Maxine Rockoff and Robin Sparkman

00:00 Robin my name is Maxine Rockoff. I'm in Brooklyn New York. I'm 82 years old and I look forward to having us conversation.

00:09 Hi Maxine. It's such an honor to do this with you. I am so I'm robbing Sparkman. I'm 51 years old. Today is October 8th 2020. I'm also in Brooklyn New York having a storycorps virtual conversation with maxi Rockoff and Maxine and I know each other because we are board members of Union settlement to be strong. And so Maxine is so nice to have this conversation with you. I thought that it would be fun today to talk a bit about your white amazing career and just talk to you have looking back on your life. And any other wisdom you want to see past it anybody else who listens to this conversation in the future and I thought I'd start a little bit with some classic storycorps questions, which is just a little bit about where you grew up.

01:05 I was born in Gary Indiana and I had rheumatic heart fever. So we decided for my family decided that we needed to move to Tucson Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. If you don't beat that when you meet somebody you don't say hi. What are you do you say hi what's wrong with you? Anyway, I lived in Tucson Arizona until I was in the tenth grade and to be moved in Northport Long Island, New York, and I spent one year in in the 11th grade know the fifth grade Northport and then I went to college. I went to college after your sophomore year in high school.

01:47 The Ford Foundation was doing an experiment.

01:51 And they were taking kids who dad only two years of high school two or three years of high school and putting them in colleges. There were 11 colleges that were participating in this experiment and I applied for and I was accepted at 4 and the one I chose of the four was Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland and field you to go to college rather than finish High School directly and we can just move to North Port where I was in my tenth year and I didn't have any group of friends that I was particularly interested in or cared about why didn't have a Coterie of wonderful friends that I wanted to graduate with and when the opportunity presented itself, I was delighted and it presented itself in a weird way. I was in my typing class.

02:44 Those were the days and I'm glad actually then learn how to type. You smell that I'm using the computer all the time. I need it so the counselor of the school that the junior high school right West came into called called me and she told me about this new program and she asked me if I wanted to play and I said, yes, and we went from there and tell me what you how you ended up choosing your course of study at Goucher.

03:17 When I went to college, I thought I was going to be a physician all the doctors. I mean all the all my cousins on my female cousins are doctors with a couple of murder lawyers, but everybody had some kind of graduate education and my father was a position and as I say most of my cousins were positions, so I assumed I was going to be a physician.

03:38 And then in my second year of college I met this wonderful man, and I decided I would marry him after two weeks knowing him and and I did and he was a physician and we decided that one position was it enough was enough. So I moved we move together to Washington DC. I moved from Baltimore and he moved he was already in Washington in the Navy. So he had two more years there and I went to George Washington University and decided had we haven't decided that one position in the family was enough. I went into physics the first I want to go to history, but my family thought that was not appropriate. So I chose something harder and I chose metaphysics and then I decided they just wanted the mathematics part of it because it was the hardest thing I can think of and tell me it's never a question that ever dawned on me.

04:38 I like to study math. So tell me about what is it about math? What what is it? That is so so exciting to you.

04:48 To tell you the truth. There's not much this exciting about math and they said I was going to college and planning to be a doctor and then having married when I decided I wouldn't so I went into mathematics and I was in the University of Pennsylvania subsequently reading their computer will being involved in the computers use in the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. That's where I got my first exposure to the the whole world of medicine and

05:21 I was like there were so many smarter people than I was in the cohort in The Graduate School. I decide to go to graduate school cuz this computer guy was running on.

05:32 Was in the building where the mathematics Department was, so I started migrated upstairs and started listening to lectures and so on and I decided to take to get involved and I was so dismayed when I was about to choose a to decide whether to go on I thought this was ridiculous there. So many people you're so much smarter than I am and I had a wonderful Mentor. His name is Marie gerstenhaber. If you still in that position, he's an algebraic at the University of Pennsylvania, and he said Maxine just because you're not as smart as Mike bar doesn't mean that you're going to be teaching at the harbor the way my car is just it's a union card. He said just get it.

06:17 And was it did you feel when you have finally got your PhD? What does that mean to you?

