Falling in love at CSHL

[Errol Friedberg]

The 2000 CSH symposium was memorable for me both professionally and personally. From a professional standpoint the meeting was on DNA repair, which just happens to be my favorite topic! From the personal point of view, which is the primary purpose of this posting, I fell in love at CSH with the woman to whom I am now married. Any time that I walk the grounds of CSH the memories of that time in early June 2000 come flooding back. I'm sure they always will!

Rhonda and I had known each other superficially for a number of years, since we are both scientists and she was at one time working in the DNA repair field. Our relationship deepened during a large international scientific meeting on DNA repair held in December 1999 at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Seven months later, in June of 2002, we met again at CSH----and fell in love. A "defining moment" for us was on the night of June 5, the last night of the 2000 CSH Symposium. We went for a walk in the grounds and talked on the lawn outside the Jones Laboratory. That building also has special significance for me because it was there that Albert Kelner discovered enzymatic photoreactivation of DNA, the first know DNA repair mechanism, in 1948.

[Rhonda Friedberg]

Had anyone told me that my life would be changed in an instant, I'd have laughed. But when Errol kissed me for the first time in the last hours of the last night of the 2000 Symposium, my life changed completely and irrevocably. Errol called it a "defining moment". What understatement!
It was an experience with life-changing consequences. A kiss from the perfectly-right-for-me person at the perfectly-right-for-me time. It was a miracle that I'll always be thankful for.

An interesting note is that Erling Seeberg was there too, though he doesn't know this. He was also walking by the water and admiring the moonlight. But, for us, watching the water quietly, there was only space for two.