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VIEWPOINT
ROGER D. LEWIS, PhD, CIH, FAIHA, is professor emeritus of environmental and occupational health at the Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice.
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My “What Now?”
BY ROGER D. LEWIS
In 2006, Ann Patchett, the well-known novelist, gave a commencement speech at her alma mater in which she told her audience to think of her as Darwin sailing home on the Beagle, gathering up wonderful things and bringing back wisdom from a long and arduous journey. Patchett’s speech was later published in a book titled, What Now?
Since my retirement four years ago from Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice, my “what now?” has been, Now, what do I do with all the wonderful things that I gathered during my career?
I have been giving away every conceivable laboratory or field equipment item, from glassware to gas chromatographs, that I used or obtained during my lengthy academic career. This has been a difficult task. Not only did I accumulate many things on my own, but I was the recipient of instruments and supplies from other retirees.
I was not sentimental about the items I held in storage from my decommissioned lab. I felt differently, however, about a collection of books given to me by Wendell Ward, who I got to know at the American Petroleum Institute (API).
I began work at API, in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s. After my first year, a new boss told me I had to “sink or swim” in a new position within API’s health and safety research department. Wendell, although not my supervisor, became my confidant and mentor. When Wendell retired, he gave me his collection of over two hundred NIOSH criteria documents, TLV booklets, and petroleum safety documents, many of which dated to the 1960s. Wendell died unexpectedly soon after his retirement.
A BIG BREAK
Several years later, Wendell’s books came with me from our home in Silver Spring, Maryland, to my bookshelf at Saint Louis University, where I started as an assistant professor. On occasion, I passed around the oldest TLV booklets to my students. The advent of the internet and digital media, however, made these books more a curiosity to my students than a practical resource.
Roger Lewis with the display of legendary industrial hygiene equipment at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation Library, Columbus, Ohio. Photo by Christoper King.
Wendell, although not my supervisor, became my confidant and mentor.
Finding a new home for Wendell’s books required considerable time and effort. Our university library and other libraries in St. Louis didn’t collect industrial hygiene books. My big break came when I posted a photo and description of the books on AIHA’s Catalyst forum. Jeff Hutchins, a former industrial hygienist with the Bureau of Worker’s Compensation in Ohio, said that BWC had one of the largest collections of occupational safety and health resources in the country.
I reached Amelia Klein at the BWC Ohio library, and her first response was not promising: the library already had over 300 NIOSH books about the same age as the ones I wanted to donate. But she offered to review an inventory of my documents. I spent several days entering the data in a spreadsheet. To my delight, Amelia told me there were many titles that she did not have. She wanted my collection!
A JOURNEY’S END
Chris King, a faculty colleague from Saint Louis University, and I drove to Columbus in late October 2024. We were greeted by Amelia, who received my six boxes of books and gave us a tour of the BWC Ohio library. Its substantial online collection of occupational safety and health materials can be viewed via the Ohio Memory website. It includes colorful and dramatic safety posters from decades ago. One of my favorites, from 1932, is an “illustration of people on a rooftop watching the Three Wise Men approach Bethlehem under a shining star,” according to the BWC’s description. The poster quotes Deuteronomy 22:8: “When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man falls from thence.”
Wendel Ward’s books have now ended their journey with me. I carried them throughout my forty-year career. If those books could speak, they would tell you how fortunate I am to have found the industrial hygiene profession.