Dear Norman:

As you correctly wrote in the booklet from the 2014 Symposium honoring my retirement, we first met at the 1976 meeting organized by Hugh Davson, Laszlo Bito, and me at the NIH. The title of the meeting was “The Ocular and Cerebrospinal Fluids” and the proceedings were published by Experimental Eye Research as a special issue. The title of your presentation was “Ontogeny of the Blood Brain Barrier,” and it was a scholarly work covering not only your own studies but also those reported by others over the years. The most striking part of your presentation was, however, the first slide (these were the days before PowerPoint), which I vividly remember. It showed several shepherds driving hundreds of sheep down a London street, possibly Oxford Street or the Strand. You said that these animals were on their way to your laboratory at University College London and that sheep offered a great model for studies of blood-brain brain development in foetuses (note the proper British spelling). Your presentation is well recorded in that issue of Experimental Eye Research (Volume 25, 1977. Supplement), and I urge one and all to read it.

My next interaction of note with you and with Kate was in your office at University College London late in the year 1977. I was on a sabbatical leave from the NIH studying with Hugh Davson and Mike Bradbury at Kings College London. Your office rivaled that of Cliff Patlak, stacked full of papers, journals, lab notebooks, and other repositories of data. In those cozy quarters, the two of you brought me up to date on your findings since the NIH meeting, and the conversation rolled on for hours, ending only when it was time for a trip to a local pub, a bit of beer, and more discussion.

We continued to see each other at various neuroscience meetings over the following years. Most notably, you, Kate, and I attended the first Gordon Research Conference on Barriers of the CNS, held at Tilton School, Tilton, New Hampshire in August of 1999. Thankfully, Joanna and Adam Chodobski, the organizers of this conference, brought you and me together once again. At this meeting, we not only discussed brain barriers but also engaged in various indoor and outdoor sports. With respect to the latter, one morning you observed me returning from my daily run of 4-5 miles and shook your head in disbelief at such madness. You then commented that you had given up running when you were a youth and had taken up a sensible sport, sailing, which you expected to be able to do for the rest of your life. True to that, you are still a sailor of small boats and have produced a sail boat simulator model for training others in that worthy art.

To continue with sailing, you have told me that it has been recommended by your several doctors to drop bicycling, which could lead to a nasty fall and broken bones, and to take up swimming to keep in shape prior to hip surgery. When I responded that I do a lot of swimming to keep physically fit and am building a swimming pool in my backyard in Seaville, NJ, you replied that an important part of sailing small boats is not to go swimming because it is a failure of sorts. As you added, this view of swimming has been acknowledged by such famous sailors of big boats as Denis Connor, a highly successful America’s cup skipper. So, Norman, I hope that sailing keeps you physically fit and that you smoothly “sail” through your upcoming hip surgery.

In 2001 you and Kate organized a Cerebrovascular Biology meeting at Freycinet, Tasmania, Australia. I was pleased to be invited and attended. Several of us including the Chodobski’s stayed at your home on Sandy Bay, Hobart, Tasmania, both before and after the meeting. There we enjoyed much conversation, camaraderie, and coffee. The latter was especially fine and was made with a French press. I raved about this coffee so much that Joanna got me a French press after we returned to the States. I think of you and the rest of the group every time I use the French press for making my morning coffee.

It was also at this meeting that I was seen by several people running up the trail toward Wineglass Bay and its beach. Later that day there was a rumor at the coffee break that some member or members of our group had been swimming nude in Wineglass Bay. Now I have done a fair share of swimming in the nude, and I did not bring my Speedo swimming suit along on this trip. So it is possible that I was the nude swimmer or was among them, but I was not, to my great regret, swimming naked in Wineglass Bay that day. My life – and perhaps yours – is full of such missed opportunities. Anyway thanks for a great meeting and the sighting of at least one Tasmanian Devil.

You came to visit me in Michigan in 2007 or 2008 and stayed with Mary Ann and me at our home in Grosse Pointe, one of the most pleasant, most safe, most orderly places on earth (that being stated by someone who has lived in 8 states and 2 foreign countries in the last 60 years). On our way to and from my office and lab at Henry Ford Hospital, we toured the depressed, dysfunctional city of Detroit, which lies mostly south and west of Grosse Pointe. The contrast between the abandoned homes and factories of Detroit and the pleasant life in Grosse Pointe was duly appreciated by you and distracted you from my failure to brew our morning coffee with the French press.

So, Norman, we have been the best of friends for many years. I hope that all goes well with your research and your life in Australia. I trust that your hip surgery and arterial stents will permit you to keep going for many more years. Keep up the sailing and stop by for a swim in my backyard pool whenever you can! May the Research Council drop a million Australian dollars on your proposed study of the ABC transporters in the developing brain.

With great respect and love,

Joe