A TRIBUTE TO MY FIRST DOCTORAL STUDENT, JOHN SOUTHIN, WHO DIED IN CANADA

       I learned that my first PhD student, John Southin, died in Brockville, Ontario December 29, 2014.  He was in my Biology course at Queen’s University in Fall 1958.  I had just completed my PhD at Indiana University and was settling in to Kingston, Ontario.  John was an exceptionally good student in my course and I invited him to do an undergraduate research project in my laboratory which was in the basement of the Theology building. John grew up in Brockville, Ontario. He enjoyed witty conversation and it was fun when his fellow students dropped by the laboratory. When I married Nedra in 1959, I was also invited to join the faculty at UCLA.  I asked John if he would like to go with us to California and work in my laboratory there.  We drove from Kingston through the highways and old US 66 into the Mojave dessert.  It was an adventure because I was the driver and neither Nedra nor John knew how to drive.  Also our baby Christina, born in Kingston, was in the car. 

     At UCLA,  John flourished as a graduate student and worked on a good dissertation project studying chemically induced types of mosaicism in mutations.  He became progressively disillusioned with American foreign policy and went to Cuba and taught in Havana for several summers. After his PhD he went to McGill University to teach.  He founded an androgynous bookstore for the LGBT community in Montreal.  He set up a teaching program for prisoners in Quebec province.  At McGill he had a very popular course in molecular genetics.  When he became Director of the dormitories he exposed and expelled corrupt dealers of food for the students.  He taught and inspired many students at McGill. When he retired he returned to Brockville. He used his skills to restore old Colonial era stone homes and sold several so he could provide one for himself.  He became active in Brockville health programs for the poor and the elderly.  He lived with his partner of many years and wrote a local news column on local affairs and health issues.  He died of a late onset neuromuscular disease. 

       John had the courage to embrace causes that made him controversial.  When he left UCLA to go back to Canada he became part of the “underground railroad” for war resisters in the US protesting the draft for the Vietnam War.  He helped them get entry and jobs in Canada.  When he volunteered he was gay in Havana he was expelled from Cuba. One of my favorite conversations with John was when I asked him, at UCLA, why he had framed pictures of Queen Elizabeth II and Marshall Tito on his laboratory wall.  He said the Queen was the symbolic head of the United Kingdom and politically powerless, unlike US Presidents who are politically powerful and therefore poor symbols of the government as a whole.  As for Tito, he was the first to break with the USSR, establishing a socialism that was independent of the Politburo in Moscow.  It was the model he hoped to see in Cuba. He enjoyed the irony of helping impoverished Cuban students but carrying his lecture notes in a $400 alligator attaché case he bought in Los Angeles.  Every Christmas John and I exchanged New Years cards with a letter updating our lives.  I did not know he was ill.  I shall miss him.