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Caitlin Haskett (00:00:01):
The following interview with Susan Horwitz was conducted by Caitlin Haskett on behalf of Bryn Mawr college as part of the project, mid century Jewish martyrs, a collection of oral histories. It took place on July 11th in Susan's office [redacted] in the Bronx, New York City. To begin with, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up before you went to Bryn Mawr?
Susan Horwitz (00:00:28):
I grew up in Winthrop, Massachusetts, which is a small town just north of Boston. I went to public high school. I graduated from Winthrop High School and then I went on to Bryn Mawr College. I had thought that I would be a history major when I went to Bryn Mawr. I was very interested in history, but when I got to Bryn Mawr I had to take a science course. It was a requirement, so I thought, well, I'll take a biology course in my freshman year and get it out of the way. As it turns out, I enjoyed the course tremendously and I decided at that time that I would go on and major in biology and take chemistry and that's what I did, and then four years later I graduated as a biology major. Completely different than what I had expected when I first came to Bryn Mawr.
Caitlin Haskett (00:01:39):
Tell me a little bit more about the high school that you went to.
Susan Horwitz (00:01:43):
The high school that I went to was a public high school Winthrop, Massachusetts was a middle class, lower class sort of working community. It wasn't an excellent high school by any means and when I came to Bryn Mawr I felt that I really was not very well prepared for the college. I don't know what the situation is today but at that time quite a large percentage of the class, I don't know what percentage, but certainly a third of the class at least if not more had prepared at private schools. I think they were better prepared than I was.
Susan Horwitz (00:02:29):
When I arrived, I felt very much the divide between those students like myself who had gone to very ordinary public high schools and those who had been very well prepared say at Ms. Porter's, one of these schools. I was surprised I have to admit that there were so many Jewish girls at Bryn Mawr. I had not expected that at all. I certainly didn't select Bryn Mawr for any reason except the fact that it had a very good reputation and I felt that I would get a very good education there.
Caitlin Haskett (00:03:13):
Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about what the decision process for you going to Bryn Mawr was like.
Susan Horwitz (00:03:23):
My decision to go there?
Caitlin Haskett (00:03:26):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Susan Horwitz (00:03:26):
I had visited a number of different schools and I thought that I could be happy at Bryn Mawr. It wasn't too far from Boston but it was not in Boston and I wanted to be out of Boston. I had lived there my whole life and it was a prestigious school and I thought it would be a good place for me to get a good education.
Caitlin Haskett (00:03:56):
Did you apply to other colleges or you knew Bryn Mawr was it for you?
Susan Horwitz (00:04:02):
Oh, I applied to other schools. The other school that I was really thinking about because I was very interested in dance at the time was Bennington College and I'm sure my experience would have been quite different there than at Bryn Mawr.
Caitlin Haskett (00:04:18):
Yeah. Before we get into Bryn Mawr too much, tell me about what your religious upbringing was like.
Susan Horwitz (00:04:27):
I grew up in a small town and there was only one synagogue in town and that was orthodox. That was the way small towns were in those days. My family was not orthodox but that's where we belonged and most Jewish families in town belonged to this one synagogue and you have to remember this was quite a few years ago. I graduated from high school in 1954. Young Jewish girls were not bat mitzvahed at the time, so I did go to Sunday school and as part of every Sunday and as part of that we did sometimes go to services on Saturday and certainly I went to services on Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur but except for that I would not certainly think of myself as a religious Jewish person, but culturally I was definitely Jewish in my thinking and in my concerns for other people and my whole outlook I think was very, I would call it the Jewish and my friends, my close friends in high school were Jewish.
Caitlin Haskett (00:05:55):
Tell me more about what you mean by having a Jewish outlook.
Susan Horwitz (00:06:01):
Family was very important. We were not religious but Passover was a major holiday. We all got together. I went to my grandmother's one night on one side and my grandmother on the other side. It was a family tradition, we each of us brought different foods with us and we fasted on Yom Kippur. I sort of think of myself as a very important cultural Jew. I didn't speak Yiddish myself but my father spoke Yiddish and my grandfather spoke Yiddish and my father was a first generation American. We had deep Jewish roots even though we were not a religious orthodox family.
Caitlin Haskett (00:06:57):
You mentioned your father and your grandfather. Tell me a little bit more about your family.
Susan Horwitz (00:07:05):
On my father's side my grandfather came to this country. He ran away from the Tsar, Russian Tsar army. Came to this country by himself. He left his wife pregnant in Russia and she came two years later with her daughter, their first child. Education was paramount in the family. My aunt who was born in Russia came when she was two was a 1926 graduate of Simmons College. My father was born three years later.
Susan Horwitz (00:07:49):
He went to Harvard, in Harvard law school. It was never any question in my family about my going to college and my father was... and mother felt strongly that women should be educated and my father always said, you do just what you want, the world is yours. Get an education and that's very important. That to me was the family that I grew up in. It was a very musical family. My father played the violin, my mother sang, my sister played the piano very well. I was not very useful musically but there was no science in my family. I mean, I didn't know any scientists. I didn't have anyone to follow but just... that's how I got into science, just because I enjoyed it and liked it.
