The Thomas Jefferson Class of 1955, Port Arthur, Texas

Thomas Jefferson High School -2006

I don't care what they renamed it, it will always be Thomas Jefferson to our class of 1955.

Our 51st Reunion- September 2006

TJ class of 55,

True Defenders of the Old Maroon and Gold

This web page is dedicated to those class members that we have lost. Special Recognition is given to J.W.Beal who worked so hard for us developing a class web site.

Port Arthur Yellow Jackets- The Older Wiser Class that Sticks Together- We had it Our Way !

COMMENTS ON THE LIFE OF DEWITT REED, By Pat Bostick Reed, January 2010

Many of you may recall DEWITT REED as a fun loving guy with a contagious laugh and a fondness for playing the guitar, flying airplanes and driving cars as fast as he could with mufflers howling. Most of these qualities and interests endured throughout his life. He did, however, manage to tone down the mufflers.

His laughter endeared him to many. He was simply fun to be with. His music evolved from country and folk to classical and flamenco. Numerous party invitations included “and would you bring your guitar?” Of course, I got to tag along. As he settled a bit, he worked hard and accomplished much. To some extent he was driven by an insatiable curiosity and a broad range of interests. He wanted to know how things worked—the origin of the universe, the nature of spirit and the mechanics of solar energy. And he was known to explain his latest knowledge in baffling detail.

Most of all, Dewitt was a good human being who valued his family and PA friends throughout a life filled with fun and hard work. He was an enthusiastic life’s partner for me, one who led me to intriguing places and pursuits that some considered “out of character for Pat Bostick.” We had no children, but we enjoyed a rich life together.

We started dating during the summer of 1955, went to Lamar together for a year, then to UT-Austin. We married in 1958, and I taught “junior high school” while Dewitt finished his pharmacy degree. Early in 1961, we returned to PA where he worked as a pharmacist for Mulkey’s, and I taught at TJHS. It was during the next four years that we were bitten by the travel bug, starting with a trip to Monterrey, Mexico. When we started to realize how varied the world is, yet how similar people seem, we started to broaden our horizons and sample strange places and cultures. We went to Mexico City, then spent most of a summer in Spain where we toured, lived with a family, took Spanish lessons and Dewitt studied guitar. A longterm pattern was established that eventually took us to much of North America, residency in Europe and travels from Iceland to Asia.

In 1965 we returned to UT to graduate school, and by the end of the sixties, we each had a brand new PhD in hand. Dewitt’s was in pharmaceutical chemistry and mine in biological sciences. To some extent, the world became our oyster. Our first job site was Charlottesville VA, where we did post doc research at the University of Virginia and explored the eastern seaboard. Next, through luck and happenstance, we secured two research positions in biological chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and moved to Germany. We spent two years working some and playing a lot before we moved back to the USA and landed in Pocatello, Idaho. Dewitt taught med chem at Idaho State University, and I taught nutrition. We did outdoorsy things, bought our first house, built a second story on it and, by 1979, looked south to Arizona.

During our 20 years in Flagstaff, Dewitt had a number of interests. He taught pharmacology at Northern Arizona University and consulted for W.L. Gore on patency of arterial transplants. Decades ahead of his times, he designed and built a solar house in an alpine meadow at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, where night temperatures sometimes fell to 20 below zero. He kept us relatively comfortable in a good-sized house without a furnace and thermostat—just the sun and wood. He also realized one of the ambitions of his teens. He put together a country/western band. With beard and jeans, he was probably the only middle-aged PhD in the state playing bars, weddings and RV parks.

Dewitt’s interest in drug delivery devices (ways to get drugs—legal ones—into the body) led him to establish his own research laboratory. He focused on transdermal absorption, and in the mid 1980’s developed an effective “patch”. He eventually held the US patent for one of the first nicotine patches! He wasn’t able to commercialize his design because it was for timed release, thus more complicated and expensive to manufacture than the ones finally produced. Later, however, using similar materials, he developed (and patented) a small inhaler that held essential oils for introduction of their vapor directly into nasal airflow. The medicinal effect depends on which essential oil is breathed, but his device solved the problem of how the vapor is kept constantly available by the novel approach of wearing an inhaler directly on the nose. This patent he licensed to a company in New York, who has developed it for retail distribution.

Dewitt was his own man and secure enough in himself that he was comfortable being supportive of me. We were good partners. His moral support and gourmet cooking sustained me while I immersed myself in university administration, first at NAU mostly as academic VP and interim president. Then in the mid-1990’s he moved with me to North Carolina where I served as chancellor (president) of the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Tragically, the last year before my retirement in 1999, he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and given 18 months to live. Heartbroken, we moved back west. He managed to stretch his survival to seven and a half years, but the cancer finally overwhelmed him. Dewitt died in September of 2006 in Las Vegas where we lived at the time.

I moved back to northern Arizona and live in the small town of Sedona with my little dog. Returning to an interest of my youth, I am studying art and painting, mostly in oils. End