David Hennessey Waldeck

A Lesson Beyond the Classroom

After David became a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, my mother, my sister Lisa, and I went to visit him. He gave us a tour of his laboratory and office, and we enjoyed seeing where he taught and conducted his research. While we were there, one of David’s students walked into his office carrying a paper that had been due the day before. The student wanted to turn it in late and had an explanation for why it wasn’t submitted on time. David’s position was simple: the deadline was the deadline. If an assignment was due on a certain day, it had to be turned in then. He wasn’t inclined to accept late work. My mother immediately stepped in. “David,” she said, “you will take that student’s paper.” David answered just as firmly, “No, I won’t.” Then my sister Lisa joined the conversation. She reached for the paper and told the student, “Give it to me. I’ll make sure he takes it.” David still refused, insisting that he wasn’t going to accept it. I sat there watching this exchange in amazement. Here was a respected university professor arguing with his mother and sister over a student’s late paper, while the student stood quietly nearby, probably wondering whether the assignment would be accepted or not. Eventually, Lisa told the student they could leave. She kept the paper, convinced that David would ultimately accept it, and my mother continued to insist that he should. For years, I never knew how the story ended. Not long before David passed away, I asked him if he remembered that day. He smiled and said that he did. He explained that, at the time, he believed deadlines should always be enforced. But after he eventually sat down with the student, he learned the real reason for the late paper: the student’s parent had died. That conversation changed him. David told me that it made him realize students have lives outside the classroom. Sometimes they face circumstances that are far more important than any assignment or deadline. He accepted the paper and gave the student full credit for the work. More importantly, he said the experience changed the way he approached teaching. From then on, he tried to give students an opportunity to explain their situations before making a decision. Rules still mattered, but compassion mattered too. Looking back, I think that was one of the most important lessons David learned as a professor. He didn’t lower his standards—he simply learned that understanding people is just as important as enforcing deadlines.

The Chemist Who Ran Away—and Ate His Homework: A Brothers’ Tale of Fear, Innocence, and One Very Unusual Study Habit

A Night on the Run Sibling rivalry is practically a childhood rite of passage, but for my brother David and me, it sometimes escalated into full‑blown drama. One night in the late 1970s, when I was in seventh grade and David was in high school, our usual bickering turned into something unforgettable. In a moment of frustration, I locked him out on the backyard deck. David, furious and scared, pounded on the sliding glass door until the entire pane shattered. The crash echoed through the house—and through both of us. What came next was pure panic. Discipline in our home could involve a belt or even a piece of Hot Wheels track, and David was convinced he was in serious trouble. So he ran away. But in the rush to escape, he grabbed one thing: his chemistry textbook. He had a test the next day, and even in fear, he didn’t want to fall behind. It was the kind of logic only a teenager could muster—fleeing home while still preparing for school. He didn’t go far. David hid across the street in a neighbor’s overgrown hedges, studying by the dim glow of a streetlight. Hours passed. My parents grew frantic. By late evening, they had called the police. Officers promised to keep an eye out, but there was little they could do. Around 1:00 a.m., David finally crept back inside. Instead of punishment, our parents simply told him everything was okay. The crisis dissolved into relief. The Night He Ate His Ticket That chemistry book would resurface in another story—one that revealed a different side of David’s teenage mind. Around 1976, our mother, David, and I went to see Taxi Driver at the local theater. Halfway through, the projector broke. The staff apologized and announced refunds for anyone who turned in their ticket stub. When David reached the cashier, he admitted he didn’t have his stub. “I ate it,” he said. It sounded like a joke. It wasn’t. At the time, David was studying chemistry at the University of Cincinnati and had developed an odd habit: tearing off paper corners and eating them. The movie ticket had simply become another snack. The theater couldn’t refund him, but they handed him a pass for a future show. Years later, when I inherited David’s old chemistry textbooks, I noticed many of the page corners were missing. That’s when I realized the movie ticket wasn’t an isolated incident—he had literally been consuming his coursework. Fear, Innocence, and a Mind at Work Looking back, these two stories—David hiding in the bushes with his chemistry book and later chewing on its pages—capture something essential about him. He was brilliant, anxious, earnest, and wonderfully unpredictable. A teenager trying to make sense of the world in the only ways he knew how. He didn’t just study chemistry. He lived it. He ate it. And he carried it with him—even when he ran away.