Michael Thomas Berthold

Below excerpted from http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/14/nyregion/long-island-journal-impo... / New York Times:

Michael Berthold was talking about the future. Photovoltaics, hydrogen fuel cells for non-polluting, energy-conscious houses. Earthberms, solid east-west walls, radiant slab heat, sky-lighted atriums, insulated attic floors and other ecological, environmentally friendly ways to build. "It's the 21st century, he told the fifth-year architecture students in his energy conservation class at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury on a recent evening. Energy is the future. Energy conservation technologies must constantly improve, but will they keep pace with the growth and ever-increasing hunger for energy?'
But Mr. Berthold, 49, an architect who grew up in Freeport and resides in Sea Cliff, may not live long enough to find out. He has a stage-four brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiform. The tumor inside his head doubles in size every seven days. He has had brain surgery twice in the last eight months to remove it, but the tumor keeps growing back. He is undergoing radiation and has just started chemotherapy. If it doesn't work, he said, he could be dead by June.
During his career, Mr. Berthold has designed thousands of residential and commercial projects on Long Island. Since the 1970's, his tendency has been to take a solar/ecological approach to design. When oil prices plummeted in the early 80's and solar design fell out of vogue, he was forced to turn to workaday architecture. Additions, extensions and renovations paid the bills.
But with oil prices higher than they've been in years, and renewed concerns about global warming and preserving the planet, photovoltaics and hydrogen fuel cells that make and store electricity from natural gas are the rage. The Long Island Power Authority is beginning to experiment with photovoltaic cell panels that can be mounted on a rooftop to convert solar energy into electricity.
I have been waiting 20 years for this kind of work, Mr. Berthold said, instructing his students to redesign the homes they live in an energy-efficient manner as a final project. If I can survive and actually live, maybe I can get back to work and do 21st-century work. I know all this is going to change in the next 100 years. Buildings use 30 percent of the energy in this country.
Because he is on disability, Mr. Berthold is no longer paid as a part-time professor. So he recently created the Michael Berthold Conservation Design Award at the New York Institute of Technology. The money he would have received to teach will now go to an architecture student who shares Mr. Berthold's passion for ecologically friendly design.
Mr. Berthold's own pet conservation project is the 400-square-foot earth tone shingle studio-garage he built two years ago to blend in with the small Victorian home he shares with his wife, Laura Campbell, 47, a parent educator, and his two daughters -- Kate, 16, and Emily, 11. That's where, until his illness forced him to stop recently, he did all his designing.
Before his cancer was discovered last summer, he added to the roof solar water collectors, salvaged from his mother's house 25 years ago, that store the heat in the studio's radiant slab floor. The solar collectors also provide hot water to the house all summer long. On top of the studio is a cupola that allows ventilation and brings in natural light.
Heating, cooling, light and electrical costs for the year have been under $100, Mr. Berthold said.
But Mr. Berthold, who was self-employed, has no pharmaceutical insurance. He must pay for his own chemotherapy. The tab is $2,000 a month. The Sea Cliff United Methodist Church has started the Michael Berthold Fund to help with his expenses. Ms. Campbell has had to stop working to care for her husband. Sometimes, when he's feeling up to it, Mr. Berthold still plays the drums with his local band, Midlife Crisis.
Anxious to continue teaching future architects about energy-conscious design, he is hoping the treatments will stunt the tumors' growth. I have good work to do in this century, Mr. Berthold said. I just hope for our children and the future of our children's children that energy conservation will mean a change over to photovoltaics and hydrogen fuel cells, the clean fuels of the future.

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 20 2019, 0:10:25 UTC