Oral History Interview with Barbara Heffelman by Matthew Crawford 
 
July 7, 2023 
Location of Interview: Conference Room of the Department of History, Kent State University
 
Liquid Crystal Oral History Project 
Department of History 
Kent State University 
 
Transcript produced by Sharp Copy Transcription 

DR. MATTHEW CRAWFORD: My name is Matthew Crawford. I’m a Historian of Science and Associate Professor at Kent State University. Today’s date is July 7th, 2023. I am with Barb Heffelman, who is the youngest daughter of Dr. Glenn Brown and has come to share some memories and discuss some things she has in her personal archive. Thank you, Barb, for bringing these things in.

BARB HEFFELMAN: Thanks for allowing me to come in and share my love for my father. I might cry during this, but—I’ll try not to. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: That’s understandable.

HEFFELMAN: In my eyes, he was a great man.

CRAWFORD: Certainly from my perspective working on the history of liquid crystals, just an absolute pillar. And obviously you know him much differently. We could start anywhere. If you want to walk through his biography, or if you want to discuss your experience with him, that’s fine. Whatever you’d like to do.

HEFFELMAN: Okay! We can kind of go all over the place. My father was born in Logan, Ohio—I’m sure that’s in the history, but—on a farm, grew up on a farm. He was one of I believe eight children.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow.

HEFFELMAN: They were very poor, growing up. I don’t know—of course I wasn’t around then—but he had this—he didn’t want to grow up and stay in that area of Ohio. He had dreams of being something different than a farmer. His brother, who is three years younger than him, Harold, they had talked—we have letters that were written between my mom and my father, as they were dating—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —and in it, my dad mentions that he and his brother were talking about buying the family farm. We don’t know what made him change his mind and not pursue farming, but then to go into what he later became, as opening—the pioneer of liquid crystals. So, that’s—many—a lot of things that people don’t know about, about my dad.

CRAWFORD: What year was your dad born?

HEFFELMAN: Let’s see. That was—I want to say 19—1916, he was born. 1916. He was 79 when he died. So, where was I? [laughs]

CRAWFORD: He grew up in—

HEFFELMAN: Logan.

CRAWFORD: —Logan, Ohio.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: On a farm.

HEFFELMAN: Correct.

CRAWFORD: At some point decided that he didn’t want to go into the farming life.

HEFFELMAN: Correct. My uncle, he actually wrote, which I’ve never had time to read yet, a “growing up on the farm”—he called it Down on the Farm—and this was what it was like to grow up on this farm. He wrote just his memories. But all I know is I remember my dad talking about the hard work it was, and they had to walk to school, and the stories—us growing up laughing—“Oh yeah, we had to walk five miles to school in the snow and the blizzard.” But they actually had to do that! They both grew up with outhouses, and things that us, nowadays, can’t even imagine. My mom would always talk about the Sears Roebuck catalog was the toilet paper, because they didn’t have that back then, in the outhouse. That’s off the subject, but just to know how—where they came from I think is critical, because you don’t realize, at our ages, that they had to go live through that.

CRAWFORD: Well, and if he was born in 1916, he would have been a teenager through the Great Depression.

HEFFELMAN: Correct.

CRAWFORD: Was your mom from Logan, as well?

HEFFELMAN:: She was from near—a little town called Junction City, and they met—my father was a very religious man, and even back right out of college—in college he was a layman for the Methodist church down there. And so he was at the church where my mom played the organ. He was there as the layman minister. That’s how they met. My mom was playing the organ, and that’s how they first met. But reading these letters back and forth, as they were dating, my father was quiet, a shy man. And reading these letters, it was funny, thinking, “He wasn’t very romantic at all!” [laughs] But that’s—it was just kind of funny reading them, now. I just read them like a year ago, started going through them. Anyway, but that’s how they met. Then he was getting his master’s at Ohio State, and I have all that here.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Actually I have all his degrees here.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, that was Iowa. That’s his PhD. Here’s Ohio State. That was his master’s of science.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, I even have, from his high school [laughs]. I’ve been able to keep a lot of things. This thing, Bowling Green gave him an honorary Doctorate of Science.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow, in 1972.

HEFFELMAN: Mmhmm. And that meant a lot to him, to get that. Anyways, from Ohio State, then he went down to the University of Mississippi, and that’s where he was able to get a job teaching chemistry. I’m backtracking. Because Larry was born—my sister was born in Mississippi. Okay, he went back to Mississippi. But he was in Mississippi when he was corresponding with my mom by letter. There was no phones back then. It was during World War II. He was worried about being drafted. At that time, they wanted students who were majoring in chemistry to stay in college, because they felt they were going to need those people for the war effort. And so, even though he had a number that he could have been drafted, he was released or not called to duty because he was teaching chemistry. At that time, that was when he was writing his first—authored his first paper, was there. I actually have the paperwork from—again, I wish I was better organized here—this letter that was sent to [laughs]—here’s a picture of my dad. These are all pictures of my dad. This was his high school, his high school picture.

CRAWFORD: Wow. Yes, he’s much younger in these photos than the ones that I’ve seen of him.

HEFFELMAN: I know. Every one you see, he has his white hair.

CRAWFORD: Yes. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: When I was a kid—we moved here into Kent when I was four, and my father was the only one who had white hair. He was 41 when I was born. So my friends would come to the house, and they’d all say, “Oh, your grandfather is here.” And I’d always say, “No, that’s my dad.” And I was like, “That’s my dad.” But I wish they would have seen my father—he was very handsome. But he—we all got white hair early from my dad. So again, I’m all over the place, but going through this book—we’re going to jump around, obviously. So this is the first press clipping in 1960 where Kent State hired my dad to come up.

CRAWFORD: From University of Cincinnati?

HEFFELMAN: This was University of Cincinnati, yes. Yep—“The new Chemistry head comes to Kent from University of Cincinnati. He has also taught at University of Mississippi and University of Vermont.” I’m sure you have some of this already. I’m going just through these. These are all in chronological order. He was very, very active in all the chemistry societies, chemical societies, in this area, and he was all the time going on trips to speak. All the time. So, these are just all different—

CRAWFORD: Did he ever talk to you about why he decided to come to Kent State?

HEFFELMAN: I think at the time—I don’t know. Again, I was only four. But I believe he came up here because—I’m assuming he shared his dream, and they were willing to support him on that. So like in ’63, he became the dean for Research. He kept kind of moving up in different fields. Strictly when he came up here, it was for the Chemistry Department. Then I’m not sure when he branched out. He authored—this was his first book, in ’63.

CRAWFORD: Quantitative Chemistry.

HEFFELMAN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Eugene Sallee.

HEFFELMAN: Sallee, yeah, coauthored with him. Up until this point—the bio here is about “he authored or coauthored numerous papers in his scientific field.” It talks here about his research interests and getting into liquid crystals. So this is in ’63. You probably have all that. But he then was promoted, again, to the dean for Research. Oh, here—we even have—this is for—for clearance.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. So here is his history. Ohio University was his undergrad, Ohio State, and then Iowa.

CRAWFORD: In ’49, yeah.

HEFFELMAN: So, in ’63. Look at that old map of the campus.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Fewer buildings. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Yes! Much fewer buildings!

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, and the interesting tidbit is, both my parents went to Ohio University, and then all four of us siblings went to OU.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really? Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, yeah. Just because my oldest brother went. He was a history major, and he went to OU. And I think because all the years of all of us having to go along to go visit him, that by the time I came around 10 years later, I wasn’t even looking anywhere but OU, because I just—I loved Athens. I just thought it was great.

CRAWFORD: What did you study in college?

