I left John Carroll in ’42, not ’43. There might have been six or seven of us in that class who were accepted to medical school after only three years. I understand that there are a fairly select group of medical schools that have continued to accept three-year students.
I applied early, and, of course, with Pearl Harbor – which was December of ’41, and I was in school at the time – the word went out that they needed doctors, and the government encouraged acceleration. I think throughout the country there were a lot of schools that pushed their three-year students into medical school.
[My college years were] perhaps the most directed time in my life. Completing all of the pre-med requirements in three years was a major achievement, but it wasn’t necessarily a happy one. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the field, but it wasn’t punctuated with frivolity on the weekends and whatnot.
In medical school – and the medical terrain, I don’t think, has changed much now – they crammed four years into three years. We went right through the summer, which is a pretty demanding thing. It kind of wrings the social implications out of school, and it’s a pretty steady pull.
As a freshman, I went in as a civilian, and from the sophomore to senior year, I was in uniform. And, incidentally, the government paid for those years in medical school.
I enlisted in the army, but I think the feeling was that if you were physically fit, they expected you to be in the military, and other than the few women in our class and a few people that were infirmed and not in uniform, the rest of the class was. And we had a certain time set aside each week for marching and other military ventures.
[Training as a medical student] was military service. Then we remained in the military on inactive duty, and then as we finished internship we were picked up for, in my case, two years of military service as a physician. At that time, I was based in Temple, Texas, which was a very large army medical facility. These were veterans returning from the war – some with injuries and some with routine things that required hospitalization.
So, altogether, I had four years in the military. I was assigned to this hospital in Temple, which, certainly from a professional standpoint, was a very worthwhile venture. It was a huge hospital, and my two years there amounted to a two-year residency.
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[In high school,] I can’t say I had any real career definition at that time. Several members of my mother’s family were severely ill, and I got a fair amount of contact with the doctors looking after them, but I can’t truthfully say that at the high school level I was imbued with [the goal to be a doctor]. But by the time I was through, I knew that medical school was achieved through pre-med, and that’s the way I went at Carroll.
As an introduction to medicine, [Carroll] was essential. I think I had a good premedical education, and I was well prepared for medical school. I thought it was a good education and it introduced me to a lot of people who ultimately were very commendable citizens.
My ongoing interest in and contact with the school through [my son] Miles has been important to me. Occasionally. Miles has taken me over and walked me through the new building [the Dolan Center for Science and Technology], which I was very impressed with.
But I haven’t spent a great deal of time there. It’s not that I’m not interested, but many events take place at the end of the year or the beginning of the year, and I’m just not in town then. We have a place in Brewster, on the Cape. I retired in ’86, and, since then, we’ve been there for the major part of the summer.
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I was a student at Carroll [when Pearl Harbor was attacked]. My dad and I were driving someplace locally and he had the car radio on. It was a Sunday afternoon. I don’t remember the exact time, but I would imagine five or six o’clock. I remember this coming over the radio, that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and bombed. It was interesting because, I think, we at Carroll and, I suppose, most of the other universities in the country, had a kind of an isolationist posture. Of course, the country itself was [that way], and they had a lot of notable people speaking against our intervention in what was viewed as a European war – people as prominent as Charles Lindberg and Father Coughlin and people that had the ear of the country. And this disappeared almost overnight with Pearl Harbor.
And I think Roosevelt’s attitude and conduct of the presidency was one of expectancy. There were those who thought he could anticipate, or knew, that the Japanese were going to precipitate a war, but in reality, I don’t think any proof of that has ever come forth. But it became apparent, certainly here and nationally, that any isolationist tendency largely disappeared.
I don’t remember D-Day quite as vividly. The atomic bomb, however, I do remember. I remember being in a lab as an intern, this was early in the evening, [and hearing] that the atomic bomb had been dropped. I had been in an internship and I was quite certain that I would be called up and probably sent to Asia. That was in ’45, and it didn’t happen; I was picked up and sent to Texas.
I’m not terribly disposed to argue the point that we shouldn’t have employed [the atom bomb].
[That the bomb saved lives in the long run] was Truman’s contention, and, I think, correctly so. It was a move that saved many American lives and also many Japanese lives.
The war ended around August of ’45, and I was in an internship at that time. And had that not occurred, I think I would have completed my internship and then gone directly into the army and probable placement in one of the combat zones.
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Preceding the war, I was of an age and stage where I experienced the Depression. By the time I went into high school, the Depression was probably bottoming out, but my four years in high school I found rather somber. I was at Cathedral Latin [in Cleveland]. I grew up in University Heights.
My dad, during part of the Depression, was unemployed. He was in the advertising business, and he was at Time in Chicago and sometime in Buffalo. And the employment in that, if not zilch, was very meager. Advertising was kind of on a low rung.
He did some writing for the City of Cleveland, and his brother maintained a fairly large practice in advertising in Chicago, and I think he directed some of that work to my father, but the pickings were fairly lean. But he was able to keep food on the table.
Those are things I haven’t thought of in many years, but I do think that the Depression, from a philosophical standpoint, left most of the subjects permanently frugal.
I have tried to maintain a certain level of frugality, and I think having experienced that as a kid, it stays with you. And I think that many of my contemporaries have experienced that same view. And in reference to the current question of a recession, I don’t think that people really recognize the difference between a profound depression, where the vast majority of people were out of work and looking for their next meal, and what we’re looking at now.