06:24 Well, it was very exciting. I was pregnant with my second child and I had this experience of being in a conference in the field in which I did my dissertation and I was pregnant is very obvious and it was kind of interesting to have people react to me in that in that situation.

06:47 What types of things what did they say to you to remember? Well, they were very cordial and very considerate and sort of laughing at me. I just was a long time ago. And in those days you just didn't see women in in such fields are mean there are obviously a few but it wasn't normal. And and so I was an odd an odd person out. And did you ever really that didn't bother you while you were cognizant of it, but it didn't deter you absolutely. Where do you get that what they would call now? They're collecting Rich where it where you get that grit from

07:28 What's an extra questionable? I have no idea.

07:38 Wanting to do something unusual, I guess was part of it or wanted to do something. That would give me a career or give me a an option. I thought about becoming an actress. I was looked up this morning of Mary McMurtry was the name of the woman who did ahead of Mary McMurphy's Children's Theater in Tucson, Arizona and I was in Mary mcmurtry's Children's Theater and I got the lead parts always and then as it went through I always took an opportunity to be involved in theater when I could when I got to college to got your college. I got the lead in my first year there in the Caucasian chalk Circle. I was Russia and so it was a very interesting and attractive option, but I figured I couldn't

08:28 Could make a living that way so I better not do that that you did while you were pursuing your doctorate and after that. Can you can you start by talking to me about the field of biomedical Computing? What is it? Well, it has to do with the Computing related to life events life cycle and I was at the University of Pennsylvania. My husband went to the University of Pennsylvania to be a resident there and I got this job in the computer center of the University of Pennsylvania, which had a univac 1 computer which I think is so old that most people never heard of it, but it was one of the very first computers and it was a big monsters computer that took up a whole room and I was a programmer there and my job was to take care of the medical school. There was a black notebook a three-hole notebook that had pages in it.

09:29 And each page was written by one of the people in the medical school physician or a researcher who said if I had a univac 1 at the University of Pennsylvania, I would do X and so I went through the book 1 page after another and I went up to the person then knock on his door and said hi and it really wasn't his knock on the door. And I said hi. I'm here to help you if you how do you how do you want to use the computer? And what can we do together? And when was the first time you became aware of computer when I got this job with the National Institute of Standards and technology and I had a wonderful Mentor there who put me in touch with the man who invented the univac 1 computer at the end. It was sitting there at the end.

10:29 Hershey Pennsylvania, what was one instance of it? And he got in touch with the man who had done that inventing in the man who done that inventing is one who got me the position in the in the University's computer center.

10:43 Back then if someone had told you that we would all be having these computers on our desktops and in our phones. What what what do you think you would have been your response that's ridiculous that had all the information on them that they seemed how could that possibly get down to something that you hold in your hand and handheld computers are much more powerful than those other big machines feel like you're part of something groundbreaking to work with that computer.

11:28 No, I did had I had no idea how important it would become.

11:33 Interesting. It was a precursor right to other other computers, right? It was sort of the grandfather of computers subsequently in my life. I married to the man who is known for making computers personal but he died he this is my second husband when he died the New York Times had a big article about him and it said Wesley Clark 77 the man who made computers personal and what that meant by making computers personal as if he conceived the idea that a researcher in the medical used institution want to have his own computer or her own computer and not have to share a computer as we did with the univac where this is all the Microsoft. I mean,

12:24 IBM computers worth at time. They were called timeshare computers and that's what most people used. When you and Wesley when you first met did you talk about your experience and I first met him sort of independently. I went to a conference on computers in medicine and it was really really exciting because there are some people who are doing things at the University of George Washington University in Washington DC and that the University of Illinois and Champaign Illinois or wherever that are doing these things where they were modeling various parts of the human body and 411 experiment had to do with Statistics. So here is all the stuff that was going on and the man who gave the first talk was absolutely fascinating.

13:19 And I went up and talked to him and I took him out to lunch and subsequently. My husband told me that he and this man had we had flipped a coin to see who would give the talk and he my husband one. So I had to give the talk to your intellectual e broad to the area and tell me more about what you did after you left pan in terms of your your own work.