HEFFELMAN: I was an outdoor recreation major. I started—I was going to be a math major [laughs] and then my freshman year, the first quarter, away from home the first time, I took my first calculus class ever, and I said, “Nope!”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: “Math isn’t gonna be for me.” So, yeah. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, and then—so I was a director of a parks and recreation department.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. In Ravenna. And then I changed careers many, many times, over the years.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Did any of your siblings go into science?

HEFFELMAN: No. My oldest brother was a history major. My sister was a math major. My other brother was an engineer. And then I did the recreation part.

CRAWFORD: What are the names of your siblings again?

HEFFELMAN: The oldest brother, Larry. And then Nancy, and then Don, and then me. So like here is just the speech he gave at this Cleveland section of the American Welders Association—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —but just talking about making the most out of life. He was a big believer in being the best you could be, and getting the most out of life, and contributing to society. Any of this, you can make copies of, if you want.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, that would be great.

HEFFELMAN: He was a big supporter—this was one of his grad students—he was a big supporter of his grad students. The scholarship that’s in my dad’s name, the note that we give to the award winners, we make mention that—and I don’t remember this, because I was too young, but my sister—we have in there that she remembers one time when we were on a family vacation, that we had to bypass where we were going to meet one of his grad students who was at a different college, in order to sit and talk to him about his dissertation.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: I mean, that’s how—and we waited in the car in a parking lot while he helped this student.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: And I have numerous other things I brought, from other students who—that my dad was their mentor, that how much of if it wasn’t for him they wouldn’t have pursued the field, and how he just believed in his grad students. And then in the staff at the Institute. I remember growing up—now, of course, again, I was young—and when—Dr. [Adriaan] de Vries, was he in Chemistry or Biology? I can’t remember what his field was. He was the first man who came over from Europe to study at the Institute. Every time somebody would come over, Mom would fix a big meal, and they’d all come to the house and have a dinner. Well, none of them spoke English. His wife was there, and they had two boys and they were younger than me, and they didn’t speak English. And so I just remember sitting there, and I was young, and how do you talk to somebody who doesn't understand English? So every time—and then Dr. [Alfred] Saupe I think was the next man who came over. Then after that was—but every time, they’d always be invited to the house, for dinner, to welcome them, and meet—so they could meet Dad’s family and wife and the kids, and just make it like a home. Oh—Arora, I think? Dr. [Sardari] Arora was the next one?

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. Mmhmm.

HEFFELMAN: And then—I have I think a list of who—but I really remember de Vries and Saupe and Arora. Then Dad became friends with them in addition to, and we would do things. We would have them for dinner, or they would invite us to their house or something. Just all the years of—my memory of my father, again, being the youngest, was, we grew up on Harvey, and the Institute’s first location was the—now it’s called the Lincoln Building. His routine every morning was he’d get up, and he’d have—Mom would give him breakfast. She would drop him off. Then he’d walk home for lunch, have his lunch, walk back. And he was real big on exercise. And then, my older brother and sister then would pick him up to come home for the night. But we had four bedrooms, and the one bedroom was his office. And so then every night, he’d be up in his office, working. Because he was just so dedicated, to his field. He just was—but yeah, he still—he also, though, made time for us. The weekends were us. He didn’t do anything on the weekends. It was family time. And he was huge into baseball, loved baseball, loved the Cincinnati Reds. We have a brick at the Stadium in his name.

CRAWFORD: Really! Wow!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. In here you'll see he—here, this is a great one. Here.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Tom Seaver, 3000th strikeout—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —with my dad’s name on it, and the—he was at the game, with the ticket.

CRAWFORD: 1981. Wow. That’s amazing.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. He just loved the Reds.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] I remember when I interviewed Dr. Doane, Bill Doane—

HEFFELMAN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: —he talked about—I think it might have been—maybe it was an interview he did with your dad right after he got hired, or maybe it was when he was getting hired, and your dad [laughs] asked him if he played baseball or something. Because he was looking for somebody—

HEFFELMAN: My dad asked Bill that.

CRAWFORD: —for the church baseball team.

HEFFELMAN: Yep, exactly! Yep!

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Bill said it just totally caught him off guard, because he didn’t know [laughs]—

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, my dad loved baseball. He loved it so much that he paid for the church baseball team.

CRAWFORD: Wow, okay.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. The fee. He bought the uniforms. And then he pitched. [laughs] That didn’t go hand in hand—he would play no matter what—but the church didn’t have any money, so every year my dad—so nobody would know, he would pay for the registration fee, he’d pay for the uniforms, so everybody could play. The minister was Carl Pearson, and his son Dick Pearson, played on the softball team, the church softball team. Well, Dick then I got to know later, because he was also—he was the director of the Cuyahoga Falls Park and Recreation Department, so I got to know him that way, professionally, in our field. When my dad died, he came to the funeral, and he said, “I’ll never forget when I played ball with your dad, we held him in such high regard that we couldn't call him ‘Glenn’ on the ball field.” So they called him “Doc.” So they’d—“Okay, come on, Doc! Throw it in there!” But they held him in such high esteem, because he was—they just admired him so much that they couldn't call him Glenn. I thought that was the funniest story, when he told me that. I was glad he shared that with me.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: This was I think Dick DeSanto. He may have been his first—was he his—? No, I don’t know if he was like maybe one of his first grad students. Then I can’t remember what state, what university he went to. But look at this old picture of Kent State.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow. Yeah, geez.

HEFFELMAN: Isn’t that amazing?

CRAWFORD: Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: I’m trying to think where—this was a smokestack, so this would have been—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, that’s Cartwright Hall. This is Van Deusen now. I think. Yeah, because this is Front Campus.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, there you go. That’s the Hill. So the Chemistry building would have been—this is Lincoln?

CRAWFORD: Yeah, that should be Lincoln. Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: That would have been the old library.

CRAWFORD: Oh, right, right.

HEFFELMAN: Is that right? Am I looking at that right?

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I think so.

HEFFELMAN: Okay, so then in ’65, this is when they started the first Liquid Crystal Conference at Kent State, and that’s what opened up the whole kind of world. Even though he had written—I’m not sure what year he wrote his first paper, to open up his first research paper. I’m sure you have it in there. But this is what really opened up. And here’s people coming from other countries to little Kent, Ohio—when you look at Kent, and this picture of what it was, back then. Let’s see, I would have been—11? No, nine. I was only nine years old, then. And so I don’t remember much about that time, other than it was a lot of work. Now, my dad’s secretary was Alice Milhalus and she was amazing. She was my dad’s like righthand person when it came to organizing, and the administrative part. She was a wonderful woman. She was just wonderful. Then I saw this one, about space. Here.

CRAWFORD: This is from—1965?

HEFFELMAN: ’65.

CRAWFORD: Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: It says here, his study spans a decade.

CRAWFORD: I know one of his first publications on liquid crystals was a literature review, and that was a pretty famous paper. I think that was from ’59 or something like that.

HEFFELMAN: ’59? Okay.

CRAWFORD: But he may have started working on it earlier.
HEFFELMAN: Yeah. And again, I don’t have that. My brother and sister have more information. We're just trying to get it all into one location, and unfortunately we haven't gotten that all together yet. These are just all different—like here’s all the different—yeah—

CRAWFORD: Right.

HEFFELMAN: —from Berlin.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: I mean, that’s just—for back then, that was just amazing.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, to bring in people from all over the world like that. Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. Well, I have pictures, old slides—this is oral, so you're not going to have pictures—but old slides back in the sixties when he traveled to Russia for the first time, and how long it took him to get there. He had to I think fly to Finland or Sweden first, and he had to sit and wait, like a week, for Russia to approve—

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow.

