My son Ben at his first birthday party. Nothing was holding him back from that cake.

One year ago today, I took my first tentative step on this Substack journey.

And over the past year, my life has changed in more ways than I could have imagined. This includes a retirement, a move and a lot of writing.

After eighteen months of traveling the distance between Gainesville and Eustis where Marci is working as medical director at Camp Boggy Creek work, we have bought a house in Mount Dora.

Even today we are putting new wood floors in (ourselves). We have a big move from our rental house to our Mt Dora home next week.

New wood floors in our bedroom. We are working hard to get the house ready before family weekends begin at Camp in September. Marci is the mastermind and great at flooring. I just do what she tells me to do.

It is quite different here from our rural three-acre homestead in Waldo. We now live in a 55-plus community with a homeowners association and a tiny yard. My love of gardening is finally confronting the reality of arthritis in my shoulders, hips, knees, and hands.

But the yard is beautiful. We live on the water, with a chorus of frogs to lull us to sleep. I have come to believe that one of the keys to happiness is learning to love what you have.

And we have so much. An embarrassment of riches.

Sunrise over the water in our new backyard and a family of ducks.

Marci has completed a successful summer season at Camp Boggy Creek and is preparing for the family weekends that will punctuate the school year.

The kids are good too. Anna is engaged to Eli and Ben to Anne. So we have a couple of weddings in our future. And Sara just started in Occupational Therapy school at the University of Florida. Go Gators!

As for me, I have recently taken up tai chi, which seems to be helping my joints, and I am enjoying the community pool here at Lakes of Mount Dora. I also auditioned for and was accepted into Voce Illumina, a new community choir in Mount Dora. I am one of only two men singing alongside twenty women. We are truly outnumbered. If you are a guy who likes to sing, we rehearse on Wednesday nights. We could use you.

I have spent much of the summer volunteering as a camp physician and have also done a little locums work, enough to keep my doctoring muscle in shape. Being at camp has given me another gift: the opportunity to become reacquainted with my guitar.

Much of my remaining time has been devoted to writing.

I completed the serialization of Stunt Mole, the first installment of my memoir. I began writing it during the pandemic, when my children were experiencing panic attacks and depression, because I wanted to tell them about my own struggles with those things while growing up in the 1970s.

One of the unexpected joys of sharing it here has been reconnecting with the people who are in the book. Through companion interviews, I have learned more about who they were then, who they became, and what our shared experiences meant to them. If you are interested in checking out the memoir or the companion interviews, you can step into them here. Stunt Mole Reader’s Guide.

I have also completed a draft of The Grizz, the second installment of my memoir. While working on it, I revisited letters I wrote to my parents from Alaska and from Camp E-How-Kee, an Eckerd Foundation wilderness program that offered troubled teenagers an alternative to detention during the 1980s. My goal is to have this out by next summer.

And I have just finished a month of posts focusing on the value of my high school performing arts program. The arts offered me refuge in high school and is where I made some amazing friendships. I plan to continue to offer interviews from the fascinating people who I went to high school and performed with. Singing and playing music has been such an important way for me to stay grounded during my career as a pediatric oncologist.

As we move into Pediatric Cancer Awareness month you’ll notice that the importance of artistic expression does not disappear.

Today at 2 pm EST, I will celebrate my first Substack anniversary with Registered Clinical Counsellor and fellow a cappella singer Haide Wall Giesbrecht who writes . During our Substack Live, we will explore the physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of singing. There may even be a guitar involved.

And throughout September, I will share stories about the extraordinary community that surrounds children and families facing cancer.

You will hear from my former teacher and mentor John Graham-Pole from as I comment on his exploits as a new physician at St. Barts hospital where he faced treating cancer when there were no cures. I plan to do a live with to talk about the art of medicine. She writes in memory of her son Marshal, a super creative kid who created beauty from discarded things, at Marshal’s Party. I am working on a collaboration with Kelly who writes in memory of her son Kevin, a brilliant boy who expressed himself by composing music at . I close the month with a live with a former pediatric oncology nurse practitioner where we will talk about why people go into oncology careers and what sustains them.

