For Mom, loyalty and stubbornness were close cousins, usually but not always ending up in a positive way. When Mom was on your side, she remained a loyal friend forever. But cross her for whatever reason, and one might as well not exist after that. Although family loyalty was a wonderful thing to witness, and she herself never exhibited the tendency not to speak to her siblings, there was a streak in that family that at times caused siblings not to speak for years over events that were hard for a kid to understand, and frankly even harder for me as an adult to understand. Stubbornness played a huge part in almost any major decision that needed to be made, often affecting me, rightly or wrongly. If I disagreed I was always wrong. I remember an episode years later after my Dad died. Mom was in her 80’s at the time, and lived near my family in Arizona. We were out for a ‘country drive’ on a steep, winding, narrow back road from Flagstaff to Wickenburg, Arizona on our way back to Sun City, where she lived. She was in the back seat, my wife and I in the front. All I heard was ‘bitchin’ about how I was speeding on the winding roads, which I was, as she was tossed from side to side in the back. It was a fun road for me to drive, always a speed demon, but not for Mom. Of course I got pulled over by a cop. As he approached the car, and before I could say a word, she said; “ What’s the problem, officer? My son certainly wasn’t speeding.” It was the only time out of many in my lifetime that I was stopped by a cop who didn’t give me a ticket. I just looked at her in the rear view mirror and smiled. Her son could do no wrong at that point in life! Even though years earlier, during my college days, we didn’t speak for over a year, not a word, because she didn’t approve of who I was dating at the time.
Not long after that speeding episode Mom had a severe stroke and was incapable of caring for her self, or speaking for many months. She was adamant about remaining in her home. She got her wish, but this required full time live in help. She managed to fire just about everyone that Phoenix had to offer in the way of in home care. Often I would get a call in the midst of my busy office hours from her home aide as she was on the way out the door, saying she was leaving and Mom would be alone. ‘The hell with them”, Mom struggled to say. It was her way of exercising what little independence, strength, and spirit she had left in her frail body. Mom knew I would find someone else. If they weren’t going to be nice to her, or stole some of her possessions, she just let them go even though there was no one else to care for her. She eventually did get her voice back after months of physical and speech therapy. It was a colossal effort on her part that spoke much of her inner strength and fortitude. Before she died she apologized to me for those times when we didn’t speak, and said things to me that I wished she had said years earlier but hadn’t. She was most appreciative of the time, energy, love, and attention I gave to her at the end of her life, and I was forever grateful for those last few months when she struggled to speak, this time from the heart.
My brother and I were two different human beings in many respects. He clearly relished the roll of ‘older brother’ and held it over me whenever he could. We played together, went most places together, and fought together. For years we had an adjoining closet between our bedrooms, and he would often taunt me with repetitive phrases such as “ Bones, skinny, no muscles” over and over again while I lay crying on my bed. Although not always aware of it on either of our parts, I suspect we were just two competitive kids, whether it was competing for parental favoritism, competing on the basketball court, or competing in academics. He was the trailblazer, but often chose different trails than me. As I reflect back on it now, it didn’t always make it easier for me with my parents when I went off in other directions. But the competition served us both well in our lives.
With Penn State just 30 minutes away by car, there was no conflict about college loyalties. This was truly Penn State Nittany Lion country. There was no other team even worth our loyalties. I can still picture the long line of cars snaking through town on a Saturday morning to State College for ‘The Game’. I even remember going to games on Saturdays before Joe Paterno was head coach when he was an assistant under Rip Engle. So one wouldn’t be surprised to know now that after all these years of loyalty to the program, how let down I was, and still am, after the recent cover-up that occurred relating to the pedophilia scandal brought down on the school by one horrendous individual.
Summers were spent around the local amusement park and public swimming pool, and Boy Scout camp in the mountains that garnered me nature, canoeing, and swimming merit badges. There were many car trips to visit family. The highlights for me were many journeys to Atlantic City where I got salt water in my veins, sun on my skin, salt water taffy in my mouth, and the best iced tea in the world made fresh daily by my Aunt. I could play in the ocean waves for hours on end. It was here that I first developed a healthy respect for the power of Mother Nature. One day I got carried way out past where I should have been for a little kid, and struggled mightily without success against a huge rip tide current. Scared, panicked, afraid of sharks, gasping for air, heart racing, and exhaustion setting in quickly, I felt like I was well on my way to Europe and/or the bottom of the ocean. Suddenly my feet hit a sand bar. I was able to stand up, catch my breath, get hold of myself, and figure out a way to get back to the shore. Thank goodness for swimming merit badge, good fortune, and sand bars. But I learned never to challenge Mother Nature beyond its norms, a valuable lesson for a budding Obstetrician and Gynecologist.
Law seemed to be in my family genes. My father and his brother, cousins, and eventually my brother and his wife, were all lawyers. After one summer in my father’s law office, it was clear to me that it was not in the cards for my future. I was bored beyond belief, and considered myself the ‘black sheep’ of the family, since everyone seemed to go into the Law. But that was not to be my direction. I just needed to find my own path.