14:01 Went to Washington that's where I got my Ph.D. But by that time I was having children and removed when we were in Washington. I was able to get a job at the National Institutes of Health in which I did some programming. I did programming 2 hours 2 days a week and Me 3 days a week and I got the opportunity to work on my dissertation two days a week and I found a mentor at the University of Maryland who came there. Once it once a week to get some extra money and he became my dissertation supervisor.

14:37 A picture of the problem that I chose or chosen that presented itself to me and became my sister station was how do blood cells that are Sickle Cell which means you're sort of Lifesavers impair in normal blood cells with your kind of round in bringing in oxygen and by modeling the intake of oxygen by those two different shaped cells using partial denture hurt and differential equations. We discovered how much quicker the sickle cell

15:12 Could bring it because they had too much more area surface area. And what did that research mean to you to get that done?

15:24 Nothing personal because in that instance, we didn't publish a paper but subsequently every time I did some work with someone to do to answer a problem or address the problem. We ended up writing a paper or two or three and they were published in the

15:43 By medical literature and that became very important because that was sort of how you get a resume and curriculum vitae and those are important for making progress in this intellectual field. And then after that then you move to New Haven.

16:01 Yes, we moved to from Washington. We moved to New Haven for my husband was in the medical school and

16:12 I didn't like New Haven. Can I tell you why?

16:17 I felt so isolated in New Haven if you weren't on the

16:23 Academic ladder

16:26 And scheduled to get tenure you didn't exist and moreover New Haven was so isolated in terms of what it had a woman would take her husband sweetheart. I'm going to have my hair done today. I'm going into town to have my hair done today and she would mean New York. So New Haven was not a place in which to be but I continued the work that I did and how much of that had to do with your own work and how much it had to do with being a spouse.

17:01 Everyone everything I had to do I did some because I needed to make money when my husband was not making any money. They were times even as a physician when he took a piss at once when you took a position in which he was.

17:17 Supposed to be proud to have gotten the position even though they didn't pay any money. You were supposed to support yourself. And so it was very important for me to get some income to support us and subsequently. They did provide him some income and we used it to travel voucher about your fellowship from Ford. I mean you talked about that, you know, you did your work and you were a working mom before that that term was actually used you said it was before quote women's Liberation was defined. So I'm just I want to ask you about the so what did what did you say because you were doing all this work before it was sort of called. It was a recognized as you know Progressive when the women's liberation.

18:17 Movement happens, you know, what was your initial thought when you heard about you know that the Amendments and what were your thoughts no relationship to them. I didn't realize it but I was doing this in any sense pioneering or unusual just seen your one step after another and you're looking locally. You're not looking at the big picture and when you and when you would read about what they were doing, you just didn't think that it was just something else that was happening out there. The things that they were doing were so different from the things that I was doing they were doing speeches and writing papers and and being famous because they were making these news

19:04 Forays into a world that didn't exist for women that they are doing something that was very notable and very very life changing for the women. They were did you think you'll be ready for dance whole thing was about Housewives right? And did you think like, I'm not housewife that that that doesn't apply to me on while I'm working. I have my own identity. I have a doctorate in mathematics from an did you Did you sort of see yourself crime in a different realm or no? No, I was very local in my observations and what I knew and the people that I was interacting with her very much in my similar situation. Not not any women. Yeah, but the people who are trying to get ahead and trying to write papers and trying to make a career in their own Fields were people that I was kind of know. Those are my

19:59 Holly's, so you said in this interview with Joshua that you had at that time you to deal with your husband that you would work and you would cover I guess the cost of childcare. Yes, and that as long as you had dinner on the table when he expected it, you know, he wouldn't give you grief about working. I guess this is can you tell me how you came to that to you land. And did you know, what were your thoughts about it?

20:32 I didn't realize it was a deal at the time. He said it was expected and assumed that the wife would see the dinner was on the table when it was supposed to be in that the children were taken care of in the laundry got done and the toilets got cleaned and it was assumed that the woman would be responsible for all that and if she could afford to have someone take care of all that stuff and also take care of the children when she was not available then then you had a very wealthy woman who was at leisure to do whatever she wanted in Mayan since it was not well, but it was just having enough money to have all those things taken care of so that my husband didn't have any inconvenience as a result of my being working my working your husband give you grief for working.

