Cherish the Exception

In early May 1961, I had a good feeling about graduate school and the direction that my thesis was heading. Maggie was completing her internship in medical technology at Milwaukee County Hospital. I worked on my thesis with enjoyment and continued class work in statistics, radiation biology, and special topics, courses that were recommended to round out my education.

With my thesis work moving along positively, I was feeling the effects of that statement in scripture (“I will make a suitable partner for him, it is not good for man to be alone,” Genesis 2:18). I thought about it for a few weeks and then decided to purchase an engagement ring and in this way ask Maggie to marry me.

I purchased a small ring and drove to Wisconsin with a wonderful thought in mind. I would give it to her in Gesu Church, the center of the spiritual life at Marquette and a church that I loved so much. I imagined its dark interior on a Friday evening with the votive lights flickering and only a few pious souls to interrupt the moment.

Under the pretense of wanting to see the church again, she agreed to make a visit before going out for dinner. The church was filled to near capacity. I failed to anticipate that this was the first Friday of June. In those days, first Fridays of the month were celebrated by evening devotions and benediction of the most holy sacrament. We could not find a seat in the back of the church but were able to find one in the front.

After Fr. Cahill’s homily about the importance of prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, I began to fumble in an attempt to take the ring out of its case without being too obvious since this was to be a surprise. I could see that Maggie was wondering what I was doing. I slipped the ring on her finger, and she seemed taken completely by surprise. Several elderly ladies who observed all of this smiled with approval.

Since 1965, I worked on the scientific basis for the development of sexual behaviors in nonhuman primates. Our experiments and results pertained, however, to heterosexual behaviors, which are organized by prenatal hormones during fetal development. Fred Stormshak, professor of Animal Science at Oregon State University, inquired whether I was familiar with the work of Ann Perkins, who was on the faculty of Carroll College in Helena, Montana. Perkins collaborated with James Fitzgerald, who was the director of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Sheep Experimental Station in Dubois, Idaho.

Perkins, Fitzgerald, and colleagues published several papers in the agriculture literature in which they described a group of rams whose sexual orientation was completely and unequivocally male-oriented (homosexual to use human terminology). They were not interested in estrous ewes, would not breed with them, and, in fact, if given a choice in an experimental paradigm, would choose a male over an estrous female toward which to direct their courting and other sexual behaviors. At that time, Charles Roselli and I studied the distribution and control of aromatase activity in the brains of various rodent species.

Stormshak and I arranged to meet with Fitzgerald and Perkins at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, which in 1995 was held in Anaheim, California. At that meeting, we planned to convince Fitzgerald and Perkins to collaborate with us on a study to compare aromatase activity in various brain parts between male- and female-oriented rams. This experiment made sense because data in the literature suggested a role for the aromatization of androgen in the brain as being important for female-oriented sexual function. We asked the question: “If this enzyme complex is important for heterosexual behaviors, perhaps it will have importance for homosexual behaviors as well?”

We met at lunch in Anaheim. I clearly remember the details because it was on the day that O. J. Simpson, in his white Bronco, was eluding the police on a nearby freeway. Perkins and Fitzgerald were interested in collaborating with us, and we agreed to send them an experimental plan to investigate the potential role of brain aromatization in the sexual orientation of sheep. The experiment was performed on a cold, windy, late October day in 1995.