One day in August of 1936 Katie invited me to go with her on some errands downtown. As we were driving, she turned to me and said, "Fred, I've noticed that you are very quiet lately.  Is something wrong?" I said "Yes, I realize that I have been quiet.  I've been very depressed for the past week or so. I know that in a few more weeks I am starting my third year at Western and I have no interest in going back to school.  I can't imagine why I feel this way." "Well, if you promise not to laugh at me, I can tell you how you can rid yourself of that feeling." "I can guess. You will want me to go to a fortune teller." "Fred, I know you don't believe in such things, but I promise you that even if you pay no attention to what she says, when you leave her house your depression will be gone." I turned to her and said, "Now that in itself would be a good scientific experiment. I would be willing to see if that is really true."     A few days later she called to say that she had made an appointment for me to have a card reading with a Mrs. Smithson. When the time came, she picked me up and we drove to the Smithson house in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Kalamazoo. When we knocked, Mrs. Smithson greeted us at the door. She asked Katie to take a seat in her living room and escorted me through a beaded drape into her reading room. There she seated me at a small table no more than twenty inches square on which was a deck of playing cards. She took a seat at the table immediately to my right. and without further ado, began talking as she placed each card face up on the table.  She told me:     "You like to do everything exactly right. You are not pleased unless everything is 'just so.' " Then as she continued to lay down each card she spoke rapidly about things I would encounter in my life and suddenly I realized that I could not possibly remember all that she was saying and I would need to concentrate to remember anything that seemed important. She continued     "You will live to a relatively old age." "You will lose someone close to you in your family. This is not someone living in the same house with you." Another card ·····"You will lose someone very near and dear to you. It is an accident - not a car accident but something very violent. I see everything thrown in every direction. Like a building explosion. And you are right there - right where it happens. I don't understand why you are not killed." Another card ·····"You will work on a new kind of power - like diesel power - but they haven't invented this yet." Another card ·····"You will suffer a great loss. I can't tell what it is but someday you will understand what I mean." "You will spend much of your life in the East - but not in the Far East." There were so many more things that she told me that I could never remember afterward. She went through the whole deck or at least most of it. To say the least, I was stunned. I thanked her and we left. As we got into the car, Katie asked "Well, Fred, how do you feel? Do you still have that depression?" The depression was gone. But so was my 'doubting Thomas' attitude regarding the reality of the spiritual world.     Now, as I think back on that experience of over seventy years ago, I am awestruck at the reality of it all. As it turned out, my grandmother died almost two years later after a short pneumonia-like illness on December 31, 1937. It was only a week after her 80th birthday. The second death she had predicted was far more devastating for me. This was the death of my mother, which I describe below. It happened almost three years later just as the fortune teller had predicted and, as she said, it is a wonder I was not killed also. Indeed, I would have been sitting right next to the boiler that had exploded but instead decided to leave for home to study for exams.  The tragedy happened less than a half hour later.     Another prediction that came true was that I would work on a new type of power that had not been invented at that time. It was almost eight years after that date, while working in Niagara Falls for the duPont Co. that I was selected to take part in the Manhattan Project, the secret project to develop the atomic bomb. In the summer of 1944, as newly weds, I and my wife Irene left Niagara Falls and headed out to Richland, Washington to take part in this wartime effort. This experience changed the course of my career. During the following two decades, I was to pursue a career in nuclear power reactor engineering. The discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of the atom by slow neutrons, was first announced in December of 1938 with the appearance of the journal paper by Strassmann and Hahn. It was not until the middle of 1939, six months after the appearance of the Strassmann-Hahn paper, that Enrico Fermi came up with the idea that it should be possible to create a nuclear chain reaction by inducing the cascading production of slow neutrons. It was this insight that led to the realization that it was possible to produce an atomic bomb and which made possible the creation of nuclear power reactors. But, this was almost three years after this fortune teller's prediction. How could she have known that I would be working on this new type of power that at the time had not even been discovered?     Her prediction that I was to spend much of my life in the East, but not the Far East, also was on the mark. Seven years later, in 1943 while working at duPont, I met my future wife, Irene, who was of Greek descent. It came about that I worked in Athens from 1963 to 1965 where I served as a UN consultant to the Democritos Nuclear Center. Furthermore from 1980 to 1988 I worked in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, another middle eastern country. Much of my later life involved taking annual summer trips to Greece, which continued up through 2008. How could this fortune teller have known events that were to take place over the next 70 years of my life?   