21:22 Not really know he just accepted it. We didn't talk about it much.

21:28 Did you talk about your actual this substance of your work, you know at the gym, even though he was the first conference to which I went.

21:41 He sent me a corsage. So here is airplane going from Philadelphia to Minneapolis, and I had a corsage.

21:53 Cuz he was proud of you. Yes, you said he was excited for me. It's that is doing this all that's really nice. That's really nice couple other things about this. So tell me about the just the overall management of three kids and a career in an era before you can have your groceries delivered or if you needed a size 7 your volleyball shoe, you know, it's obviously that's wonderful. I didn't realize that there was any big deal about it. I know I just did it and it was convenient and I had to do these things to take care of the things that I was responsible for. And when you look back do you do you wish that you had

22:53 I don't know pushed more your husband to get for a more egalitarian roles in the household or it's just that was what it was like back in this world pregnant the early 70s, you're right even earlier than that was 260. The only thing I worry about and regret is the possibility that I didn't get my kids as much loving and time and attention as I might have done.

23:21 But I did a lot of work at 4 in the morning so that I could give my kids my day hours have I ever said that to your kids that you wish that you were worried that you would give it to them? Yes, and they assure me that that was not the case.

23:39 Are your kids have one of they think about having a mother who had this really unconditional career at a time when so few women were doing the type of work that you were doing if they were working at all. What what have they said about that? They're proud of me. I think they do regret moments when I might have been with them and wasn't but I think I'm on the whole they're proud.

24:13 When we when my husband and I separated and I had a choice of moving from this beautiful home. We had in Bethesda to an apartment on downtown Washington or moving to New York. I had an opportunity to move to Newark to work for Merrill Lynch and I'll tell you about that in a moment. I had was a very difficult choice and I decided to go to New York and leave leave the kids in Washington and that was heartbreaking. I got to see them frequently and I went down there and they came up to visit me and we had summer vacations together, but it was still a very painful but how old were the kids then?

24:57 My daughter who's the oldest was already in college, so she was about 18 and that would mean my first son was 15 and my younger son was 13 should I wasn't very challenging time for all of you. We had wonderful summer times at the Ruby's place. We rented a cottage up in the Adirondacks and went there for a week. Just the four of us. We had such a wonderful time. What what is there particular memory that stands out from that? Yes. There is my youngest son.

25:39 Came in he was driving by this time assassin's fish me later. And he said I'm going to town to do my laundry. Does anybody have anything they want me to take which has somebody doing his laundry all of his life and he was going to do so laundry with a very big deal. I'm curious Maxine, you know when you were making your own a career decisions when you were so young and you are very influenced obviously by your first husband and by your parents to in terms of what you were going to major in and stuff. What what advice did you give to your correct kids as they were thinking about their own career choices?

26:33 I didn't have to give them much but I stay each chose a discipline or field and thing that they enjoy doing and what I encourage was that they wanted to do it. Whatever gave them Joy was what I wanted them to do. I didn't influence them in any direction I think and do you think that you were deliberately trying not to influence them because it sounds like you you were something you were influenced. I don't know how heavy-handed or not your parents and your husband were you know, or whether you just kind of felt the pressure to your major in pick your field based on what you thought would they would want you to do? So, did you deliberately try to hang back a bit on that stuff?

27:19 Not deliberately. It just I just didn't push them. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but how how was your line was there on this?

27:36 Tell me about I loved her with other role models in your life. I sounds like you had some wonderful mentors, but were there other people who were were kind to you and throw model your ways of making life work?

27:56 Frankly, they were not there were not many women who had careers and children and tried to have a normal quote home life quote a normal life and manage their careers.