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As life expectancy has improved, people are thinking a little differently of individuals who are 60 and 70. I remember, in my practice, seeing a person who was 70, and I always thought that was pretty ancient. And the rare person in their 90s. But [now] there are a lot of people getting close to 100.
[Greater longevity] is a tribute to many things: improved medical care, probably better nutrition, better understanding of what’s good and bad for you, and generally a more supportive society. There’s great provision for the elderly and infirmed.
And there have been specific innovations in the medical field that have very genuinely extended life expectancy: a better understanding of cardiovascular disease, and certainly the various operative procedures for coronary artery disease. And the various joint replacements have kept people much more mobile.
I used to go to the Cleveland Heights Recreation Center with regularity to ice skate. I greatly enjoyed it. The thing that was nice about it was I was there when I was doing Senior Scholars [noncredit courses for seniors in the community] at Case, and I would get there at, maybe, noon to 1:00, and at that time a lot of the people there were in my own age group – they were my contemporaries. There were a few young ones and a few decrepit old ones, but at the time, these were people who had probably skated all their lives and felt quite comfortable skating.
I eventually got pretty well immobilized with arthritis. I’ve had severe arthritis. You may notice as I move around. I did bad things to my knee a few days ago and have even additional difficulty.
I’ve had a laminectomy for arthritis. I had a hip replacement and shoulder replacement, all for arthritic reasons, and, in each instance, the procedure was very successful. It hasn’t gotten me back to playing tennis or ice skating, but I can pretty well manage the daily achievements – though going up and down the stairs continues to be a major achievement. In a house like this, it’s definitely a two- or three-floor effort.
The basement is an integral part of this. I used to use the third floor, after the kids had grown and left, for a computer area, and I still have a very complete setup on the third floor. But since I’ve gotten a laptop, I do most of my computing on the second floor in my bedroom. It’s been a very satisfying thing.
Something that intrigues me is that I’ve read that of the great achievements, from a technological standpoint, of the last century, the cell phone outranks the computer. Of course, people could argue that you couldn’t have the cell phone without the computer, but the impact on the Third World, I guess, is more profound with the cell phone. It isn’t predicated on a line phone, therefore it doesn’t require stringing of cable and it’s been embraced, I think, in many of the poverty-stricken countries in its totality. Even relatively poor people have cell phones.
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There was a time when I routinely biked to [work at] Euclid Hospital. It’s probably close to 10 miles each way. I rather doubt that I could do it now. But I still bike fairly extensively. The interesting thing is I can bike more comfortably than I can walk. I’ve had this observation confirmed by two of my boys, who have had hip surgery similar to my own problem, who indicated that they, too, could bike with some facility without pain, where walking is much more demanding. Now I, for instance, just by design, I’ll bike from here up to Heinen’s for, not major [grocery] shopping, but for relatively minor things that I can put in a pannier and carry back home. It makes the effort kind of purposeful and it’s a fun venture.
The biking part of it I’ve enjoyed, especially because it has been an example that almost all of my kids have enjoyed, also. Miles and Howard have both had their hips replaced, but both are people who don’t think anything of biking 10 or 15 miles on a Sunday. And Howard has biked several times to Cape Cod from here. Christopher and Patrick biked all the way across the country during a summer. Both of our girls also bike.
I have a treadmill and an exercise bike in the basement. If the weather is bad, it affords me some exercise I wouldn’t otherwise get.
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Donald and Elaine Coburn have lived in their house near campus for more than 50 years. All seven of their children attended Gesu parochial school.
I met my wife when we were in St. Louis together. She was in college and I was in medical school. I met her at a dance that her college offered, and I continued to think she was pretty neat. And before we left our respective schools, we became engaged.
Originally, when we moved here, we were interested in the parochial school, which, of course, is Gesu, right next door. It was kind of good to push the kids out of the front door and [they’d] literally be there.
As the kids got older, five of our seven graduated from Carroll. Our two older boys graduated from Notre Dame.
One of our parental achievements has been that all seven of our kids have advanced degrees, in a variety of fields. And several of them were here [living at home] – for instance, our boy that has an MBA from Case [Western Reserve University] was here during that period. Others had already moved on and were pursuing graduate degrees. Mary, for instance, has a graduate degree from Northwestern. Our Chris, who is the second youngest, from George Washington in Washington, DC. Patrick from Case. And our next oldest boy was Howard, who has a law degree from Case. Then we have Cissy, who has a law degree from Ohio State. Miles got his doctorate from Ohio State. And Jim is a computer consultant and he has several degrees from Cleveland State. So they’ve all had a fairly generous exposure to advanced education.
We’re fortunate. All five boys are here [living in Northeast Ohio]. My oldest daughter is just now getting back into the workplace; she is working for the Ohio State Medical Association in Columbus. Mary is in Morristown [New Jersey].
We have 13 grandchildren, which is kind of neat. The oldest would probably be in her late 20s. The youngest is Mary’s, and he will be 4 shortly.
Establishing and raising a family of seven kids has been a very happy experience. I’ve greatly enjoyed my retirement years. Both Lanie and I have felt that these have been very generous years, ones we’ve been able to share with our family. We feel very fortunate that it’s been a very happy family – I mean, everybody talks to everyone else, and we get to see all of our children’s families.
As told to David Budin
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