I have fond memories of two family physicians both of whom cared for us in our small town. I sensed the respect and reverence that they received within the community. I of course didn’t know it at the time that I too would become a physician, but in many small ways they laid the groundwork for me. I was wide eyed when I was in their office, or when they would make house calls when we were sick as kids. There were always distinct smells that came along with the doctor, and unusual tools and instruments that fascinated me. As a young kid home from school with a high fever, I can still remember peering through my upstairs bedroom window watching the doctor get out of his car in his black three piece suit, black medical bag in hand, slowly walk up to our front door, knowing full well the routine that would follow; greetings, peering into my mouth with a tongue depressor on the tongue, feeling my neck glands, taking my temperature (often orally, though not always), then drawing up the antibiotic into the syringe and shooting it into my behind. At the time I had no idea it was chloramphenicol, a potent antibiotic born the same year as me in 1949, now no longer in use due to dangerous side affects on the bone marrow, and of course not effective against viruses anyhow. All that mattered then was getting better and back to school as quickly as possible. But that black bag and the doctor were both full of magic, as far as I was concerned.
Two years ahead of me, my brother graduated first in his high school class and was the first kid from my hometown to go to Princeton University. I was proud of him for his accomplishments. He was an avid reader of almost anything he could get his hands on and an excellent student. He was also a good basketball player known locally as ‘Big Luke’ named after his idol Jerry Lucas. He had long arms and legs, and sharp elbows. Over the years I learned to defend myself with my elbows, since I got a few of his in my chest and face over the years. Taller than me, he played a great forward on our high school basketball team.
Over the next two years I had a number of occasions to visit him at Princeton. It seemed like a logical place for me to seek admission as well. The school had a great reputation, a lovely campus, and it would be fun being on the same campus with him for two years. One could actually
get on the train in Lewistown, as I did many times, ride four hours through central Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, the capital city, on through the suburbs of Philadelphia, then Center City Philly, North Philadelphia, Trenton, New Jersey, and disembark at Princeton Junction. It was my favorite mode of transportation. From there the ‘Dinky’, a two car shuttle, would ramble for the next five minutes to deposit me right in the middle of campus facing the impressive gothic designed Blair Arch. With its massive stone steps cascading downwards from the arch to other quadrangles, dorms, and the university store, its archways would often echo with the song and sounds of a Capella student singing groups. A short stroll away was the Princeton Inn with Albert Einstein’s residence nearby, all surrounded by the beautiful Princeton golf course. Walkways meandered through campus to Nassau Street, the main street through Princeton, New Jersey. One wound past stately Nassau Hall, formerly the capital building of the United States in Revolutionary war days, fronted by a gorgeous quadrangle filled with ancient, tall trees with black squirrels running up and down the trunks and limbs. The campus was impressive, idyllic and unlike any other I had seen. The buildings were huge, mostly Gothic in design, and stately architectural masterpieces.
(The Princeton University campus.)
In autumn the color of the changing leaves on the magnificent trees were breathtaking. Manicured lawns were covered with red and golden brown fallen autumn leaves surrounding the Henry Moore Sculpture near the ornate University Chapel with its stained glass windows, located across the mall from the huge Firestone Library. The crisp smell of autumn was everywhere. Students in orange and black Princeton Tiger colors strolled through archways and paths scurrying from class to class. Planted by Edith Wilson, wife of former university president T. Woodrow Wilson, the amazing, formal, lovely, and ornate Prospect Gardens, located behind the president’s house were most impressive. There were spectacular green clay tennis courts filled with students and faculty challenging each other. The University Tiger band played ‘Old Nassau’ as it marched through the campus. Crowds of alumni and students at the Saturday football games gave the campus a fall buzz of excitement and energy.
I stayed with my brother in the dorms, attended a few classes, and simply put was hooked on the place. The only challenge was to maintain the grades and scores to accomplish admission. Something like only 20% of my high school graduating class went to college, most staying in town to work in the local mill and factories. It was hardly a ‘feeder’ school for Princeton or any Ivy League campus. The odds of getting accepted into Princeton were pretty slim anyhow, but especially coming from our high school. So I had two more years to work at it and that is what I did. My mind was set. I wanted a good liberal arts education from the best school that would accept me. And I wanted out of Lewistown. As wonderful a community as it was in which to be raised and excel, it was too small, too isolated, and too rural for me. I knew there was a large world out there to which I hadn’t yet been exposed. For me a Princeton education would be the ticket to find it.
Aside from academics, local high school sports played a big part in my life. I had a lot of mental and physical energy that needed to be expended on a daily basis. Athletics was the vehicle for me; four years of high school basketball, summer baseball leagues, and two years of tennis which was a new high school sport for me. The green clay courts at Princeton had a special appeal to me. I had never played on clay before, and I longed for the chance. I used to watch the Aussie greats Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall on TV in those long, grueling grand slam matches that went on forever in the days before tie- breakers. They were out there by themselves, with no coach to discuss how to change the momentum of a game flowing in the other direction. They often had to converse with themselves, to find new ways out of a hole, and change momentum so that things would turn in their favor. There was no one else to rely on other than one’s self, which had a special appeal to me. As much as I enjoyed team sports, something about one on one head to head competition and self-reliance appealed to me.
