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TI: So today is Monday, October 14, 2013. We are interviewing Dr. David Boyd, and also in the room is Marietta Boyd Gruner, David's sister. And behind the camera is Dana Hoshide, who is doing this, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so I'm just going to start with some basic questions. And so, David, can you tell me when and where you were born?

DB: I was born in Seattle, here, February 2, 1937, at the... actually, I think I was born in a doctor's office. We didn't have enough money for a hospital at that time. I was born in the, it's now the insurance building over on 45th Street.

TI: Okay, so on 45th. And what was the name given to you at birth?

DB: David Ross Boyd.

TI: And any significance to that name?

DB: Well, I think David was probably sort of a biblical name, and Ross was the name of my uncle, my (mother's) brother, who was a very wonderful man, young man, so I was always proud of both names.

TI: Good, okay. And so as a young boy, so your first memories... tell me where you grew up.

DB: Well, we grew up initially, where I could recall was on 55th Street, just off Meridian, between Meridian and lower Woodlawn ball field. And I went to McDonald School, we walked from there, (...) and then we were there 'til I was probably seven or... no, a little later, ten. And then we, Dad had found himself a wonderful house on East Green Lake (Way). If you take, as I mentioned earlier, if you go to the Spud's, and then you walk to the next block, it's the second block in from the corner overlooking the lake, big yard. And, of course, for Dad, the field in front, the beach in front, and the field house, so we were real beach and gym rats just like the Collins kids were down here with Dad. So it was wonderful. And all the kids then, some of the kids were born there, and all six of us kids grew up there, so that's our home, basically, the ancestral home in Seattle.

TI: So tell me about your siblings. If you can kind of go down the order...

DB: Helen Jean was the oldest child, and she was a very industrious and intelligent young lady, did well in high school, but she didn't go to college. That was her anticipation, and she didn't go to college, but she's raised, married a fellow who was in business and very industrious and successful, and they've raised three or four children, (...) and they're a very productive family.

TI: How much older was she than you?

DB: She's four years older than myself. And then my brother, Tom, who is three years older than me, was number one, the real athlete in the family, a real Bob Mathias potential, he could do anything. And he and Dad, of course, clicked, because of the sports and athleticism. My dad was a superb athlete as a young man, even in middle age, and actually, as an old man. But anyway, they connected very well on the sports, and of course, I had to compete with that. Because I was three years younger and a little bit more of a klutz, and so competing with my brother Tom was a challenge. But Dad and sports and the sports metaphor and actually playing games was a big key element in our family, and success and achievement was measured on the ball field, pretty much. So Bub then went to -- his nickname was Bub, he went to, with me through the school systems, we both graduated from Roosevelt High School.

TI: And Bub is Tom?

DB: Tom, yeah, his nickname. And we graduated from Roosevelt High School, and he went one year to Central Washington College of Education, then went into the service. And when I graduated from high school in 1955, I went to Central Washington College of Education, anticipating being a teacher. Dad always wanted to be a teacher, but through educational limitations and the Depression, family, he just never quite made it. So he did his whole career in the Park Service, Seattle Parks Department. So Bub was the athlete, and coaching and teaching, and teaching at home, and teaching other kids, any kids that came along with us, Dad would participate in helping him with his game or strategies or whatever. So it was, the milieu of conversation had sports metaphors. And then there was a hiatus, and then Marietta was born six years after I was, and she was a very good athlete, she still plays soccer with a more advanced age group, of course, and she was a teacher in special education -- I'll let her go into detail -- in special education, and she raised a family of four kids, and they've gone on to teaching and academic activities. And then we had another younger (brother), Michael, and Michael was again quite talented athletically and the like, but we found out that he was hard of hearing at about (two) years of age. Some question whether he was or he wasn't. Probably was a result of post-measles meningitis that injured the nerve. But from that point on, my mother became energized with mainstreaming his education so he wouldn't have to go to Vancouver and become a cobbler. [Laughs] That was always the death knell around our family. So she would, starting in the late summer, would then be petitioning the schools for kindergarten, first grade, second grade, to get Mike mainstreamed, and of course, all the other kids that had similar difficulties mainstreamed on and off into special schools and the like. And she won that argument. She mainstreamed it all the way up to high school, and I think they finally gave up and let him go. But he played sports, he lettered at Roosevelt and track and football. And then our youngest (brother), Dan, was (five) years behind Michael, and he had the same thing with the sports orientation and geared towards education. He was the one who, in the Seattle literature (...) he was a mountain climber as well, and he was the group that went up to Mt. Everest and didn't make the climb. I think it was... what year would that have been? '82. And he's a teacher.

TI: Wow, but a heavy-duty mountain climber, to do Everest.

DB: Well, they ran up and down Mt. Rainier like it was nothing. They even took me up twice, so it's doable.

TI: No, I've done that, too. It's pretty hard. I mean, when you say run up and down, that's not something you run up.

DB: Well, he did. And my own situation, I went to Central Washington College of Education, thought of teaching, but then I got more interested in psychology and then in science, so somebody said, "Why don't you go to medical school?" so I said, well, why don't I go to medical school? So I applied and got in several places, University of Washington, but then I was advised by one of the famous doctors in Seattle who was from South Park initially as a kid, William Hutchinson, who was the senior surgeon over at Swedish, and that's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, and they were South Park kids. So he sent me off to talk to Bill Hutchinson, he said, "If you want to be a real doctor, you go to McGill University, and so I did. And so there I met my wife Joyce in anatomy class, and we chummed up in anatomy class and other studies, and got married and started having children right away, and graduated with two children, two MDs, and she now is a pediatrician in public health, and then I took off into surgery and some other kinds of things. But we have four children, and Sue is the oldest one, she's a psychiatrist, and then Tom is a geologist and does disaster response kinds of things, and then Ann is here back in Seattle, the third (child), Ann, is back here in Seattle, and she got interested in geography in school, and I thought maybe she'd teach geography. And she ended up being the cartographer for Microsoft, all those maps, those are hers. And now she's with Google, so now they're doing maps all over the world. So I said, "You can't make a living on geography," but she's done quite well. [Laughs] And then our younger son Bob, he's like a lot of kids today, he's an expert in "computerology," and I have no idea except there are servers and things that they work with all the time. So he's with a contract group that works with... and he lives with us in the Washington area, in the D.C. area.

TI: Well, very, very accomplished children.

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