Caitlin Haskett (00:08:50):
Yeah. What did your father do for work?
Susan Horwitz (00:08:58):
My father was a lawyer in Boston. My mother was a bookkeeper. Although my mother was not a college graduate she graduated from high school. She was extraordinarily intelligent, very well read and she worked as a bookkeeper. I grew up in a family where people worked. They were educated and they expected their children also to follow in those footsteps.
Caitlin Haskett (00:09:31):
Tell me about any expectations that you had for Bryn Mawr when you were getting ready to start your first year there.
Susan Horwitz (00:09:40):
Well, I had no idea what the Jewish community would be like. I had no idea if there'd be other Jewish students or how many they would be. Well, I assume there'd be some but I didn't know, have any idea, and frankly, I was amazed at the number of Jewish students that were at Bryn Mawr. I think I had a very unusual experience because I've actually spoken to quite a few of my friends this last week with whom I was close at Bryn Mawr who were Jewish because I wanted to compare our experiences.
Susan Horwitz (00:10:21):
Most of my close friends at Bryn Mawr lived in Rhoads because when I came that was the dormitory that I was in and I calculated with my good friend Maxine Savitz, how many Jews we thought were in our class. I don't know about our class but we thought that about 25% of the freshmen in Rhoads were Jewish which was quite surprising to us.
Susan Horwitz (00:10:56):
We had a group of Jewish students and I think that made an immense, immense difference. One of my friends was in Pembroke East and there was only one other Jewish freshmen beside her in that dorm. Matt Gal was from Philadelphia, so according to my friend went home almost every weekend, and she was quite unhappy her freshman year there.
Susan Horwitz (00:11:32):
In fact, she requested that she be moved to Rhoads and not only did she request it but her parents requested it and the school refused to do that, so actually she left, which is unfortunate. She went on to have terrific career as a pediatric radiologist, but left after her freshman year at Bryn Mawr. I think that I was very fortunate to be with this group of women who were at Rhoads. That is not to say that I didn't have friends that weren't Jewish, but my closest friends definitely were Jewish and they have remained very close friends over the past 60 years. In fact, just recently five of us had lunch together in New York City to celebrate an award that I just received which was very nice.
Caitlin Haskett (00:12:38):
That sounds wonderful.
Susan Horwitz (00:12:39):
I had other friends who weren't Jewish and some who I have kept in contact with over the years.
Caitlin Haskett (00:12:49):
You mentioned the student who requested to move into Rhoads and the college said no. Do you have any idea why the college refused that request?
Susan Horwitz (00:12:59):
I have no idea.
Caitlin Haskett (00:13:00):
Any guesses?
Susan Horwitz (00:13:03):
I don't. I have no idea why they would refuse someone that request, and actually I just spoke to her this morning because I wanted to clarify it in my own mind and she said that she had requested it, and then her parents had requested it and the school said no.
Caitlin Haskett (00:13:23):
Hmm, interesting.
Susan Horwitz (00:13:28):
So I assume then that the experience of the Jewish students who were freshmen in 1954 probably varied tremendously on what dormitories they lived in. In fact, this woman told me that the first day she was at Bryn Mawr, one of the other freshmen who was in Pembroke East asked her whether Judaism was a religion or a race, so that gives you some idea of the difference in the experience that I had compared to what she had.
Caitlin Haskett (00:14:11):
Yeah. Did you experience anything like that?
Susan Horwitz (00:14:16):
Absolutely not. I did not feel at all that there was any discrimination because of my religion. Of course we had no groups such as Hillel on campus at that time. The only religious group that was on campus were the Quakers who had a service every Sunday morning that we were all welcome to attend but we were not required to attend but other than that there was no such thing, Hillel on campus or any kind of religion whatsoever.
Caitlin Haskett (00:14:56):
Did you ever attend the Quaker service on campus?
Susan Horwitz (00:14:59):
Yes, I did. And I liked it very much.
Caitlin Haskett (00:15:02):
Tell me about going to the service on campus.
Susan Horwitz (00:15:06):
Have you ever been to a Quaker service?
Caitlin Haskett (00:15:08):
Yeah.
Susan Horwitz (00:15:09):
Well, you know what it is. I mean, you sit and people talk, and it was interesting.
Caitlin Haskett (00:15:14):
Yeah. What did you like about it?
Susan Horwitz (00:15:16):
What did I like about it? I mean, I only went a couple of times. It was not an activity that I participated in, but I liked the fact that everyone could say what they wanted to say. Was very open, very friendly and I don't know, do they still have Quaker services on Sunday?
Caitlin Haskett (00:15:36):
Not at Bryn Mawr, but at Haverford they do. Did you ever go to Jewish religious services while you were a student at Bryn Mawr?
Susan Horwitz (00:15:44):
No.
Caitlin Haskett (00:15:46):
No.