Football was the team sport that challenged me most in high school and taught me valuable lessons for the rest of my life. Football was king where I came from in central Pennsylvania. Friday nights the stadium lights would come on, the whole town would show up for the 10 game season, good hard cider was everywhere in the stands on cool autumn evenings, and the local fans and sport pages were full of football news. There was much about football practice that I hated, and much that I loved. Two-hour practice sessions three times a day in the summer heat before the season started were grueling. If one got hurt the coaches made us ‘run it off’ and take laps around the field, even if the leg was dragging, the thigh bruised, or the knee swollen. Medical help was rarely accessible. Water was sprayed on the dusty field rather than in our mouths during water breaks in the midst of the summer heat. It was at times both sadistic and brutal, difficult emotions for a young adolescent to fathom, and not something any of us could ever discuss with a coach. Salt tablets were handed out before team showers because we were all in danger of depleting ourselves of electrolytes from the sweat in the hot sun with three a day practices during summer before school began.
My junior year our team went 0-9-1. One tie, and a winless season, was all we had to show for our efforts. We were the talk of the town as was our coach, a former Marine and my high school biology teacher, an all around upstanding human being. All the sweat, tears, and hard work we put in seemed wasted. My coach picked me as a captain that year. It wasn’t easy being captain on a winless team. Not surprisingly, the next year someone else was chosen to be captain. I was benched for the first four games of my senior year. During one practice game I let a receiver get behind me for a long touchdown, a fatal flaw for a defensive safety. I had to earn my way back to the starting team. I unintentionally injured our best running back during practice one day, a brute of a guy with monstrous thighs. The coaches were impressed by the jarring hit I placed on him, but there were just times ‘you gotta do what you gotta do’ to reach a goal. After that I went on to lead our team in interceptions in the remaining six games. We won 9 games and lost one that year, the largest sports turn around ever in our neck of the woods, the heart of football in Central Pennsylvania. We won several league championships in central and western Pennsylvania. No team from my hometown has had a championship since then, almost 50 years later. Football rivalries are strange things. Mental toughness, tenacity, loss, loyalty, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, honesty, friendship, camaraderie, victory all had their roots in football for me, and to this day the lessons learned help me in my daily struggles and challenges. One of the many simple lessons I learned was never to run away from a head on challenge coming full force directly at you. Tackle it, and then move on!
When I, too, graduated as class valedictorian two years behind my brother, after four years of hard work and focus, I was asked to deliver the valedictory address at the stadium filled with parents, relatives, townsfolk, friends and neighbors. It gave me a sense of much needed comfort to do so on the field of some of my athletic endeavors. My speech focused on “The Individual”. Delivered from memory because my English teacher would not permit it any other way, the speech focused on individual rights, freedoms and the lifelong pursuit of them, a theme that I took to heart for the rest of my life. Years later, every time I opened a door to an examination room in my office without knowing who or what personal situation I was going to find behind the door, I knew that I was going to respect the individual waiting for me on the exam table. That was a given.
So I followed my brother’s footstep two years later to Princeton. The unofficial motto of the University over the centuries was ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service’. Past alumni who took that to heart were James Madison, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy (yes he started his freshman year here), Adlai Stevenson, James Baker, Laurence Rockefeller, Meg Whitman, Jeff Bezos, Bill Bradley, William Frist, and Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, three Supreme Court Justices now sitting on the “Pr
inceton Court’, not to mention Michelle Obama.
I had no idea as a freshman where I fit in this idyllic New Jersey campus. What I did know was that freshman year there was a language requirement among others. My first day in freshman German class, a language I had already studied for four years, we were all asked to stand and say something in German. I muttered through something simple about who I was and where I came from then I sat down. Next was a guy who unbeknownst to me at the time would wind up as class valedictorian four years later. He discussed Einstein’s theory of Relativity in German. I instinctively knew I was in trouble since I didn’t understand it in English, and lacked the ability to express it in German. I gave my self some credit though; it was obvious I was no longer going to be at the top of my class, a good thing to know from day one.
Medicine was a thought in my head even as a freshman but in those days one had to major in the sciences to get in the hallowed doors of competitive medical schools. There were way too many other subjects that interested me to spend four years in a great liberal arts college majoring in the sciences. I suspected I could do well if I applied myself, but did not have a true intrinsic interest in pursuing science for four years to the exclusion of everything else. After an aptitude test administered at my request while in college, I remember three results: I scored equally well for professions requiring male and female traits; medicine would be a good choice for someone with those traits; I should not ever consider being an accountant since they had never seen anyone score so low in that field.
Assume the Position: Memoirs of an Obstetrician Gynecologist Page 3