I will also introduce you to Dr. Bill Carroll, a world class leader in pediatric leukemia research and expert in mentorship; Dr. John Ligon, who is developing novel immunotherapy trials for osteosarcoma and other deadly childhood cancers; Emilie Lynch, a childhood cancer survivor, pediatric oncology pharmacist and patient advocate within the Children’s Oncology Group, and Nick Sano, Camp Director at Camp Boggy Creek and a survivor of childhood leukemia at age 3.

I hope to show becomes possible when scientists, clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, patients, families, artists, advocates, and philanthropists all work together to help kids, and how compassionate creativity heals a fractured world.

So go grab yourself a piece of smash cake and pull up a rocking chair.

We have some stories to tell.

Me and Marci walking Indigo in our new neighborhood last weekend.

Late one night in Hollywood Grit, Diana Elizabeth Jordan, playing Gladys, is sweeping the patio outside her duplex apartment building. Wearing a flowing red floral dress, she looks elegant but tired. Her work is interrupted by her tenant, Grit Thorn, who has survived a beating and has been drinking. Gladys immediately recognizes the danger beneath his dark humor.

“All these people out here chasing dreams, and you’re chasing death—wasting all that potential,” she tells him.

“Death is certain, Gladys,” Grit replies, “and certainty is comforting.”

Gladys refuses to accept his resignation. When he insists that he has his dreams, she challenges him to do something about them. “It’s never too late to start,” she says.

He dismisses the thought as something she read on a coffee mug. But Gladys persists, offering both hard-won wisdom and the practical reminder that his rent is due.

In just a few minutes onscreen, Diana creates a woman who sees possibility in another person even when he can no longer see it in himself. It is a role that reflects the arc of Diana’s own life. As a teenager with cerebral palsy, she found teachers at Oak Park and River Forest High School who saw possibility in her. More than four decades later, she is an actress, teacher, and disability advocate who now does the same for others.

“The movie, Hollywood Grit, now that was a magic moment because that part was not written for a character with a disability. The director said, ‘I think having you would elevate the film.’

“That girl that dreamed about moving to California and being an actress is actually doing that!

A kid who wanted to act

Diana and her younger sister Susan (now Charlie) lived in Rockford in Illinois for six years. Her father, Charles, was a minister. Then, they moved to Oak Park.

Diana’s cerebral palsy mildly affected her speech and gait. She was usually one of the only students with a disability in her class.

“My mom really advocated for me to be mainstreamed. It was not until I got older that I realized how fortunate I was that my mom really fought for me.”

In grade school she already knew she wanted to be an actress. Diana acted in a couple school plays. She tried out but did not get into plays in middle school. These early experiences did not dissuade Diana from her passion to be an actress. Diana had a dream but up until high school there was not much evidence that the world would make room for it

Diana’s family. From right to left—Diana, mom Margaret, dad Charles, and sister Charlie (formerly Susan).

They never told me I didn’t belong

At OPRF, the possibilities seemed almost limitless: theatre, choir, speech, original comedy, puppetry, and dance, guided by teachers who took young artists seriously.

Because of her disability, Diana faced barriers to participation in the arts that many of her classmates did not face. However, she found teachers who supported and encouraged her to participate and share her gifts.

“For me as an artist who had a disability when there were no examples out there, Mr. Eitrheim, Miss Barrickman’s and Miss Englehardt’s support was critical. They could have told me no. They could have told me this isn’t a possibility for you! They told me it would be hard and challenging, but never said no you should not do this. They always made me feel like I had something to offer as an artist. I am extremely thankful for that!“

Diana explains that the encouragement she received in high school helped her navigate the barriers she encountered later.

“I think part of that was the opportunity I got in high school. I didn’t get everything I auditioned for, nobody does, but I got honest encouragement. It’s not like it was a little pat on the back of an opportunity but I thought they saw something in me and gave me an opportunity! I did not think about it like that then, but when I think about it now, I am like ‘Oh my God!’ I was in The Miracle Worker and I played Penny the neighbor girl who was living in the very liberal South in the 1870s…it was non-traditional casting before it was a thing, they were just giving me a genuine opportunity and that was really terrific for me!”

