Postscript

Only in hindsight is any legacy made manifest. From my parents I inherited a willingness to participate in the adventure of life. My journey from Bratislava to New York was fraught with unexpected twists and turns: a childhood in the shadow of a frightful war; life under Communist rule and an illegal emigration from my country of birth; a career in research laden with small triumphs and unanticipated twists. From stumbling onto a student research project, and meeting Alick Isaacs and then Albert Sabin, who helped me find the field of research that would become my lifelong passion; to the unexpected opportunity of participating in the development of a drug that revolutionized the treatment of autoimmune diseases and helped millions of people; my future was never preordained.

Along the way I acquired material wealth that I had never aspired to, catapulting me into a new world of philanthropy and art collecting. I did not plan for this particular future.

The title of this book might have been Life Is Wonderful and Unpredictable; but who would read a book with so banal a title?

We lived our life. We engaged with the world as deeply as we could, always with love. And in the maze of opportunities life offers, we found the way we made our own.

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On February 1, 2013, less than five months before my eightieth birthday, I was seated in the ornate East Room of the White House along with twenty-one other scientists chosen to receive either the National Medal of Science or, like me, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

Within seconds of the announcement President Obama walked into the room—filled already with some two hundred guests.

In his speech, the president talked about the obstacles many of the National Medal recipients had overcome and mentioned four recipients by name:

One of the scientists being honored today is Jan Vilcek. Jan was born in Slovakia to Jewish parents who fled the Nazis during World War II. To keep their young son safe, his parents placed him in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. And later, he and his mother were taken in by some brave farmers in a remote Slovak village and hidden until the war was over. And today, Jan is a pioneer in the study of the immune system and the treatment of inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

I only had one thought as I listened to the president’s words. “I wish my parents were alive.”