In Memory Of
Alice-Eugenia "Robin" Black-Schaffer
04/23/1915 - 01/29/2015
Alice-Eugenia “Robin” Black-Schaffer passed away in Bloomington, Indiana, on January 29th 2015, at the age of 99. She was born Alice-Eugenia Black on April 23rd 1915, in New York City, to Adolph and Edith Black. Adolph was a professor of engineering at Columbia University. Edith had taught languages in Vienna, Austria, from which she came; they were an older professional couple. From the age of 5 ½ their only child, Robin, as she came universally to be known, grew up in boarding schools in Austria and Switzerland, and summer camps in the United States. When she was 16, seeking to assess her level of preparedness for further education in the United States, her parents had her take the entrance examination for Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. She not only passed the examination, she won a full scholarship. This was a tumultuous time for Robin and for the world, and Robin saw more of it than she wished: in 1933, during her junior year abroad, she was present in Munich at the notorious Book Burning on the Konigsplatz organized by the then-ascendant Nazi Party. After returning to the United States she graduated from Barnard, and then went back to Europe to study art in Vienna, where she lived with her maternal grandmother, Malvina Loewy, and experienced the closest to a regular home life she was to know. But Austria was far from immune to the political and financial turmoil sweeping central Europe, and she was again to witness history there. In the meantime, another young American had come to Vienna: Bernard Schaffer had been a medical student in Germany, but he too found the rising Nazi tide seeping into his life at school. It was easy to transfer to another German-speaking medical school, and he hoped that the different character of Austrian society would ameliorate the political tensions he had been feeling in Germany. Although circumstances in Austria proved politically less different than he had hoped, one fateful day, he attended a birthday party with his girlfriend, and met one of her classmates Robin) who was a fellow American, and as he said, greatly impressed him with her intelligence! By 1938, the Nazi party of Austria was able to engineer a “popular” takeover of the government and the de facto union with Germany that was later ratified by a puppet government. Robin was on the Ringstrasse in Vienna when the German Nazis made their triumphant entry into the erstwhile capital of the now-fallen Austrian Empire. When she left Europe this time, it was not only to return to the United States, but also to marry the medical student she had met abroad, out of which arose the forging of the her surname, Black-Schaffer. Her father was loath to let his family name lapse, and her fiancé was equally loath to abandon his family name. With all the prospective members of this new family fully acquainted with European as well as American customs, an idea was floated by way of compromise: hyphenate the names. We are all very familiar with the concept these days, and it has a long and illustrious history in Europe, but it was quite a novel concept for America in 1939. The newly-married couple pursued their professional paths, with Robin earning a masters’ degree in social work at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and her husband, BC as he came to be known, his medical internship at the Medical College of Virginia. Not content with social work, Robin went on to medical school herself, first at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she completed her preclinical years, then transferring to Duke University to join BC for the final two clinical years of medical school, where she became one of the first three women to graduate from Duke’s medical school. In 1949, Stephen, the first of Robin’s two children, was born and, six months later, Robin’s newly expanded family, left for post-war Japan, where BC became chief of pathology for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, investigating the effects of nuclear explosions on large civilian populations, while Robin pursued her medical internship. There the family remained until 1952, when, with Robin pregnant with Dorothy, her second child, they returned to the United States for good, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where BC joined the University of Cincinnati medical school faculty as chief of pathology at the Veteran’s Hospital. At this point Robin took a break, if staying home to raise two children can be called a break. When Dorothy, the younger of her children, started school, Robin began to take medical refresher courses, then took her national board examinations, and went into practice as an emergency physician, working mother’s hours in several of the Cincinnati area hospitals while her children went to school. In 1968, the family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, when BC was offered the position of director of the Indiana University Medical Sciences Program, the preclinical program for combined graduate and medical degree students at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, and the forerunner of Indiana’s multisite preclinical medical school of today. In Bloomington, Robin joined the IU Student Health Center as a physician in 1968, actively practicing there till her retirement in 1989, serving literally thousands of IU students as “their doctor” over more than two decades. With retirement, she and BC stayed on in Bloomington, among their IU staff and faculty friends. As their heath declined, they sold their home and moved to Bell Trace, first in independent and then in assisted living. In 2009, BC passed away; Robin, who always missed her companion of seventy years of marriage, lived on another nearly six years. Robin often joked with visiting children and grandchildren, stroking an imaginary long beard, that she had become “an ancestor”. She has indeed, being survived by her son Stephen and her daughter Dorothy; by Stephen’s four children and two grandchildren, and by Dorothy’s two children and one grandchild. She was and is dearly loved by them all, and she will be greatly missed.
