Sarah- Summer of 1976

 The summer of 1976 was a pivotal couple of months for me. Musically, academically, personally- lots of things changed or had their groundwork laid that summer. This post revolves around two people that affected me that summer,, both named Sarah, and their final confluence this evening.

I entered the University of Pennsylvania as a mechanical engineering major. I had no idea what I wanted as a major. I knew I wanted to go to medical school, but I also wanted a useable trade if I did not get in. Thus music and history, my main interests, were not major options, even though I was already making most of my spending money singing professionally. And I entered Penn as an also-ran. Penn was the 'safe' school for Episcopal Academy. It was where you went if you didn't get into Yale, Harvard, Trinity, or William and Mary. As I recall 20 of my 75 classmates went to Ivy League schools, 11 of us to Penn. I was wait-listed at Yale, my first choice, then admitted in late August for January, after I had already enrolled at Penn.

My first year ended with me expecting a 3.75 or 4.0 GPA, and I got a 3.5. I was absolutely crushed. My hopes of med school admission were threatened. I went off to Greece to see my uncle and grandfather, a trip I did not relish because of bad memories, and came home to no job and no plans. I was going to work at McDonald's simply as a way to make some money, but my mother strongly discouraged this. Instead, I ended up as a volunteer in the clinical microbiology lab at Jefferson Medical Center. I worked 3-4 days weekly, taking the train downtown and walking to the hospital. Not only were my grades bad but I wasn't making any money. I was a fifth wheel, a volunteer.

And yet, oddly, that summer has pleasant memories. I walked all over downtown Philadelphia, learning about a city I had hardly visited even though I lived in its suburbs and went to school there. I found Chinatown, and open air markets on Arch Street, the Reading Terminal, Independence Hall, Lit Brothers, the Sam Goody store where my father had bought records and where, one day just two years later, I would buy an album on a day that changed my life profoundly. 

I met the first Sarah on one of those lunchtime walks. In the Arch Street open air stalls a radio was playing Hall and Oates' 'Sarah Smile'. I loved the song instantly, its mix of melancholy and happiness a perfect reflection of my mood. I can not hear the song  even now, can not even think about it, without smelling Arch Street on a hot summer's day.

And being a volunteer wasn't all bad. I had flexible hours, and the techs treated me like a mixture of a son and a trainee. I got to do real work, spinning and plating urine cultures, diluting and reading syphilis and rheumatoid arthritis tests, doing acid fast stains for TB. It was much more interesting than I expected, and the director, Donald Jongkind, became one of my med school reference letters. Unknown to me, the experience that summer became important in me becoming a lab director in my current work. And this is where the second Sarah comes in.

On my last day, an elderly tech (probably about my age now) named Sarah said to me "Hey you, hotshot." I turned, wondering if she was talking to me. "Yeah, you," she said. "You're gonna go to med school and become a doctor, but I want you to remember something. You may have hundreds of patients, but each of them has only one doctor."

I have never forgotten that moment. I have been inspired by it all my life to provide personal care and attention to everyone whom I see. I did get into med school. Six times over. I went to one of the great med schools in America. And I've had a full and satisfying career. Sarah was right.

I'm an odd guy religiously, and I write about it infrequently because it means a great deal to me. I don't believe Jesus was divine, and I have no patience for the evolved theology of the corporate church. But I believe intensely in a Creator, Interventional God, and I believe He speaks to us all the time if we just listen.

Sarah was the Voice of God that day. She was the first person who said I would get into medical school. She gave me advice that guided my career, and still does. She was more important than any advisor or mentor in shaping my medical values.

This evening all this came full circle. I was between two parties, and had dinner in downtown Chattanooga. I could choose anywhere at all to eat, and chose The Public House, as I hadn't been there in a couple of years. My server was a black woman named Ryishia. I tease and play with most servers, but few give as good as they receive from me. She did. She was quick, funny, articulate, insightful. The light of intelligence shown in her eyes and her face, and we got talking.

She is 29 years old. She wants to be a pharmacist. Her parents live in a trailer. She is working two jobs, saving money to apply to pharmacy school, her tuition to come from her savings, loans, and some state tuition support programs. She is working hard for a goal that is almost impossibly difficult for someone from her background to imagine. If pharmacy school tuition had the same ratio to the value of the property I own as it does to her parents' trailer, it would cost 10 million dollars. It is so easy for the wealthy to shrug off tuition relative to their income. If professional schools cost 10 million dollars they would understand why the poor can't go. It's simply unimaginable. Daddy doesn't say "sure, sweetie. We support you in your decision to be a pharmacist." Instead it's "You're on your own." She has faced this and retains optimism and good humor.

There is a famous story of George Washington's pat. He, a childless man, patted a boy on the head one day, a kind of blessing. The boy, as a man, chose a boy to pat in turn, and this pat has now gone through, as I recall, 8-10 generations. At some moment, a child is selected, and the bestower of Washington's pat simply says "I pat you", and explains the story. It is for me an intense story of being chosen, being blessed.

I've been the number one premed preceptor for both University of Pennsylvania and University of Tennessee. Every student I've mentored has gotten into med school, every med student into their residency. And for all that teaching and mentoring, I've never talked about Sarah much.

But somehow, tonight, I felt intensely called to tell Ryishia not just the story, but to say to her what Sarah said to me. It was, for some reason, very clear that she would get into pharmacy school, would get what she wanted. And I told her that she would serve hundreds of people, just as she does now, except that she would be giving them advice and comfort about their medications. And, like Sarah, I reminded her that she would see hundreds, but each of them would have only one pharmacist.

She has the address for this blog, and I hope she reads this, and downloads it, and keeps it forever as a memento of the day she was told she would succeed. I felt it, for her, as I have never felt it before.

When you get a transplant you can't help but wonder if you are worthy, and what you're going to do with the life granted to you. I've certainly wondered. But tonight I don't. Tonight I was alive so I could encourage a woman reaching for something fantastically greater than her background. And she is going to get it.

Ted