Today we attended the dedication of the Cardiovascular Learning Center named after my father. When Dad died the hospital started a memorial fund, and they used the money to create a state-of-the art classroom and conference room, sorely needed in a cardiology department that serves medical students, residents and fellows. Dad started working at County as the only fellowship-trained cardiologist in the county in 1962, and the academic medical center grew up around him over the years, culminating in the arrival of the medical school in 1973 (I graduated from that medical school). I spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony today. I couldn't write about my father when he died four years ago; it's still hard, but this is a start.
My father loved to learn, and loved to teach. He was interested in almost everything – history, politics, economics, music, art, sports, wine, food – and of course medicine. I have met people who accumulate knowledge to use as a weapon, to wield power over others or to show off, but Dad loved knowledge for its own sake, and he delighted in sharing that knowledge. We grew up surrounded by books and magazines and newspapers; it’s really no surprise that we both ended up as English majors.
Dad was the best teacher I ever had. He taught me that no matter how expertly you can read the code of the EKG, you don’t know what it really means until you know the story of the heart beneath the leads. He taught me that if the tests don’t make sense, if they don’t match what the patient is telling you and what you see on exam, you should trust the patient and yourself and ignore the data. He was fascinated by the science of medicine, as he was by so many intellectual puzzles - the diagnostic process, the hunt for the answer – but he never let that fascination obscure his connection to the people for whom he cared.
Dad was passionate about his patients, and he was almost as passionate about the institutions and people he worked with. Even thought we're now standing in University Hospital, it will always be “County” to me, because that’s what Dad called it; he first worked here as a student researcher, and when I was a kid I came with him, sometimes to see patients and sometimes to watch him tinker with the original echo machines – the B-mode machines that used light-sensitive paper, so the exam had to take place in near-darkness. He was loyal almost to a fault, but that loyalty came with an expectation that everyone around him would live up to his standards for professional behavior, and that every decision would be based on what was best for the patient.
When I was a candy striper at Community Hospital, and then a summer volunteer and a medical student in this building, I was always known as my father’s daughter. I usually took off my nametag, so I didn’t spend my whole day saying “Yes, he is. Oh, thank you. Yes, I think he’s pretty terrific, too”. I was proud of my father, but I wanted to be my own person – and I figured I’d finally escaped when I started residency 3,000 miles away. My very first day of my very first rotation, we went around in a circle introducing ourselves, and my attending said “Jay's father is the reason I became a cardiologist”.
I now know that I will never be able to outrun that legacy, and I no longer want to. I’m deeply pleased to be back here and to speak to you as my father’s daughter, in a space that honors much of what was most important to him. I know how much he loved teaching students and residents and fellows, and I hope his spirit will continue to enrich the learning that happens here.
Finally, I should probably bring you up to date on Eve, because I know many of you spent a lot of time looking at her pictures in my father’s office. Eve is almost 11; she’s in fifth grade and she’s a musician, an artist, a dancer and a really good friend. I asked her what I should say today about her Grandpa, and she said “You should say he was kind, and that he loved his family very much”.
