How JFK Changed My Life

I can't tell you why I remember this in as much detail as I do. I was only seven years old. It was October of second grade. John F Kennedy was in a tight battle with Richard Nixon, the Vice President.  The Democratic and Republican National Conventions of that summer were the first I watched.  My parents let me stay up well pass my bed time to watch the conventions.  I was glued to the TV. I felt I was seeing democracy in action and it turned me on.

You see in New York City the public schools are closed on all election days (November, primary day and any special election).  From the year I was born until I finished sixth grade my mother was a poll worker.  She would take me with her from 7:00AM in the Morning till 9:00PM at night.  I would play with the other kids.  My mother and the other poll workers would play MahJong..  I learned the importance of voting, and thus have missed only a rare election my entire life.  Even if I was going to live in a place one year I registered to vote.  In college and medical school I voted absentee from school.

Woody Station Wagon

Car bwith speakers

I clearly remember it was a Sunday afternoon in October 1960.  The election was less then a month away. I was walking home from Sunday Hebrew School.  It was a few minutes after noon.  As I was walking the last little bit to my house a Woody Paneled Wagon with giant speakers on the roof was coming down the 72nd Avenue toward me.  It was plastered with campaign posters for JFK.  I heard patriotic music coming from the speakers and the music and the station wagon stopped and out bellowed, 'COME MEET THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES".  It then said this was just two blocks away, on Jewel(70th Ave.) Avenue off the corner of 164th Street.  My heart skipped a beat.

PS 200 Front

I checked with my Mom and went to the rally.  It was two blocks away at the far corner of PS 200 elementary school.  This was the closest school to my house.  However I went to a school (PS 154) almost three times farther, because PS 200 was built specifically for the complex of apartment buildings call Elechester built for the men in the local electricians union. On the map below you can see where my house is ( by the d in 72nd AVE, after you move the little man and the 'A' bubble to top edge of the map.).




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JFK at another Rally

Flat bed truck but without rail.

There was a giant crowd.  I was standing on the curb right by the third tree from the left in the street view image above.  We all waited what seemed like hours but was probably 45 minutes and a shout went up that he was coming.  I couldn't see since I was so short (I was only 7) and was standing on my tiptoes.  All of a sudden some men cleared the street in front of my and I say a flat bed truck coming toward me down the hill.  It stopped right next to the curb between the second tree and the one I was standing next to.  Everyone surged around the truck and I ended up next to the rear bumper.  I looked up and two feet in front of me was a giant standing on the back end of the flatbed truck and holding a rail.  He reached down and shock my hand.  I was awestruck.  He then gave a speach, which I don't remember a word of, but I became a die-hard fan of JFK that momment and a life time Democrat.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy. Some of these blogs may seem mundane. However, they are important foundations for later Blogs.

Fools Rush In: Saving Two Lives

We were living in Vienna Va. and I was working at the American red Cross Blood Research Laboratories at the NIH campus. The director of industrial design for the Am Red Cross was the regional director of the Industrial Design Group. They arranged a trip to the Amish area of Pennsylvania to tour the John Deer design facility. We had great tour of the design facilities and saw some of the first 3-D CAD systems in the world. We then all had dinner at a family style Amish restaurant. And we left to drive the two and a half hour drive back to DC at about 8 P.M.

We started driving on route 83 from Pennsylvania toward Baltimore. There was a detour and we had to leave the highway and go on a small two lane road that went through a very mountainous area near Hereford MD. Margie was driving and I was sleeping in the passenger seat. All of a sudden Margie stopped short thrusting me against the seat belt. I quickly awoke and looking out the windshield I saw in front of the car before us a tractor trailer laying on its side having rolled over between 120 and 150 degrees, about halfway between being on it's side and being on it's top. There was fuel spilling out of the tank onto the road. I rushed out of the car to the tractor and climbed up to the drivers window.


I climbed up the twelve feet to the window on the drivers side and looked in. I could see the driver trapped by the steering wheel and climbed through the window. He groaned "my brother". All I could see was a massive amount of chains in the back seat of the cab. I quickly realized that his brother was under all those chains. I quickly started to dig out the brother from under out. He had been sleeping in the back seat. Fortunately, I was able to get his head exposed. Neither of them were conscious at this time. It took almost 17 minutes for the local volunteer fire department to arrive. During that time I was keeping the neck stable on the brother in the back seat (I suspected a severe neck injury from having hundreds of pounds of chains fall on him (they were in the compartment under the matress he was sleeping on). Also he was unrestrained and likely to have injured his neck. While I was doing this the driver, his brother vomited. When the Hereford volunteer fire Dept arrived I refused to leave until someone with at least comparable training to myself arrived. I had worked seven years with the FAST team of western NY, was an EMT, had three years of surgical residency behind me. I explained I was already in the best position to render aid and the best skilled at the scene. They explained it was a highly dangerous situation because of the hundreds of gallons of fuel that had spilled. I told them you take care of the fuel and hand me two cervical collars and IV catheters and bags. I started an I.V on each. BTW there was not enough room for anyone else to come into the cab. I was doing this all upside down.I placed an cervical collar on each of the men. Several times I had to clear their months from vomit. I was given the Menaris France Award For Valiant Service in Emergency Medicine at their annual dinner in January 1984.

