It's a DNA Thing

About 48 years ago, a young man named David Lewis Jones participated in a science fair at Cairo High School. He was one of just a handful of black students there at the time, but few would argue that he was one of the most brilliant people who ever attended that school.

And I'm not just saying that because David was my eldest brother. In fact, I got the link to this picture from a woman named Joan, who attended Cairo High with my brother and who has since become an incredible source of insights about my hometown and its tortured racial history.

Even before getting this picture, I had been deeply moved by Joan's frank, heartfelt remembrances of David, and how smart and poised he was during their Cairo High years. But she never pulled any punches. Joan has been brutally honest about the racial divide, and how at the time, she didn't understand what David must have endured as he broke down barriers during the tense, hostile, turbulent Civil Rights Era.

And the thing is, as a 16 year old kid in 1962, David wasn't even trying to break down barriers. What teenager is itching to be a Civil Rights martyr, for God's sake? I'm sure all he wanted to do was go to school, get good grades, and do his nerdy, wonky thing. David was the ultimate geek, because he was super smart, obsessed by math and science and science fiction and chemistry and stuff like that. If he had been born 20 years later, he might have been the black Bill Gates. If anybody could have invented the Internet all by himself, it was him. As it turned out, through the years he was pretty successful in financial circles, in banking, investment and consulting.

But then, as tends to happen frequently, the tables turned. For a lot of reasons, David eventually decided life wasn't worth living. It is truly too painful for me to think about why he made that decision, so usually I just don't. But I was forced to think about it, a lot, during James's graduation, when it felt so brutally wrong that David wasn't there to witness it.

But then again, he was. Look at the picture above. David is helping two of his Cairo High classmates on a project about "Monomolecular Films." (You know, just as I was typing that, I realized I don't have the foggiest idea what the hell that means, so I'm going to pause here for a minute to Google it.)

Okay, I'm back. Here is the definition of "Monomolecular Films," from Answers.com:

"A film one molecule thick; often referred to as a monolayer. Films that form at surfaces or interfaces are of special importance. Such films may reduce friction, wear, and rust, or may stabilize emulsions, foams, and solid dispersions. The broad field of catalysis, which is basic to petroleum refining and many chemical industries, involves chemical reactions that are accelerated in the thin films of reactants at interfaces. Moreover, thin films containing proteins, cholesterol, and related compounds constitute biological membranes, the internal interfaces that control the complex processes of life. See also Catalysis."

Even with the definition, it's still Greek to me. But James is probably familiar with the term. He graduated with a Chemistry degree from Cal Poly.

It was in his blood.