An American Saga: The Story of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner

This tale of two families is set on a grand scale, as James Thomas Flexner brings his talents to bear on his own noteworthy heritage. An American Saga is an historical narrative, grounded on documentary sources, which ends with the marriage of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner. The account deals equally with the lives and the backgrounds of husband and wife, the author's parents. Simon Flexner was the famous medical investigator, discoverer of the "Flexner vacillus" and the "Flexner serum", who became the creating director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) and, eventually, the acknowledged leader of American medical science. The Kentucky-born son of impoverished German Jewish immigrants, he grew up in penury. As he never completed the eighth grade, he was almost completely self-educated when he appeared at The Johns Hopkins University even before its celebrated medical school had been founded. Almost instantly he began making the discoveries that soon made him the leading younger medical scientist in the United States. Helen Thomas' family were Quakers. Her ancestors, among the original settlers of Maryland, bankrupted themselves in 1810 by freeing some hundred slaves. Exiled from plantation life, they settled in Baltimore where they regained prosperity and aristocratic position. Helen's father played an important role in establishing The Johns Hopkins University and its Medical School, and Bryn Mawr College, of which Helen's older sister, Carey, became president. Helen's mother's family, the Whitalls, was characterized by women with strong feminist and religious beliefs. Helen herself was a striking redhead with literary interests andachievements. She was twenty-nine when she met Simon, then thirty-seven. Coming from such different backgrounds, it took three years of courtship for them to come together in a union which was to have great impact on the society of their day. Featured in this multi-faceted saga are such prominent persons as Bertrand Russell and Logan Pearsall Smith, Drs. Welch and Osler, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Lyman Dwight Moody, and Walt Whitman.