28:11 Did you have girlfriends who were you know, even if they weren't working, but they admired what you were doing or they worked enough by at least supportive know when I left Goucher after 2 years it down shirt. I was very young when I got married and those friends have remained and we still have we get together on the first Monday of every month at 5 and resume now we used to get together in person, but we know soon and these are people who I've known for 60 years and we've grown up together and we've had children together one of us Lost Child to cancer. And so you're just experiencing those

28:59 Events in lives was something that has bound us together and we know each other intimately and so our conversations can be here what's going on with feeling good was feeling bad. We can talk about feelings and we feel that we know it because we believe we we do know each other well enough so that those can be very intimate conversations. I think there is something about people who know you early on in your life. I think there is something about that where there are it's not about what you ultimately became our accomplishments or things like that. They just knew you you know, when you were, you know young and just the just in the process of becoming right?

29:52 Vulnerability or just you know, you're not you can put your put your pretenses down, you know, these people who knew you and maybe knew your parents or siblings or just don't know your stories back story story sense, right one wonderful woman who just died 2 weeks ago. In fact, and she lived in New York and she encouraged me to come to New York and I had to make that decision and she she went out the things that I would be able to do a New York. I chose. I have a choice between going into a medical field and going into

30:32 Computing in finance. I had two choices when I came to New York and one wants to go to work for Merrill Lynch in one wants to go to work for Citibank.

30:44 And I decided to go to work for Merrill Lynch because I thought that the Merrill Lynch Brokers had to be concerned about their clients in ways that Physicians have to be concerned about their clients and my niece was a great artist drew a wonderful picture of a broker with his head in a sort of square.

31:06 Quotron tube the front of a computer to hang out just looking at the at the screen and he was trying to figure out what to do and on top he had a bunch of products coming in like bonds and Richardson.

31:21 Stocksund all sorts of products that he could choose and at the bottom of the screen there were little man and there was a doctor and the retired couple in the young couple and all these different people had to be supplied with the or record. It was necessary for the broker to recommend to them what was best for them taking care of their situation. So I saw that as a parallel between what a position does and what somebody in the mint in the financial world does whereas I saw Citibank people is just being people who were on the floor of the bank that didn't realize exciting things in from the back and it's somebody who had thought seriously about being a physician write that must have a think that's right to yes. Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me about your your kids? And did you did you ever think

32:21 Yourself, you know, I should just focus on my career and not have kids know. It was the other way around I had children and then I thought maybe I shouldn't be in a career when I worried about who would pick them up from school and bring them home. So the person I hired to be my housekeeper with somebody who lived in with us and could drive and so she did all the picking up in the carrying around 2 to lessons and clarinet lessons and violin lessons and all that stuff what has being a mother and a grandmother miss you.

32:59 Well, I I treasure my children and I treasure my grandchildren one of my granddaughters is living with me now.

33:07 My apartment here in Brooklyn, we don't see each other very much giving me the cold virus because she's out and and she's many more people and it's interacting with many more people that I am so worried about not getting too close and try not to be in the kitchen at the same time.

33:34 I'm sorry, how do you communicate with each other to text or how do you know when we're when I'm 6 feet away from her and she's in the kitchen and I'm on the outside of the kitchen. You don't talk and we sit at opposite ends of a long table when we're eating together. What do you like about living with young person?

33:53 There's somebody to talk to there's somebody to find out what's happened with her today when she has a job here in New York and that's what brings her here. And so sometimes she has painful interactions with her boss and I enjoyed the wrong word, but it makes me feel good to feel that. I can be sympathetic and helpful to her and it's very interesting to find out what sorts of things are going on a broader storycorps questions in the time that we have left.

34:32 I don't have an answer to that. I never imagined anything that I didn't do I imagined made I made happen Shepherd being a doctor that decision was changed my life from what I had expected and you have done so many things in your life. What it what are you most proud of?

