Perpetual Motion
He credits his late first wife, Nancy K. Rosenblatt ’57, with getting him into cycling. She was an avid cyclist and bought him a mountain bike for his 65th birthday, after he retired as deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Once I started cycling, I found I liked doing the longer rides,” says Rosenblatt.
In 2005, at age 71, he attempted to ride from his home in Berkeley, Calif., to Swarthmore for his 50th reunion. He met his now longtime riding partner, Lori Cherry, on the trip, which took a dangerous turn when they were hit by a car in Dodge City, Kan.
Shockingly, his injuries were misdiagnosed as mere sprains in Kansas, so he kept biking. “Crossing the Midwest, we’d arrive at a hotel, I would have ridden 100 miles,” says Rosenblatt. “And the staff would run over to me to help me off my bike and hand me my crutches.”
It wasn’t until he reached Wooster, Ohio, that he received proper medical attention. The local hospital “found all these breaks in my ankles and knees and put casts on,” says Rosenblatt. Health care workers insisted he return to California.
Despite the harrowing experience, he didn’t quit riding. He only switched to the recumbent bicycle, which he affectionately calls “the trike,” after breaking his pelvis in a bike accident the day before he turned 77.
Rosenblatt, who majored in chemistry at Swarthmore, has stayed active intellectually as well as physically since becoming an emeritus professor at University of California, Berkeley. “I go to the physics department Monday afternoon and hear the latest advances and the chemistry department on Tuesday for physical chemistry seminars,” he says.
“It keeps me active, keeps me seeing young people,” says Rosenblatt, “and it’s fun.”