Dr. Ruth Glanville Perez and Eva Antone Ross

[00:01] EVA ANTON ROSS: Good morning. I'm Eva Anton Ross. I'm 76 years old. Today is February 4, 2023. We're in the Segundo barrio of El Paso, Texas, and I'm with my classmate from Loretto Academy, Ruth Glenville Perez We attended Loretto more than 50 Loretto Academy more than 50 years ago. Go ahead, Ruth.

[00:33] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Hi. I'm Ruth Perez Ruth Glenville Perez I'm 75 years old. Today's date is February 4, 2023. I'm in El Paso, Texas, with Eva Anton Ross, who's a friend of mine. And Eva and I met in 1961 as freshman and graduated in 1965 in the largest ever class from Loretto Academy in El Paso, Texas. Eva came from St. Patrick's, and I came from St. Joseph's, and we and other classmates have maintained contact over the years through thick and thin. Today, in our mid seventies in our hometown of El Paso, my husband and I are working to seek full implementation of our patent to cure Parkinson's disease and related disorders. And Eva is a retired teacher and administrator from the Ysleta School District, known in the community for her feminism, activism, and especially a focus on local history. This year, 2023, is the centennial year of our high school, Loretto Academy, and today we're here to help celebrate this milestone and share some of our memories about Loretto and how our education there helped shape us into the successful, powerful women that we are. The core values of Loretto, which are displayed on the face of Hilton Young hall clear for all to see, are faith, community, justice, respect. When we were there, they always told us, be kind. Always do your best. Find a way to make a difference in this world. Our experience at Loretto helped shape us into self motivated, modern women on a mission. We had outstanding teachers who made differences in our lives.

[03:02] EVA ANTON ROSS: So now I'm going to ask Ruth. In our planning, we talked about sister Edith Ann Yeager. She taught you biology and art, and you spoke movingly of the impact sister Edith Anne had on you. So go for it.

[03:24] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Okay, so I'm a research scientist, and my scientific roots came from my training during her biology classes, where actually she did all sorts of things, like, we would walk around campus and look at the different plants. We would talk about what we could do to make a difference in this world. And I realized in her class that I absolutely love science, that that was going to be what drove me in my career and later in life. And so I've always been really, really grateful to Sister Edith Ann then, for her enthusiasm about art and science. Another thing is, I make a lot of the images for our papers and use Photoshop and PowerPoint and other programs. But I realized the art skills that she taught me use the space, use the color that informs the art that I put into the manuscripts I publish. So she was a really important person in my life.

[04:57] EVA ANTON ROSS: I quickly want to say that she was a tall, elegant woman. And thing that I have done is put a lot of images of Loretto over the years onto the digital wall at the El Paso Museum of History. And so I know for sure that there are pictures of Sister Edith Ann and others of our teachers standing on the front steps of the high school. Now we're gonna move into Ruth talking about a jesuit priest, Father Hanley and his impact on her view of the world and her view of eternal life.

[05:42] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Well, I'm not so sure about that. I guess you're right. The really amazing thing about having a jesuit priest come teach us religion at Loretta Washington, they're so well educated and, well, like the sisters of Loretto, they're very forward thinking. And as we would talk about things in class, one thing he mentioned is, look, you guys are part of this post war, world War two baby boom, and there are a lot of you. And having so many of you, there are going to be things that impact your generation in a way that may never impact any other generation in our country. And one of these things we began talking about was the health related issues. And I realized that if I could find a way to make sure that we could find cures for diseases related to aging, that I could make a difference to our group and to future generations. And, in fact, that's that. And work at UTep with Doctor Don Maas. That informed me to pick up the banner and run with it for research on aging related issues and finding ways to make cures for disease.

[07:25] EVA ANTON ROSS: Do you want to say anything else about the impact of Father Hanley?

[07:32] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Well, he was an inspiration, partly because he himself developed cancer during the time that he was teaching us, and so he missed a few classes, but he came back, and he never gave up. He was a fighter, and he was also a tall, elegant man. And I really admired the strength that he showed and the courage that he showed as he marched through his facing cancer. I lost track of him over the years. I don't know if he made it, ultimately, but I really appreciate what he gave me in the classes that he taught.

