[4] He was introduced to sociology as a freshman at Yale in the autumn of 1941 and had chosen it as his major field of study when he was called up for officer training in the Army Air Corps.
Soon after his leave was up the two were married—a union that lasted almost 60 years and produced four children (John Gilbert, Scott Whittier, Margaret Lowry and Sarah Morgan).
[6] In 1985, the Brims settled in Vero Beach, Florida, spending their summers at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and later, Old Greenwich, Connecticut.
[8] During his twelve-year tenure he expanded the foundation's field of inquiry and support, which had been centered on welfare programs for children, to include study of their social and psychological development.
Over the next ten years, the Network conducted dozens of separate studies of midlife drawn from interviews of more than 7,000 Americans of both sexes, aged 25 to 74.
The complete findings of the MacArthur project appeared in 2004 in How Healthy Are We" A National Study of Well-Being at Midlife,[14] a book edited by Dr. Brim with Carol D. Ryff and Ronald C. Kessler.