May 1939:  The Terrible Accident that Killed Mother      It was May 26, 1939. I had just completed the last class session of my first year at the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School. It was Friday morning and my first exam was scheduled for the following Tuesday. My three roommates were still in classes so I had some time to study for my first exam before they would be coming in for lunch. I opened my Physical Chemistry book and began to read. An hour later when Kit, Harold, and Jim arrived, all glad to be done with class work for another year, I realized that I had been rereading the same paragraph for the whole time. Then, I realized that my mind was not concentrated on study. Suddenly, I felt that studying was not important and that I should go home and that there I could concentrate better to prepare for next weeks exams. I collected some books and a few personal items in a small satchel and left, telling the room mates that I would be back next Monday. It took only about 10 minutes to walk to the highway south of the campus. Still holding my satchel, I raised my hand to signal an approaching car for a ride. That first car stopped and the driver offered me a ride all the way to Kalamazoo. He was a friendly person and we had an enjoyable conversation during the 100 mile trip. He stopped to let me out only a few blocks from my house. I went in and left the satchel and thought how nice it would be to surprise my mother with a visit at her work at the Park Club only a few blocks away.      She was surprised and delighted to see me and told me of the problems she was having because of a new hot water heater that has been installed only a few days previously. The plumbers had the steam relief line running some twenty feet across the ceiling from the hot water tank to the sink where mother washed the vegetables for her salads. After we talked for a few minutes, mother invited me to sit down at the little table next to the hot water tank and have some delicious dessert that Mrs. Wester had prepared that day. I refused and told her that I must start studying for my first exam the next Tuesday. She said that was OK as she would be done clearing up her work in another half hour and she would soon be home. I bid her a good-bye and left for home. There I settled to studying again and was unaware of the passage of time until the telephone roused me. Joel told me he had been calling all over to reach me. Mother was in a terrible accident and not expected to live and he was on his way to pick me up to go to the hospital..      A few minutes after I had left the Park Club, a party came in who all ordered steaks so the chef fired up the big broiler in the meat kitchen adjacent to the salad room. The new hot water system utilized the heat from the broiler to heat its water and this time the small relief line was insufficient to handle the large heat load from the steak broiler. The bottom of the hot water tank ruptured and drove the tank up through the ceiling, into the dining room, through a large dining table, and out through the brick wall of the building. The refrigeration piping to the walk-in freezer which passed directly above the hot water tank was ruptured releasing anhydrous ammonia into the walk-in freezer and the enormous force of the explosion drove a heavy ice-making machine against the door of the walk-in freezer.      At that instant, my dear mother was in the walk-in freezer putting away some things. She was unable to escape because the door was jammed shut. She was asphyxiated by the ammonia gas and taken out only after some ten minutes when the chef, counting personnel, realized she was missing. He rushed back in and seeing the ice machine in front of the door he used all of his strength to single-handedly move the heavy machine to get her out.      At the hospital, she was placed in an oxygen tent where she was kept alive for four days. I was by her side when for a moment she opened her eyes and seeing me, she slowly shook her head. On the fourth day, May 30th, while I was sitting by her side, her breathing hesitated and the color drained from her face. I knew that was the end.* * Comment by Paul LaViolette: The tragic explosion and resulting death of my grandmother Maggie occurred the same month that Fermi first conceived the possibility of the nuclear chain reaction, the insight that led to the atomic bomb. Should this be regarded as just a coincidence? Or is there a mystery and underlying order to life that we have yet to fathom, the same mystery that allowed a gifted clairvoyant to foretell the accidental death of my grandmother three years in advance and to predict the involvement of my father in the field of nuclear energy 8 years in advance. Just like the explosion that took Maggie's life, the idea of the chain reaction and atomic bomb which was born that same time was destined to claim many lives. My father never associated these two events, and it is only my own ruminations that have led me to consider this Jungian synchronicity. It makes one wonder if there is a pervading consciousness that links life's events, communicating through symbol and metaphor.      The events that led to my father's involvement in the atomic bomb project were in a way part of the general flow of events that surrounded the U.S. involvement in World War II. He and my mother were two of thousands who had participated in this project and the project would have proceeded even without them. Furthermore it was a military strategy decision whether or not to use the bomb and in what context. Nothing like this had ever been done before and most of those working on this project probably had no inkling of the kind of devastation this weapon could cause until its first test at Alamogordo.      The fortune teller experience that my father had was one that left the deepest impression on him. I had heard him repeat it countless times when the conversation at social gatherings would turn to spiritual or metaphysical matters. For him it left a wonderment about life, and I can say in my case too, having heard this story so often, it has left for me the same wonderment. Perhaps this is one of the many sign posts we encounter along our life journey that encourages us to reflect inward and probe deeper into the mystery of things.