[08:21] EVA ANTON ROSS: Let's move on to a question about when did you know that curing diseases in your time with doctor Moss at UTEP. Expand on that. You know, talk about getting in the class and how he worked with you, and you've really had a lifetime of experience with him as a mentor.

[08:42] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Okay. I went to the University of Texas at El Paso after Loretto, and one of my professors in the psychology program there was Don Moss. And I did well in his classes, and he invited me to join his lab to do research. And in doing that, we were working on Alzheimer's research in his lab. Did some monkey studies and rat studies and testing a drug that he has that could actually slow the progression or stop the progression of Alzheimer's disease. And eventually he got a patent, but it was pretty late, and it hasn't gone as far as it should. But during that time, I came to realize that this drug discovery and the commitment to excellence in research could help make a difference.

[09:58] EVA ANTON ROSS: I want to say that you and your husband actually have a patent, so you learned the legal process, the intellectual process, and the trying to persuade pharmaceuticals. A lot of persuasion from both sides on that issue. Let's step back just a minute and say at one point, you were a 39 year old single mom with two boys, and you were working as a cytologist and cytogeneticist. Let me say that big, long word again. So what actually motivated you to move out of the lab and into getting a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine?

[10:47] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So what I realized at UTEP, I'd gotten a bachelor's degree in biology and then the master's in psychology, and that if I was going to go on to help develop new drugs, that I would need a doctorate, that you can't do research on your own without a PhD or an MD PhD. And so I started interviewing at different campuses around the country, and the one I liked the best was the University of Pittsburgh. And I went there and studied neurobiology, first doing developmental neurobiology because of Doctor Jennifer Lund, who did an interview with me, said, you know, before it all falls apart, wouldn't you want to know how it got put together in the first place? And I thought that was a pretty smart question, and it snagged me, and I went into developmental neurobiology, and that informed my work from then on because I have always wanted to know, what's the normal function of something? How does it normally work in the brain? And if it comes apart, what causes that to happen? And what can I do to help put it back together?

[12:17] EVA ANTON ROSS: All those close observations that zestrita then had you doing paid off. That's right over there at Pitta. It was there, too, that you developed an even deeper sense of the importance of making a difference. And the next step for you was a fellowship to study neurodegeneration at Harvard in 1994. How did your Loretto background help you as you hit obstacles at that phase of your career?

[12:57] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So, by this time, I was. I was married to Ray, we were living in Pittsburgh, and I was offered this postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School at Brigham and Women's Hospital. And that meant that I was moving on my own to Boston, that Ray and Chris stayed in Pittsburgh while I moved to Boston. And so they helped me get situated there. I found an apartment in Malden, Massachusetts, on the Orange line, and I would take the orange line down to. To the medical school area every day. And I guess obstacles. One of the first was that it's really lonely being on your own. And as a postdoctoral fellow, I was with lots of other wonderful postdoctoral fellows in the labs of Doctor Denis Selko and Edward Ku and others at the center for Neurologic Diseases. And I developed wonderful friendships with postdocs from Japan and Germany and all around the country, and that helped to support me during that time. But I think the biggest obstacle I overcame at that time, Washington, was learning to support and sustain myself and getting through day after day of really hard work. Reading, reading, reading, learning new stuff. And the beauty of it was, I was at Harvard Medical School, and right across the street every day, almost, there was an international researcher coming to talk about his research. So you got to hear the newest and best and most exciting stuff all the time.

[15:15] EVA ANTON ROSS: You made room in your day for all of that curiosity.

[15:19] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: That's right.

[15:20] EVA ANTON ROSS: Things that were not directly related to cranking out a PhD.

[15:25] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Actually, I had the PhD by the time I did that.

[15:28] EVA ANTON ROSS: Okay, the postdoc, whatever.

[15:30] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Yeah, the credential. But you're right. It was to add to my knowledge base so that I could do deeper and better science. And it was always stuff that I was interested in. But when you're interested in everything, you had to learn to limit it a little bit.