Susan Horwitz (00:15:46):
That of course is quite different from... I don't know about at Bryn Mawr, but I know that my grandchildren who were in college, they often went to different people's homes for Friday night services for dinner. We didn't have any of that at Bryn Mawr at all.
Caitlin Haskett (00:16:07):
Would you gather with other Jewish students to have... make kiddush together on Friday nights or anything like that?
Susan Horwitz (00:16:15):
No.
Caitlin Haskett (00:16:18):
No. Paid attention to other things?
Susan Horwitz (00:16:19):
Well, I don't think that the women that I associated with who were Jewish were religious. They probably didn't do that at home, so they probably didn't do it... wouldn't do it at college, and probably of all, I can't be sure about this, that they weren't just open about their religion as perhaps people are today in college.
Caitlin Haskett (00:16:54):
What do you mean by that?
Susan Horwitz (00:16:56):
We didn't talk about it in public. We didn't discuss it in public.
Caitlin Haskett (00:17:03):
Would you talk about it with your other friends who you knew were Jewish?
Susan Horwitz (00:17:09):
Well, yes. I mean, we talked a lot but religion was not an important thing to me or to my friends. We knew we were Jewish, we were but we didn't celebrate together.
Caitlin Haskett (00:17:23):
Okay. If you never talked about religion how did you know that each other were Jewish?
Susan Horwitz (00:17:32):
It's very easy. I don't have to tell you, you just know. It's one of those things.
Caitlin Haskett (00:17:39):
You just sort of found each other.
Susan Horwitz (00:17:40):
We found each other. Yeah. Well, of course some people, it is the name, it's very obvious. My maiden name was Band, B-A-N-D. In fact, that's the name I use. Susan Band Horwitz which was not particularly Jewish or in any other way, but you know, you look the way you look, the way you act, it's pretty obvious.
Caitlin Haskett (00:18:15):
Did you... I need to think for a second about what I want to ask.
Susan Horwitz (00:18:22):
Go right ahead.
Caitlin Haskett (00:18:27):
Tell me about just sort of living in Rhoads in general. I know you mentioned a lot of your friends were from there, but what was living in that dorm like?
Susan Horwitz (00:18:39):
Well, living there was very nice because I had so many friends there. As I said about 25% of the freshmen who came to Rhoads were Jewish and little by little we sort of moved together, so at the end of Rhode South where we lived the whole corridor were the Jewish girls who we had become very friendly with and we had non-Jewish friends too, loads of them particularly I think in the sciences. Probably there weren't as many Jews girls in the sciences as there were maybe in psychology, literature. I'm not sure about that, but we had loads of friends that weren't Jewish, certainly in biology, there were many different majors and I was very friendly with these girls or in chemistry.
Susan Horwitz (00:19:35):
There was no reason that Jews went to any one particular major. I think we made friends with lots of different people. Actually one of the women that I talked to actually this morning who was among my close friends grew up in a very small town in New Jersey, the way there were very few Jews. For her coming from this small town in New Jersey where she said there were only three Jewish girls or boys in her high school, when she came to Bryn Mawr it was quite different. There were so many more Jewish students there than in her high school.
Susan Horwitz (00:20:17):
So it depends from where you came but I think the biggest difference at Bryn Mawr was the fact that the Jewish students weren't debutantes and many of the girls that came there had their coming out parties. They were debutantes, they had gone to private schools, so there was a very big difference in class much more so than in religion I think.
Caitlin Haskett (00:20:48):
Yeah. How did you feel about that?
Susan Horwitz (00:20:53):
Well, I hadn't met those kinds of people previously. For the most part I found them people like me, but their experiences had been very different than say my experience had been growing up. I mean, many of them had gone to private schools, not only had they gone to private schools which was something that really surprised me, they had lived at these schools which to me I had never imagined going away in junior high school and high school to live somewhere else and go to high school. I was very close to my parents. We lived at home. There was this divide and I don't think that's so true today because you probably don't have that many debutante students.
Caitlin Haskett (00:21:51):
Yeah. I think it's certainly less visible today. All right. Shifting gears a little bit, tell me about the academics at Bryn Mawr. You said you shifted to biology really early on.
Susan Horwitz (00:22:06):
Yes, I did and then I took... well, I had to take a lot of courses because I majored in science and I took chemistry I guess at least two full years of chemistry. Organic chemistry and Bryn Mawr had a very good chemistry department, also had an excellent biology department. I mean, it was really rather unusual.
Susan Horwitz (00:22:38):
We had two women in the biology department, Mary Gardener, who, actually had written a book on... a biology book I believe we used her textbook and then we also had Jane Oppenheimer, as a professor and of course, she was a truly outstanding scientist who actually became a member of the National Academy and being a woman and being elected to National Academy was not a simple thing. Very difficult, but she was and she was truly an outstanding scientist.
Susan Horwitz (00:23:28):
So, you know, having these types of teachers and professors was a wonderful thing for your education. One of the things that I've discussed this with some of my colleagues who are scientists who were students with me at Bryn Mawr, we always called our male professors Dr. It was "Dr. Barry," but it was "Miss Oppenheimer," M-I-S-S. And I'm thinking about that looking back on that, it's really peculiar that at a school like Bryn Mawr we called our female professors who were the same PhDs as the males, we always called them Ms and the males were Dr.