34:59 Of all the things I've ever done the most of which I am the thing of which I'm proudest is wiring up the settlement houses in New York, you know, what a settlement house is why don't you tell us most people think of the settlement houses where people who are poor settled, but actually they're called settlement houses. They started in London in the 1800 when people were coming in from the fields in the Farms to do work in the industrial sector that began in London in the 80s and they were called settlement houses because the people who ran them the Eleanor Roosevelt's at the world actually settled in the physical homes of the houses that these were and now you go to a settlement house in the Lower East Side where a lot of immigrants came and needed the help in the learning how to speak English and learning how to dance and learning how to take care of their finances and learning. What a bank was and what a

35:59 Bank account was such thing as shaving they when you say settlement house you think well, that's where the people settled these incoming people from our neighborhoods in Ireland or London or Europe, but they're call settlement houses because the women who ran them settled in them, and so now you into a settlement house and you see two offices connected by a bathtub, I mean a bathroom in the bathtub has a piece of plywood on it and it's got to filing cabinets on it connected by a bathroom. Tell us about wiring up the Soma houses to tell me what that entails well before I went to wire up the show me houses. I was working for something called The Carnegie Commission on science technology and government. We had some really great people who were in charge of our various projects and programs about science.

36:59 Technology in the government in various sectors and I heard Al Gore say we need on ramps to the information superhighway in poor neighborhoods.

37:13 Because at that moment people were who were wealthy were beginning to have computers in their family rooms a single computer were all the kids could come in and you'll use it whenever they want to do and people who are poor didn't have that opportunity. So here was Al Gore saying we need to have that opportunity for poor people and I was on the board of Union settlement at that time how we know each other and I thought to myself well if we need them in poor neighborhoods, let's get going and I raised three and a half million dollars by writing Grant applications for the biggest one with course. Not a horse with the largest one came from the government when Al Gore said that he set up a set of Grant giving

38:01 He set up a grant-giving agency that set up these places where computers could be used in poor neighborhoods and in places where there weren't any such opportunities and I went to the head of what was called United neighborhood houses. And he said if I could if I could support myself, would you let me work for you? And she said yes A friend of mine who is a wonderful friend and ran the

38:29 Gift-giving part of a large corporation if you want to do that, I'll give you $25,000. So she did and that made it possible for me to go to this head of the

38:42 The year the show me houses in New York City and say if I can support myself for you. Let me come to work for you. And of course she said yes, and then I erased a lot of money but I like writing Grant proposals. What did it mean? Once the settlement houses were wired? What how did they have over the next steps after that will initially there was a family room where they were 15 or 20 computers around the outside unit is sitting in there. And that's where people came in to learn how to use computers and how to reduce simple coding and how to interact with the screen and how to use the printouts and how to ask questions and get answers to them. And what is what do you think now when you look at the settlement houses and you know that in terms of their use of Technology

39:42 When we initially started we had telephone lines that connected the computers to wherever they were being connected to and then came in and possible to get.

39:54 You had to have physical.

39:58 Powers physical trees

40:05 Supports for these lines you like telephone poles going to have the signals got into places like settlement houses or to your own home and that's and that's how we did it.

40:22 But it was just great that they didn't get left behind right? Yes. Yes, it absolutely was great. So it made it possible for people who lived in the poor neighborhoods to come in and learn how to use computers that made a huge difference. There's one tiny anecdotal tell you of Jerry wise philanthropist to Heather big philanthropy who had a big pot of money that he gave to such a situation where he felt that it could be useful.

40:52 Gave us $10,000 no overhead, which is a big deal. We needed the overhead from Grants. But anyway, he has $10,000 to use in which we could pay people were students at the New York City Technical College College of Technology and their jobs were to come to the settlement houses and go into these rooms where the computers were and fix them up and teach the young people who are there in the old people that many seniors in and adults who came in to learn and we were able to pay them these young men for doing that. So that was a three-way win freeway with the obvious once wrote that the settlement houses got inexpensive labor. That was very good.

41:39 And the second one was at these students. Real real live down to earth experience doing these consultations and work in the settlement houses. But you know what the third when was these kids from the New York City Technical College, we're poor and something they were many of them were the first ones to be in their families went to college and they became models for the kids were in the settlement houses who who saw in this young man who came there with most of them who came to the settlement house to work with the kids and show them how to use computers and they were able to Envision for themselves a career in computers, and I'm so glad that you talk to us about that that is certainly something to be proud of and it's been a pleasure to talk with you today about your extraordinary life. So amazing and all

42:39 Important work that you've done, so thank you for speaking to me and thank you for having this conversation with sword. It has been a pleasure Robin. Thank you for inviting me.