Shirley's Bio
I'm mixed British - Welsh, Scots, English, and named for a street in
Cardiff, the capital city of Wales.
From Cardiff and Penarth, my family moved to Stratford-on-Avon, the
home town of Shakespeare. Shortly before WWII we moved to Coventry,
where we lived through the Blitz. After that, we moved to Barnoldswick, on the
Yorkshire/Lancashire border, where Frank Whittle was developing the
first jet aero-engines. Dad had been a pilot in WWI, and was an
engineer as well as an artist; he was too old to fly again, so he
joined the ground-crew.
Visit :
Wales *
Cardiff *
Stratford *
Coventry *
Yorkshire *
Yorkshire Links *
friends in Barlick *
See :
Photos of Wales
At 15 I left school, to work in the aero-engine labs : by that time
WWII was over, and the factory was being run by Rolls-Royce. It was
there that the first VTOL plane was developed - the "Flying Beadstead" -
so called because that's what it looked like. Then I moved to another
company and worked on rocket fuels and design, on a team preparing for
the first space shots and satellites. While I was working I also went to
"Night School" at Burnley Tech., and entered for the London University
external degree. I couldn't decide between Physics and Chemistry for
a major, so ended up taking triple honours - Maths, Physics, and Chemistry.
After the B.Sc. I started straight in with doctoral research - not
in metallurgy or fuel technology, but on some potential carcinogens.
The first step of a 26-step synthesis produced lovely chunky crystals,
about which the books said "Discard the salt crystals." - So I
dumped them in the sink and flushed them.
Funny - they didn't dissolve in water like salt crystals should.
Turned out the stuff wasn't salt at all, and I spent the next two
years finding out what it was, and writing my doctoral thesis on it.
Then came three years of teaching and research on Insect Pigments, at Aberdeen
University, where I met my first computers, and learned to program
with 5-hole paper tape (edit it with a razor blade, sticky tape,
and a steady hand), and a "short" program might well run for 27 hours !
Those were the days before BASIC - I'm ancient :-)
I wanted to move into the newly opening field of Biophysics (this
was before there was such a term as Molecular Biology) so joined
Sage Bernal's group at London University - in the labs where
Rosalind Franklin made the X-Ray photos
used by Crick and Watson in the great helix break-through for DNA.
I found that I had "green fingers" for growing crystals - for the
Ribonuclease project, and for all sorts of biologicals for the doctoral and
post-doc projects.
After London, I moved to the MRC Labs in Cambridge, to crystallize
t-RNA for X-Ray studies. I still remember the weekend when I fished
a dripping photo out of the final rinse, saw the pattern of spots
with a nice distinctive "Helix Cross", and knew that I had true
crystals of a Nucleic Acid - the first in the world !
t-RNA and I moved as part of Ken Holmes' Biophysics team to the
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, and for the
next 9 years I played with nucleic acids and proteins, TMV and other
viruses, X-Ray Crystallography, Electron Microscopy, sequencing,
and all the other toys of what is now called Molecular Biology.
While in Heidelberg, I helped to start the "English Church" - now
part of a team with churches in Stuttgart and Strasbourg. It was in
that Church that John and I met, and got to know one another. The
army intervened, and moved John back to the Pentagon, and we both
agreed that it had been nice knowing one another, but that we both had
careers to get on with.
Well, for several years we kept in touch by mail, until the mailman
in the village where I lived would hand me my mail with a twinkle in his eye,
saying "Einen Brief aus Amerika - fur Sie!" (A letter from America -
for *you*). I explored the possibility that God was calling me to
be a nun with the Marienschwestern in Darmstadt, but came to the
conclusion that my calling was to stay "in the world".
To cut a long and involved story short, John and I decided to get married,
so I resigned from the MPI and came to the States on a "Fiancee Visa",
which came through only about two weeks before the date we'd set for the wedding.
John stayed in the military for another 2 years, to complete his 20,
then we moved to Ambridge, PA, to attend TESM (Trinity Episcopal
School for Ministry), and John entered the process towards
ordination in the Diocese of San Joaquin in the central valley of
California. We spent the next 5 years commuting between Pennsylvania
and California : winter and spring at TESM, summers working at
various churches in the Diocese. We both completed the M.Div., and
John was ordained Deacon, and then Priest, at the Mission Church of the
Resurrection, in Clovis, California.
