Silvio Petricciani - University of Nevada, Reno

Marriage and Family Life and Plans for the Future
169
So he said, “Well,” he said, “I’ll give it some
thought.”
And oh, it was about three or four weeks
later, he had already applied to McGill
University in Canada, at UCLA and Stanford.
And he was accepted at all three, so he chose
to go to Stanford. Well, he called me and
told me that he had decided to accept my
offer. And then he decided to go to Stanford
because it was closer to Reno, and he knew
I was moving back up here, and also, I have
a brother who lives in Los Altos, so he was
close to family.
And he was accepted at Stanford, and
he went on and worked in their medical
department while he was going to school. In
other words, I didn’t help him completely;
he more or less pulled himself up by his own
bootstraps. I paid his tuition and some of his
living expenses, but he also worked while he
was going to medical school. And he worked
with a Dr. Kornberg down there who was
studying with DNA, which is the staff of life
and genetics and so on and so forth—far
beyond my comprehension. But he graduated
from Stanford Medical School, and then
did his internship in Buffalo, New York at
Children’s Hospital.
And after he did his internship, why he
decided to go with the National Institutes of
Health and go into research. And he’s been
in that ever since, and of course, he went
with the (it’s more or less—they’re separate
departments, but they’re all in one) Food
and Drug Administration, which he received
an honor from them for his work in testing
drugs and so on, so forth to make sure that
they weren’t harmful to people. Of course, this
requires a lot of scientific work and testing
and research.
And the last time he was here, he had
decided to stay in government work; but he’s
now thinking of making a move to a medical
school, and I think he’s already done it and
teaching anatomy at this school, but still
being able to do his genetic research with
this medical school. I think it’s a government
medical school if I’m not mistaken, but I don’t
know the name of it.
Oh, he did also get a fellowship to the
University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and he
studied there for almost a year. And then he’s
been sent to Switzerland several times, five or
six times, by the government on lectures and
so on, and he’s been to Russia. He’s going to
Russia again this fall to lecture, and he’s been
to India. He’s practically been all over the
world except for the Far East, and sent there
by the federal government, of course, for—not
exchange student, but exchange professors to
lecture on things that they’ve had.
And he’s getting along very well. He has
his own home in Washington, D.C., and he
has a private practice, about two hundred
patients; he’s doing all that, too. Sometimes
wonder where he gets the time, but he enjoys
his work; he likes Washington—for the life
of me I don’t know why, but he does. And of
course, naturally, any father would like to have
him here and practicing his medicine here,
but he feels that his calling is research and
that’s where he wants to be, so far be it from
me to decide his life for him. And I’m very
proud of him; he’s done a beautiful job and
made me very proud, and neither one of my
two children have ever given me one iota of
trouble in any way, shape, or form. They never
fooled around with drugs or anything that
would have them be in trouble with the law
or anything else. I’m just a fortunate parent,
really. And so much for John.
Sylvia, of course, as I say was born here in
Reno also, and she grew up in Las Vegas and
she went to UCLA for two years and decided
to—call it drop out or end her college career.
Of course, girls are—sometimes they’re