Put Your Faith in Love?

What do love and faith have to do with career? Read on.

“Don’t put your faith in love, my boy, my father said to me….I fear you’ll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree.” So began a Harry Belafonte song, “Lemon Tree.” The refrain went, “Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.”

To love is to lose?

IBM and I sort of fell in love in June of 1964, shortly after I graduated with a B.A. in physics from Cornell University and three days before I was scheduled to enlist in the U.S. Army to be sent to their renowned language school in Monterrey, California, to continue my training in the Chinese language and become part of the Army Security Agency.

My parents called my attention to an ad IBM had recently placed in our local paper. They were looking for scientists and engineers for their Kingston, NY, location, a half-dozen miles from our home. I went, interviewed, and received an offer by the time I had driven home. I worked there six months, with nice, intelligent co-workers, seeking to improve IBM products through the maintenance of standards, like our National Bureau of Standards.

Then, I was drafted. The U.S. Army and I did not fall in love, but we made it through two years together. I studied at Penn State and Harvard, worked outside Boston, taught at Harvard, got divorced, then re-united with my college sweetheart, Tina Su, and looked for a job.

IBM! Together again, this time at their renowned research center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

Ten great years of marriage and of work at IBM ensued. Tina Su Cooper, my beloved wife, started having symptoms from her multiple sclerosis, and IBM started having some financial set-backs, both in 1993.

Tina and I are inseparable, but IBM and I? “If you are 50 or over, with us 10 years or more…” they had a buy-out package just for you. For me! It included continuation in their medical benefits program, almost like lifetime medical insurance. Of the thousands of scientists there, I was one of the first to sign up, figuring that first they pay you to leave and later they might just push you out, which ended up happening to a friend who did not take the early retirement buy-out.

“I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.” So goes part of one set of traditional wedding vows. IBM and I were not really married, of course, but there seemed to be a life-long commitment in those medical benefits in our parting package. Had I been wrong about that?

In 2004, twenty-one years after IBM and I waved good-bye to each other, my precious wife nearly died from pneumonia triggered by her multiple sclerosis, and Tina ended up quadriplegic and ventilator-dependent, fed and medicated through a gastric tube. For nine years, dear IBM spent about $400,000 per year on her in-home skilled nursing care and her rare hospitalizations.

Last September we were informed that beginning January 2014 our IBM financial support for Tina’s nursing care would stop. We would join about 110,000 IBM retirees in being moved from the IBM health benefits plan to Medicare plus subsidized supplemental private insurance, which would fall far, far short of paying for Tina’s care. We would need to spend our savings, mortgage our home, accept money from our families, and eventually become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and then–as a last resort–Tina would end up in a nursing home, likely to die soon thereafter from infection and dejection.

Through the efforts of a local reporter and IBM management, I was given the opportunity to speak with the IBM executive in charge of this health plan transition program, Dr. Kyu Rhee, Chief Health Director. He and I spoke in early October, while he was on a business trip to India. He listened carefully to our story, asked some pertinent questions, said that situations like ours required some special consideration. I was left cautiously optimistic.

IBM’s Dr. Rhee was to call us in November, and he did.

A funny thing had happened on our way to bankruptcy and Tina‘s demise: IBM changed its policy and decided to continue (to “grandfather”) Tina’s care just as before! We got the word over the telephone from Dr. Rhee in November and in writing in December, profoundly relieving us.

Thinking about our experience, I concluded: expect more; get more. I had originally thought IBM would be better than that September shocker indicated…and they were. I recently wrote to thank Dr. Rhee, and I stated that IBM’s decision was in its finest tradition.

Sometimes, you can have faith, even if it’s not quite love.

Dr. Cooper is a retired scientist, now a writer, author and writing coach. His first book, Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage and Devotion, was published by Outskirts Press in 2011 and is available from Outskirts Press, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, in paperback and ebook formats, as are his co-authored memoirs The Shield of Gold and Ava Gardner‘s Daughter? and the memoir he edited, High Shoes and Bloomers. His writer-coaching web site is http://writeyourbookwithme.com.