Lessons out of School: Insights Against a Backdrop of the Conflicts of the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

Nancy Callen Russell grew up in Mt. Vernon, New York and then moved with her family to Oklahoma where she attended the University of Oklahoma and married her first husband and father of their three children. She worked for 30 years at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center beginning with data management on collaborative clinical trials, followed by survival and other data analysis in the hospital’s patient database. Her final years were spent assessing herbal and other complementary treatments for a collaborative project with the University of Texas School of Public Health and finally for the Integrative Medicine Center. Several of her published articles on cancer research are listed in the bibliography. Following her retirement, she volunteered as research co-chair for the Mastocytosis Society, co-authored an article on fibromyalgia and became a nature guide with the local chapter of Master Naturalists. She lives in the town of Wimberley where she continues to enjoy the surprises of life through biking, swimming, climbing and meeting with friends and family. The author struggled with and overcame the fearful perceptions about different people in the 1940's and 50's and the limited expectations for women in the 1960's. She had three children followed by a 30 year career in cancer epidemiology and a ten year interlude as a massage therapist.