Spotlight: James E. Sykes, Class of 1949

“In 1948, I was endorsed and recommended to attend the Miller School of Biology to pursue a graduate degree. The recommendation came from Dr. William Allison Kepner, who had retired from UVA and was teaching at Randolph Macon College, from which I was about to graduate. My new wife and I reported to the campus in February of that year. We moved into the GI village of Copeley Hill, owned by the University and consisting of many expandable, surplus military trailers.  We owned a trailer which we parked in the mobile section of the area, at a cost of $10.00 per month.  This fee included parking, electricity, fuel oil for the heater, bathhouse, and laundry facilities. Transportation between Copeley Hill and campus was made available by city bus service.  The director of the village was an ex-GI who had been a sergeant in the Women’s Army Corps.  She was a “pistol;” knew everybody by his or her first name and called them by that.  She was very efficient and loved by everyone on the Hill.

In addition to taking courses, I became an instructor in an undergraduate biology lab and graded papers for Dr. B.F.D. Runk.  An office was assigned to me upstairs in the Miller School of Biology, located just past the entrance to the Alderman library.  One of our professors, Ivey Lewis, was Chairman of the Department of Graduate Studies, but I do not know how he fitted with the biology group. I cannot recall that we had a Department head at the time. Dr. Lewis and his family lived in one of the large houses on the Range. It was either the first or second house to the left rear of the Rotunda. Other professors that I can recall from the Biology Department were Drs. Edwin Betts (Botany), Horton H. Hobbs, Jr. (Invertebrate Zoology), Orland E. White (Botany), and B.D. Reynolds (Parasitology), Ladley Husted (Genetics). Dr. Lewis held a seminar every Friday afternoon, at which a graduate student presented a paper or a visiting speaker lectured.  Each Friday, he also handed out slips of paper, which contained some phrase in German that we were expected to translate and bring back the following week. I had not been exposed to German, and cannot recall what I did about the translation.  I had only been exposed to Latin, French, and Spanish.  As an aside, I must add that every student and professor in Mr. Jefferson’s University was required to wear a coat and tie while in class.  That was routine, and I never heard any objections.

I went to Mountain Lake Biological station in the early summer of 1948. As best I can judge from recent photos on the Internet, the campus is almost the same as it was 60 years ago. The main laboratory building, the mess hall, and the residences appear exactly the same.  While there, I took a course in parasitology under a visiting parasitologist, Dr. Bullock.  It was at this point that I decided I would do research and write my thesis in the field of parasitology, and Dr. Reynolds became my advisor. Later, I became interested in fish parasites and ultimately wrote my thesis on “A study of the Caryophllaeidae in the Catostomidae of Virginia, with a description of a new genus and species (1949).”

As with many veterans of that day, I surmised that after losing four years to WWII, I needed to go to work and begin earning a living. I had enough GI Bill left on which to earn a Ph.D. Therefore, I left UVA upon earning a Master’s degree, although I later took additional courses at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) while working there, and at Duke Marine Laboratory while working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  In later years, I became Director of NOAA Biological Laboratory in St. Petersburg Beach, FL. Having published more than fifty papers in marine science, I am thankful for the opportunity that I had to train for that career in the Biology Department at the University of Virginia.”

To learn more about Dr. Syke’s experience as a marine biologist, read his recent publication “Follow the Coastline” by Xlibris.

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Do you have fond memories of your student and faculty experiences at UVA? Biology alumni are cordially invited to submit their memoir writing to appear in future columns of “SPOTLIGHT.” Submissions may be sent to Kris Bajgier, Department of Biology, .