Diana as a Sophomore in High School. Being cast in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was a highlight of her high school acting career.

Her teachers did not confuse inclusion with lowering expectations. Diana auditioned. Sometimes she was cast; sometimes she wasn’t. They gave Diana the opportunity to be judged as an artist. That’s what made the encouragement real.

Even then, Diana was not only searching for her own place in the theatre; she was helping younger performers find theirs. She remembers during The Music Man being particularly delighted to be in charge of the children in the band.

“I remember the son of the stage manager, her little boy had Down syndrome. I kind of took him under my wing…I threw a little cast party for them with cookies and juice in the green room!”

The place where she belonged

Diana explains that she struggled with identity in high school. “I was an insecure kid…But I think it was in theatre I felt the most at home. I did feel different, but I felt more accepted in choir and theatre.”

Diana developed a sense of confidence at OPRF that propelled the rest of her career. “You have to believe in whatever you have in order to do whatever you do. You have to have that humble confidence. But that initial confidence was instilled in that insecure girl that went to OPRF. She was an insecure kid that wanted to be an actor, and she was lucky enough to have teachers who honestly encouraged that. I had other friends who did not get that encouragement at their high schools. I have had to fight a lot more as an adult.”

When the barriers became clear

I asked Diana whether, as an actress with a disability, she felt like a pioneer.

“It’s really funny, because I did not think of it from the activist perspective at the time. I was just a kid who wanted to act. It’s interesting now for people to say I was such a pioneer, but that’s not how I started out. I started out saying “I want to act” and I had the opportunity to do that because I went to a high school with a great performing arts program. As I got older and went on to college and to pursue a career, the barriers became more apparent. I remember in college at the University of Kansas a professor saying that he would spare me and let me out of a class because I did not have perfect speech. It was a dialect class and he actually told me he would fail me, so I dropped the class. I have had to fight and advocate like that my entire life.”

In spite of these barriers, Diana earned a bachelor’s degree in theatre, an MFA in acting, and an associate degree in occupational therapy.

“I moved to Chicago at a time when there were a lot of theatre companies. You were doing your day job and then at night you would go and do a show. And again, I worked, but they didn’t know what to do with me because I had a disability and I definitely got that message. But I also got the message You’re good, but how do we cast you?”

”Because of the good opportunities I had when I was younger to do acting, it helped me to understand that the disabilities that are part of who I am do not define who I am. Twenty-five percent of the population has some type of disability, but it is such a minuscule part of my story. I am a teacher, and a sister and now an aunt and a godmother!”

“I did start to do some artist education with some of the summer programs offered through the city of Chicago. And I really liked that. I really liked teaching artists! Chicago theatre in the late 80’s and early 90’s was very exciting and bustling. There were a lot of young theatre companies. It was also around the time that non-traditional casting was becoming more…they were working on the question of how do you reimagine theatre with more diverse casting? I was thinking that disabilities needed to be a part of that discussion and the intersection of disability and theatre should be a part of the non-traditional casting model.”

Diana fell into the role of a disability activist naturally. She feels that she was following in the footsteps of her father who focused on urban ministries during the civil rights era.

It was then that Diana met two playwrights who were disability activists who became her mentors, Susan Nussbaum and Mike Ervin. They used their platform as playwrights to tell stories of the lives of people with disability through humor and drama.

Through working with other actors and artists with disabilities, Diana explained that she had a shift in attitude about her own disability. Disability was part of Diana’s identity, but never the whole of it.

“My activism was not about overcoming my disability. In college, I think it was oh, I am going to overcome my disability. When I got involved in activism I came to realize this was more a part of my identity. I learned that a problem isn’t necessarily the disability, but rather a lack of access and how specifically disability has been stigmatized…My goal as an actor was to add some roles that were not necessarily disability specific, where I could tell time-tested stories. And I have been able to do that! It hasn’t been easy!”