HEFFELMAN: —his visa to get into the country. And there was no phones, no—you know? My mom—my dad is sending my mom a Western Union just to let her know what was going on. There was times she had no idea where he was, what’s going on. We have some of those telegrams, still.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: That’s just mindboggling. One year they were in Poland. My mom would travel with my dad, back like in the—I think it was in the seventies. At the time, the Pope was Polish. And so they went to the house of one of the men that was in liquid crystal, and he knew the Pope, and the Pope came, and they got to meet the Pope.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Wow!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. I mean, that’s like—

CRAWFORD: What a chance encounter! [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: I know! It’s just like, wow. And they weren’t Catholic, but to meet the Pope, I mean—

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Still a big—

HEFFELMAN: It’s still like—that was probably one of the most memorable events of all the years. There were many, many, but that was one—to meet the Pope, of the world. It was just like, wow.

CRAWFORD: What you said about where your dad grew up, on a farm—and you mentioned earlier in our discussion that he really wanted to get out and kind of see the world—do you think that that was part of this career that he built for himself that allowed him to travel but also to bring people in from other places? Does that come from that desire to—?

HEFFELMAN: I think he could foresee what liquid crystals could be in the future. Unfortunately, he died before he could see it grow—I remember him telling me when I was young, his dream was to find a cure for cancer, with liquid crystals. That was his dream. And unfortunately he didn’t get to see that. But I think he knew the potential, and that’s why he wanted to bring this to the whole world, to get other people interested, in order to make this keep growing, to where it could grow. And it’s still a long way to go. I mean, it’s just mindboggling what can be done with liquid crystals. And the fact that they're now getting into medicine, and—that’s great. I mean, my father, he was into the biological aspects of liquid crystals, not the commercial, not the—so he just wanted to use it for mankind, and not to make money.

CRAWFORD: I remember reading some of the early kind of like annual reports of the Institute and some of his writings that we have here in the Special Collections Library, him talking about those sorts of applications, not necessarily for commercialization but for the good of society sort of thing. Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about potential health applications. And I know early on there were some individuals associated with the Institute that got funding to look at the potential for using liquid crystals to detect cancer and things like that.

HEFFELMAN: I’m sure you've seen—this has to be in the archives—when they did this?

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah.

HEFFELMAN: In ’68. This is when the Institute was still in
the Lincoln Building. And they brought this model in and painted her.

CRAWFORD: Right, right.

HEFFELMAN: This was—let me see, I think there’s a picture of her, here. This thing is so torn up. But this whole article was about the liquid crystals.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. I read about that. And then the article that was in LIFE Magazine?

HEFFELMAN: Yes. And that’s this one.

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. There it is. Haven't actually seen a physical copy. I’ve only seen it online. Yeah, right, they—

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, this is the one where they brought—this may have been the one where they brought the model in. And she had a—yeah, here.

CRAWFORD: Right.

HEFFELMAN: LIFE Magazine in ’68, to do this full blown-up—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, that’s a big—that’s a big deal. [laughs] Did he ever talk about this article, or what it was like to have that?

HEFFELMAN: Me, again, being young, it was like, “Ooh, the woman—” [laughs] It was like, “Oh my gosh, she had her top off” or something. That was like, “Oh my god, that was scandalous,” you know?

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: [laughs] But I just know he was very proud of that article, and knowing it was going to help open up to, again, the country, what was going on at Kent State.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like from what I’ve read that your dad played an important role in helping to build the research profile of Kent State University.

HEFFELMAN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Obviously the Chemistry Department, but in his role as dean of Research, he played an important role in that.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, he was very dedicated. He believed in helping people. And, very religious man. There was never any swearing in our house. He never smoked. He never drank. It was just a very good upbringing for us. And his beliefs, and—

CRAWFORD: I know you said he brought a lot of the scientists from other countries to the house. What about other members of the Institute? Did they come to the house as well?

HEFFELMAN: Sure. My dad belonged to the local chapter of the Chemical Society, and so everybody took turns hosting, like a monthly meeting, in their homes. I don’t know how often it came to our house, but then everybody came to our house. My mom was known for her lemon meringue pie—

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: —so [laughs] they’d always ask my dad, “Now, is Jessie making the lemon meringue pie for tonight?”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Because they always had like dessert after the meeting.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, of course. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: But just growing up, it was always the living room was just the—I’d help set up the chairs in a circle, and they'd meet and talk and—yeah, so they all came to those meetings all the time.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And my dad—they’d always host meals a lot for—and I don’t remember—again, I was young; I don’t remember who came. I just remember I helped [laughs] my mom. But I couldn't tell you who came to those meetings. But it was always a variety of different people. I’m sure it was just—again, I’m sorry I don’t know who was there, but I think a lot of it was probably his staff, just the husband and wives, who came, just to build that. Is there a year on this one, about the Russians invite my dad to visit? I don’t know if there’s a—which, I mean, that was huge. I don’t know why there’s no date on this, but this had to have been somewhere there in the sixties. Oh, here. Here’s this one. Well, here, this is from the Kent—it was the University Magazine at the time, in ’70.

CRAWFORD: 1970, yeah. That must have been a big deal to give a lecture in Russia in the middle of the Cold War. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Exactly. Yeah, so this was the—and that’s where he got his honorary degree from Bowling Green. This was the funniest thing. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: Commonwealth of Kentucky.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. Commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: Really!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah! [laughs] And we always thought—we thought that was the—we thought that was so cool that he was a Kentucky Colonel. [laughs] I have no idea what that meant, but they honored him with that.

CRAWFORD: Wow!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Huh! Did he have any connection to Kentucky?

HEFFELMAN: No. No connection with—not at all. [laughs] Not at all. Here’s ’72. Like here’s the fourth Liquid Crystal Conference, is at Kent State. So this is one I helped with. I was in high school, then. So I helped Alice. I was kind of like her little assistant and helped with all the—we had like little packages, welcome packages to give to the people, attendees. And just helping her do all the—everything we did with printing and stapling and all that. So I helped her do all that. And then I helped her man like the registration booth, when they came in. So that was great. Then when I was in college, another one came. Oh yeah, this was my dad’s—somewhere there’s a picture—I think my sister has—the first conference, in ’65, down at the Commons, they had a softball game.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Oh! Of course they did!

HEFFELMAN: Of course! Of course!

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: And a lot of the people had never played softball before.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: There’s a picture of my dad swinging the bat, as the ball’s coming in, at this. And it’s like a classic. And he had that hung up in the home office—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —all his life, because—

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: —that was the first conference. He was so proud of that. So that’s where that picture would be.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Somewhere. It’s—yeah, but just all these different—the old pictures of what the campus used to look like is amazing.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Did you ever consider going to Kent State?

HEFFELMAN: No. [laughs] We were very honored and lucky that we didn’t have to go to Kent. I mean, we would have gone for free. But none of us—none of us—wanted to stay in Kent. We wanted to spread our wings a little. And we knew other people who went to Kent whose fathers were professors, and once somebody found out that you were a professor’s child, it would change things.

CRAWFORD: Really.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. So, we just didn’t want that, especially since everybody knew who my dad was, so—“Oh, you’re Dr. Brown’s daughter.” Well—you know. So we didn’t want any favoritisms, or just—

CRAWFORD: I see. So it would change things like with the professors?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Oh, I see.

HEFFELMAN: We felt that. It maybe not have, but we just kind of felt that based on some of my other—not my friends, but my older siblings experienced that with their friends. But here’s just kind of—my dad wrote this.

CRAWFORD: Huh.

