Chapter 02:Leaving South Africa and A Focus on Oncology and Epidemiology
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Description
Dr. Spitz begins this chapter by explaining that she and her family left South Africa in 1978. She notes that “emigration isn’t for sissies,” talks about the decision to come to Houston and then sketches the process of settling in. Dr. Spitz explains that she worked as a physician at an old age home and then decided to do a master’s in public health. Her interest in cancer evolved during this time; she also talks about how family issues influenced her career’s evolution. She notes that she always make family her priority.
Identifier
SpitzM_01_20161013_C02
Publication Date
10-13-2016
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, Research Medical Library, The University of Texas Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Margaret Spitz, MD, Oral History Interview, October 13, 2016
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Path; Professional Path; Joining MD Anderson; Personal Background; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Experiences Related to Gender, Race, Ethnicity
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about the decision to leave South Africa. And this was in what year?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Well, it took a long time. We moved in 1978. But we started in, I would say, at least two years earlier. It was a long, involved process. You know, we had to go to the American Embassy and apply, and my husband had to get a job, so he came several times to America. And he was offered a job at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He was offered several other jobs, which I’m very happy he didn’t take, like one in Wisconsin. I don’t think I would have done well there.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s cold there.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
It’s pretty cold. And one in Philadelphia, which might have been great. But we settled on this one in Houston. And my favorite story is, I didn’t even know, I’d heard of Dallas, obviously, because President Kennedy was assassinated there. I hadn’t even heard of Houston. I had to look it up in a map. And my favorite story is when—as we were about to leave, my daughter, who was maybe in first or second grade, wrote a little note in her class, and she wrote, “We are leaving South Africa. We are going to live in Texas, which is in Houston.” (laughter) And the teacher gave her a star, and 10 out of 10. I don’t even think the teacher knew how crazy that was. It’s my favorite story.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s a good one. Even people within the U.S. tell stories about how when they were contemplating coming to Houston, there was a lot of ignorance and assumptions and all of that. So was it difficult to leave South Africa? What was that emigration process like?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Well, there’s leaving the family, although most of my family were also thinking of leaving. That’s the one aspect. It’s moving to the unknown, which is another aspect. And then from the medical point of view we had all these exams to pass. There was a visa qualifying exam. There was the FLEX, which you had to write in America. We came—my husband had passed a long time before, but we especially flew to Austin for me to write it, and that’s a story unto itself.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re referring to.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
It’s FLEX, F-L-E-X, it’s called the—I don’t know what it stands—it’s a licensing exam.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
0:20:56 Oh, okay.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
It’s probably a federal, but I’m not sure.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
I can’t remember. But it was a very difficult exam. It was an almost all day, multiple choice exam. And then there was the whole political upheavals that were going on in South Africa. And people didn’t talk about leaving. And you went to the American Embassy, and there you met your relatives, who were also lining up to leave. It was quite a strange situation.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, why didn’t anyone talk about it?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
I’m not sure, because it was a lot of competition to get in.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, I see.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
So what happened was, there was apparently a shortage of physicians in Houston, and somebody advertised in the South African Medical Journal that they needed physicians in Houston. And that is why there’s a large group of South African physicians who moved to Houston. And you know, there’s quite a large South African Houston community here now.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting. No one had ever mentioned that to me before. Huh. Interesting. So did you bring—you came over on a boat, by plane?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Oh, we came by [plane], and we had our green cards already, but we only received them at the airport in New York. I can’t remember if it was LaGuardia or JFK. I can’t even remember. I remember thinking, it’s called a green card, but it was blue. (laughter) And we moved into Houston. We moved to Houston. We came straight to Houston. And it took us five years, and then we became citizens.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, wow. So tell me about the work you were doing, and settling in during that time.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Well, of course it was very difficult, because the way of life was so different. And we came and we lived in a rented little house, and it was so tiny. We’d come from a beautiful home on an acre, with a built-in trampoline and a tennis court. And we came to this awful home that somebody had rented for us. And it had no garden, and there was rented furniture. And the dining room table was unstable, and we had to put newspaper under one leg. And it was—you know, my husband said, “What have we done?” I was far more positive than him. And he had to start work almost immediately, and I had to get the children into school. It was very difficult. I wouldn’t say that immigration is for sissies, but I think if you’re young, you don’t think of all the adverse consequences. You don’t think, what happens if we become ill, or what happens if we lose a job. Fortunately, I was too naïve, and maybe even stupid, to think of all these dire things that could happen. But fortunately, my children settled into school very nicely. And I actually started working as a physician at an old aged home near where we lived. And my husband was full-time at the medical school. And I didn’t enjoy clinical medicine. And somebody told me that I should go and do a degree in public health. And the public health in South Africa was all focused on infectious diseases, sanitation. Very different from the public health I was fortunate enough to learn at the school. So I enrolled in the School of Public Health in about maybe ’79 or ’80. And I got my master’s in Public Health.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What was your focus during that? Or, how did your focus evolve during that time?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Well, I did—my thesis was on pancreatic cancer in the Golden Triangle, that’s Beaumont, around Beaumont, Texas. And actually, those data were never published. They’re lying in a blue folder, gathering dust somewhere on my bookshelf. It’s quite sad. But fortunately, that didn’t put me off. I became very interested in cancer and I wanted to pursue a career in cancer epidemiology.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why cancer?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
I just was very interested. I can’t explain why. And maybe that’s because it is the subject of my thesis.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why—were you advised? Did your advisor suggest you work on that topic?
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Yes. I think they did, yes. My training was not outstanding, and that was partly my own fault, because I had three children at school. I had very little social network. And before I selected the classes, I looked at what time they were offered. And if they were morning classes, I could take them. If they were afternoon, I couldn’t, because I had to pick up the children and be with them. So I had not the best education, and I learned most of my epidemiology on the job.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I want to kind of interrupt just for a moment here, because we’ve got a lot of construction noise, which I’m sure is being picked up here. So I will say that for the record. Maybe the next time we get together we can choose a little bit—
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Okay.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Something on the other side, or—
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Sure. Or, I can come to you.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh no, I wouldn’t want you to have to inconvenience yourself. I’m happy to come here if there is another place we can do it.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
I’m sure we can find, excellent.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah, okay. I kind of lost my place in my mind—
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Well, we were just saying—
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, I know what I was going to say. That often, because women have those other responsibilities to family, I mean, those are just practical, logistical aspects of making career choices.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Yes, well, I tell women now that you have to prioritize, and that your priorities change at different phases of your life. You can have it all, but just not at the same time. That’s what I tell them. And I always made my family my priority, and I actually—I know a lot of women might have guilt at the end of their careers. But I feel that I didn’t deprive my children, nor do I think they suffered from my working. I always put their needs over and above my own.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s a nice place to be.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Yes.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Look back and not have regrets.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
Because most people, at the end of their lives say, “I wish I had worked less.” I don’t say that, but I also don’t say I wish I would have worked more. I did work very hard, and I have no regrets about that, either.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, I know that with some interview subjects I’ve interviewed, it’s almost as if they have no life outside the walls of the institution.
Margaret Spitz, MD:
It’s difficult to balance the two, but I think it is possible.
Recommended Citation
Spitz, Margaret R. MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 02:Leaving South Africa and A Focus on Oncology and Epidemiology" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1586.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1586
Conditions Governing Access
Open