The pursuit is the success

In discussing her life journey, Diana often compares her childhood dreams to her actual life path. “I am known in some disability circles. What I thought of fame at sixteen looks very different at sixty. It’s no longer for me about being an A-lister or having a big house. Not that those things still can’t happen. There are still things I want to happen and I still have big dreams. Those dreams haven’t gone away. I think the difference is that I don’t define my success based on whether those bigger dreams happen.

“Would I love to go to the Oscars? You bet! I still have the dream of going there one day, if it’s just to walk the red carpet. But then again, I have been on the red carpet because I have been to film premieres. And every film festival has a red carpet. You don’t always see them on the news, but red carpets are part of the industry.”

“If I only define my success by the big dreams that I don’t have control over, there is so much in this industry that I don’t have control over. Whether or not I get a role, I can do everything I can to present what I have to offer, and then I have to let it go. All I can do is do a really great job and show someone what I have to offer. I think the pursuit of the dream for me is the success! The pursuit is what I have control over, I don’t have control over the other stuff.”

Learning to love herself

Diana eventually came to understand that some of the insecurity she experienced in high school was depression. That realization came in 2004.

“It made a lot of things in my life make sense,” she said. “It has made me a stronger advocate, not just for people with disabilities, but for mental health awareness and how we need to take care of ourselves and each other.”

Medication made her life easier to navigate, and understanding her depression also changed the way she approached acting. Rather than using emotional recall and returning to psychologically dark places, Diana learned to draw upon her imagination and express emotion more physically.

She also built a broader practice of self-care around faith, movement, laughter, rest, and service. Some Saturdays, she simply turns off the alarm and lets herself sleep.

“I have had to learn to speak to myself in the way I would speak to others,” she said. “I always say nice things to others, so I really work on that.”

In keeping with this vow to herself, Diana wrote a one woman show called Happily Every After about her journey to love herself.

Diane explains: “I was coming to realize that parts of my dream did not manifest in the way I thought they would. As I worked on that one woman show I realized it was really important to me to love myself and that was what that journey’s about.”

Today, Diana is living the dream that once seemed so distant. Her life in Los Angeles combines acting, teaching, disability advocacy, and close relationships with her family.

The opportunity to play Gladys in Hollywood Grit was a dream come true. After playing a pivotal role in Hollywood Grit, she was cast in the medical drama, The Pitt as Linda Stevens, a middle aged woman having chest pain.

“Being on The Pitt was an amazing experience. There is a saying in the industry about it starts at the top. Meaning the top person sets the tone, and for The Pitt, that’s Noah Wiley. We didn’t have any scenes together, but when I wrapped, he came to the set and thanked me. I also got to meet Seth Caskey, the casting director, who cast me, and I got to thank him.

Diana on the set of The Pitt, with Emmy Award winning actor and producer, Noah Wiley.

Diana has enjoyed working with other actors with disabilities, and is particularly thrilled when they are successful. She has been particularly inspired by the success of her actor friend Troy Kotsur who happens to be deaf. Mr. Kotsur won an Oscar for his role on CODA (short for Child of Deaf Adults).

“I got to see my friend get an Oscar! Troy Kotsur and I worked together on a play in Santa Barbara in 1996 called Flight. Whenever I see Troy I give him a hug and then I think “I’m hugging someone who has an Oscar!”

Holding the door for the next generation

In addition to acting, Diana has run for and was a delegate for the screen actors guild convention. There, she was able to take her advocacy to another level

“I was one of the delegates to the SAG Convention in 2025. I feel honored to be one of the delegates selected by my fellow union members. My advocacy has always been inclusive!”

Diana successfully ran to be a delegate at the Screen Actors Guild convention, and opportunity to further her advocacy for actors with disabilities.

In 2026, she coproduced and acted in a short film, The Family, for the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. She also conducts workshops for children, and mentors young performers.

“Advocacy-wise, I have gotten to sit on panels and talk with decision-makers about the importance of casting people with disabilities.… I also work at Performing Arts Studio West, where I teach actors with developmental disabilities. Hopefully I am helping the next generation of actors. It’s wonderful for me—and I say this from a place of humility—when someone reaches out and says, Can I talk to you about how you pursued your career?”

