50th Reunion
I came to Amherst with a strong Amherst heritage. I owe much to Frank Boyden of Deerfield and to many of my friends, teachers and coaches at Amherst for their support and encouragement. Also, a classmate of my father's at Amherst was helpful in my attending Columbia Medical School after graduating from Amherst. Nancy Dunlap (Mount Holyoke '40) and I were married two days before graduation from medical school in December 1943. I then interned at the Harvard Medical Service at the Boston City Hospital and subsequently had a residency at the Boston Dispensary - Tufts Medical School. My military service was largely with the Army Air Corps Air Material Command in industrial medicine. After discharge, I had another residency at the Pratt Diagnostic Hospital, Boston. By this time we had two children and I was ready to settle down. In July 1948, I accepted an offer of a position as a medical director with the Aetna Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. This principally entailed the evaluation of the risk of applicants for life insurance. I found the work interesting and challenging. It also afforded me the freedom to be with my family and to participate in community affairs. Over the years I served on a 118 number of boards and committees relating to child development, health care, business and church. I have three children, a girl and two boys. My daughter is a professional artist in Baltimore and teaches at the Maryland Institute of Art where she received her M.F.A. My older son, Amherst '68, is an M.D. practicing emergency medicine in the San Francisco Bay area. My younger son is a P.H.D. in psychology and lives in Maine. Friends have asked "How come YOU have such smart kids?" My honest answer was "because they have a smart mother!" Nancy, who many of my classmates knew, was a remarkable woman. She was a chemist, teacher, accomplished watercolorist and a wonderful wife and mother. Unfortunately, Nancy died a few years after my retirement in 1980. Since then I have entered another phase of my life in which I enjoy peaceful country living, travel, intellectual pursuits and the freedom of a good retirement. Amherst has always been an important part of my life and always will be. Amherst is so many things- a place, her buildings, her intellectual opportunities, her varied activities but most of all her people, past, present and future. I am one of the fortunate who has had this association and am most grateful for it.
