Catching Up With . . . Cliff Roberson
What Other Classmate has Operated on Brains, Run Four Iditarods, and is now a Farmer?
by Brooke C. Stoddard '69
Cliff Roberson's early life did not presage his maturity. He grew up in Bethesda, the son of an attorney with good connections in the Washington, D. C. power structure. Cliff went to Landon School from the fourth grade and played sports there, notably football. The next step was Princeton, where for a time during freshman year he was on both the fall rowing team and the freshman football team. That pace was unsustainable and he eventually let both sports slide.
His major was going to be History but sophomore year just before the deadline for declaring a department he had an epiphany: he would go into medicine! That required catching up on courses; the only smooth path to medical school at this point was a science department, so Cliff enrolled in Biology. That was his path for the next two years, and then it was Baylor Medical School in Houston.
"I enjoyed medical school," Cliff recalls. "I made good friends and the years went quickly." He enjoyed the neurosciences the most, and when he realized that he liked fixing things, he migrated to neurosurgery. It was in this discipline that he took his residency. Cliff says that truth be told three fourths of the work neurosurgeons do is on the spine not the brain, and Cliff followed that formula, fusing vertebrae and removing herniated discs most of the time. But he also worked on brains. Some of the work was repairing trauma damage ("more hard work than technically difficult," he says). More taxing was operating on tumors; some operations tracking and removing them from the folds of brain tissue took eight hours of work. "You have to stay in good physical shape in order to do these kinds of operations," he says. "You have to have focus and endurance. Michael DeBakey, the renowned Baylor heart surgeon and innovator, told us that to be a surgeon you also have to possess some athletic ability in order to have the requisite motor skills. He also advised us to stay in good physical shape in order to have a long, productive career. He'd tell us, 'You are running a marathon, not a sprint, so take care of yourselves.' I took DeBakey's advice, perhaps to justify getting away from the office and into the outdoors, but the truth is I had a much longer career than most of my neurosurgical colleagues. And I am happy about that because I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to have a gratifying career in medicine."
Tactical escapes from this kind of pressure in a surgical practice were important and one took Cliff to Alaska, where he tried dog sledding for a week. The sport appealed to him. He cut back on his practice for a time, and he had some funds. He trained himself, and he trained dogs. At first he had no thought of entering the Iditarod, which calls itself "The Last Great Race on Earth." About 1,100 miles long (roughly the equivalent of New York City to Kansas City), contestants mush dog sleds from Anchorage to Nome in March over 10 to 15 days through astonishing cold, blizzards, white-outs, and very little sleep. Generally far from other mushers and far from help, the contestants race to control points where they feed their dogs, and try for a little cooking and rest, but more often tend the dogs and repair the sleds. The race is challenging enough that about a quarter of the starters don't cross the finish line. Cliff entered his first Iditarod in 1992, then repeated in 1994 and 1995. He mushed his last in 2008 to celebrate his 60th birthday. It turned out to be the only Iditarod he failed to complete. He was forced to scratch when a primitive alcohol cooker exploded in his face, temporarily affecting his vision. "I loved the cast of characters attracted to the race," Cliff says, "Indians, lawyers, gold miners, Eskimos, trappers � it's a delightful conglomeration." But four Iditarods was enough.
Except for his last Iditarod in 2008 when he leased the dogs, Cliff owned the teams he raced. Training is no small part of the effort. In warm months before the first snows the dogs pull a wheeled sled or an ATV. "A big part of the work is getting the dogs to obey you, because if they don't, they can overpower you and go where they want. You can be running as many as 16 dogs and the lead pair can be out of sight down a slope or around a corner, so going where you want them to is essential � as well as tricky." When the snows finally begin in late fall, the endurance training begins so that by Iditarod time in March, these remarkable canine athletes are capable of running well over 100 miles per day, oftentimes in very difficult conditions.
Cliff recalls the most treacherous portion of the Iditarod is early, when going over the Alaska Mountain Range (Denali being the range's highest peak), and at a time when the dogs are at their most energized. Afterward, along the Yukon River basin, the terrain is relatively flat and the dogs have settled down. "You can go for days without seeing anyone," Cliff says. "Generally, I never had trouble with the cold, even at well below zero. The coldest stretch I am aware of was in my third Iditarod. I passed a thermometer on the banks of the Yukon River that read -69 degrees. Counting wind chill out on the river ice it was about -100 degrees. That kind of extreme cold most certainly did bother me."
Cliff jokes that neurosurgery prepared him well for the Iditarod. In medicine if your practice requires taking care of critically ill patients, it is essential to learn to balance the lows and the highs. The top mushers have the same knack. They know not to get either too excited with it all nor too depressed when things went wrong, and something could go wrong at any instant. Moreover, you have to communicate this balance of disposition to the dogs. Cliff doesn't have any desire to do another Iditarod, but clearly he has no regrets about the time it took away from his practice either. He says, "I loved being in Alaska, running dogs, competing, etc. I loved everything about it. I feel blessed to have been in four races and finished three. Sometimes I think back and wonder if my priorities somehow got skewed. I shouldn't be prouder of running the Iditarod than doing brain surgery, but I think I am. That's because I grew up a city kid, programmed to go to Princeton and go into medicine whereas I was totally out of my element traveling down the trail in Alaska with 16 of my best friends."
As the century was turning, Cliff was concentrating on spinal rather than brain surgery, One reason is that new techniques were emerging more in spinal surgery than in repair of the brain. But he was also approaching the age when many neurosurgeons had already retired from practice. Some get out of shape � when at work they are generally either standing motionless or resting and get too little exercise to continue such a grueling life. Some just burn out. Cliff was hearing the siren call as well. He enjoyed the outdoors (witness the Alaska travels). He had once trained dogs in Montana (where he had won a couple of 500-mile dog sled races), and had admired the farms and ranches there. And he liked biking (he also entered races) in the Willamette Valley of Oregon where he now lives. He liked the farms he saw from his bike so he suggested to his wife Suzanne that they buy one.
They did, and Cliff became a farmer a few years ago. "What did I know about farming? Well, nothing, but I went ahead. Princeton, after all, nurtured a lifelong desire for learning. The first acreage I bought turned out not to be so good for what I had in mind � it needed water rights -- so I bought 120 additional acres of land. We bought tractors, improved irrigation and planted blueberries and hazelnuts. We've since also planted wheat and oats on spare ground," he says.
"To be a successful farmer, you have to work hard," Cliff continues, "and you have to know lots of different things that I knew nothing about. I went to conferences and classes, in business, soil science, hydraulics (for irrigation) and lots of other things. Starting out, I knew nothing about mechanics, but now I can fix things, including tractors. About 20% of my time I am fixing things. I do lots of menial labor, but it's not like playing golf � you have something to show for your efforts. I have to give Princeton credit � it instilled curiosity and a lifelong desire for learning. For instance, I am working on Spanish now, the better to communicate with a portion of the labor force here."
Cliff also sings in a choir. Even though he admits to not being very good, his choir has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Recently when talking with his five roommates � Grainger Bowman, Bruce DeBolt, Dale Thomas, George Green, and Bill Thorpe � in their annual Walker Hall conference call, they discovered that three (and soon to be four) of them are currently singing in choirs. This includes Thorpe, who also took up the practice relatively late in life. "That was a great thing about Princeton. It surrounded you with energetic people, people who were life-learners." Like Cliff.