Alice-Eugenia "Robin" Black-Schaffer
04/23/1915 - 01/29/2015
Alice-Eugenia “Robin” Black-Schaffer passed away in Bloomington, Indiana, on January 29th 2015, at the age of 99. She was born Alice-Eugenia Black on April 23rd 1915, in New York City, to Adolph and Edith Black. Adolph was a professor of engineering at Columbia University. Edith had taught languages in Vienna, Austria, from which she came; they were an older professional couple. From the age of 5 ½ their only child, Robin, as she came universally to be known, grew up in boarding schools in Austria and Switzerland, and summer camps in the United States. When she was 16, seeking to assess her level of preparedness for further education in the United States, her parents had her take the entrance examination for Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. She not only passed the examination, she won a full scholarship. This was a tumultuous time for Robin and for the world, and Robin saw more of it than she wished: in 1933, during her junior year abroad, she was present in Munich at the notorious Book Burning on the Konigsplatz organized by the then-ascendant Nazi Party. After returning to the United States she graduated from Barnard, and then went back to Europe to study art in Vienna, where she lived with her maternal grandmother, Malvina Loewy, and experienced the closest to a regular home life she was to know. But Austria was far from immune to the political and financial turmoil sweeping central Europe, and she was again to witness history there. In the meantime, another young American had come to Vienna: Bernard Schaffer had been a medical student in Germany, but he too found the rising Nazi tide seeping into his life at school. It was easy to transfer to another German-speaking medical school, and he hoped that the different character of Austrian society would ameliorate the political tensions he had been feeling in Germany. Although circumstances in Austria proved politically less different than he had hoped, one fateful day, he attended a birthday party with his girlfriend, and met one of her classmates Robin) who was a fellow American, and as he said, greatly impressed him with her intelligence! By 1938, the Nazi party of Austria was able to engineer a “popular” takeover of the government and the de facto union with Germany that was later ratified by a puppet government. Robin was on the Ringstrasse in Vienna when the German Nazis made their triumphant entry into the erstwhile capital of the now-fallen Austrian Empire. When she left Europe this time, it was not only to return to the United States, but also to marry the medical student she had met abroad, out of which arose the forging of the her surname, Black-Schaffer. Her father was loath to let his family name lapse, and her fiancé was equally loath to abandon his family name. With all the prospective members of this new family fully acquainted with European as well as American customs, an idea was floated by way of compromise: hyphenate the names. We are all very familiar with the concept these days, and it has a long and illustrious history in Europe, but it was quite a novel concept for America in 1939. The newly-married couple pursued their professional paths, with Robin earning a masters’ degree in social work at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and her husband, BC as he came to be known, his medical internship at the Medical College of Virginia. Not content with social work, Robin went on to medical school herself, first at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she completed her preclinical years, then transferring to Duke University to join BC for the final two clinical years of medical school, where she became one of the first three women to graduate from Duke’s medical school. In 1949, Stephen, the first of Robin’s two children, was born and, six months later, Robin’s newly expanded family, left for post-war Japan, where BC became chief of pathology for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, investigating the effects of nuclear explosions on large civilian populations, while Robin pursued her medical internship. There the family remained until 1952, when, with Robin pregnant with Dorothy, her second child, they returned to the United States for good, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where BC joined the University of Cincinnati medical school faculty as chief of pathology at the Veteran’s Hospital. At this point Robin took a break, if staying home to raise two children can be called a break. When Dorothy, the younger of her children, started school, Robin began to take medical refresher courses, then took her national board examinations, and went into practice as an emergency physician, working mother’s hours in several of the Cincinnati area hospitals while her children went to school. In 1968, the family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, when BC was offered the position of director of the Indiana University Medical Sciences Program, the preclinical program for combined graduate and medical degree students at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, and the forerunner of Indiana’s multisite preclinical medical school of today. In Bloomington, Robin joined the IU Student Health Center as a physician in 1968, actively practicing there till her retirement in 1989, serving literally thousands of IU students as “their doctor” over more than two decades. With retirement, she and BC stayed on in Bloomington, among their IU staff and faculty friends. As their heath declined, they sold their home and moved to Bell Trace, first in independent and then in assisted living. In 2009, BC passed away; Robin, who always missed her companion of seventy years of marriage, lived on another nearly six years. Robin often joked with visiting children and grandchildren, stroking an imaginary long beard, that she had become “an ancestor”. She has indeed, being survived by her son Stephen and her daughter Dorothy; by Stephen’s four children and two grandchildren, and by Dorothy’s two children and one grandchild. She was and is dearly loved by them all, and she will be greatly missed.
