Julie and Frank Child

Julie and Frank Child

Theirs is a classic MBL love story. As an undergraduate, she first came to the Marine Biological Laboratory during the summer of 1953 to work as a chambermaid in the Brick Dormitory. He began his lifelong association with the Laboratory as a janitor during the summer of 1951. She would become a highly respected biological illustrator. And he would conduct research in cell biology and teach scores of students at the University of Chicago and Trinity College in Connecticut.

Although Woods Hole can be a very small town, their paths wouldn't cross until 1958, when John Valois (then a potato peeler in the Mess) introduced Julie Swope to Frank Child. It turned out Frank and Julie were working in adjacent labs at the MBL that summer. Phil Armstrong, Director of the Laboratory at the time, had hired Julie to draw the life cycle of the catfish, Ictalurus nebulosus-a painstaking effort and Julie's first paying job as an illustrator. Frank, by then an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, was doing research on the regeneration of cilia in sea urchin embryos in the first floor Lillie laboratory he shared with H. Burr Steinbach (who would become Director of the MBL in 1966).

Thanks in part to long evenings devoted to observing the development of catfish embryos ("Frank would bring me hamburgers while I watched and sketched the embryos in various stages of development," Julie remembers), their friendship blossomed. Two summers later, Julie and Frank were married. They, and, over time their three children, would return to Woods Hole and the MBL nearly every summer thereafter, Julie freelancing and teaching at the Children's School of Science and Frank conducting his research in the Whitman building.

Today the Childs have retired to what was their summer home in Woods Hole. Julie continues to illustrate and volunteers with the MBL Associates, now serving as Chair of the Gift Shop Committee. Frank is continuing his research as well and works with Herman Epstein in the Laboratory of Alan Kuzirian in the Marine Resources Center.

"Woods Hole is such a wonderful place to live," Julie smiles, sipping tea in front of a cozy wood burning stove in their living room. "The people are thoughtful and accommodating, and so many children who have been brought up here summers, including one of my own, come back here to live." Except for the less-than-ideal gardening conditions here, the Childs have settled nicely into year-round Woods Hole living.

The Childs also have a particular fondness for the Marine Biological Laboratory. "We've always loved the MBL and think it's doing important things," says Julie. So when it came time to think about an investment vehicle for Julie's retirement, Frank thought the Charitable Gift Annuity offered by the laboratory made good financial sense. "In this day and age when rates are so low, the yield on one of these annuities is very generous," explains Frank.

"A Charitable Gift Annuity is a wonderful way to honor and provide for the future of the Marine Biological Laboratory while making a sound personal financial investment," notes Kristine Johnson, Associate Director of Development for Planned Giving and Constituent Relations at the MBL. "We are most grateful to the Childs for their thoughtful and generous gift to the MBL."