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| Rocky Mountain hi! Jan Leah Lamb Cooper with husband Dennis in 2016 at Loveland Pass, Colorado (elevation 11,000 feet). |
Tell us a bit about your career.
I was brought up to give really good cocktail parties. I studied French and Art History at New York University (NYU) and Oberlin. NYU just blew up during the student strikes of 1970. I spent the Spring Semester feeding the strikers who came for the March of Wall Street. I dropped out after a year and a half. It didn’t feel like French or Art History was relevant at that time.
I lived communally for over 20 years after that. I spent a lot of time helping other women in the commune have their babies. I became a lay midwife. I thought I’d better get a degree of some kind or I would probably go to jail for doing home births. The first time I saw a colleague prepare a sterile field I knew that medicine was for me.
I returned to school, got a double degree in Biology and Chemistry. I enrolled at medical school at the age of 36 years with three children in tow. I did an Internal Medicine/Pediatric residency and just gravitated to Pediatrics exclusively. I spent 15 years as a Forensic Pediatrician – evaluating children for abuse and neglect. I have been a general pediatrician for the last 15 years in Grand Junction, CO. I am slowing down but still have a few years left in me.
Where have you live since graduating NPHS?
New York City; Washington DC; London, England; Santa Fe, NM; Los Angeles; Houston; back to LA for residency; Fort Worth, TX; Boise, ID, and now Grand Junction.
Who were your closest friends in high school?
Stephanie Singer, Emily Polskin, Debbie Hutchins, Kevin Ashley and Rich Muglia. I have not kept in good touch except for intermittently with Rich Muglia as he is a good touchstone for many.
Do you have any regrets from your high school years?
My only regret is that I did not realize at the time the lovely bubble we all lived in. The loss of our classmates in that fatal crash was a shock. Otherwise the music, the football and basketball games, the wrestling matches, the band, the cheerleaders…such a sweet moment in time. I agree with Sue Henry…riding on the bus coming home from games is a treasured memory.
Have your perceptions of high school changed over the years?
I would say, yes, my perspective has changed about high school. I wish I could tell my classmates how I remember vignettes from our classroom days. The day Mr. Gould fainted and how the Dow twins wept and how I ran down the hall for the nurse. I wish I could say how the memories of brief encounters still hold in my heart. Walking the paper route with Kevin Ashley also stands out as relationship that was quiet and meaningful.
What is your fondest memory from your years at NPHS?
My fondest memory of NPHS was the day one of our gym teachers accidentally on purpose threw a softball at my face and crushed my nose. I was bleeding and a bit stunned, but Stephanie Singer totally had my back. She screamed at the gym teacher, she was like a pit bull. To this day, no one has ever defended me the way she did that day on the field.
What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?
I wish I had been crazier and stupider. I was internally fearful of doing the wrong thing, getting out of control was just not on the menu for me at that time. Still isn’t.
What were your proudest accomplishments?
National Honor Society. DAR Good Citizen Award. Loved cheerleading.
Who was your favorite teacher?
Mrs. Klerer. She challenged me to break out of my “good girl” mold. She ribbed me about being a cheerleader and pushed me to a think about who I was, how I thought and how I wanted to live. Mr. Saginario was a trip.
What was your worst class?
Trigonometry. I passed because I sat in the front and wore a mini-skirt. I almost failed chemistry with Dr Alpert – I was lost the first day. Surprisingly I did get a degree in Chemistry which has always amazed me.
How did growing up at a child of the 60s – and all the social baggage and impact that it may have entailed – impact you at the time and in your young adult years?
I am one of our generation who took the credo of the sixties and seventies to heart. I dropped out of what would have a been a normal trajectory of school, career, marriage and leapt into the soup of the times. I largely rejected what we had all been taught to think or believe was the path to adulthood. I disappeared into a life of meditation and deep counter-culture belief and alternative lifestyle.
I did get to live all over the world, see India, hold my breath on a precipice of the Himalayas, travel riding on top of trains, hike to 16,000 feet to bathe in glacial water at a shrine. There were moments of transcendence. The Dalai Lama held my daughter and blessed her.
It took me years to wake up and get myself and my family out of a very restrictive and oppressive environment. Those years still inform my worldview. I am grateful daily for the blessings in my life.
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