The teachers at OPRF once helped Diana recognize what she had to offer. Today, she does the same for a new generation of performers.

Blessings of family

Diana feels particularly blessed to live near her family. Her sister Charlie lives near her in LA. Her parents, Margaret and Charles Jordan, live in Upland, California. Her dad is 90 and her mom says she’s 58 but Diana knows that’s not true because Diana just turned 60. “I am very blessed that I still have my parents. Very much of who I am is from my father. I grew up experiencing his activism. At the time we were growing up we were getting those messages through osmosis.

Diana with her sister, Charlie (formerly Susan). Charlie too was a product of the Oak Park River Forest High School performing arts program. She has had a stellar career, as an executive for BET and director. Charlie led efforts to honor teacher extraordinaire, Diana Ivas at our recent OPUS reunion/tribute, She’s the One. She also has an amazing story to tell!

Be patient with yourself. It’ll be amazing

When Diana reflects, she realizes how her experiences at OPRF High School catapulted her through many obstacles that would have stopped a less tenacious and passionate artist.

“I realize how incredibly lucky I was to be at OPRF when the teachers who were there were there…I am eternally grateful that I got to go there. My teenage years were not easy, and high school was hard, but it was also incredibly amazing and I got to meet the wonderful people who were my friends and teachers. My drug of choice is gratitude, and I partake in it quite often!”

I asked Diana if she were to have a conversation with her younger self, what would she say? After a thoughtful pause she said with a kind, motherly tone

“Diana, your life is not going to always turn out the way you dream of it right now. However, just be patient because the way it will turn out will be so amazing!“

Diana Jordan at the opening of her film, Hollywood Grit.

Robert Fuller and the Oak Park River Forest High School A Capella Choir, circa 1980.

It had been twenty years, and the auditorium had changed little from how we remembered it—a little dark, a little musty.

Bob Fuller, a little grayer but still brimming with stories and goodwill, sat comfortably in his wheelchair. He had us sing softly on an “O” while he philosophized about relative versus perfect pitch, bringing in the altos and then the sopranos to complete the opening chord of Locus Iste.

More than a hundred former students, including me and my wife Marci, had come back to sing with him.

We were in our happy place.

Bob reminded us that in 1981 we had been the top choir in the state. He challenged us to recreate that sound. Karen Rosen Thornburg remembers him repeatedly stopping the choir, demanding that we rise to that old standard.

Finally, he shook his head.

“Well, ya ain’t what ya used to be!”

We cracked up.

We all knew it. And yet, to come back after so many years and once again be led by the legend himself—we treasured the opportunity.

And so did Bob.

In a conductor’s note included in the program, Bob called the reunion “the opportunity of a lifetime.” He went on to explain how he felt about rehearsing with his former students. The concerts, he said, were just icing on the cake.

“The real ‘stuff’ happened in the rehearsals…This reunion, aptly titled OPUS: The OPRFHS 20th Alumni Concert, gave all that participated a chance to delve back into our pasts and recreate those glorious moments in the rehearsal rooms. I wish you in the audience could have been with us both in those days and in these days when we explored the wonders of great music literature.”

What exactly was so magical about Bob Fuller’s rehearsals? And why did all these former students, now with busy family lives and careers, come back to Oak Park to sing with their former high-school choir director?

WHEN ONE LIFE CLOSED, ANOTHER OPENED

Bob was playing on his high school football team when he was stricken with polio.

In high school, Bob loved sports. He was a talented basketball player and also loved baseball. In ninth grade he went out for football. One afternoon, after a game where he did not play, he complained that his legs hurt. That night, he collapsed while trying to walk to the bathroom.

He was diagnosed with polio and hospitalized on the third floor of the hospital in Little Rock, in isolation. The whole football team gathered outside the hospital to show their support, while Bob looked down at them from his third-floor window. His teammates sent an autographed football up to his room.

Later, he returned to school walking with wooden underarm crutches. Sometimes his football classmates carried him up the stairs so he could attend his classes.

It was then that music moved to the center of Bob’s life. Polio had ended the athletic future he had imagined for himself.

