The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 108

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Barbara Keyfitz
My home institution, the University of Houston, agreed to give
me a leave of absence for three years; my patient husband was
willing to treat it as an adventure that we would somehow
share; and the selection committee voted to give me a chance
even though my lack of administrative experience or vision
for the Institute must have been apparent. (My friends said,
“You’ll do a great job.” I replied, “I don’t care about that, I
just want to be Director.”)
During my interview for the position, Tom Salisbury, who
was then the Deputy Director, said to me quizzically, “My
mother knows you.” After a few minutes, I figured it out.
Tom’s mother, Mary Roseborough, was a famous figure from
my childhood. The much-younger sister of a college friend
of my father’s, she had boarded in our house for a summer
while she held an internship in some Federal Government
department. As part of the deal, she did some babysitting
for my brother, then a toddler, and for me, a couple of years
older. As a lively twenty-one-year-old, she played with us and
taught us music-hall songs that became a part of my childhood.
(Family lore holds that it was my brother she really adored,
but I didn’t notice any discrimination.)
Mary Roseborough Salisbury was a recollection from more
than fifty years before, but there were many other echoes from
the past that filled the air once I moved to Toronto. At an early
gathering, I saw Tim Rooney (always Professor Rooney to me),
who had taught me Calculus in 1962 when I was a first-year
student (we didn’t say “freshman” then) at the University of
Toronto. I was saddened to read that Professor Rooney died
in December, 2016. Chandler Davis had been an early mentor
to me when I was an undergraduate, and it was inspiring to see
him again. One of the first activities over which I presided as
Director was a sixtieth birthday conference for Jim Arthur.
Jim and I were in the same class (6T6) at the University
of Toronto. We studied together and, once we were old