Caitlin Haskett (00:24:22):
Do you think--why do you think that was?
Susan Horwitz (00:24:25):
I have no idea, but that's the way it was when I came and that's the way we all work, but it certainly was discriminatory against the women who in many instances were actually even better known scientists, had written books but that's the way it was. We just did it the way the class before us did it and we did it.
Caitlin Haskett (00:24:51):
Yeah. Was that common across the campus do you think or only when you took classes that were in the sciences, did you notice it--
Susan Horwitz (00:25:01):
Well, I noticed it more because I was in the sciences a lot. Now I don't know about... I mean I took English classes in history, but I don't recall if we call... I do recall, we call them men, the males doctor and I don't recall if we called our English professor if it was a female that I don't recall but I definitely know that we called our biology professors Ms Oppenheimer or Ms Gardner which thinking back is quite discriminatory.
Caitlin Haskett (00:25:33):
Yeah. You mentioned that Professor Oppenheimer and Professor Gardener were really well known in their fields. What was it like having them as professors?
Susan Horwitz (00:25:45):
Well, they were not easy to please. I mean, you had to really work very hard to get good grades and they were demanding and they had high standards which is good for a student to have that and certainly a preparation for graduate school. I think it worked out very well.
Caitlin Haskett (00:26:11):
Yeah. Did you have any professors that you developed close relationships with?
Susan Horwitz (00:26:20):
I had a fairly close relationship with Dr. Joe Barry, who had a grant from, I guess it was from National Aeronautics or some government group, to study the effect of gravity on eventually the idea was on people, but in the laboratory we did this, I believe with mice. We had centrifuges and we would centrifuge and see what the effect of gravity was and on cells and I participated in those experiments in his lab. I was probably closest to him in terms of rapport.
Caitlin Haskett (00:27:13):
I see.
Susan Horwitz (00:27:14):
In fact, very interesting. Maybe five years after I graduated, I was on a camping trip with my husband and we were on the way back to Boston and we stopped at Bryn Mawr where he had never been and I wanted to show him where I had gone to college and so we went into the biology building and we were walking in the corridor and we heard this booming voice say, "That sounds like Susie Band." And of course it was Dr. Barry recognizing my voice as I walked down the corridor. My husband who had graduated from Harvard, he was a chemistry major and he said, "Oh my God, no one would ever say that to me from Harvard."
Caitlin Haskett (00:28:10):
Meaning no one would recognize him--
Susan Horwitz (00:28:12):
No one would recognize his voice walking down the corridor. It was such a much larger school of course, but here I was and my professor yells out, that sounds like Susie Band.
Caitlin Haskett (00:28:26):
Yeah. Did you have a favorite class that you took while you were at Bryn Mawr?
Susan Horwitz (00:28:33):
A favorite class?
Caitlin Haskett (00:28:35):
Or one that's memorable even?
Susan Horwitz (00:28:37):
Well, I think that Jane Oppenheimer's class and embryology was very unique. She was a true expert and a leader in the field. I would say that was probably the most outstanding course that I remember.
Caitlin Haskett (00:29:05):
What do you remember about the course?
Susan Horwitz (00:29:07):
Well, we had to do... We had a laboratory and you learned a lot and embryology is very interesting, so that worked out very well.
Caitlin Haskett (00:29:23):
Okay. Shifting gears again a little bit, what was your social life on campus like? What did you do outside of studying and going to class?
Susan Horwitz (00:29:33):
What did I do outside of social life? [laughs] I had a very active social life. I don't know if Bryn Mawr still does this, but they would publish a... was almost like a pamphlet with the pictures of all the freshmen with their name under it and most of the socializing that I did was with guys from Penn medical school who would get a hold of this book and then look through it and that was how I made social contacts... most social contacts were made.
Susan Horwitz (00:30:14):
In addition Bryn Mawr at that point, of course it was all female then and it still is but it didn't have the interactions that you have today, let's say with Haverford. I think I went to Haverford once in the four years I was there and that was to hear a scientific lecture. We didn't have any interactions there.
Susan Horwitz (00:30:41):
But... so that most of my social actions were with guys from Penn at the medical school but Bryn Mawr did take us, I remember when I was a freshman we went in a bus to Princeton. This was before Princeton was co-ed I believe and for a mixer. It was one of the more unpleasant things I remember because we all went into this large room and there was a balcony and I remember the guys were standing up on the balcony looking down at us who had just come in on the bus from Bryn Mawr. That wasn't a very pleasant experience but I had a very active social life when I was there.
Caitlin Haskett (00:31:31):
What kinds of things would you do? Would you go off campus or?
Susan Horwitz (00:31:36):
Well, yes. Dates, I went off campus and also I went with my friends, my female friends very often to the symphony. We went to the Philadelphia symphony like on Saturday afternoon. I felt that I had an active social life. I didn't feel isolated by any means.