HEFFELMAN: This was for my mom, but here’s what my dad, this is his—how he—his strong belief in God.

CRAWFORD: Wow. This is from 1973.

HEFFELMAN: Mmhmm.

CRAWFORD: Huh.

HEFFELMAN: This is his—to be bold, to dream, to—

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Interesting. Obviously I knew he was a member of the Methodist church, but the things that I had read about him, which were all about his professional career and chemistry, things like that don’t necessarily come through, so that’s really interesting to see.

HEFFELMAN: I just—his belief in God, God directing him to this path. Yeah, so there’s just all these different—yeah. Let’s see. This was the funniest thing. Then this is just a sideline—when I went to college—okay, I’m in Who’s Who because I’m the child of Glenn Brown [laughs]—so when I was in college my freshman year, I was trying to impress a boy, and so I said, “Hey”—I said, “I’m in Who’s Who of America.” [laughs] And he’s like, “No, you're not!” And so I took him to the library and pulled out the book and showed him my name. But yeah, that’s a little sideline.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: [laughs] Nobody believed I was in Who’s Who of America. [laughs] But even his upbringing—Marion Township, Logan, they were so proud of my father that they would honor him all the time. The Logan paper would always have—anything about him that happened, they’d always publish it in the Logan paper. With the Institute, the conferences. They were so proud of him. This is—my dad wrote this. It was eight, yeah; a family of eight. One-room school. Yeah, here—"Never dreamed then of the opportunities and the exciting experiences that have come to me since I left Logan High School.” But this I think—if this was read into the history, I think this—he—

CRAWFORD: Would you like to read it now?

HEFFELMAN: I could, I guess. It’s a long—yeah.

CRAWFORD: It’ll only take a few minutes.

HEFFELMAN: Okay! So this was—my dad was asked to come talk, speak, at the National Honor Society at Logan High School in 1977. So he wrote this to speak to the students. This is from Glenn Brown. “It has been said that a person talking about himself is certain to lie a little but I’ll try to keep things straight as I tell you just a little about my life. I grew up on a hill farm in Marion Township, in a family of eight.” His father was a teacher in a one-room school. He went to Marion Township High School two years before Logan High School. He has a bachelor of science from Ohio University, a master’s of science from Ohio State University, a doctor’s degree from Iowa State, an honorary degree of science from Bowling Green State University. Then going into, again, what he’s saying—"After years of university training comes the business of putting all the training to use. Where has all this led me? I have taught at universities in four different states. Invitations have given me the opportunity to give lectures in 38 of our states, and in Australia, USSR, Poland, India, Yugoslavia, France, and Sweden. The most distinguished of these lectures were those I gave in the Soviet Union as a guest of their Academy of Sciences. In the past 10 years, I’ve given 300 lectures off campus. A number of principles have guided my life. Of these, I will mention two. In the first place, I felt that I wanted to give my talents and abilities to mankind, and secondly, I wanted to develop these talents and abilities to their fullest. There are those who look upon the summation of life as having no reason or meaning. Over against this is a philosophy of life that says life has divine source, meaning, and destiny. I believe in the latter philosophy. On this philosophy, life can be more than a plodding existence; it can dance. How does one develop his abilities and talents? The simple answer is work. When I speak of work, I do not mean the mere performance of an irksome task. Real work consists of solving the problems of life for oneself and others by unceasing thought and action. In brief, work is man’s functioning at his best, to the best social advantage. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to take a vacation from it. Work is timeless. It knows no limitations except those of energy. Energy. One can lose a job; one not need lose work.”—Hmm!—"Self-fulfillment is not achieved in leisure. It comes of toil, discipline, work. Novels are still written on kitchen tables when the plow is put away. Assembly line laborers still study their machines while they stamp out metal patterns, study and think and devise improvements. Talent, ability; these are almost beside the point. Work is the principal factor. I say that if one plows the field and sows the grain, the harvest will come as surely as day follows night. We make our talent, ability, even genius, through discipline and endless work. No philosophy of do-as-you-please leisure, of loafing and inviting the soul, can outwit the necessity of work as the forerunner of harvest and the fulfillment of self. Men of other disciplines have said similar things. Paderewski, the pianist, said, ‘Before I was a genius, I was a drudge.’ [laughs] Michelangelo the artist said, ‘If people knew how hard I work to get mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.’ Carlyle, the statesman and writer said, ‘Genius is the capacity to make infinite pains.’ Alexander Hamilton, the statesman, said, ‘All the genius I have is merely the fruit of labor.’ I believe it is fair to say that the finest work in the world is done for fun. Some good work comes by necessity, some good work is done for money, but the best work is done for fun. Millet, the French artist, painted advertising signs for a living, but his great painting of the Brittney peasants was for the love of it. John Bunyan said that he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress as a pastime and that ‘I did it my own self to gratify.’ Albert Michelson, a Nobel Prize winner for his research on measuring of velocity of light, did much of his research down by the railroad tracks in Cleveland, Ohio. When questioned by a railway inspector as to why anyone would make such a fuss over what seemed to him such a foolish thing as measuring the velocity of light, Michelson said, ‘Because it is such corking good fun.’ I talked about work not as drudgery, although there is always some of that, but about work as the means to fulfilling one’s abilities or one’s desires. Some years ago, when I sat in one of the same seats as you're sitting in now, I knew I wanted to be a chemist. Where this would take me, I had no idea. I never dreamed then of the opportunities and the exciting experiences that have come to me since I left Logan High School. Most of the travels and lectures I mentioned earlier have come about as a result of work. Much of that work has been done in the field of liquid crystal research. We have at Kent State University the one laboratory in the world devoted only to liquid crystal research. I’d like now to share with you very briefly some of the interesting developments in which I’ve had some part.”

CRAWFORD: Would you say that’s representative of your dad, like—

HEFFELMAN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: —his world view, and the way he phrased things, and so forth?

HEFFELMAN: Definitely. Again he had this vision of what liquid crystals could do. But I think a lot of it was based on his religious beliefs, that they helped guide him. And a lot of people didn’t know that about him. Because he—he kept that to himself. I mean, he wasn’t—didn’t have it on his sleeve. But he was—he was a great man. I just [laughs]—he was my hero.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: The different chemical sections, chemical societies, they honored him numerous times.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: He received this Morley Award in ’77 which at the time was one of the top-notch awards. And here’s this—another book he wrote, with Jerry. Jerry Wolken.

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah, Liquid Crystals and Biological Structures—

HEFFELMAN: Yes.

CRAWFORD: —so keeping that theme of—

HEFFELMAN: Yes. Yeah, he truly was into the biological aspects of it. So these are just all different articles. Then he received the President’s Award, which was a huge—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, from Kent State University, in 1980. Yeah, wow.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. And it’s just me being biased, but I think because of my father, Kent State became world-renowned, because of the Institute and his research. Then you see all the other fields who now are famous, like the theatre is famous now, and the fashion—

CRAWFORD: Right, fashion school.

HEFFELMAN: —and just—but I believe, personally, that he kind of pioneered getting Kent State on the map.

CRAWFORD: Right, right.

HEFFELMAN: Whether that’s true, I don’t know, but that’s my belief.

CRAWFORD: Well, I think—like you keep saying, he had a real insight about liquid crystals and their potential applications, and for a long time and still to this day, Kent State is recognized for its work in liquid crystals, so—

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, and here, this is ’86, the governor—he got this special recognition from the governor, and this is when he was—ailing.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Richard Celeste gave him a Governor’s Special Recognition in 1986—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —"for his dedication and immense contribution to fostering a resurgence in liquid crystal research and building a foundation of internationally acclaimed scientific achievements in the field at Kent State University.” Now, do you have this article about what Alice, his secretary, wrote?[1]

CRAWFORD: No.

