Nostalgia

Random notes of Gerald A. Gellin

When I ran for Class President in our First Year, I shook hands with John Blum.  He responded: “I know you, you are Gellin the hand pumper.”  We were friends thereafter.  Jack gave up an academic career in surgery (urology), while at the University of Minnesota.  He enlisted in the U.S. Navy.  He served a year at Danang in Vietnam operating daily on wounded marines.  I asked him why did he volunteer to serve.  He answered: “In time of war the place for a young surgeon is at the battlefield.”  Jack practiced in San Diego.  He died in 1999. 

In our First Year I double-dated with Paul Strauss.  I recognized his knowledge of classical music.  I selected Paul to serve on the Hi-Fi Committee to purchase a stereo set and classical music records for the Student Lounge.  Tragically, Paul died in 1956.

I received excellent advice for that Committee from Amnon Fuhrer.  He convinced us to purchase Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.  Amnon, plagued with pseudohemophilia, died in 1980. 

Paule La Verne had an irrepressible smile.  She was a good friend.  While a resident in Pediatrics at St. Vincent’s Hospital, a paranoid schizophrenic patient of her psychiatrist husband, Albert La Verne, shot her in the Lobby of her 5th Avenue apartment building.  (Paule shielded her 3 children with her body).  Paule was taken to the nearby Mt. Sinai Hospital.  The ER physician who cared for her was our classmate, Bill Cohn.  Paule died from her wounds (in 1961). 

One of the best methods to bond with a classmate was at the Anatomy table in our first year.  One couple that worked together was Marianne Rudolf and Robert Goldberger.  Romance blossomed, and they married.  Bob was an outstanding researcher in biochemistry and administrator at the NIH, and then Provost at Columbia University.  Bob died in 2003.  Marianne, a psychiatrist, survives him.

Another group that bonded included myself and Jordan Finkelstein.  Both of us had fathers who were classmates at N.Y. Medical College, Class of 1930.  Jordan is now Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Endocrinology at Penn State Medical School.  The other two cadaver mates were Randy Chase (now ill from a severe stroke) and Robert Murray.  Bob told me about his summer jobs as a construction worker on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx.  His co-workers advised him to slow down and not work so hard.  Bob was a hard worker.  He died in 1997.

Our class inventor was Harvey Englesher.  One of his inventions was the disposable Foley catheter.  I asked Harvey about his royalties.  He said he gets a few cents for each one sold.  That did not sound fair to me.  Harvey responded.  “Do you know how many thousands are sold?”  Harvey died in 1985.

In our First Year I bonded with Howard & Penny Goldstein on our Class Trip to Bear Mountain.  We’ve been friends since then.  Howard, a gastroenterologist, developed metastatic colon/ pancreatic carcinoma.  I spent a weekend with him at his home in Beverly Hills, shortly before he died (in 2007).  When I left him his realistic parting words were; “You do not have to come to the funeral.”

In the beginning of our Third Year, as clerks on the Medicine ward at Bellevue, we were regularly Farberized by our Attending.  One of the three of us never received a negative comment.  It was Elias Rand.  He seemed to have learned the contents of our brand new Textbook of Medicine beforehand.  Esh, a nuclear medicine expert, died in 1992.

About 20 years ago I was delighted to host Ira Bernard Kron and his wife for dinner in San Francisco.  Ira, an internist in Pennsylvania recently underwent a heart transplant.  He wrote up his experience for Medical Economics, won a prize – a tip for two to San Francisco.  Ira lived several more years with his new heart.  He died in 1992.

I have referred to just a few of the 31 fine classmates that are no longer with us. 

                                                                                                            Gerald A. Gellin