[15:53] EVA ANTON ROSS: Well, you. I think when we talked the other night, you talked, too, about, you know, you were mid career, you were nothing in your late twenties. You want to talk about being an older woman with a lot of drive in that environment. I think there might have been some sexism, even at Harvard.

[16:21] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Well, I think the fact remains that women in science, women in any field, as you work to progress, you have to be better and stronger and tougher in a lot of ways than the men. They're expected to be excellent, just like we are, but they're not fighting against prejudices, against gender, against women. And so, plus, I was older, so there was a bit of ageism. I guess the advantage is I've always looked younger, so I had that on my side. And sometimes people didn't know I was older, but I had a family. I had other commitments than a lot of the postdocs just coming out of grad school, coming into grad school from their doctoral degrees may not have had, and they'd go play golf or they'd go do things that I would just stay at the lab and work late and go home and come back early, and the only time I would play would be when Ray and Chris would come to Boston, and I'd take off with them and go see museums and go to the lake and go to the shore and things. But, yeah, it took a lot of effort to hang in there. A lot of times.

[18:11] EVA ANTON ROSS: In a little bit of our notes, in planning, it talks about the importance of you publishing in top journals and how your work being able to do a proper citation and footnoting and credentialing of the specifics so that the experiment can be replicated, etcetera. Talk a little bit about that, the demands on in terms of publishing and how some of the Loretto skills, you know, writing and I. Paying attention to details is critical at all levels.

[18:51] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: You're absolutely right, Eva. And having had a good background and training in English, and then again at UTEP, we had some pretty good teachers in English and learned about writing even more. But in graduate school, learning to write the thesis, that taught me a lot at the University of Pittsburgh. And so a lot of that came from there. By the time I got to Harvard Medical School, I had to write a grant to get funding for my own research there. And that worked out well. I got funded for that, and I was able to take what I had been taught and use the skills to turn our bench science into actual papers that we could publish in really high quality journals.

[19:50] EVA ANTON ROSS: You've traveled the world presenting and being on panels, and I commend you for those, the folks you've impacted there, sharing that knowledge. Speaking skills is another important thing that I think was really at many opportunities, I got to do a little bit of drama stuff, but I remember often speaking in class, and I remember the debate. I wasn't in debate myself, but I saw many of our classmates refine their intellect and their speaking ability via that kind of academic activity. Okay, now let's go. Hey, you're a CEO of a company here at this moment, and you're working to get support for further development of the compounds. Your husband, Ray, is a partner in all of this. How is your Loretto education informing your data activities as a CEO?

[20:59] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Wow. Why did we write this question?

[21:03] EVA ANTON ROSS: Because asking good questions is critical to all beginnings and impacts.

[21:10] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Being a CEO is easy in a way, because then you really are your own boss for the first time in your life. When you get your doctorate, you think, yay, I'm going to be my own boss. No, the university is your boss. And then, of course, they have other people who are their bosses. So, as a CEO, I can choose to write grants, which I've written many, to try and continue to get funding to move the compounds to the next level. Because in the mice in our lab, at my lab at Texas Tech, we showed that one of the compounds especially essentially cured the mice of multiple system atrophy. And that's a Parkinson's like disease that's even worse than Parkinson's. It progresses very rapidly, and not only did the drug stop the progression, it actually reversed it and improved function and in a lot of ways. So we've got a lot of preclinical data and taking that information. The compound is ready for someone to make an investment in taking it to the next level, toward the clinic. And so the training at Loretto, I think what got me this far is about finding a way to make a difference in this world and about being strong and trusting yourself and knowing you can do it. And that carried me really far to be able to get this far to where I'm going. And God willing, they'll be funding to carry the drug to the next level. So it could get to the clinic really quickly through the orphan products, orphan disorder products aspect of the FDA, they may approve it more quickly.

[23:35] EVA ANTON ROSS: The Federal Drug Administration.

