Doug taught summer school. 

    Just as I was getting ready to return to my job in Cedar City, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. That was a pretty terrifying and disruptive time, but you can see that I’m still here.  I had surgery and other treatments, and I got a six month leave from my teaching. Doug took me to his house from the hospital, and I recovered there until time for me to go back to teaching in January of 1990.  I did manage to work on my dissertation, but I did not manage to finish it. 

    So this is what our life looked like after I returned to Cedar City to teach. We were younger and had more energy, so we each made the 600 mile trip (1200 miles round trip) once a month, meaning that we saw one another every two weeks.  When Doug was in Cedar City, he mostly helped me care for André, so I would go back to my office after dinner and work on the dissertation. He and André and friends would go hiking or to the video store or to a nearby pond to hunt for tadpoles.  

    I did finish my dissertation in 1990, so I became Dr. Cook. Doug and I then married in the summer of 1991, June 22, to be exact, at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in Boulder. Yes. The very same church where we said our final farewell to Doug on August 25, 2024.

    But where are the wedding pictures you ask. We had a lot. My brother-in law, Charles, took reels and reels and as a wedding present, sent the pictures to us in a beautiful tin box.  We loved looking at those pictures, of all the people and all of our beautiful family.

    But alas! In the flood of 2013 (that is another story, of course) , we lost everything—the house and everything in it and our cars, washed away be the avalanche of water that thundered down Gold Run Road. The wedding pictures are no more. They had never been digitized, and that was long before iPhones, etc. All we had were the hard copies. And this one of Catherine and Brett. I don't know how it survived.

Catherine & Brett, June 22, 1991

 

    Here is the one thing, the thing that Doug and I always recommended to couples in long distance relationships: In the almost 20 years that we lived 600 miles apart, we talked on the phone before bedtime every single night. In all that time we might have missed two or three nights, but no more.

    A low estimate of how many miles we traveled between Boulder Colorado and Cedar City, Utah when we were commuting: 162,000. Shall we put that in perspective? It's about 25,000 miles around the world if we were to start at the equator.  That means we did a trip around the world approximately six and a half times.  Or...the moon is about 238,000 miles from the earth, so if we were in space, we would have traveled halfway to the moon!!! 

Great Grandma Katie and Doug --A Love Story in Two Parts

 

GG Katie and Doug: Katie's 80th Birthday

He is survived by his wife of 33 years, Kay K. Cook 

    I begin this remembrance of our Doug by telling you how he became a part of your family. 

    Yes, we were married for 33 years, but if you do your math you will see that we got married later in life, after we had both been married before and after we had children of our own. We had been together since 1989, and we married June 22, 1991 at St. Aidan's in Boulder.  I was 51 and Doug had just turned 54.  Because we lived into our 80s, those 33 year were a gift.

    So how did two older people with families of their own get together?  Doug was a professor in the English Department at the University of Colorado, and I was a graduate student working on my doctorate. We had known each other in passing for quite a while and sometimes had conversations. Doug's specialty was Early British Literature and Shakespeare, but I was specializing in 19th Century British Literature and also women's literature, so our paths never crossed that way. I was never a student. Doug was, however, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and that meant he assigned classes to all faculty and to doctoral students, who were given lower level literature classes to teach. So I would submit my class requests to him every semester.

    In the fall of 1988, André and I rented a large house on University Avenue with my friends Jill and her son William  and also Robin. Jill and Robin were also doctoral students.  We had lots of room and we could afford to live there since we were sharing the rent. It was a good time.

    It was Jill who started it all! I think she was assigned Introduction to Literature for fall teaching. Doug had called all those teachers together before the semester began, just to go over with them what genres they were expected to cover, and possibly the number of papers and exams to give, just so there would be some consistency across the 20 or so classes that would be taught that semester.

    Jill came home from that meeting and swept into the kitchen with one important takeaway from that meeting. "I am convinced you and Doug Burger should be together," she announced to Robin and me.  We both nodded, but I didn't think much about it. I liked Doug, certainly. Everyone did. But I certainly wasn't looking to "get together" with anyone. 