HEFFELMAN: I don’t know if you can copy this?

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. Sure.

HEFFELMAN: Just to hear her thoughts on my dad. These are all just different—yeah, of course Ohio University gave him an honorary citation, because he went to school there.

CRAWFORD: Oh. Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: Here’s—House of Representatives gave him a—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: —recognition. He had a lot of—this was at OU when they honored him. My mom and I went down to that. But just all—the number of people he influenced is just—

CRAWFORD: Yeah!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Oh, and this is the—is this the scholarship you were talking about, that you set up? The—

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, so that’s the scholarship that my mom set up in my dad’s name.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Because she didn’t want—she wanted to be able to help grad students continue the research into liquid crystals, didn’t want that ever to die. And so of course that’s ongoing, still. But I have some—we even have like a spelling test, of his—

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: —when he was in, I don’t know, whatever how, what year he was. I think he won a spelling bee? Yeah, there. 1930.

CRAWFORD: Yeah! There you go—1930! Wow.

HEFFELMAN: [laughs]

CRAWFORD: That’s amazing.

HEFFELMAN: But he was also kind of—this is a little—back then, they had these little diaries, even the men, just from the different things.

CRAWFORD: Right. Wow.

HEFFELMAN: He loved to golf, too. That was his other passion besides baseball, was golf. He liked to golf. He wasn’t very good at it, but he did teach me how to golf, which was—huge. This was from—here are the Sprokels in ’72, talking—that was the year the conference was at Kent, I think the fourth one. And just the thank you from them about what a great success it was. Oh, here’s one thing I was telling you—this—Leslie Gulrich—he—this, you might want to copy this, too.[2] This was written in 2020. Here this mentions about Oleg was doing this—asked him, Gulrich to write his memoirs, for some publication that Oleg did.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I think I’ve seen the published version of this.

HEFFELMAN: But it just—it talks about dad being his mentor, and if it wasn’t for my dad urging him to continue on, even though he wasn’t—and my dad giving him pep talks, and he said not to throw in the towel, and you know—it’s a sports metaphor, there, but you know? [laughs] But this whole—I don’t know if you—you think you have this? Just shows how much his students meant to him, again. Oh, here, I think this is interesting. I think this was 1933 which he would have been, what, in college? He graduated high school in ’30. So here’s different pages of what he had to write up these experiments. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah!

CRAWFORD: That’s amazing. Illustrations and everything.

HEFFELMAN: “Experiment to see how a siphon works.” “Carbon from a candle.” And “Experiment with glass and water.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: I think it’s from ’33, so it would have been college.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: Part of his chemistry—I think that would have been—no, that would have been high school. He graduated in ’34.

CRAWFORD: Oh, if he graduated high school in ’34, yeah.

HEFFELMAN: It was the funniest thing—they had the information wrong in his high school yearbook.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really?

HEFFELMAN: Because for him, it said he was in speech, broadcast, a comic treat, and glee club. He couldn't carry a note!

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: He wasn’t a comedian! [laughs] So they put the wrong information with this. Because here’s his face, here’s his picture [laughs], and they put the wrong—but we thought that was pretty funny—that’s why we’ve hung onto that! [laughs]—that they didn’t get that right. Oh, and this is this “Fun of Life”—do you have this copy?

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I think I’ve—I saw a copy of this somewhere.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, this probably explains my dad the most. And we—this was at his funeral—

CRAWFORD: Oh, really.

HEFFELMAN: —we had this. Because—and again, a lot of it goes back to the previous thing I read, when he spoke to the Logan High School.

CRAWFORD: Oh yeah, I see the same artists mentioned there.

HEFFELMAN: Yes. But “By living for the fun of it, I mean to live a life interested in worthwhile things”—worthwhile things; that’s not spelled right—“to do something for individuals and for the human race as a whole that leaves our Earth a more decent place, and to develop a character upon which you yourself can inwardly depend.” I mean, that was his philosophy. Huh; this is an agreement between my dad, John Dreyer, Ralph Lubowitz, and William Middendorf—

CRAWFORD: Huh.

HEFFELMAN: —an acting research and development group at the University of Cincinnati. Yeah, I was always so, growing up, proud of my dad.

CRAWFORD: Do you have a favorite story about him?

HEFFELMAN: Oh, yeah, I do! [laughs] When I was in high school, I went to Kent Roosevelt, and I was taking chemistry. Chemistry was not my—I liked physics but I didn’t like chemistry. I was doing my homework one night, and it was just a very basic question where the solution was just the next step, but I didn’t know how to get to that. And so I asked my dad. I said, “Hey, can you help me?” He sits down, he looks at it, and he takes this—what should have been a one-step answer, took it way out into like infinity. He had this so far out, the solution—I mean, way out there—that I just sat there, and I’m like, “Um.” And after like five minutes, I said, “Okay, Dad, thanks!” So [laughs]—so he thought he helped me. And so then he left, and so I called my sister, and I said—she was like upstairs—I said, “Nancy, can you come help me?” [laughs] And she goes, “Oh, you just want this, the very next step.” But my dad was so smart and so intelligent, he had taken this problem and had it solved way out to where—infinity. I always tell people that story. That’s how genius he was. That high school chemistry just wanted the very next step, you know? [laughs] But that was probably—that’s a story I tell a lot. And just as a family, Christmas was—Christmas was his favorite time, and he made Christmas Day very special. That was—my parents were frugal. We didn’t spend money on things we didn’t need. But Christmas was his one time a year that he made sure it was special, for all of us. And just—back then is where we—upstairs, we—they probably got up at 2:00 in the morning putting things together, you know?

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: But we were on our—we didn’t hear. We slept through the night. And then at some point, we’d wake up before—and we were ready, but we weren’t allowed to come downstairs, and we all had to wait at the top of the stairs until my mom and dad got down, and my mom put the Christmas album on the stereo, the old record player. And the lights, she’d plug in the lights to the tree. And everything had to be set up—the stuff from Santa, the presents from Santa had to be on each of our—we each had our own chair, designated. And then they’d say, “Okay!” and we’d come running down the stairs. It’s like, “Oh, Santa!” You know? And so it was just—it was such—and my dad would just be beaming, you know? He would just be—just so proud, and grateful he could do this for—because we didn’t spend a lot on ourselves other than clothes and food, we didn’t buy anything that wasn’t necessary, but that was his big thing every year, was that. Yeah, but he was real active in the church. He was a lay minister quite a bit at the Methodist church. He was on different boards with the church. So he was very active with the church.

CRAWFORD: Do you know, or did he ever talk about why he chose chemistry as opposed to physics or—?

HEFFELMAN: In that one piece I read that he presented to the high school class, National Honors class at Logan, he had said that he always wanted to go into chemistry. So, yeah, I don’t know what—

CRAWFORD: Right, yeah, so just—for whatever reason.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. But I think we found something—a grade from, I don’t know, wouldn't have been junior high back then, but maybe high school, where he got like a C or something in chemistry! We laugh about it, now, and we say, like, “How could he get a C in chemistry?” But that was just a—whatever. He could have been working too hard on the farm and not studying. But we always kind of chuckled about that, that he went on to what he became, [laughs] you know? But he had a good sense of humor. He enjoyed life. Every summer, we would do a two-week family vacation.

CRAWFORD: Oh yeah?