Anita remembers that Bob seemed undaunted by the change.

“He just turned his attention to the piano…I have never heard him complain. And I have known him all of my life. He just took it in stride.”

THE MAN BEHIND THE MUSIC — Bobby Scott

Bob met his future wife Anita in first grade. They became childhood best friends—and, off and on, boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Bobby Scott” met Anita in first grade, starting a lifelong friendship culminating in marriage.

“We called him Bobby Scott in those days. His name was Robert Scott Fuller. But everybody called him Bobby Scott…He was my first-grade boyfriend.”

And by fourth grade, apparently things had gotten serious. At a Girl Scout dance, Bobby Scott gave Anita his Boy Scout ring.

“So I guess we went steady in the fourth grade!” Anita smiled.

After Searcy High School, Bob attended Hendrix College, where he studied piano and music. After college, he worked at the Methodist church in Searcy and married Anita. The newlyweds then traveled by bus to New York, where Bob earned a Master of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary. He spent another year studying at Juilliard under Abraham Kaplan, serving as an assistant conductor.

Bob Fuller in 10th grade. The people of Searcy raised funds to buy Bob a piano.

Kaplan had a major influence on Bob’s conducting style, which was calm and understated rather than flamboyant.

Anita remembers, “I love Bob’s conducting style. To me, it’s unique. He has such a gentle way of conducting.”

Former student, Amy Anderson de Jong, who went on to become a professional singer and voice teacher in the Chicago area, reflects: “His conducting was elegant. He was able to unite us in common musical goals with gentleness and clarity…He got us completely engaged without over singing.”

Bob conducting his alumni at the 2011 reunion event. (Image Courtesy of Chris Hayewski)

During his year with Kaplan, Bob served as assistant conductor of the Camerata Singers, which performed with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

Anita remembers: “Bob had to get onto the stage before the rest of the chorus. Bernstein often arrived early too. He knew Bob by name.”

Bob later named the OPRF elite a cappella small group the Camerata Singers after the New York Ensemble.

__________________________________________________________________

SERENDIPITY—Finding His Calling

After New York, Bob returned to Searcy and worked at the Methodist church. Then, Jonesboro’s choir director became ill. They needed someone to fill in, so they asked Bob.

“He did, and he loved it.” Anita recalls. He remained the choir director there for over a decade.

In 1973, a devastating tornado destroyed much of the high school where Bob was working. The band and choir began to meet in a church.

Through a connection with his band-director colleague, Bob ended up teaching at a summer music program at SIU in Carbondale in 1978. There, Jack Wirtz, director of the Oak Park River Forest High School performing arts program, saw him conduct and was impressed with how the students responded to him. The choir directing position was open at OPRF as the former choir director was ill.

When Bob returned home, he explained to Anita that Oak Park might want him.

“I didn’t drop a beat. I said, ‘Take it.’ We went up, saw the town, and fell in love with Oak Park.”

And in Oak Park, as in Jonesboro, his students loved him. Karen Rosen Thornburg has some ideas about why.

Before Karen ever stepped into OPRFHS, music had been stitched into the fabric of her life. As the daughter of a cantor, she grew up singing in temple and leading youth choruses.

“Singing was a big part of my identity,” she says. “It was a beautiful gift. But it was tangled up with mixed-up emotions I had about my dad. He was so gifted musically, but he teased us, criticized us, compared us. And after the divorce, he just left. It made me question my worth for a long time.”

Enter Mr. Robert Fuller.

“He saved it for me,” Karen says simply.

On his very first day directing choir, he stopped rehearsal, pointed to Karen—whose name he didn’t yet know—and asked her to stay afterward.

“I thought I was in trouble.”

Instead, he told her he loved her voice and suggested that she take voice lessons. Karen explained that she couldn’t afford them.

Mr. Fuller didn’t hesitate.

“Come see me at lunch,” he said.

For weeks, she received private voice lessons from him until she earned enough money at her after-school job at Peterson’s Ice Cream to afford lessons with a vocal coach at school.