In Memory Of
Alice-Eugenia "Robin" Black-Schaffer
04/23/1915 - 01/29/2015
Alice-Eugenia “Robin” Black-Schaffer passed away in Bloomington, Indiana, on January 29th 2015, at the age of 99. She was born Alice-Eugenia Black on April 23rd 1915, in New York City, to Adolph and Edith Black. Adolph was a professor of engineering at Columbia University. Edith had taught languages in Vienna, Austria, from which she came; they were an older professional couple. From the age of 5 ½ their only child, Robin, as she came universally to be known, grew up in boarding schools in Austria and Switzerland, and summer camps in the United States. When she was 16, seeking to assess her level of preparedness for further education in the United States, her parents had her take the entrance examination for Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. She not only passed the examination, she won a full scholarship. This was a tumultuous time for Robin and for the world, and Robin saw more of it than she wished: in 1933, during her junior year abroad, she was present in Munich at the notorious Book Burning on the Konigsplatz organized by the then-ascendant Nazi Party. After returning to the United States she graduated from Barnard, and then went back to Europe to study art in Vienna, where she lived with her maternal grandmother, Malvina Loewy, and experienced the closest to a regular home life she was to know. But Austria was far from immune to the political and financial turmoil sweeping central Europe, and she was again to witness history there. In the meantime, another young American had come to Vienna: Bernard Schaffer had been a medical student in Germany, but he too found the rising Nazi tide seeping into his life at school. It was easy to transfer to another German-speaking medical school, and he hoped that the different character of Austrian society would ameliorate the political tensions he had been feeling in Germany. Although circumstances in Austria proved politically less different than he had hoped, one fateful day, he attended a birthday party with his girlfriend, and met one of her classmates Robin) who was a fellow American, and as he said, greatly impressed him with her intelligence! By 1938, the Nazi party of Austria was able to engineer a “popular” takeover of the government and the de facto union with Germany that was later ratified by a puppet government. Robin was on the Ringstrasse in Vienna when the German Nazis made their triumphant entry into the erstwhile capital of the now-fallen Austrian Empire. When she left Europe this time, it was not only to return to the United States, but also to marry the medical student she had met abroad, out of which arose the forging of the her surname, Black-Schaffer. Her father was loath to let his family name lapse, and her fiancé was equally loath to abandon his family name. With all the prospective members of this new family fully acquainted with European as well as American customs, an idea was floated by way of compromise: hyphenate the names. We are all very familiar with the concept these days, and it has a long and illustrious history in Europe, but it was quite a novel concept for America in 1939. The newly-married couple pursued their professional paths, with Robin earning a masters’ degree in social work at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and her husband, BC as he came to be known, his medical internship at the Medical College of Virginia. Not content with social work, Robin went on to medical school herself, first at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she completed her preclinical years, then transferring to Duke University to join BC for the final two clinical years of medical school, where she became one of the first three women to graduate from Duke’s medical school. In 1949, Stephen, the first of Robin’s two children, was born and, six months later, Robin’s newly expanded family, left for post-war Japan, where BC became chief of pathology for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, investigating the effects of nuclear explosions on large civilian populations, while Robin pursued her medical internship. There the family remained until 1952, when, with Robin pregnant with Dorothy, her second child, they returned to the United States for good, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where BC joined the University of Cincinnati medical school faculty as chief of pathology at the Veteran’s Hospital. At this point Robin took a break, if staying home to raise two children can be called a break. When Dorothy, the younger of her children, started school, Robin began to take medical refresher courses, then took her national board examinations, and went into practice as an emergency physician, working mother’s hours in several of the Cincinnati area hospitals while her children went to school. In 1968, the family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, when BC was offered the position of director of the Indiana University Medical Sciences Program, the preclinical program for combined graduate and medical degree students at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, and the forerunner of Indiana’s multisite preclinical medical school of today. In Bloomington, Robin joined the IU Student Health Center as a physician in 1968, actively practicing there till her retirement in 1989, serving literally thousands of IU students as “their doctor” over more than two decades. With retirement, she and BC stayed on in Bloomington, among their IU staff and faculty friends. As their heath declined, they sold their home and moved to Bell Trace, first in independent and then in assisted living. In 2009, BC passed away; Robin, who always missed her companion of seventy years of marriage, lived on another nearly six years. Robin often joked with visiting children and grandchildren, stroking an imaginary long beard, that she had become “an ancestor”. She has indeed, being survived by her son Stephen and her daughter Dorothy; by Stephen’s four children and two grandchildren, and by Dorothy’s two children and one grandchild. She was and is dearly loved by them all, and she will be greatly missed.