    But Jill got to work. She called Doug's secretary to ask if Doug was seeing anyone. She learned that there was a woman who called him frequently, but other than that, she didn't know.  Then we all got caught up in the semester with our teaching and working on our dissertations and parenting, so the idea of Doug was pushed into the background.  Until the end of the semester, that is. That's when Jill got back to work.

    "We'll have an end of semester Christmas party for all our friends and we'll invite Doug," Jill announces. Robin and I were fine with that. We worked hard cleaning house and making food, and inviting people. Jill issued the invitation to Doug. He was sorry, he said, he couldn't make it. He had a final to give that night. But Jill persisted. "Fine. Then come after the final. You'll be tired, and we'll have plenty of food and wine, and you can relax." I'm pretty sure she kept on it until Doug had no choice no choice but to say,"Yes." 

    He in fact did show up around 10pm when our party was in full swing.

    I’m not all that clear about all the events of that night, but I do remember the piano episode quite clearly. We were singing and dancing when Jill decided I was time to sing Christmas carols . Only Robin and I knew that she had been practicing the carols on the piano she brought with her when we moved in. Everyday we had had to listen to her tortured and careful working out the chords. She thought she was ready for the big night, but when she started playing, it was with that same tortured pounding on the keys with her eyes glued to the music. We tried to sing, but it was like “Deck. The. Halls. With. Bows of. Hol. Ly. 🎵🎵

    After we sweated through that song, Keith Thomas took over, very gallantly and really not condescending, although we were all wondering how we would get through the evening dragging out each note. “Here,” he said. ‘Let me relieve you and you can get back to dancing,” in that smooth British accent we all swooned over.

    Alas. Keith was much better than Jill’s attempt, but still. With great confidence he began “Silver bells. Silver bells. It’s Christ…mas timeinthecity.”

    I later told Doug that he had literally shoved Keith off the piano bench. As Keith staggered to get his balance, Doug began a beautifully executed performance of “Silver bells,” followed by any number of other carols and we all sighed with relief and sang heartily.  

    I have to say, some little ember in my in my somewhat hardened heart caught the musical notes that came from Doug’s playing, like a fresh breeze blowing over a tiny ember, awakening it to life. Doug played so easily and happily and the mood of the party changed and so did mine. A man who played the piano. I wanted to know more.

    The rest is history, sort of. Just as Doug and I were getting to know each other—we took a hike and had coffee together, (A side note: getting to know someone in the Rocky Mountains always involves taking a hike.) I accepted a teaching job in Utah.

(To be continued…)

Doug and Brett. The only picture I have of him at the piano

 

Polio Part 2: When We All Got Vaccinated

  

Photo is from Genesis Health

Dear children--Grands and Greats,

    This is a side note to the thing I'm telling you about Doug, but it actually includes him, and it's important that you know what happened to end this epidemic and the fear that was gripping all parents.

    As  is the case with many epidemics, a vaccine happened. In your own lifetimes, of course, when your lives and mine intersected, the COVID epidemic caused hundred of thousand of deaths until a vaccine was created. Joanie was born right in the middle of the epidemic and right in the center of it in New York City. When Luca came along, everyone was still wearing masks. By the time Rafe came into the world, we had seen the worst of it, but we were still getting vaccines and people were still getting sick. Doug had a very bad case of COVID and was in the hospital. I had COVID twice: once with very mild symptoms when Doug was in the hospital and then again, last summer, when I felt really bad, but it wasn't serious.

    Back to the polio vaccine, however.  By the 1950s, there were around 50,000 cases of polio. Although adults did get polio, it was a disease that affected mostly children. What Doug and I remember is this: We re both in high school at the time. I was at South Park High School on Beaumont and Doug was in high school in Denver. It would have been around 1955.  I was in Miss (that's what single women were called then)  McDougal's English class when the nurses walked in with a tray full of sugar cubes. We all lined up and one by one, we were given the sugar cube and the nurse watched while we popped it into our mouths, waited for it to dissolve. and then swallowed it. It was a time of great celebration. I think maybe school was canceled for the day, but I can't be sure about that.  After the vaccine, the cases plummeted.

    But here's what's really interesting. As far as I know, our parents did not have to give permission for us to received the vaccine. I believe it was just announced that vaccines would be given in the schools on a certain day. Of course, they would have gladly given permission. 

