Jose Alcala:
CLASS OF 1957
Waynesville High SchoolClass of 1957
Waynesville, MO
University of Illinois - Biomed & Health SciencesClass of 1972
Urbana, IL
University of Missouri - Arts & SciencesClass of 1966
Columbia, MO
Jose's Story
MY EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER EXPERIENCES
I am a retired Molecular Biology scientist. I was born in
Ponce, Puerto Rico, and moved to the mainland at age 16
to the state of Missouri, where I finished High School at
Waynesville High School, Waynesville MO in 1957,
I then attended the University of Missouri (Ole Mizzou)
where I finished both B.A. and M.A. degrees in Zoology.
After, that I attended the University of Illinois where
I finished both an M.D. degree and a Ph.D. degree in
Cell and Molecular Biology. I spent 30 years working in
medical schools, teaching and conducting research involving
the ocular lens and cataracts, primarily in the city of
Detroit, Michigan. I then returned to Ponce, Puerto Rico,
the place of my birth, to work in a medical school,
from which I then retired in 1997. Besides my obvious
interest in science, I am interested in our nation's affairs
and those of the world at large.
From an economically challenged background (homelessness),
my scientific education was entirely funded and made
possible by the National Defense Education Act of 1958
enacted by then President Dwight Eisenhower, in
response to the challenge posed to our country by the
Soviet Union's placing of the first manned satellite in
space (Sputnik, 1957), and other amazing scientific
achievements of theirs, demonstrating to the world the
scientific superiority of their Communist educational system
to our country's then. President John F. Kennedy Jr. then urged
Congress in 1961, under the Act, to fund the training of a
superior population of American scientists to catch-up
with the Soviet Union's supremacy in these all-important areas.
That was the year that he committed our country
to place a man on the moon in ten years, something
that was achieved. As my education was financed by a
National Defense effort to counter the Cold-War threat
of a scientifically robust Soviet Union, I remained, and
still remain, on-call to be mobilized for service to our
country in case of an extreme national security threat,
something that has come close to happening several
times in the past 40 years, sometimes with just a prior
warning ahead of a mere matter of hours. As all of this is
in the public domain, I am not revealing any national
security secrets by mentioning it here. I am included in the
National Register of Technical and Scientific Manpower
in the United States, U.S. Government,Washington, D.C.,
in the National Science Foundation. Due to my area of expertise,
I would be involved in work on the development of fast defensive
measures ag...Expand for more
ainst biological warfare threats against our population
from any hostile source, the USA committed never to develop offensive
biological weapons in 1969, although we also can, readily.
I am very grateful and proud of having participated in these events in my life.
To supplement the financing of my education, I did
free-lance writing of political campaign speeches for
candidates to local and national offices, including many
for senatorial and presidential candidates. The most
bizarre case involved the candidacy of one of my
professors who was running for city mayor, and who
happened to also be the president of the local chapter of
the White Citizens Council in the small Missouri town
where I lived at the time. He noticed my natural writing
ability and knew of my work as a free-lance writer, so he
proposed I write a speech for his campaign. I arranged to
sit down with him and for him to inform me what he
wanted to say in his own words, his request involved a
racist diatribe against Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, and
Catholics. I wrote him the best speech I think I ever
wrote in my life, full of hate, racism, and xenophobia, it
rivaled any speech ever given by Hitler. I well knew that
the people of the town would reject such an obvious
attempt to exploit, and appeal to, their own deep-seated
fears of those that are not of their own race or ethnicity.
He was fully satisfied with the speech, so much so that he
doubled my asking fee and paid me $1,000. Needless to
say, he lost the election, and was left dumbfounded and
confused. I laughed my way to the bank and had a whole
year of the most excellent dinners in all of my college
educational years. He was a very talented and superior
Advanced Calculus professor. Months later, suspicious
that I set him up (which I didn't), he insulted me and
finally told me "What a pity, such intelligence in a Puerto
Rican's body!" which I consider the best compliment
anyone could have ever made me. By the way, I easily aced
his course, 100% in all the tests in his course . . .
Although born in Puerto Rico, I am a Jew, a Shepardi Jew,
the dark skinned Jews. Although a Jew who follows
The Torah, I have accepted Jesus the Christ as my Lord and
Personal Saviour. I am part of the growing thousands of Jews
known as "Messianic Jews," or those Jews who have accepted Jesus
the Christ as the Son of G-d (Blessed be His name).
I am divorced and have a son, who served in the US
Marine Corps, served with distinction at the beginning of
the Iraq war, and is now married and studying Psychology
at a Florida university.
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