HEFFELMAN: We’d usually go out west. We would drive, originally, and then—then we started to fly. A lot of times it was centered around a conference. Like California, we went to, we flew, but there was a conference associated with that. So, he always combined work with vacations. He just was so dedicated. He still made that time for the family, but he was so dedicated that he always tried to combine something with the family time. But we just had great vacations growing up, going out west, and just, all of us crammed in, six of us, into a—it was a Buick. He always bought Buicks. It was a Buick sedan, and six of us crammed in there.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And he’s the only one that drove. And he drove the whole—all the way out west! And all the way back. Again, I was eight or something. I was real young. Less than that, because Larry couldn't even drive yet, so maybe I was six or something. So, I remember—we all talk about those family trips, and Mom playing the games, like, the sky is—I see—I spy, or I spy what color, or license plate game or all that stuff was us kids growing up making up games, just to keep things entertaining. But that was a different time back then. There were no rest stops back then.

CRAWFORD: I know. Must have been very different.

HEFFELMAN: Yes. Very different than now.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: But those were good—very good memories. We lived right down—we lived on Harvey, which was right down from the—I don’t know if it’s still the Education building—I think it’s still the Education building—on Main Street. Wilson.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Were there a lot of—? This is still true to a certain extent, but were there a lot of university families in that neighborhood at the time?

HEFFELMAN: Yes. John Doutt—I’m not sure what his—where he taught. He was a professor. Bixenstine—he was I think—psychology? And then there was—they added the street up—Burr Oak; there were some professors up in there. Yeah. But it was a mix, probably half professors, half just people in other professions. We had a doctor who lived in our neighborhood. Yeah, but it was a really good neighborhood growing up. Until they took the swamp out. Because it was just like—we all were on the same—not all of us, but myself up and my next brother—Don is four years older than me. So us two and all the neighborhood kids were all around the same ages. So we just played and played, and it was the best neighborhood to play in. I mean, we all would just play all summer long. Everybody got along real well. It was a great neighborhood growing up.

CRAWFORD: Was Walls Elementary there when you guys were growing up? I don’t know exactly when that was built.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, it was built when—I went there in fifth grade. So I used to go to Depeyster.

CRAWFORD: Okay, so that’s when they put that in.

HEFFELMAN: I was the only one that went to Walls. So they built it, and then, starting my fifth grade is when they opened that up. But we used to walk to Depeyster all the time. Yeah, and then we were like a tenth of a mile short of the two-mile radius to take the bus to Roosevelt, so we had to walk. Does the Kent State bus still come down Harvey?

CRAWFORD: No, I don’t—not a Kent State bus, no.

HEFFELMAN: Because we used to, in high school, the Kent State bus came and went out to Twin Lakes, so I used to be able to get on and ride that, to school.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, being a daughter of somebody on campus. If you didn’t have a faculty member, you couldn't ride the bus. But I got a pass, and you could ride it, so that was great.

CRAWFORD: Oh, cool. Yeah! I don’t know if Kent State runs a bus anymore, to be quite honest. I think they're all Portage County buses that come through campus.

HEFFELMAN: Oh, that PARTA or whatever?

CRAWFORD: PARTA, yeah.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, that was a great neighborhood.

CRAWFORD: It’s a great neighborhood. What was it like growing up in Kent?

HEFFELMAN: It’s funny because I always thought—all of us probably Kentites, we always thought we were kind of a little step above Stow, and Ravenna, and Tallmadge, and so there was always these big rivalries in like football in high school. Because, you know, we thought we were better than any other little city, because we had the campus, with the university here. So that was—but it was fun. I worked at the downtown theatre—

CRAWFORD: Oh, really? Wow!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. It’s that live theatre now; it used to be a movie theatre. I used to ride my bike from Harvey, and I’d work there at the movie theatre, in high school. My sister used to be—Hahn’s Bakery was downtown, and she used to work there.

CRAWFORD: Really! Wow.

HEFFELMAN: But downtown, that part has totally changed. But, no, The Loft is still there. Ray’s is still there. I’d come home from college in the summer, and all my friends were still here; we’d be down at Ray’s and The Loft all the time. Yeah. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: All the time!

CRAWFORD: Yeah, The Loft looks like it has been there for a while. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, we hung at The Loft more than anything. But used to be these big baseball, softball rivalries, between The Loft and Ray’s. So I’d play—

CRAWFORD: Oh, really?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. We’d always be in some—the guy who owns Ray’s had a—friend had a farm way out in—oh, what was it?—up in Mantua or something, and we’d go out there and play softball, and just—it was a fun time. But yeah, every summer we’d have these big softball—against The Loft or Ray’s. And I knew the guy—I knew the owner of Ray’s, but I also knew the manager at The Loft. I went to high school with him. And so I was always invited, to go out and play. Yeah, but it was—it was a good atmosphere. Grew up with the same people all through. Well, no; grade school, there were so many different grade schools. And then once you got to Davey Junior High, then that’s when you met all these people, and then you just went all through high school with the same people. My class was very close, and we've had five-year reunions ever since.

CRAWFORD: Really! Wow.

HEFFELMAN: They didn’t do the five-year; they did ten. From ten years on, there has been a five-year reunion every five years. And we're like the only class that does that.

CRAWFORD: That’s amazing.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, and so our 50th is coming up next year. I go to every single one. Every five years, I go. It’s just fun to—people you never—you know, in high school, everybody has cliques, and the cliques are kind of—they've gone away, and so people you’d never talked to in high school, all of a sudden now you're buddies with them, and friends. Which is interesting. That’s cool, that that happens. But it was a really good small town to grow up in.

CRAWFORD: The relationship between the university and the town was pretty good?

HEFFELMAN: Um—I’d say no, only because—Larry was the only one—my oldest brother—was the only one who went to Kent State High School. We had that choice, okay, to do that, and he—

CRAWFORD: There was a Kent State High School?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah!

CRAWFORD: Oh, I didn’t know that.

HEFFELMAN: It was—the building—right there.

CRAWFORD: Oh, the Michael Schwartz Building?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Across from Satterfield.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, across from Summit. That was the high school, right on the corner of Morris and Summit.

CRAWFORD: I didn’t know that.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. That was the high school. I don’t know why he wanted to go there. So he went there, and then when Nancy was ready to go to high school, she wanted to go to Roosevelt, because her friends were there. Because by the time we moved to Kent, Larry was 14. He would have been turning 15, maybe? So he didn’t have that connections with anybody, so then he chose—so—but Nancy, and then Don and I, all of us wanted to go to Roosevelt. We didn’t want to go to Kent State, because we knew everybody. Then when I was in high school, it would have been my sophomore or junior year, they closed the Kent State High School.

CRAWFORD: Who went to the Kent State High School? Who was it for?

HEFFELMAN: It was for professors’ kids.

CRAWFORD: I see, okay.

HEFFELMAN: So, it was only for faculty only, could go there.

CRAWFORD: Wow. Interesting.

HEFFELMAN: Faculty children.

CRAWFORD: Children of faculty.

HEFFELMAN: So when they closed that high school and all those students came to Roosevelt, there was a—there was a lot of friction.

CRAWFORD: Really! I can imagine.

HEFFELMAN: Again, it was either in my sophomore or my junior year, maybe in my sophomore year, when that happened. And the students who came from Kent State High School—um—they had kind of a little bit more of a superiority over us, that we were the local townies, and they were, you know, faculty children.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: So there was some friction. And they basically stayed in their own little clique. And, it took a year or so for them to kind of—for everybody to kind of get back together. Then by the time my senior year, everybody was friends, and everybody was playing sports together. But it took a couple years for that—and yeah, there was a lot of animosity between the two different groups. And a lot of them, they knew who I was, because of my dad, and they were like, “Well, why didn’t you go to Kent State High School?” I said, “Well, you know, my friends were—” I grew up with my friends that went to Roosevelt, so I didn’t know anything different. Yeah, so it was a really good town. And living through May 4th was—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I was going to ask what that was like.

