Exuberance: The Passion for Life (53 page)

I am indebted to the following individuals for generously agreeing to answer my questions about the role of exuberance in their lives: Dr. Samuel Barondes, the late J. Carter Brown, Dr. Andrew Cheng, Dr. Robert Farquhar, Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, Dr. Robert Gallo, Senator George McGovern, Katy Payne, Dr. Joyce Poole, Hope Ryden, Jean Schulz, Judy Sladky, Dr. James Watson, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, and Dr. Ellen Winner. Senator Wellstone died in an airplane accident in late 2002, before I was able to complete my follow-up interview with him. With regret, I decided that it would be best not to include his earlier, incomplete remarks in this book. Paul Wellstone was a magnificently exuberant man, and his contagious enthusiasm for life, ideas, and politics was of importance not only to those he represented in Minnesota but to the entire nation. He is greatly missed by those of us who were fortunate to work with him on mental health advocacy causes.

J. Carter Brown, for many years the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., also died during the course of my writing this book. Because he had written out responses to my questions and we had, on many occasions and at great length, discussed the essential role of exuberance in his life, I felt comfortable including his observations here.

Several people were helpful to me while I was doing research for this book: Duncan Blanchard, atmospheric scientist and biographer of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley; David Dugan, who provided
me with useful information about Michael Faraday’s lectures at the Royal Institution; Dr. Ellen Gerrity, Senator Wellstone’s legislative assistant for mental health and addiction issues; Randi and Hart Johnson and Keith Charles, who were gracious when I visited St. Paul, Minnesota, for the Peanuts on Parade Festival; the Reverend Stuart Kenworthy of Christ Church, Georgetown; Marla Krauss, Special Collections Librarian for Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History in New York; Alain Moreau, for his initial and elegant art design for the chapter illustrations; Jinny Nathans, Archivist, American Meteorological Society in Boston, for information about Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley; Diane Ney, Records Manager, Washington National Cathedral, for providing me access to the correspondence between Richard Feller, Clerk of the Works, and Rodney Winfield, the artist who designed the Cathedral’s stained-glass Space Window; and Marian O’Keefe and the staff of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Financial support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been generous and greatly appreciated.

I am indebted to those who read early versions of my manuscript and made helpful suggestions: Pat Conroy, Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, Dr. Robert Gallo, Donald Graham, William Graham, Dr. Jerome Kagan, Matt Ridley, Dr. Jeremy Waletzky, and Dr. James Watson. William Collins has, as always, typed my manuscripts with unbelievable accuracy, celerity, and grace under endless time pressures. Ioline Henter has been extraordinarily helpful in locating references, tracking down quirky topics, and ferreting out information of all kinds. Carol Janeway, my editor, has been her usual remarkable self. I am deeply indebted to her, as well as to Stephanie Koven Katz and Ellen Feldman at Knopf. Christopher Mead and Bradley Clements have also been enormously helpful. I am fortunate in my colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, as well as in the School of English at the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland, especially Douglas Dunn, Robert Crawford, and Phillip Mallett. More than anyone else, however, I owe a profound debt to Silas Jones for his help, caring, and friendship.

I have been blessed with kind and generous friends who have seen me through some very difficult as well as wonderful times: Ray and Joanne De Paulo, Bob and Kay Faguet, Bob and Mary Jane Gallo, Chuck and Gwenda Hyman, Carol Janeway, Joanne Leslie, Alain Moreau, Bob Packwood, Norm Rosenthal, Jeff and Kathleen Schlom, Richard Sideman, and Jim and Liz Watson. Jeremy Waletzky has been a friend beyond imagining. My family, as always, has been a tremendous source of love and support: my mother, Dell Jamison; my father, Marshall Jamison; Julian and Sabrina, Eliot, and Leslie Jamison; Danica and Kelda Jamison; Kin Bing Wu; my cousin James Campen; and my brother, Dean Jamison.

My husband, Richard Wyatt, died while I was writing this book. He was delighted by the idea of my writing about exuberance, and he encouraged me in every conceivable way. He supported my ideas with enthusiasm, made many imaginative suggestions, and never let a day go by without expressing his love and encouragement. I admired him enormously: he was an excellent scientist and physician, as well as a gentle, immensely curious, and quietly exuberant man. I miss him more than I can say.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

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