The Go team from Baltimore Shock Trauma Center was just recently organized and had not flown a mission yet. This rescue was their maiden rescue. The unique aspect of the team was that they had a surgeon, anesthesiologist, trauma nurses and carried O-negative blood for field transfusion. They could set up a full field surgical unit. They arrived about 45 minutes after the fire department and I allowed them to take over from me. I slowly backed out of the cab and was helped down by several of the firemen. It took them nearly 2 hours to get the men extracted. They had to get a crane to lift the cab. They first got a twenty ton crane and it was not enough finally they got a 45 ton crane and were able to get the men out of the tractor cab. We were finally ablee to get on our way about 2:30 in the morning. I took thee next day off from work and slept in. I was given the Citizen Award by the Baltimore County Fire Department. The two men both survived after weeks in critical care and months of rehab.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy. Some of these blogs may seem mundane. However, they

College: No This Is Buffalo Not Oxford.

It was June 1971 and I was on the plane on my way to Buffalo for an orientation for my freshman year. Now you may wonder why I was on the way to Buffalo when I had got a full ride academic scholarship to NYU (that will be a later blog). When I got there with several hundred other incoming freshman that would all become my closest friends(LOL), well at least a few, we got to sample what life at UB would be like. I met a girl that was the same height as me, six foot tall. She was the off spring of a Swedish man and Japanese woman that met during the occupation of Japan after WWII. She was absolutely Gorgeous and she was the first girl I knew that was my height. We spent most of that weekend together. It definitely gave me something to look forward to when I would be coming back in the fall.

They told us about a new experiment in American College Education that they were going to do. They wanted to start a residential college system similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge. There were going to be four colleges: Clifford Furness College (the science); College B (the humanities); Rachael Carson College (the environment); and an Art College. Clifford Furnas and College B were to be in McDonald Hall and the other two in the residential hall across the quad. The concept was that rather then upper class resident advisers, all the resident advisers will be graduate students. The Dorm director rather then being just some elderly couple would be a Junior Faculty member and their family. There would also be fellows of the College and they would hold seminars and offer non-credit courses exclusively for the members of the college. The idea was to have students who would expand their studies outside of the traditional disciplines and combine the arts and science when approaching a topic. I intellectually fell in love with the idea and ran to sign up. I met Lyle Borst PhD the Dean of Clifford Furnas College and Jon Ketchum (pictured at right) the Dean of College B. I will have lots more Blogs about both these men as they are two of the most important men in my intellectual development and also both had fascinating history and uniquely inquisitive minds.

We also met Warren and Tony Barbour(see picture of Warren on right) the dorm 'parents' . They lived with their new born daughter in an apartment on the first floor. Warren was an anthropology Professor and specialized in mid American ancient cultures and headed the excavation of The Teotihuacan Valley Project.

As a founding member, I stayed with Cliford Furnass College for six years through the end of my Junior year in Medical school(being the longest resident member ever). It was where I met Margie my wife. I had so many fantastic encounters with professors that I would never have had if I wasn't a resident there. Through Jon Ketchum I developed my strong interest in philosophy and stayed, during the summers, at the student residence Oakstone Farm that he ran. So stay tuned and I'll blog a lot on these topics and men.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

I Can Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.

It was Friday night and the Spring Fling at Jamaica High School was just ending. I as the chairman of the ticket committee was the de-facto social coordinator of the cast party. I decided on Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor on Queens Blvd in Forest Hills Queens. I had my motives for having it there. Thomas McNeil, who went on to found Cyote Ugly, one of my best friends in High School and had graduated a year earlier, and I had a bet.

Here's some history about the real Coyote Ugly. It won't make the movie any better or any worse, but you will at least be armed with some facts:

Coyote stands alongside the best New York shots-n-beer saloons such as (in order that I like them): Doc Holliday's, The Patriot, and Duff's Brooklyn. There are other pretenders who copy these five saloons by letting girls dance on the bar, but forget them. All of these places, Coyote included, owe their existence to one man: Tom McNeil.