    Now back to Remembering Doug.

A Parent's Nightmare: Doug Gets Polio in 1946: Part One

He survived polio at a young age and spent five months in a polio ward for boys in Children’s Hospital, Denver.    

 When Doug and I were growing up in the 1940s, the biggest fear that our parents had was that their children would get polio. I'm not sure you have learned much about the disease, but it's possible that you've been vaccinated against it. If you haven't been, then there is no longer the threat of a disease that afflicted mostly children. The vaccine for polio didn't become available  until 1955, when Doug and I were both in high school. 

    We were just little kids in the 1940s,  but even as little kids, we knew the dangers of getting polio. Just as our parents were frightened, we were also frightened. What we knew is that polio could cause us to be paralyzed even to the point we wouldn't be able to breathe. We saw pictures of sick children every day, especially those who were confined to "iron lungs," long metal tubes that breathed for the children who couldn't breathe on their own. In 1946, there were 26,000 cases of polio nationwide, according to the History Channel.

    Doug was one of those cases. I had hoped that he would write about that time in his life, but, instead, he told me and others about it. So this is what he told me.

    It was summertime, and Doug was visiting his grandparents in Nebraska. He began to feel sick and a little tired. I think he had a fever as well. This was the way Doug liked to talk about it: "It was an old country doctor that my grandparents called. He's the one who said I had polio."

    As Doug remembered it, his grandparents called his parents and then they put him on the train back to Denver. Polio is highly contagious, but that wasn't known at the time. In fact, scientists believed that it came from mosquitos or from contaminated drinking water. That's why big trucks scoured neighborhoods, spewing DDT as little kids gleefully followed the trucks and the poison fog. DDT was used to kill mosquitos. It is now banned.

    Doug remembered arriving at Union Station in Denver, where his parents were waiting for him. When he got off the train, he said that he was dragging his leg as he walked down the ramp to meet them. They took him straight to Children's Hospital. 

    At Children's Hospital, Doug had to stay in isolation for two weeks. No one was allowed to visit him during that time. I can't imagine the agony his parents must have felt at first, learning their son had polio and then finding out they wouldn't be allowed to see him for two weeks.

    After his quarantine time was up, Doug was moved to a polio ward of all boys of various ages. Doug spent FIVE MONTHS in that polio ward. The one thing he said  about that time is that the nurses were really strict, and if the boys misbehaved they would punish them by not giving them their meals for the day. Of course, the boys misbehaved. Sick as they were, they were still boys. They would have food fights and call each other names.It wasn't unusual, he said, for a boy to get out of bed and crawl to another boy's bed--crawling because he had polio and couldn't walk--to start a fight. I thing Doug was mostly an observer of these things. He really wasn't one to act out.

    The major event during that five months was a visit by the movie star, Shirley Temple. You will need to look her up. She was a famous child star, only a few years older that Doug. She was immensely popular and was known as "America's Sweetheart" at the time. But what Doug remembers most about her visit is that when she came to his bedside, she asked him, "When are you going home?"  And Doug said, "I don't know." I wish you could have heard Doug tell this story just to hear the way he sadly and plaintively said, "I don't know." 

Shirley Temple in 1943

 

    He also remembered his treatment for polio, which was created by an Australian nurse, Sister Kinney. Before her treatment became popular, polio patients' legs were put in plaster casts, which must have been awful. Sister Kinney's method was to apply warm, moist woolen blankets to the paralyzed legs. It's never been quite clear whether the treatment helped children walk again, although there are some documented cases. What is clear, though, is that those warm blankets were soothing and comforting. 

    Doug's mother Blanche told me that when they visited Doug, they always brought him a puzzle or some toy or book that would be a project for him, and that, when they left, he was so engrossed with his new thing they he didn't notice they had gone.

    After the five months, Doug had little after effects of his illness or the long time he was in the hospital. Many studies have been done on the trauma in children caused by the two week isolation period, but Doug never expressed any trauma. He spoke of that time matter-of-factually. He would never forget Shirley Temple's question, though.

(To be continued. See Part Two for when we all got vaccinated.)