I had returned to Hopkins to complete the analysis of the data provided by the China study, with plans ahead for writing a memoir that would include reports of all of my research. I had grown old, old enough that it was long past time for most people to retire. Any doubts I might have had about retiring were alleviated by an offer from the dean. She was strongly advocating the establishment of what she called “The Academy at Johns Hopkins,” an institution for emeritus faculty who wished to continue their association with the university. It was very appealing, as she painted it. We would have a small building in the middle of the campus, a greenhouse no less, and an intellectual life of our own, but with all the facilities of the university available to us. Implicit in the plan was that the members of the Academy would all have offices in the greenhouse, and we would share a lively intellectual life there. I readily agreed to retiring from my formal position as a full professor, giving up my named professorship, and moving to my new office in the Academy's greenhouse.

I knew, of course, that this office would not begin to accommodate my decades of accumulating books and papers. But that was readily dealt with. I tossed out several tons of papers that I felt certain no one would ever want to use. I gave several thousand books that I had acquired over the years to an organization that wanted them for use by African students and faculty members. I hired a building contractor to strengthen the foundation walls of my house in Washington, and to convert a pantry where I had earlier stored dishes and cooking apparatuses into a storeroom for three filing cabinets and several shelves for papers that I wanted to bring to my home (and office) in Washington. All this worked out well.

There was also a very nice gift from the dean. I was due for sabbatical leave, and I was particularly eager to take that leave to teach at Deep Springs – my gift to the institution where I had spent my first two years in college, and that I still dearly love and support.