It was Tommy who owned the original Village Idiot from the 1980s until 1993 that introduced the concept of bars of this genre to New York. Tommy's formula for success is based on this concept: men will stick around a bar a hell of a lot longer, and spend way more money, if all the bartenders are female. (Gilbert claims that when Tommy needed new help, he would put out a sign that read, SHAMELESS SLUTS WANTED: NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY)

You have to realize Tom was twice my weight. At that time I was about 150 pounds and Tom was over 300 and played semi-pro football. Our bet was that I could out eat him. So thirty-four(34) of us went to Jahn's after the schools spring movie extravaganza.

We all got to Jahn's and I took charge and we got a table along the back center wall that was long and we could all sit at. You have to realize this table could be seen from the entire restaurant. Just what I wanted. Everyone was hyped because the show had gone great. I had enough from the party fund (I controlled the money) for everyone to pretty much get what they wanted. I sat against the center of the table with my back to the wall. Tom sat directly across from me. Everyone sat around us.

The bet was that we would each eat a Twin Jahn's Burger Delux and then a kitchen sink. We had to eat everything on the burger plate before we ate the Kitchen Sink. So everyone ordered their dinner and Tom and I ordered our Twin Jahn's Burger Deluxe. After we finished it we ordered two Kitchen Sinks. You have to realize that when they bring out the Kitchen Sink they have the whole staff parade behind making a racket with bowls and spoons. They wanted to make sure everyone in the restaurant knew that someone had ordered it. The waitress came with 34 bowls and started to place the two Kitchen Sinks half way down the table on each side of Tom and I. I said no one for him, pointing to Tom, and one for me. This got the attention of everyone.

The Kitchen Sink, a mammoth creation with twenty-two flavors of ice cream and eleven different toppings served in a huge tureen. The trick is to gather a crowd large enough - and it easily feeds ten to twelve - to finish it before it melts into a puddle of sugary goo. While the atmosphere suggests time has stood still, the price tag on this extravaganza reminds us it has marched on . . . what cost us $16.95 in our youth is now a whopping $42.65. The memories alone are worth five stars.

We started eating and the cheers went up. It was like a tournament. As we ate through about a gallon of ice cream each we gathered a crowd. I don't think anyone in the place wasn't gathered around our table. It seemed as each a cheer went up as each spoon went into my mouth. I heard a sigh and large exhalation of breath and looked up to see Tom slumped back in his chair and about a pint of ice cream soup in his bowl. Well I finished the last few spoons of mine and then took Tom's and finished his. Then I collapsed back into my chair and one of the loudest cheers I heard in my life went up. I paid the bill for everyone.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Racing the Day Away.

When I was 14 I started working at Bridgehampton Race Track. I should not have been able to work till I was 18 but that never stopped me. I was also doing surgery on dogs at fourteen and people at 16(much more on this in later posts) so why would I let a little age deficiency stop me. My brother-in-law Bruce Newman had the year earlier got involved in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). The SCCA ran auto races and road rallies across the country. They got members to volunteer to do all the jobs around the track during the races. The four main jobs were Pit marshal, Flagging and communication, rescue and Timing and Scoring. Bridgehampton was arguably the most dangerous racetrack in the United States. They ran local, regional, national races and the Trans-Am and Can-Am races. Twenty people both race drivers and spectators alike were killed over the 45 years the track was open.

Take a look at the race course on this video of the Can-Am of 1968(jump to 1 minute and 10 seconds) (those cars are going 180-210 MPH):




The race track was built by local racing enthusiasts when in the early fifties people were getting killed and very serious accidents were happening on the back roads of Bridgehampton. It became one of the fastest and most dangerous tracks in the USA.

Also among the drivers with a deep sense of respect for the place is Mario Andretti, who first drove at Bridgehampton early in a career that includes a world championship and an Indianapolis crown.

''It's a special track,'' Mr. Andretti said in an interview. ''It was one of the first race tracks I raced on in my career, in 1965. It was actually an awesome course. It was dangerous, in a sense.''

The first of the course's 13 turns, a right-hander that dives downhill, was infamous among racers. ''Turn One was an unbelievable corner because it was blind, and you just fell out,'' Mr. Andretti said. ''It could scare the bejesus out of anybody.''

If you look at the video and see there were no guard rails. Those men in white jump suits were me when I was on flagging and communication (when I both almost died and saved someone else's life) and also when I was on rescue( again almost getting killed and saving someones life)(these to be later posts). Over the pit area you will see a tower, that is were I spent most of my time the last two summers working there. I met some of the greats of racing and had a ball getting an award for my work. My brother-in-law Bruce worked Pit Marshal all four years and I was for most of my first year.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.