Caitlin Haskett (00:32:03):
Did you participate in any groups or organizations on campus?
Susan Horwitz (00:32:10):
I don't think we had many groups in those days. I don't remember any to be honest, of course there was like the French house where people lived who only spoke French, then goes a German house, but languages were not my forte and I did take freshman German, and I finally, in those days I don't know if this is still true, you had to take... pass exams in two languages and they had to be unrelated. It was not easy for someone like me. I did do it in German and I think Spanish.
Susan Horwitz (00:32:46):
Of course in those days when you were a graduate student in science you had to show that you had proficiency in reading German because so much of the scientific literature particularly chemistry was in German, so I had to do that as a graduate student.
Caitlin Haskett (00:33:15):
So, even though it was difficult having to pass the orals at Bryn Mawr helped with that maybe.
Susan Horwitz (00:33:23):
Of course, but for that was much easier. You had to just take an English paper and explain... a German paper and explain what was in it. Speaking in English and since it was science it was much easier.
Caitlin Haskett (00:33:38):
I see.
Susan Horwitz (00:33:39):
Yeah.
Caitlin Haskett (00:33:42):
Do you remember participating in events on campus or anything?
Susan Horwitz (00:33:46):
Yeah, May Day we always danced around the maple and singing, we had the Lantern and we sang songs and all that. It seems like centuries ago. I think it still have the lantern and in the basement somewhere. Yeah, sure. That was part of Bryn Mawr May Day, Lantern Night of course.
Caitlin Haskett (00:34:19):
What did you think about those kinds of events and traditions?
Susan Horwitz (00:34:23):
At the time I think if I recall correctly I enjoyed doing it. Looking back now I'm thinking about it doing it, seems a little silly but we all did it. We had fun because were doing it with our friends and they were all nice people and it worked out okay.
Caitlin Haskett (00:34:54):
That's good. You mentioned... I'm jumping back a little bit, but you mentioned you had a lot of Jewish friends. Do you know if any of them would ever go off campus for religious services or anything like that?
Susan Horwitz (00:35:06):
None of them did. I actually spoke to quite a few of them and they didn't. We never did. I don't think they... we had no contact with the community and I didn't know if at that time there were many Jews living on the main line. We might've have had to go into Philadelphia. Now things have certainly changed but at that time it was a little bit different I think.
Caitlin Haskett (00:35:41):
Was there anything else that struck you from the conversations you've been having with your classmates recently?
Susan Horwitz (00:35:47):
Well, I think as I said, all of us except one lived in Rhoads. I think we had a very positive experience because we had a group and people flock to likes if whatever you are you come together and we all had that common background, so we were very close except for this one friend of mine who actually was only there as a freshman because she wanted to move and she was unhappy in Pembroke East. I have no idea like what happened, how people felt and then [inaudible] or any of these other places but I think for those of us it was a very positive experience in Rhoads.
Caitlin Haskett (00:36:39):
Do you remember how you came to live in Rhoads?
Susan Horwitz (00:36:42):
It was assigned. I don't think I... I didn't know anything. It was just assigned to me and I don't know how they did that actually. Speaking to one of my friends this morning who was... she majored in sociology and one of the things she told me was that the chairman of the Department of Sociology had told her that there were no quotas at Bryn Mawr and I don't know what the history of that is because certainly many colleges at that time had quotas and I don't know what the policy at Bryn Mawr was in those years.
Caitlin Haskett (00:37:43):
Yeah. There's nothing official that says either way. That's all I know really. Did it seem like there was a quota?
Susan Horwitz (00:37:53):
No, I don't know anything about it. I just... let's say she was a sociology major and Jean Schneider, I guess Himas Julius was chairman of the department at that time and had said that there were no quotas at Bryn Mawr which may have been true. It may not have, I just don't know.
Caitlin Haskett (00:38:15):
Yeah. Interesting.
Susan Horwitz (00:38:17):
So, um, that's something I don't know anything about.
Caitlin Haskett (00:38:23):
Yeah. Okay. You mentioned that you got assigned to live in Rhoads and you've mentioned that 25% of the freshman class in Rhoads was Jewish. How do you think that happened?
Susan Horwitz (00:38:38):
I have no idea. I was going to ask you.
Caitlin Haskett (00:38:42):
Yeah.
Susan Horwitz (00:38:42):
I have no idea. I'm trying to think when Rhoads was built. It was quite new at that time. I don't know the exact year but maybe they just had more space. It was quite a large... we had the north and the south Rhoads and it was quite a large dormitory and I think maybe it was fairly new and they had space because they put a lot of freshmen there.
Caitlin Haskett (00:39:12):
Hm. So, you think it was because there was so many freshmen that--
Susan Horwitz (00:39:18):
Yes.
Caitlin Haskett (00:39:18):
--you ended up having that many Jews.
Susan Horwitz (00:39:19):
Yes. I think but I absolutely don't know. I doubt it. They segregated us according to our religion.
