Instead of taking Dr. Karpovich's advice, Larry accepted (1953) a position in the high school of Littleton, N.H., as a teacher of mathematics and science and coach of skiing and football. Littleton is near Franconia, then the site of the best skiing in the east, and also of the first ski school in America. Larry was one of the instructors of Franconia Ski School in 1953-56. His life-long love of this area of New Hampshire, its people, and its great beauty and skiing remains undiminished but he did finally take Dr. Karpovich�s advice and left for Minnesota to study with Dr. Henry Taylor in September 1956.
In December, 1956, Larry married a great skier named Colleen whom he had met in New Hampshire in 1955. Their son and daughter were born in Minnesota during 1957 and 1958.
His course work in the first two years at the University of Minnesota was selected to strengthen his background in chemistry, mathematics and physics. In this rigorous environment his survival was supported by the guidance and genuine concern of Henry Taylor, Francisco (Paco) Grande and many others in "The Lab" and the Physiology Department. They opened up for him their enormous knowledge of the literature of the preceding decades.
A strong influence of August Krogh was felt through both Keys and Grande who had worked with him in Copenhagen. Grande had also worked with Krogh's student, Erik Hohw� Christensen who, with Erling Asmussen and Maurius Nielsen comprised Krogh's "Three Musketeers". Larry remembers with special gratitude the friendship of Christensen and Asmussen and the advice they gave. Later, Larry and Asmussen became close friends, sharing office space during his stays (1978-79 and summers of '84 and '88), at the August Krogh Institute. Larry's thesis research followed in the footsteps of Krogh and, more directly, of Hohw� Christensen and Asmussen, toward understanding the physiological meaning of maximal oxygen consumption. Another connection to Krogh was felt in Larry's fruitful collaboration with Bengt Saltin and Bodil Nielsen.
Along with the intellectual stimulation, life in the Minnesota years was enriched by personal connections. Larry and Colleen ran a ski school, a gift of a local ski area owner, a famous skier and designer and old friend of New Hampshire skiing, who learned they were "short of funds". Among their pupils over six years of operation were faculty members of various schools and colleges and their families, expanding their friendships beyond the Physiology department.
Professor and Mrs. Grande, among others, helped them with emergency babysitting. Paco had a luxuriant moustache that Tom Rowell loved to tug. The Taylor teen age sons were frequent and amusing skiing guests and pupils. Friendship with other lab families continues to the present: the Blackburns, Hartels, Mancinis, Alteveers, now distributed around the globe.
In May of 1962, Colleen and Larry left for Seattle. Larry joined the division of Cardiology, directed by Dr. Robert A Bruce, as a Senior Fellow.
The fellowship began with three months of intensive training in Professor Robert Rushmer's Cardiovascular Instrumentation program. Larry received further training in lipid biochemistry under Professor Edward Masoro, a strong advocate of studying the biochemical foundation for understanding physiology. They continued research together until Masoro left Seattle in the late 1960's and have remained close friends.
Larry attended rounds and clinics in Cardiology with Robert Bruce and John Blackmon. They emphasized the potential of learning human physiology through exploiting what they called "nature's experiments", i.e., disease models, setting the context for a landmark study. John and Larry discovered that patients with mitral stenosis and highly fit athletes redistributed flow among the peripheral vasculatures in the same way, when responses were scaled in proportion to their maximal oxygen uptake capacities.
Also influential in the first years at the University of Washington was Professor Earl Benditt, chair of Pathology, who gave Larry the opportunity to participate in his teaching laboratories and classes.
Though he moved his primary affiliation and laboratory and office to the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in 1970, Larry retained an appointment in the Department of Medicine. Collaboration with clinicians and laboratory researchers from various disciplines continued through Larry's entire career at the University of Washington. Among them was technologist Fusako "Faji" Kusumi, whose problem-solving and meticulous attention to detail Larry relied on for over 25 years, for example, her accurate measurements of extremly low blood oxygen levels.
His participation in the Cardiovascular Program Project centered in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics resulted in a strong connection with Professor Allen Scher, always a fount of critical analysis and scientific insight. The project also supported Pam Stevens who worked with Larry as secretary, illustrator, and technician; she was invaluable in preparation of his publications. Evelyn Steen, a registered nurse, worked with Larry from the start of his days in Cardiology; she scrupulously maintained sterile conditions in the laboratory. With their warmth and humor, Pam and Evelyn elevated the mood of subjects and experimenters alike.
Larry expresses his debt to some of his colleagues in the video, though he regrets the omission of many others who were important to him. He regrets also having inadequately expressed how much the many friendships made meant to him.
After retirement came the tragedy of Colleen's slow decline and death. Larry somehow found the energy to continue to contribute to scientific and editorial work. But, his friends, aware that his intense passion for his work was exceeded only by the intensity of his feelings for his friends and love for his family, feared he would never recover from the loss of the light of his life. Yet life has taken another turn, bringing him to love and marriage again in the past year. His eyes sparkle anew with the delight of life.
Prepared from Larry's rough chronological outline by George L. Brengelmann with the addition of the above paragraph and the following:
Albert Schweitzer said that the blows of the realities of life need not erode away the soft iron of youthful idealism, but should hammer it into steel. So it has been in a friendship of 40 years of intellectual combat with that stubborn Celt, Larry Rowell. October 2009.