HEFFELMAN: That was—I was eighth grade. And that Friday when they burned down the ROTC Building—we lived on Harvey, right down the street, so we could see the fire from our house.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: We could see the flames over the trees. There were helicopters with spotlights going around over our house, in the neighborhood.

CRAWFORD: Oh my gosh.

HEFFELMAN: And that Friday night, it was about—I think it was about 10:00 at night—the phone rings, and it’s the Campus Police calling my dad, and said, “They've chained up the University, the Liquid Crystal building. You need to come down, because you have staff still in there working and they've chained them in.” So my dad left the house like at 10:00, 10:30, and we were like, “What’s going on?” He had to go down there and help kind of—like talk to the students, with the police, to get his—the people who were in there working able to leave. And it was a scary time. So then, Saturday—that was Friday night—so Saturday, the ROTC Building had been burnt down, and so, my older brother [laughs]—my two brothers and I walked up there. If my mom would have known, she would have been mad. She didn’t know my brothers were taking me up there. Because I was—I was 13, I think? Yeah, 13. So we went up just to see—the building was still smoldering, and burning, and all the—people were still milling around. It was just—and then Monday—still all this unrest. The students were breaking windows in downtown Kent. I think that was Saturday night. I don’t remember any of this, but one of my friends from high school, she lived on Dansel with some other people, and one of the fathers owned one of the stores downtown. And they were breaking the windows. And so, according to my one friend, she said that a bunch of the fathers were going to go downtown with their bats, to defend, and they asked my dad to come with them. And I’m like—I said, “I don’t think that’s true. My dad would never do that.” But she’s trying to—she was insisting that they asked my dad. But again, my dad wouldn't do that. But I guess they went down with their baseball bats, with some of the other local townspeople, and—it was a crazy time.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I can imagine.

HEFFELMAN: Then, on Monday, we were in school, and that Monday is the shootings. That was May 4th. I was in eighth grade at Davey. There was an announcement over the loudspeaker that everybody had to go back to their homerooms. So we go back to the homerooms, and they just make this announcement that there has been some problems up on campus; everybody needs to go home. And the buses, who rode the bus—well, I couldn't ride the bus, because we were—the distance. So, I start walking home, not knowing what—nobody—they wouldn't tell us what was going on—that there were shootings, that there—we didn’t know anything other than “There’s unrest, there’s trouble.” So I start walking home, and my mom sent out—it had to either have been my sister or my brother—had to be my sister—to come find me. And sure enough, she found me walking and got me in the car and took me home.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: But that whole—I mean, it was just—and at that point, then—let me back up. That was Monday. The National Guard came in on Saturday, and they camped out at Walls School.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really!

HEFFELMAN: Right—right—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, right—

HEFFELMAN: —by our house!

CRAWFORD: Right across the street, practically.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. So they brought them from Columbus. Governor Rhodes brought them up from Columbus where they had been defending a truckers’ strike. And, long hours, stressful. They had no sleep. He brings them up to here. And so these are young men who had no—no sleep, no—not very much training, and all uptight with the truckers’ strike. So they had been based at Walls School. So, there’s like half track—half—what do they call it?—half track tanks? Half—?

CRAWFORD: Oh—yeah.

HEFFELMAN: I don’t know what kind of tanks they are. Anyways, these tanks are coming down Harvey. These—

CRAWFORD: Oh my gosh.

HEFFELMAN: —big trucks carrying the troops are coming down Harvey. And they set up at Walls.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And at the intersection of Doramor and Harvey, they had National Guards with bullets in their guns, rifles, guarding that entrance—

CRAWFORD: Oh my gosh.

HEFFELMAN: —into Walls School. They were standing guard, two of them.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And so here’s the kids in the neighborhood up there talking to these guys, and just like becoming their friends. And these National Guards, they were like 19, 20. They were young. And so all these kids are up there talking to them, and they're holding a rifle with live ammunition [laughs]. You know, you think back, it’s like, oh my gosh. But—having them right there, I mean, that was—that was scary. And it was just such a stressful time. Oh, and, you know, it just—my dad, I don’t think he slept at all those four or five nights, days. Again, being 13, my parents didn’t share much with us, kind of kept us—me, especially being younger—sheltered, and didn’t want to say really what was going on. We had to stay in the house. We couldn't go out. We couldn't—school was cancelled. It was just—it was—very trying. And I never realized—I really am impressed with what Kent State has done with the museum here.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, the Visitor’s Center. Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: And after going through that multiple times to watch that video tape—

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah, that’s—

HEFFELMAN: I mean, the first time I watched it, I cried. I was crying, sitting there crying, when you see what really happened. It was like, “Oh my gosh.” Because you know, all the misinformation that was put out after, for years, about what happened, and to actually see that—I don’t know who took that video, but, to watch what really happened—I mean—I think I sat there the first time watching—I think I watched it three different—three times. Because each time I kept getting kind of madder and madder. But kept thinking—disbelief, at the same time. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I mean, this—you know—so I always tell anybody, “Please come to Kent. You have to go see that.”

CRAWFORD: How long were the local schools closed for?

HEFFELMAN: I don’t remember. I don’t know if it was all week? Because Monday was the shootings. I don’t even remember at all when we went back. Because back then, we were in school until the end of June, so—I have a feeling it may have been all week, but I really don’t remember.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: I just know it was—the stress that my dad was under, during all that, was—and they brought—the SDSers came from California, and Hell’s Angels came from California, to cause trouble.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And they're the ones that instigated everything that happened. I’m sure you know that part, being in history. They came in from California. The Students for a Democratic Society or whatever, they came in, and they took over—do you know where Saint Pat’s school is, on Depeyster? Or it used to be Saint Pat’s. Or it’s the church, and—Depeyster School, Saint Pat’s, and up on the hill is a house.

CRAWFORD: Yep, yep.

HEFFELMAN: You know that—that’s where they—

CRAWFORD: One of my colleagues lives in that house.

HEFFELMAN: Okay. One of my brother’s friends used to own that house.

CRAWFORD: Oh really!

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. So that’s where they—

CRAWFORD: Yep.

HEFFELMAN: —you know all that. Yeah. And you just think about, they're up there, causing—getting all these students riled up, but they were accusing—you know this—the Liquid Crystal Institute—of making chemical warfare for the Vietnam War! [laughs] It’s like—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I know, that was a big thing at that time. And so much university science research was funded by the federal government, and certainly some of it was engaged in weapons development—the Manhattan Project and stuff—and I think, yeah, the Liquid Crystal Institute became kind of a target, or something like that.

HEFFELMAN: Right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: I remember reading about the building being chained shut, and, yeah, I didn’t realize your dad had to go down in the middle of the night to—

HEFFELMAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: —yeah, geez.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, because he was trying to help talk the students into what really was going on in that building, and we need to get the—let these people go home. Yeah, it was—yeah. But again, my—I know my mom and dad talked a lot, but my dad was—didn’t want us—was keeping us sheltered, and not trying to explain—and the stress that he was under.

CRAWFORD: Well, that would have been a lot to take on, at that time.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, but all that was—trying times. But, it’s a part of history.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. I know that at a certain point the Liquid Crystal Institute was renamed the Glenn Brown Liquid Crystal Institute.

HEFFELMAN: Correct.

CRAWFORD: What was that like for you and your family when that happened?