[23:36] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Yeah, the Food and Drug Administration. That's right. Thank you, Eva. And when you've got a compound that has promise for an orphan disorder, like MSA, multiple system atrophy, it can get fast tracked and moved more quickly. And with the help of that program and with offending to get phase one trials done, we could probably get things done much more quickly than the standard route of analysis for a drug.

[24:20] EVA ANTON ROSS: So you're here in El Paso, and, you know, this elaborate process and how to approach it. Did you ever think that you would be so deep in both science and policy and persuasion, making that. Did you think. Did you think you'd be doing this at eight at a today? What was your dream for yourself back then in a Kia stamos. So what do you want to say to that?

[24:57] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So, of course, I was very naive. I thought I'd do this, and then I'd be my boss, and then I'd find the cure and everybody would say, yay, and pat me on the back, and it would happen, and that would be that. And I've learned over the years there are a lot of steps, there's a lot of hoops to jump through, and there are a lot of bureaucratic aspects of everything that are remarkable but have to be done. And so did I ever think I'd be where I am now? Probably not the way I am now, but, yes, I thought I was going to make a difference. I thought I was going to find a cure for a disease, and here I am. And God willing, I have not given up as you. I have not given up. Never give up. Trust yourself. Follow your heart, and never give up.

[25:59] EVA ANTON ROSS: Ruth is you want to talk about your position on the board during this.

[26:04] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Centennial year at Loretto Academy? I am a member of the board of trustees at Loretto Academy, and the beauty of that is that we get to help direct some of the activities and things that go on at the academy. And with a group of wonderful board members, we're making a difference there as well. And the centennial activities are in the process of being worked on.

[26:43] EVA ANTON ROSS: The board is very diverse, and a big thing they did was select a former student for the first time as president of the. Of the school. And it's a lot of. A lot of new good things are bound to happen as a result of the decisions. The Loretto community has a lot of faith in collaboration and respect for diversity and cultivating, listening to every level. So we'll all be celebrating, and I will probably be in at least row number two. Happy as a clam, is what I want to say. So you want to shift now and let's do a different section?

[27:35] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Yes. Thank you. Yves, you are remarkable in the way you can speak about things and fold it together quite beautifully. I'm really proud of you.

[27:50] EVA ANTON ROSS: Thank you.

[27:50] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So Eva worked in the Ysleta school district for almost 30 years, both at the campus and the district level. And in our discussion the other night planning this, we decided that we would move to have you describe a key teacher at Loretto academy who impacted you and helped you in your activities with education.

[28:25] EVA ANTON ROSS: A really important part of Loretto is that it's actually a small group, and we're here on the border, and there's this mix of international businesses coming into El Paso. And so we mentioned at least three teachers, but the one I'm going to pick to talk about here with StoryCorps is sister Ann Michael. And the order changed. We grew up in the time of Vatican II, and the church made an effort to open the doors and let in a lot more freedom. And, you know, using the vernacular was freedom speaking in the language of the people listening at mass. So a person who was involved with languages was sister Ann Michael, and she changed her name. She is Marianne Cunningham. She's 93. She's living at the Loretto mother house in Nerinx Kentucky. I speak with her about once every three months, and mostly we tell stories back and forth, and we laugh a lot. She taught Latin, and she was the choir director. She was maybe ten years older than her students. She's a big, jolly, irish catholic person from Kansas City. She's a major writer of documents with other. The order itself writes its own history. And there's a wonderful chapter in a book called Century of Change, which covers the 20th century. And that's another important thing that's in the Loretto Academy library, available to all. And Sister Ann Michael was just lots of fun, and I learned lots of Latin from her, but I think I learned a sense of freedom and independence, and she was. Her writings show a strong feminist, personal frame of reference, and it wasn't. It wasn't done with any kind of manipulation. These are choices and people. People at Loretto choose activities. They choose to let their creativity follow whatever channels. But I remember her at one point in her black habit with the beads of the long string of beads rattling at her side, you know, kind of racing into the chapel, towards the chapel, because, hey, she was late for a specific kind of thing. But the fact she knows my life up to this point, and I know quite a lot about her life. And, Loretta, women are make intense friendships at both the teacher student level and also among the students, and intergenerationally, a part of what I have done. I wrote some articles in 2012 in honor of the 200th anniversary of the order, especially the local women who chose to join the Sisters of Loretto. So Loretto's a landmark. Loretto is a magnet, and Loretto is a force for change that other people in the city employers know about. Next question, please.

