Elizabeth Mertz, a homemaker and biology professor who worked in the CIA, dies at 97

It was the mid-1970s and to encourage friends of hers who were getting master’s degrees while raising children, Elizabeth Ralph Mertz wrote them a poem, titled “Accomplishments.”

“When Aristotle wrote his books,

When Milton searched for rhyme,

Did they have toddlers at the knee

Requesting dinner time?

When Dante contemplated hell,

Or Shakespeare penned a sonnet,

Did Junior interrupt to say

His cake had ketchup on it?”

The poem, which included eight more stanzas, was so well liked that Ms. Mertz submitted it to Radcliffe Quarterly at her alma mater. It was eventually published not only there but in Reader’s Digest.

At the time she wrote the poem, Ms. Mertz was raising four children and getting her Ph.D. in physical anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh — this after teaching