HEFFELMAN: That was the biggest honor that they could have given—the University could have given my dad, to recognize him in naming the building after him. That was—amazing. And I still go into the Institute to see his picture on the wall, and see—his name is still up there. I always go every—every couple years, I go up and make sure his name’s still up there! [laughs] You know, just to make sure there’s no—nobody’s going to change that, take that away. Because, if they ever were to move that into another building, I just hope that they still keep his name, with the Institute.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. I don’t see any reason why they wouldn't. He played such an instrumental role.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah. But that was the biggest honor. We're so proud of that, that he was recognized. That is probably his biggest recognition, ever, despite the degrees and the honorary degrees and the awards, is having that named after him. And then to have the scholarship set up in his name.

CRAWFORD: I noticed you mentioned you had that—Leslie Gulrich sent you this sort of memoir that he wrote. Do you hear from his other students at all?

HEFFELMAN: No. Both my parents are deceased, and so, we don’t hear anything at all from anybody. I’m not sure they would know how to even reach any of us anymore. Other than maybe my sister, because my mom lived with my sister for seven years before she died, down in Beavercreek. But my sister would have said something, and she hasn’t heard—yeah. And actually, when my dad got sick, that’s when we kind of started losing communication with people. So when he died, it took a long time for some of that to get out that he had passed. My mom might have gotten—would get a letter—it could have been like months after he died, that somebody overseas just found out, through the grapevine or something, that he had passed. So, it’s a shame that—because he had so many dreams to—what he wanted to keep doing, and—

CRAWFORD: Yeah, but he accomplished a lot. The Institute and all the work that it has done, both—even in the time that he was the director—just looking at the history of that Institute and the work that he did to build that up, at a time when this university wasn’t really engaged in that kind of work—it took a tremendous amount of effort, and vision, and dedication.

HEFFELMAN: And even what was going on in the country and the world, with the Vietnam War, and just all the unrest, and then the Cold War, and all that. To do everything he did with everything else that was going on—the fact that he could get into Russia when he—the years he went in—is like unheard of.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, and to have that real international vision so early on, with organizing the conferences and everything. I think partly that was a function of—because liquid crystals had been kind of unknown. My understanding is they were studied earlier in the 20th century and then there wasn’t that much interest. And then, partly due to the work of your dad and some other folks, there’s this renewed interest in the sixties. But then you had research centers all over the world, so it was almost international by design, but his ability to be able to bring—

HEFFELMAN: To bring everybody together.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, and bring them to Kent State.

HEFFELMAN: In all the different areas that—around the world that—different researchers were using liquid crystals, but maybe studying it in a different avenue. To bring all those people together. I remember seeing, when—the year it was here, and I was in college—and I helped a lot, then, that summer—and just seeing, reading the list of all these abstracts that were being given, I’m like, “Oh my—” I mean, they were all over the board, all different fields, using liquid crystals. It was just amazing.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. It was definitely an exciting time. There were people working on displays at that time, but I think, yeah, there really was this effort to try to find all kinds of different applications. Yeah, I’m not surprised.

HEFFELMAN: I remember when we announced the scholarship, it was here at Kent State, and my mom and I went to announce like the first scholarship, in my dad’s name. It was at the Student Center Ballroom, I think? But that was—

CRAWFORD: Yeah—

HEFFELMAN: —[tearfully] I’m going to start crying again. That was—that was a lot. That meant a lot, that—

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Yeah, it’s—

HEFFELMAN: —[tearfully] to continue my dad’s name.

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Well, and to give something back, and to provide support to a next generation of chemists and students. With what you said about how invested he was in advising his students, it really makes a lot of sense. So that's really great that you were able to do that.

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, he was [tearfully]—he would be smiling [laughs] and happy that his name is being continued into the research, and that these students—again, I did not do well in chemistry, so [laughs]—but when I read—was it last year’s?—not this year’s winners, the recipients of the scholarship, but last year’s, they shared or we watched or something, and I think after a couple minutes, I’m like, “I have no idea, and I don’t understand what they're talking about.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: But it’s amazing how these students are just—and with computers, now, and the digital things that they can do so much more with research, than back when my dad was—you see the old pictures of him with his old—telescope thing looking at a slide, you know?

CRAWFORD: Yeah. [laughs] Things have changed quite a bit. [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: Exactly. Yeah. An interesting thing—my father had Parkinson’s disease, and severe dementia as the Parkinson’s progressed. At night time before going to bed, he would read, and he would either be reading the Bible, or a book on some field of science—

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

HEFFELMAN: —or a baseball book. About baseball. So, he knew something was happening within his body before he was diagnosed. And so, we found books that he was reading on the brain.

CRAWFORD: Oh. Wow.

HEFFELMAN: And so, again, he knew, ahead of time, that something wasn’t right. And so, then he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. So—

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Hmm.

HEFFELMAN: —yeah. But it was always sad that, again, he wanted to do so much more. And to have somebody so brilliant have Parkinson’s and then dementia—so he—his mind—

CRAWFORD: Right. Yeah.

HEFFELMAN: —wasn’t there. But my mom was an amazing woman. She was able to have him stay in their house for as long as she could.

CRAWFORD: Wow. That’s great.

HEFFELMAN: I moved in across the street from them—rented—the house across the street from them, to be there to help out. And so sometimes I’d get a call at 2:00 in the morning that he—I can’t go into what happened, but I’d have to come over and help. Then it just got to the point where it just couldn't be done anymore, so we moved him into Laurel Lake, in Hudson.

CRAWFORD: Is he buried here in Kent?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, at the Kent—

CRAWFORD: Standing Rock Cemetery?

HEFFELMAN: Yeah, Standing Rock, yeah. He and my mom are both there. But, my mom took care of him for so long. But that’s when she wrote—this [“The Glenn H. Brown Liquid Crystal Institute: The Glenn Brown Years (1965-1983)” by Jesse A. Brown][3]— after he died. That kind of helped her. Part of her grieving I guess was writing this about my dad. But again, this alone says so much. You talk about all the people—here’s the members of the Institute. And just—just all the—she put—it took her years to put this together, and she was going through files of documents and paper and—

CRAWFORD: Wow. Yeah, it’s a really valuable thing to have. It’s really great that she did that. Great. So, maybe I’ll make copies of some of these things, and—

HEFFELMAN: That would be great.

CRAWFORD: —but, yeah, thank you so much for—

HEFFELMAN: Sure.

CRAWFORD: —sharing all this and for sharing your stories.

HEFFELMAN: I appreciate you letting me come and talk to you, and—

CRAWFORD: Oh, my pleasure.

HEFFELMAN: But this “Fun of Living” basically describes my dad to a T, more than anything. [The letters we received after my father passed also describe the kind of person he was].[4]

CRAWFORD: Good!

[End]

________________
[1] Heffelman has provided a physical copy of an article titled "Secretary recalls Glenn H. Brown's humanity" to be included in the file with their interview matierals. This article was published in a 1986 issue of Inside Kent State. Anyone interested in this document hsould consult the physical copy in the Liquid Crystal Oral History Project Records at Kent State University Special Collections and University Archives.
[2] Heffelman has provided a physical copy of a memoir of Dr. Glenn Brown, written by Leslie Gulrich, to be included in the file with their interview materials. Gulrich was the first person to graduate with a PhD from the Liquid Crystal Institute. Anyone interested in this document should consult the physical copy in the Liquid Crystal Oral History Project Records at Kent State University Special Collections and University Archives.
[3] Kent, OH, July 1996
[4] Heffelman has provided physical copies of letters of sympathy given to the Brown family after the passing of Dr. Glenn Brown. These copies are to be included in the file with the interview materials. Anyone interested in these documents should consult the physical copies in the Liquid Crystal Oral History Project Records at Kent State University Special Collections and University Archives.