[32:43] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So I'm glad you spoke about her, because she also helped us. We cut a record, the choir members. We cut a Christmas record that she. And an LP that's currently coming back in style. Yeah. Anyway, so how did Loretto education influence your academic career and extracurriculars.

[33:13] EVA ANTON ROSS: At Utepdeh, I want to say that I was a person who spoke out in classes. I read my assignment. I went through as fast as I could, and I tried to figure out how the credits could be compiled as fast as possible, and I did. I was totally convinced that I could be in student government and pretty much any activity that I wanted to at UTEP. Let's move through our questions because our time's getting short, and I want to say whatever you want, cover our content as much as we can.

[33:50] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: All righty. Well, you did write a successful gender equity vocational grant that ended up redirecting your career. Did your Loretta skills help you with that?

[34:06] EVA ANTON ROSS: I had been at Ascarate elementary. I went to Riverside, just refining teaching skills, and I was an english teacher, but I became an assistant principal at Riverside. I found out this importance of grant writing is in both of our stories. And I found out that a pile of vocational money was available at the federal level, and I figured out that I could get my hands on that money, and it's really like writing a term paper. And I was successful. I ended up at central office. I had. I was in a field that I wasn't formally trained for, but I actually did a statewide newsletter, and it was there that I got to impact teen parents and build onto facilities, extra, extra things to take care of teen moms and be sure that girls were not kept out of an education just because they got pregnant.

[35:14] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: That's great. Thank you for that. Now, you recently became a widow. How have you modified your life to live by the principles instilled at you at Loretta?

[35:30] EVA ANTON ROSS: My husband died October 21, and so I'm kind of new at handling all of this, but I'm returning to even more involvement in the archives at UTEP or in community affairs, politics that are a basic part of day to day life and citizenship and encouraging our community to grow in ways that I feel are reflect Loretto values. And I'm going to go celebrate today that a local neighborhood Duranguito is not going to have, is not going to be bulldozed. And that took a lot of politics over a ten year period, not just from me at all. I'm a drop of sand in the effort. But together, this community has said we are preserving this part of our heritage, and we will do it through the channels required of good citizens and active folks. So I'm working at being an active widow.

[36:52] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: And doing wonderful community service as always. So we're both retired now, and we want to maintain our ties to Loretto in this centennial year. And I think one important way is to interact with students at Loretto to show them that you can make it. You can come from a small school. You want to talk a little bit more about that.

[37:27] EVA ANTON ROSS: I think coming from a small, tight knit, private catholic school is a colossal advantage, especially in this community and other places sometimes, too. And I want to maintain my ties with the nuns that taught me, with the husbands that are married to Loretto alum, with writers who speak. Writers, famous writers. There's one, Andy Tehran. I don't know her personally, but I want to promote her in women's history month in two weeks. And I want to. I want to. Anything that I can do financially, talking to anybody, writing. I'm on board to help Loretto grow into its future. That's just where I've always stood.

[38:32] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: That's great. And as a member of the board of trustees, I wholeheartedly concur with all your actions.

[38:40] EVA ANTON ROSS: Do you want to sing a little of Loretto of the plains? Thank you. No.

[38:47] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: So I think now I'd like to thank you, Eva, for joining me here. This has been a wonderful experience. I hope someday we're lucky enough to hear our voices on NPR, and if not, at least we'll hear them in.

[39:05] EVA ANTON ROSS: The archives being stored in the archives of the US. It's equivalent to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It's great.

[39:15] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: Yeah. So you're supposed to thank.

[39:22] EVA ANTON ROSS: I'm so sorry, Ruth. I thank you for your years of friendship and for this opportunity and for making us write a good script.

[39:33] RUTH GLENVILLE PEREZ: And thank you for our assistance here today and story course.

[39:39] EVA ANTON ROSS: So.