Chapter V: Wooster, Ohio
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
- Thomas Jefferson
1940-1941
Wooster, Ohio
Almost my entire family – my father and his siblings and all my older brothers and sisters with the exception of John – had attended Wooster College, a small, first-rate, originally Presbyterian institution of higher learning. So it was natural for Mother to locate there even though she was a graduate of Albion College, a Methodist institution in Michigan. We found a pleasant three-story apartment on Beall Avenue, which most importantly, as it turned out, had a full basement.
I entered seventh grade in Wooster Junior High School, and on opening day I was settled into my assigned seat in our homeroom waiting for the teacher to come in. The boy behind me tapped me on the shoulder, and to make conversation said, “Guess where I was born.” This was to me a pretty weird way to get acquainted, so I said rather disgustedly, “China.” He, astonished: “How could you know that?!” I replied, “So what? I was born in China, too.” This of course he refused to believe for some time thereafter. His name was David Brown, and in spite of this awkward introduction, we became the closest of buddies.
Mother and I, Wooster
Chemistry in the Basement
David Brown was interested in chemistry and physics, and had quite a laboratory in his basement with all kinds of chemicals, a veritable latter day Thomas Edison. I was agog when he it showed to me. This was going to change my life.
David had somehow established a friendship with the man in charge of the stockroom in the chemistry department of the College of Wooster who was kindly towards him – and subsequently to me – and who would give us small quantities of almost any chemical we wanted – free of charge. One time he even gave me, with appropriate cautions, some white phosphorus kept under water in a glass bottle. This is a highly toxic element, which burns the skin and spontaneously ignites when exposed to air. It made for some beautiful magic tricks though! Imagine anyone giving something like that to a 13-year-old boy today!
So our basement on Beall Avenue soon became the growing site of the Fitch Chemical Lab. Like every other young chemist of those days, my principal interest was in pyrotechnics. I made black gunpowder from potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, put it into paper tubes and ignited them to produce beautiful flares. I learned that strontium produces red flames, copper, blue and boron, green; and that adding iron filings gave off lovely sparklers. I made up small quantities at a time of the gunpowder and kept a supply in the yellow teacup I had made from our Pasadena school project on China. 
In my thrill at learning how to produce such gorgeous fireworks, I called my brother John in for a demonstration. I prepared a paper tube of the stuff, held it arms length with a pair of forceps and lit it. We both stared in admiration as the flame shot forth with a magnificent cascade of scintillating sparks. It so happened that one of these incandescent devils landed in my beautiful and prized teacup containing my entire supply of black powder, whereupon there ensued a volcanic eruption with flames reaching several feet high. We stood transfixed even after the conflagration had ended, leaving the cup red hot. As it cooled, the experience must have been too much, for the cup went “tink” and fell apart into two halves. I was devastated by the combined loss of all my gunpowder as well as my precious cup. John, on the other hand, thought this was hilarious and was convulsed into paroxysms of laughter. I was furious and told him to stop, but my anger just made him laugh more loudly. So I got a medicine dropper and my bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid, and told him that if he didn’t stop laughing I would squirt acid on his pants. He didn’t stop. So I squirted. He stopped. It was quite wonderful to watch the holes in the fabric appear almost immediately.
Me in 7th Grade
Of course full reports were made to our mother, who much to my relief was quite philosophical about it, especially since the pants were brand new. Once again I escaped punishment. Incidentally Mother was fully supportive of my having a laboratory in the basement and my learning about chemistry. I don’t believe she fully realized how dangerous some of the things that I was doing were. Certainly I did not. I made thermite powder which, when ignited, burned with an extremely hot flame and left as a product molten iron. I did a number of experiments with hydrogen sulfide gas sans any proper ventilation. One time this resulted in severe headache. I had no idea that this gas can kill (as it did some years later a janitor in the chemistry department of Dartmouth College). I made little bombs by stuffing gunpowder into small bottles, igniting them with house current melting a fine copper ignition wire. And I had a peashooter pistol into which I put strike-anywhere matches to produce flaming missiles, which were directed to a pile of newspapers in a corner of the basement.
I also learned about a fascinating chemical, nitrogen triiodide, that was so sensitive that it would explode at the delicate touch of a feather. It was very easy to make: just soaking iodine crystals in ammonia water for several days, and then drying them. You wanted to place them in their final resting position while still wet because there was no hope of moving them once they were dry.
The fact that our apartment building still stands is, in a way, a tribute to my mother’s faith in me plus a huge amount of dumb luck.
But Mother always maintained that she trusted me in all ways, something that I feel was invaluable towards my development as a person and as a scientist. When it became obvious to her that chemistry was a passion for my friend David and me, she took the initiative to inquire at the Wooster College Department of Chemistry for a tutor. A young man was found, and he came one summer to teach us qualitative inorganic analysis, i.e. determining what elements were present in unknown mixtures of chemicals. This was a course taught to sophomore chemistry-majors in college. I managed to procure an old analytical balance (for weighing small quantities) from the kindly chairman of the chemistry department, and built a small centrifuge from the motor of an electric fan, a stick and some wire. This was required to “spin down” precipitates in order to separate them from the solutions in which they were formed.
Young Chemist, Age 12
David Brown and I always looked forward to the regular visits of our tutor. This was a wonderful way to learn about the chemistry of many of the elements of the periodic table. Of course when I got to college, I went through the entire scheme of analysis again, but with much greater understanding of the theoretical aspects of why we did what we had done.
War with Japan
The war was progressing with the Japanese making huge territorial incursions into China and moving on into Southeast Asia. The United States was selling Japan scrap iron and oil right up until the day of Pearl Harbor. Mother went on a speaking tour, and like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, she could mesmerize an audience:
“He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child:
The Mariner hath his will.”
--- urging everyone she could to help stop this insane trade with those who were about to become our mortal enemy. This meant that she would be away from home much of the time. She had to find a boarding school for John and me.
Northwood School in Lake Placid, New York it was, with a student body of about 75 from ‘first form’ to ‘sixth form’, i.e. from 7th to 12th grades. After taking an entrance exam and meeting with the Headmaster in New York, John and I were admitted with the proviso that we would be set back a year since their academic standards were much higher than those of the public schools in Wooster. Mother took an apartment in New York City so that she could be at the center of the news world, close to the diplomatic corps in Washington, D.C. because she was going to take them all on, as well as traveling to cities and towns across this country. She apparently was very good at it, often receiving standing ovations. Her early education as an English
Geraldine Fitch, Author, Lecturer
major and teacher were now paying off with interest.
Dad in the meantime was in China as Field Director of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, a countrywide system of cottage industries in support of the resistance to the Japanese invasion. He was also in charge of YMCA rehabilitation services to Chinese soldiers injured in the war. So we saw precious little of him, although he did come ‘home’ infrequently.
Dad was in Nanking when the Japanese entered the city and unleashed the most horrendous atrocities that came to be known as the Nanking Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking. He wrote a diary of his experiences of those horrible days and surreptitiously took movies as well. These, sewn into the lining of a great winter coat, he later smuggled out on a Japanese troop train – of all things! – to Shanghai and the rest of the world. Books have been written and movies made of those experiences. It was 
a terrible, terrible time.
There is now a museum of that holocaust in Nanjing. They hold an annual day of remembrance every December 13th. Recently I was invited to be their guest and to give a brief talk about my father before a distinguished group of Chinese and international attendees. In this picture I am standing next to my father’s memorial in the Museum.
And so John and I were sent off to boarding school nestled in the north woods of northern New York state, while Mother worked in New York City between lecture tours, and Dad was in China.
♣