Visit :
St. Paul's, K Street (Washington DC) where we were married *
TESM *
We had some wonderful years in California, seeing the Mission grow,
working Cursillos, and making friends at the Hispanic, Hmong, and Lao
Missions. I started to learn Hmong, mainly with the children of
the community, who would sit on the church steps with me and laugh
with delight as I tried to get the tones of the language - "child's
play" to them, but something the western ear and voice have to work at.
We found a beautiful home, on 2 acres of land, a few miles out of town,
where I could look out of the kitchen window, over our neighbour's
kiwi orchard and an orange grove, at the snow on the Sierra Nevadas.
We had chickens, ducks, cats, goats, sheep (solar-powered lawn-mowers :
the sun comes out and the sheep start chomping), and I got to be
quite good at building fences and gates, putting in irrigation lines,
looking after the well, and planting young trees for the orchard.
I kept up with Academics, by teaching Physics and Chemistry part-time
at FSU (Fresno State University) and at West Coast Christian College -
where I also taught Maths, Greek, and Hebrew.
Then came the memorable day when we had a phone call from someone
we'd never met, and had never even heard of, asking if we'd move to
Houston, Texas, for John to be the Assistant at St. Thomas' Chruch
and school there. The circumstances were so completely unexpected
and strange, that I knew we were going to move, even before John
had finished the phone conversation. So, within a few weeks, a new
Pastor was found for the Mission, and John moved to Houston. I stayed
on to finish out my contract with FSU, and to pack up our books and sell the house.
So off to Houston, where I had to learn to live with Texas-sized
mosquitos. For the next several years, John was the Assistant Pastor
at St. Thomas', and I was a Chaplain at Ben Taub Hospital, the main
Trauma Center and Charity Hospital in Houston. I did several units of CPE
(Clinical Pastoral Education) at Ben Taub, and often got the
Friday evening to Saturday morning shift - with an unending stream of
GSWs, AgAss, MVAs, Rapes, drug overdoses, and assorted stuff that
had to be experienced to be believed. (GSW = gun shot wound; AgAss =
Aggravated Assault; MVA = motor vehicle accident)
Time came for another move, when the people of St. James', Clovis,
asked John to come and be Rector, which includes having the oversight
of the Missions of the High Plains' Team, with churches in Portales,
Tucumcari, and Fort Sumner. We settled down in Clovis, and I joined ]
the Symphony Orchestra at ENMU (Eastern New Mexico University) in
Portales, taking up the Viola agian after 30 years.
In Clovis, I taught Science and Math in the new Christian School,
and Chemistry at the Community College, then decided to get back to
music more seriously, so I enrolled as a Music student
(at Bachelor's level again) with basic theory and aural skills,
aiming for a degree in Church Music. I get to learn a whole lot of instruments - Handbells, Guitar, Piano, Organ, Viola, Violin, Voice - not all of them all at once - I only have enough practice time to take two at a time. This semester it's Violin and Voice, but also playing viola in the Symphony Orchestra.
A couple of years ago I did a study of Liturgy and Music, for which my professor said: "Get on the Internet and find some resources." In spite of having played with mainframes for years, and also PCs for quite a while, would you believe I'd never hooked up a modem, or used e-mail, or got on the Net? Well, students at ENMU get
free access to some good labs full of terminals, so I went to the
Computer Labs, asked for an orientation, and jumped right in.
For "Music Resources" I found not only the Spanish hymns for which I was searching,
but also a bunch of Musician Jokes (and much more) - and got an A
for that course. Then I found out how to get a Home Page, and
started this one. Then I thought I'd make one for each of the High Plains' Churches. Doing that, I found all sorts of opportunities for free Home Pages, so started yet another Page to share what I'd learned. I'm still working on that (and on this one too), and have ideas for others, so my Pages are always "under construction" !
Now I've also been appointed as one of the Religion Professors at ENMU. It's good to get back to teaching again - Greek and Bible courses, so I'm getting course material
up on the Web for my students
Visit :
Clovis *
ENMU
See :
ENMU Symphony Orchestra *
ENMU Campus
Link to :
Dr. Shirley's ENMU Pages *
The InterNet Viola Society
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Send e-mail to Shirley at:
rollinsondr@hotmail.com
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