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George Rathmann
Founding Chairman, Amgen
I can remember at the ages of 8, 9 and 10, my brother going into science. He was quite a bit older than I was. My brother-in-law being in medical research at Lilly, things like that. But I was actually, about that time, I was also reading medical books and the popular type of books, Paul de Kruif and Microbe Hunters and things like that, Pasteur and Ehrlich, and that was a huge stimulus to think about medical research. I never stopped thinking about it. I got myself into more physics and chemistry along the way. Some of the excitement there was learning how to create explosive reactions whenever you wanted to, in a way that you were pretty sure wasn't going to hurt you. Fortunately I never was even close to being injured. In high school and those days, those adventures sometimes were rather painful, when people got semi-disabled with fingers and other things. So it's not a very good role model for people. But getting your hands on early chemicals and physical experiments is a really stimulating part, experiencing it yourself. So there's a whole combination of things that involve role models, and people would give you stimulus by their objections. My brother-in-law, in my case, would set up little experiments so he could build some kind of a projector with a few little objects, and all of a sudden you were really creating something. That's very exciting, and if you happen to be susceptible to this, as I was, it leaves an imprint that never goes away. So I was probably fascinated from maybe an 8-year-old age right on up.
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George Rathmann
Founding Chairman, Amgen
When you get to a large company -- even though you started as a tiny company -- when you get to a large company, you know full well they can get along without you. And that's great. That's the way it has to be. But when you look at a small new one, you get the feeling that it could go under, or it could fail to see anywhere near its full potential. So you can make a huge difference. And it may be arrogance. There's certainly an element of pride there. But I think it's a fun thing to think about all the things you might be able to do -- and you find out. Of course, you get this impression anyway when you start dealing with people and they say, "Oh my gosh, you've done that already, and you've done that already. Ah, if you'd just tell me about how to do this." I spent two-and-a-half hours this morning -- that's why I missed the morning session -- because somebody heard I was going to be in Phoenix, and they just wanted to talk to me about their new company. We talked for a couple hours on a company that has five employees, but they've got a long way to go. And they can make it. I mean, they can make it. They just need to get encouragement, and I don't want to join that board. I've got plenty to do. But at least once in a while, when you see that the person needs more than advice; he needs maybe some leadership and some direct involvement by somebody, then you feel like, "I think I'd like to do it." But it's hard to make a difference when you're just going to be an advisor. I may make a difference in that company this morning. May happen again and again, because a lot of people come by. But I always have the fear that a little bit of advice could be very dangerous. Whereas, you put yourself into it, it's your life. Then what you do is probably going to be more productive. So you get the feeling -- I still have the feeling that this new company -- there's a lot of things I can do there. I've been there now 120 days. I probably have ten years of work ahead of me to make sure that it realizes its full potential, but that's very exciting. I think that's what is exciting.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: It's all special. They were all very special experiences, even the ones that didn't work. It's like saying which of your children do you love the most? Sometimes you have a special feeling for things that didn't work. It's like a child with a deformity, a child that doesn't quite make it. He is not loved less, he is sometimes even loved more, because you felt you didn't do enough for him. So, they all stand out. And I don't try and differentiate between them. People ask me which is my favorite play. Which is your favorite August Wilson play? I have no favorites. They are all my favorites. My work is my favorite.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: Now, that's why I'm in the theater. To take those lives, to reveal them. Not just those lives, any life. And that's what's important about theater, or should be. It does reflect the lives of a totality of a community that exists out there, and does speak to the totality of that community. Not all at once, but through its own particularness, which is what Raisin did. Other people were able to find themselves in it. I remember when we first did Fences at Yale Rep. My promotional manager, a wonderful woman, she had come to see a run-through, and she sat with me afterwards. She said, "Do you know, I looked at the play, and I looked at that role that James Earl Jones is playing, and I said, you know, that's the man down the street. I know him, that's the man down the street." A little further into the play, she said, "No that's not the man down the street, that's my brother." And a little further, "No, not my brother, that's my father." At the end of the play, she said, "I said to myself, no, that's not my father, that's me." And it's that kind of universality, that stems from particularity, that makes a work of value and reach out beyond itself. Not by trying to reach out beyond itself, but by reaching deeper into itself, to its own truth. And that's what's wonderful about theater for me.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: After three years of it, when I should have gone to law school, I ended up not going to law school and determining that I would have a life in the theater. I had to decide at that point what security was, what it meant. Was security property? Was security money in the bank? Or was security getting up in the morning and not counting the hours? Having a life, not a job. The theater was something that seemed to satisfy my life-need. I was not concerned about, would I make it, would I not make it, would I be successful, would I not be successful. The opportunity to function in that area was something that compelled me and I ended up in the theater.
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Sally Ride
First American Woman in Space
I was literally just a couple of months away from getting my Ph.D. in physics when I saw, believe it or not, an ad in the Stanford student newspaper, that had been put in the newspaper by NASA, saying that they were accepting applications for astronauts, and the moment I saw that, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Not that I wanted to leave physics, I loved it, but I wanted to apply to the astronaut corps and see whether NASA would take me, and see whether I could have the opportunity to go on that adventure.
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Sally Ride
First American Woman in Space
Sally Ride: I was ecstatic. I was thrilled, and my first reaction was probably identical to the reaction of the other four members of the crew who were told that same day. We could not believe that we got our chance to go into space. We were the first four from our astronaut class to get to go, and so we had been in training for four years at that time, building up to this point, and the moment that we were told, it was, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe that I get a chance to do this." And it was only after that, not long after that, but after that, that I thought, "Oh my gosh, I am going to be the first woman to get to go up, representing this country."
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