Caitlin Haskett (00:39:27):
So, when you were approaching the end of your time at Bryn Mawr, what did you plan to do with the rest of your life? Did you have any plans?
Susan Horwitz (00:39:45):
Well, I think that when I finished my junior year and that summer I came home to Boston where I lived, where my family lived. I don't remember what I did that junior year to be honest. I had been a camp counselor I think after my freshman and sophomore year. I don't know what I did after my junior year but I did sort of look around to see if there were any jobs that I could do with my undergraduate degree. There really wasn't much around that I could do with biology.
Susan Horwitz (00:40:30):
One of the jobs was working in a lab where I could take the dyes that were used in Revlon lipstick and put them on the eyes of rabbits to see if they were... if these dyes could be used in lipsticks and that certainly was nothing that I was interested in doing
Susan Horwitz (00:40:57):
I could see that there wasn't going to be a lot for me to do with just a bachelor's degree in biology, so I thought, well, I will go to look at some schools and see about graduate school. So this was 1957, 58 and there were not a lot of women in science at that time at graduate school. I looked in chemistry departments and I remember once in a very well known chemistry department talking to one of the faculty and then saying at the end, "Could you please tell me where the ladies room is?" And the guy said, "Ladies room. I think there's one in the basement."
Susan Horwitz (00:41:49):
And that was pretty much the way things were at that time in science and then at another school I wanted to... I said, well, chemistry, I'll look around in biochemistry and somebody said to me, "Well, why don't you think about getting a PhD in zoology then you could work in a museum." I had read at that point that Brandeis was inaugurating a new graduate department of biochemistry and that was close to... my parents lived in Brookline and that was in Waltham, it was close.
Susan Horwitz (00:42:34):
I went over there to see what was going on what... They were just going to be opening in 1958 a new graduate department of biochemistry and what I was really impressed with was that they had two women on the faculty and that was really unusual. Two assistant professors and both of them were excellent scientists.
Susan Horwitz (00:43:05):
Mary Ellen Jones, who was a very good biochemist and Helen Van Vunakis who was an immunologist and both of these women were married, both had children and not that I believe that you need to be married or have children to be a good scientist, but this is how I envisioned my life and so it was very attractive and so they gave me a full scholarship and I said, "Okay, I'll come." And that's how I got there.
Caitlin Haskett (00:43:45):
Yeah. I want to go back a little bit. You mentioned you were a camp counselor after your freshman and sophomore year. What was that like?
Susan Horwitz (00:43:55):
Well, I had gone to camp growing up. A Jewish camp and a lot of... I loved camps, some people don't like camp but I did like it. I was a camper there many years and actually... then I was asked if I wanted to be a counselor and I was the dance counselor. I was a dance counselor at a camp in New Hampshire after my senior year in high school and then I was... went back after my first and second year in college then I outgrew it but it was a Jewish camp and I think Jewish camps do influence the campers that go there and these aren't particularly orthodox camps.
Susan Horwitz (00:44:41):
They're just camps where there is a lot of interest in Israel, with their services on Saturday morning and so I think that shaped my interest in Jewish things. Jewish, not so much religion but in Israel and traveling to Israel which I did when I was quite young, so that did certainly influence my life.
Caitlin Haskett (00:45:27):
What do you remember about going to summer camp as a kid?
Susan Horwitz (00:45:31):
Oh, it was fun. Kids my age we did... I learned how to swim, how to dive, how to play volleyball, horseback riding, it's just a lot of fun.
Caitlin Haskett (00:45:49):
And You mentioned you were the dance counselor. Did you get to dance when you were a camper?
Susan Horwitz (00:45:53):
Sure. I mean a dance counselor in a Jewish camp was mainly Jewish dances. Singing Hora of dances we did in those days, yeah was fun and then I taught that those kinds of folk dances that's what I taught. Not only Israeli dances but other kinds of dancing folk but all folk dancing. We did square dances, American dancing with the campers. That's what I did the first couple of years after Bryn Mawr.
Caitlin Haskett (00:46:41):
This is, may be a little frivolous question but can you tell me about a time where you got in trouble at Bryn Mawr or you did something you maybe shouldn't have? Just antics.
Susan Horwitz (00:46:55):
It was a long time ago. I mean, I've been out how many years, over 60 years. I can't answer that question because I can't--and also I was pretty dull. I mean, I'll admit it. I took my classes, I did my work, I did my homework. I guess the worst thing we ever did in those days, something that I liked very much which I guess they don't have anymore, is each dormitory had its dining room which was wonderful because we really got to know the people in our dorm because we would sit there and talk.
Susan Horwitz (00:47:37):
It wasn't a cafeteria. We were served dinner and you had to wear a skirt to dinner, a dress, you couldn't wear pants and when you worked in the lab every afternoon, it was chemistry, biology usually wore slacks, pants.
Susan Horwitz (00:48:00):
And then I remember, because the door--the dining room would close at a certain hour. I don't know, was it 6:30 or something. You had to be there otherwise you couldn't come in. We would, or I would run home and I had one of these big skirts and I would just sort of roll up my pants, put the skirt over my pants and run into the dining room before they closed the door.
