FALKENBERG

Joan Falkenberg and I met in Moravia in the Fall of 1992. Joan's friend Paul Cavanagh had sold me a house at 4 South Main Street in Moravia, directly across from the US Post Office, in August, 1992 and, within a few months, I started to have some trouble with squirrels invading the attic space with the onset of cold weather. After asking Paul for some help with this problem, one day in about October, 1992 Paul came by to help me out. He happened to bring Joan along and that is when I first met her at my modest house at 4 South Main Street. From the closing on the house in about July or August of 1992, I knew that Paul was married to someone else (I do not remember her name) and living with his wife on the North end of Moravia. Some time, during the next year, in early 1993 Paul's wife filed for divorce from him and she vacated their property and moved on to Colorado. I do not know what the cause of the divorce was all about. At about this same time I went over to visit Paul, in his place, and discovered that he had a severe burn on his right hand from what appeared to be contact with cooking oil that was boiling hot. He never really explained about that incident. His hand was pretty badly damaged and I felt bad for him then. Later in the Winter of 1993 I saw Joan again with Paul as he was in the midst of restoring another large and historic house in Moravia. He was quite capable at all types of restorations and was quite capable in general with computers and IT and carpentry and plumbing etc. During this brief contact I talked to him and Joan as Paul worked....just small talk. Earlier from the first time that I had met Joan, in the Fall of 1992, I distinctly remember her calling me and Paul, "Men of Moravia" meaning that she thought Paul and I were perhaps quite resourceful. I have to admit that Paul Cavanagh was indeed exceptionally capable at a multitude of things useful. The next contact I had with Joan was again with Paul...I had planned a cookout at the Fillmore Glen State Park to celebrate that Bassett's big "carbonates" NSF grant proposal was just approved, and that I was named as the principal graduate student being supported for the work (Bassett was named the PI on the work). And because this 3 year grant was approved I would have plenty of money and financial support to complete my thesis research for my PhD degree from Cornell University. As a bonus to the big "carbonates" grant being approved, during this same time, Bassett had also included me as a co-author on 2 relatively important academic papers about the theory and development of all of the instrumentation that would be used to complete the "carbonates" work to meet the requirements for the big NSF grant. The instrumentation had been developed mostly by Bassett and his other graduate student A.H. Shen, but I also contributed a little bit of the design and development of what became known as the "hydrothermal diamond anvil cell (HDAC)". In any case, I was at this cookout with my eventual wife Kathy "Hsi-cheng" Shen...who was the sister of Bassett's graduate student A.H. Shen, and Paul Cavanagh was with Joan Falkenberg, and Bassett and his recently disabled wife were there, and several other people from Bassett's group and from Roald Hoffmann's group and other people were there. The cookout happened in about mid-June of 1993 and the whole thing went off all right with some minor problems. I did not talk to Joan very much during the cookout at Fillmore Glen State Park because she was with Paul and I was with Kathy. This was maybe the second to last time I was in Joan's presence. I was glad that she and Paul were able to come to the event at all. I believe the last time I saw Joan Falkenberg was at a somewhat upscale bar and restaurant called "Just a Taste" in Ithaca on Aurora Street in the Summer of 1993, before all hell started to break loose in late August, 1993. I think Paul invited me to meet her with him at this place. In any case, I did meet them at "Just a Taste" but everyone there was relatively well-dressed and I was in plain clothes, and Paul and Joan just kept talking the whole time I sat with them, and I felt like I was really not welcome to sit with them at all. So after a while I just got up and told them that I had to leave then. That was, I think, the last time I saw Joan. From the first time I met her, in perhaps October, 1992, I was attracted to her because she is good looking. I wanted to tell her about my mysterious grandmother, Mary Falkenberg from NYC, but I just never had a chance to get her separated from Paul to tell her about this strange twist of fate. So unfortunately I never told her about the strange coincidence between Joan's name and the name of my grandmother. In any case I hope for the best for Joan and her friend Paul.