Alice-Eugenia "Robin" Black-Schaffer
04/23/1915 - 01/29/2015
Alice-Eugenia “Robin” Black-Schaffer passed away in Bloomington, Indiana, on January 29th 2015, at the age of 99. She was born Alice-Eugenia Black on April 23rd 1915, in New York City, to Adolph and Edith Black. Adolph was a professor of engineering at Columbia University. Edith had taught languages in Vienna, Austria, from which she came; they were an older professional couple. From the age of 5 ½ their only child, Robin, as she came universally to be known, grew up in boarding schools in Austria and Switzerland, and summer camps in the United States. When she was 16, seeking to assess her level of preparedness for further education in the United States, her parents had her take the entrance examination for Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. She not only passed the examination, she won a full scholarship. This was a tumultuous time for Robin and for the world, and Robin saw more of it than she wished: in 1933, during her junior year abroad, she was present in Munich at the notorious Book Burning on the Konigsplatz organized by the then-ascendant Nazi Party. After returning to the United States she graduated from Barnard, and then went back to Europe to study art in Vienna, where she lived with her maternal grandmother, Malvina Loewy, and experienced the closest to a regular home life she was to know. But Austria was far from immune to the political and financial turmoil sweeping central Europe, and she was again to witness history there. In the meantime, another young American had come to Vienna: Bernard Schaffer had been a medical student in Germany, but he too found the rising Nazi tide seeping into his life at school. It was easy to transfer to another German-speaking medical school, and he hoped that the different character of Austrian society would ameliorate the political tensions he had been feeling in Germany. Although circumstances in Austria proved politically less different than he had hoped, one fateful day, he attended a birthday party with his girlfriend, and met one of her classmates Robin) who was a fellow American, and as he said, greatly impressed him with her intelligence! By 1938, the Nazi party of Austria was able to engineer a “popular” takeover of the government and the de facto union with Germany that was later ratified by a puppet government. Robin was on the Ringstrasse in Vienna when the German Nazis made their triumphant entry into the erstwhile capital of the now-fallen Austrian Empire. When she left Europe this time, it was not only to return to the United States, but also to marry the medical student she had met abroad, out of which arose the forging of the her surname, Black-Schaffer. Her father was loath to let his family name lapse, and her fiancé was equally loath to abandon his family name. With all the prospective members of this new family fully acquainted with European as well as American customs, an idea was floated by way of compromise: hyphenate the names. We are all very familiar with the concept these days, and it has a long and illustrious history in Europe, but it was quite a novel concept for America in 1939. The newly-married couple pursued their professional paths, with Robin earning a masters’ degree in social work at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and her husband, BC as he came to be known, his medical internship at the Medical College of Virginia. Not content with social work, Robin went on to medical school herself, first at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she completed her preclinical years, then transferring to Duke University to join BC for the final two clinical years of medical school, where she became one of the first three women to graduate from Duke’s medical school. In 1949, Stephen, the first of Robin’s two children, was born and, six months later, Robin’s newly expanded family, left for post-war Japan, where BC became chief of pathology for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, investigating the effects of nuclear explosions on large civilian populations, while Robin pursued her medical internship. There the family remained until 1952, when, with Robin pregnant with Dorothy, her second child, they returned to the United States for good, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where BC joined the University of Cincinnati medical school faculty as chief of pathology at the Veteran’s Hospital. At this point Robin took a break, if staying home to raise two children can be called a break. When Dorothy, the younger of her children, started school, Robin began to take medical refresher courses, then took her national board examinations, and went into practice as an emergency physician, working mother’s hours in several of the Cincinnati area hospitals while her children went to school. In 1968, the family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, when BC was offered the position of director of the Indiana University Medical Sciences Program, the preclinical program for combined graduate and medical degree students at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, and the forerunner of Indiana’s multisite preclinical medical school of today. In Bloomington, Robin joined the IU Student Health Center as a physician in 1968, actively practicing there till her retirement in 1989, serving literally thousands of IU students as “their doctor” over more than two decades. With retirement, she and BC stayed on in Bloomington, among their IU staff and faculty friends. As their heath declined, they sold their home and moved to Bell Trace, first in independent and then in assisted living. In 2009, BC passed away; Robin, who always missed her companion of seventy years of marriage, lived on another nearly six years. Robin often joked with visiting children and grandchildren, stroking an imaginary long beard, that she had become “an ancestor”. She has indeed, being survived by her son Stephen and her daughter Dorothy; by Stephen’s four children and two grandchildren, and by Dorothy’s two children and one grandchild. She was and is dearly loved by them all, and she will be greatly missed.
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