Susan Horwitz (00:48:25):
So, being a science major I didn't socialize as much as I would've if I was a psych major or an English major. I think we would come back and we would see those students playing bridge, sitting around and talking. We didn't do that because we were in the lab four days afternoons a week and we would just come back and jump into our skirts and go to eat. I think that science students had a different college experience than those who were English majors or art majors or whatever.
Caitlin Haskett (00:49:11):
How did you feel about that kind of different experience?
Susan Horwitz (00:49:17):
Well, it seemed to me they had the better deal that they had an easier life than I did but, I liked what I did, so, that's what I wanted to do and that's what I was better at doing. I have no knack for languages. In fact, interestingly I'm an opera fan and I have--go with a friend and we have two seats at the Metropolitan Saturday matinee and there are two seats beside us that actually are taken by two former faculty members at Bryn Mawr both of them were in the English department and I recall the first time we found out that we had that in common--Bryn Mawr in common, she said to me, "Who was your English teacher?"
Susan Horwitz (00:50:19):
And I said, "I don't have the faintest notion." I said I was a science major and I can't remember who my English professor was, so yeah, it was different, and there weren't that many girls who majored in science in those days because it was tough. Some who then had gone to medical school, but who really wanted just to be in the science aspect was different.
Caitlin Haskett (00:50:59):
But you did go on to get your PhD in science. Tell me a little bit more about your life after graduating Bryn Mawr?
Susan Horwitz (00:51:09):
Well, as I told you, I went and I liked Brandeis since I started there as a graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and five years later I had a PhD. I studied enzymes primarily and I was interested in enzyme kinetics and I--I mean, graduate school, getting a PhD is hard work.
Susan Horwitz (00:51:38):
I mean, I had to take my qualifying exams after two years which I was happy to pass and then they went on to do my thesis, which was a study of dehydrogenases, which are enzymes present in bacteria, and after my freshman year I met young man who was a medical student in Boston, his name was Marshall Horwitz, and he came to spend his summer in the laboratories in the biochemistry department and that's where I met him. We got married after, I guess my third year at graduate school and he had just finished his third year at medical school.
Susan Horwitz (00:52:27):
And, um, I lived in Waltham, we were married, we had an apartment in Waltham, and then I gave birth to twin sons five days after I defended my thesis. I had two full term babies and at that time my husband was working every other night as an intern in Boston and making $1,200 a year and I had two little boys. In those days you didn't always know you were having twins until the ninth month when the doctor said, I think I hear two heart beats.
Susan Horwitz (00:53:21):
There was none of the types of it, today when you're pregnant you know right away the sex and how many babies, et cetera. It was quite surprising and necessitated me making some changes. I had planned on going on and doing a postdoctoral fellowship in enzyme kinetics which I was interested in.
Susan Horwitz (00:53:50):
But that was a very male dominated field at the time, and after I had the twins and I knew I had prime responsibility because of my husband's work, I realized that I had to make some adjustments in my work schedule, so I spoke to my thesis advisor, his name was Nathan Kaplan.
Susan Horwitz (00:54:16):
And I said, I cannot work a regular schedule. I have to have ability to modify my schedule when necessary and what I really want is to work Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and have the rest of the week off. Fortunately for me he was very friendly with the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Tufts medical school. His name was Morris Regan and he spoke to him and he said he would take me three days a week but I had to help teach the dental students pharmacology.
Susan Horwitz (00:55:08):
Now I knew absolutely nothing about pharmacology and he suggested, well, you could teach cardiac pharmacology, you could teach renal pharmacology, but I didn't know any physiology. I didn't know anything about the heart or the kidneys, so then he said, well, you could teach the anti-tumor drugs, which at that point were primarily nucleotides and nucleosides and they were really biochemistry, so I said, "Okay, I'll do that."
Susan Horwitz (00:55:43):
And That was really my introduction to cancer biology. I began to study cancer biology because these compounds were used for cancer and I left enzyme kinetics behind and although I originally thought that I would go back and still do that, I decided that I was hooked actually on the idea that small molecules could do great things and I became particularly interested in drugs for the treatment of cancer that came of natural products. My research has really been in studying small molecules and by natural products I mean isolated from trees, plants, bacteria, sponges that grow in the ocean and that's really the area of science that I have developed.
Caitlin Haskett (00:56:47):
And then, so you've just been in that your whole career and sort of--how long have you been at Einstein University?
Susan Horwitz (00:56:55):
Well, I came to Einstein as a post doc and I was still working three days a week. I was very fortunate that they let me work here. We came because my husband came. He had a job here, so I came and I worked three days a week for a couple of years and then when my children were going to the first grade I decided to come back full time. Give it a try and I gave it a try and here I am.
Caitlin Haskett (00:57:27):
Very cool. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about what your family life has been like in your adult life?
Susan Horwitz (00:57:39):
You mean my married life with my children?
Caitlin Haskett (00:57:43):
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Susan Horwitz (00:57:43):
Well, I think that my children were born in 1963 and at that time there was essentially no such thing as daycare. Didn't exist in this country, although it did in many other places but not in the United States. It always meant having camp, you had to have someone who would come into the house and take care of your children and we never wanted anyone to live in. When my children were young I came back to work three days a week, when they were three months old and I had a woman who came in three days a week and took care of them and that's what I did until I came back to work full time and they would, by then they were in the first grade, so they would go in to school and I always had to have someone come to the house.
Susan Horwitz (00:58:42):
In those days kids came home for lunch. They went to grammar school, they came home for lunch, they'd have someone there to make lunch, to take care of them when they came home after school, so yeah, it wasn't easy. Not at all to move forward in the laboratory. Be promoted, be able to get grants and to take care of the kids but I was very fortunate because I had a very supportive husband who really helped me at home with the children and that made all the difference in the world.
Caitlin Haskett (00:59:22):
And you mentioned that you still go to the opera work. Have you continued with dance or any of your other more like social passions into--
Susan Horwitz (00:59:33):
I don't dance, no. [laughs] I have to say that I lost my husband, and that was a great tragedy for me.
Caitlin Haskett (00:59:44):
Okay.
Susan Horwitz (00:59:48):
But I have been very active in scientific circles and that has been terrific. I think I was the president in 2002 of the American Association for Cancer Research which is the largest organization in the world for cancer scientists and researchers and that was a very major experience of my life. My work has been well accepted and... so I've had many very positive things happen and I have two lovely children, all grown, married, great grandchildren.
Caitlin Haskett (01:00:39):
What was it like being president of the society you mentioned?
Susan Horwitz (01:00:44):
It's a lot of work. The American Association for Cancer Research has its headquarters in Philadelphia, so it's cold there quite a bit but it was also a challenge to do a really good job and we have a yearly meeting which now 20,000 people come to and the president always gives a scientific lecture. It was a challenge but a very enjoyable experience. Yes.
Caitlin Haskett (01:01:26):
Yes, that sounds lovely. All right. I just have two more questions.
Susan Horwitz (01:01:37):
Okay.
Caitlin Haskett (01:01:38):
If you can think back to yourself at the end of your time at Bryn Mawr, what do you think that version of yourself would be surprised about in what your life has been like since then?
Susan Horwitz (01:01:54):
I never dreamt that I would be a successful as a scientist as I have been. I enjoyed science. I worked hard when it was in Bryn Mawr. I was not an outstanding student at Bryn Mawr. I had a lot of catching up to do when I arrived. I think that my experience at Brandeis was very important in giving me self confidence and I was very fortunate to be able to work part time, to have professors who encouraged me and understood that I had to work part time for those five or six years.
Susan Horwitz (01:02:51):
I think that there is a real problem in this country in terms of having part time work available for women who want it and particularly for having reasonably priced excellent child care which is not very often seen in this country unfortunately. I think we have to have all our universities have childcare so that a mother can bring her child to school for babysitting, for taking care of them, they can see them during the day.
Susan Horwitz (01:03:35):
This is really lacking in this country and it's a shame, so that to be a successful woman and to raise healthy, normal children it's hard. It's hard but you can certainly do it. I have been very fortunate and the work that I have done has really been very important in moving certain drugs forward that have been very helpful in the treatment of cancer. I would never have dreamt when I was a senior in college that I would have, you know, marry a wonderful person, have two great children and have a very successful career. I think that Bryn Mawr was very important in developing me to be able to do all these things.
Caitlin Haskett (01:04:41):
That leads me perfectly to the other question I had. What kind of influence has Bryn Mawr had on your life?
Susan Horwitz (01:04:49):
Oh, I think it's been a very positive influence. I got a good education. I made very close friends whom I still see all the time. I spoke to all these people on the telephone. I'm proud that I graduated from Bryn Mawr. I think they've been good to me and publicizing me and my career and I hope that it remains a very good school with very high standards.
Caitlin Haskett (01:05:34):
Alrighty. Is there anything else you want to talk about or say?
Susan Horwitz (01:05:39):
No, I think I've said quite a bit.
Caitlin Haskett (01:05:41):
You certainly have. All right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today and for sharing your experiences.
Susan Horwitz (01:05:50):
It's been my pleasure.
Caitlin Haskett (01:05:51):
Yeah.
Susan Band Horwitz interviewed by Caitlin Haskett, July 11, 2019
Oral history interview of Susan Band Horwitz (née Band), Bryn Mawr College Class of 1958, conducted by Bryn Mawr College Class of 2020 student Caitlin Haskett on July 11, 2019, at Horwitz's office in the Bronx, New York City.
Haskett, Caitlin (interviewer)
2019-07-11
1 online resource (1 audio file (66 min.))
reformatted digital
North and Central America--United States--Pennsylvania--Montgomery--Bryn Mawr
North and Central America--United States--New York--New York
Jewish Mawrters Oral History Collection--http://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/resources/bmc-rg12-ohj
BMC-RG12-OHJ-02