“Mr. Fuller saw me. And not just me—somehow, he saw the good in everyone. He had this way of raising you up to your best self. There was something angelic about him.”

That experience with Bob Fuller represented the best of Karen’s time at OPRFHS: high expectations, a sense of purpose, and a playful, joyful energy. Many of us felt the same way

Karen Rosen Thornburg (center) flanked by Nina Fracarro and Terri Jordan, performing with the OPRF Singers. (Image from the Tabula, 1981, our yearbook.)

THE FULLER STANDARD — Excellence mattered

Fuller wasn’t beloved because he made everything easy.

Quite the opposite.

He expected excellence from his students, both musically and personally.

Karen Rosen Thornburg remembers those high standards as inspiring:

“I adored the hard work. It felt important. You felt seen. You felt like what you were doing mattered.”

In 1981, the A Cappella Choir competed and was named first in the state of Illinois. Bob reminded the choir that getting there was no reason to rest on our laurels.

“It’s one thing to get there. It’s a whole other thing to stay there,” Karen remembers him saying.

Bob chose his repertoire out of respect for his students. He believed teenagers were capable of doing difficult things beautifully.

“They demanded and respected great repertoire,” he recalled in his reunion notes.

Amy Anderson de Jong explains: “He had faith that we could do difficult repertoire and he always gave us time and the skills to succeed with it.”

The Camerata Singers learned the Liebeslieder Waltzes, hauntingly beautiful and technically challenging. Anderson de Jong explains how well Bob prepared her and her classmates; “We learned it so thoroughly that when I sang it as a professional singer in NYC years later there was nothing to undo.”

That preparation didn’t end when Bob left school. Anita remembers him sitting at home with a board he’d fashioned across his chair, scores spread in front of him.

“He was just constantly studying music.”

John Register, class of ’83, remembers that Bob chose repertoire specifically for the venues where they would perform in Europe.

“We were well prepared by Mr. Fuller to go to Europe and sing songs like Locus Iste by Anton Bruckner and some of the other songs that he knew would be great for a specific church in Brugge because of the overtones and everything. He knew all these things and he picked the music based on the places we were going. And we had no clue!”

My sister Alice remembers disappointing Bob during one of those European concert tours.

She and her roommate, Carrie Rehkopf, had a water fight in their hotel room just as Bob was making his rounds.

“We were in the hotel bathroom, and the shower nozzle came off. It was one of those handheld shower heads. We thought it was hilarious.

We got our asses kicked.

But we had fun.

One of the last nights, we sang in what must have been a tenth-century church—a Romanesque church. It was very simple, but the acoustics were unbelievable.

The music just resonated around us.

It was this magical moment. I remember thinking it was one of the most incredible musical experiences I’d ever had, and I ended up writing about it in my college application essay.

I also remember that after the concert, the mayor of the town treated us to pizza at a little restaurant.

I don’t know... it was just a wonderful trip.”

It is that combination of fun, rigor, and an expectation of excellence that so many of us still remember.

“ONE OF THE BEST RACONTEURS” — Joy mattered too

But excellence with Bob Fuller was rarely grim.

After his death, Barry Cooper reminisced on Facebook:

“I loved that he would cut us off from singing just to tell us a story. We didn’t seem to mind. He was one of the best raconteurs I’ve ever known!”

Karen Rosen Thornburg remembers another infamous Fuller story. After the men sang the opening of Swansea Town, featuring all-male voices, Mr. Fuller dismissed the girls from rehearsal so he could coach the boys on the low bass part.

“We crowded the door, dying to know what was going on,” Karen laughs.

Later, they learned that Fuller had told the boys to imagine walking on sand and leaving three tracks.

“That was Fuller—a perfect mix of mischief and brilliance.”

Apparently, Robert Fuller’s lunch hour belonged to his students. He gave voice lessons, coached students, and rehearsed barbershop quartets.

I knew that firsthand. During my senior year, I sang baritone in a barbershop quartet formed out of the A Cappella Choir. Fuller met with the four of us over lunch, patiently coaching us through old standards like “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Sweet, Sweet Roses of Morn.”

And because it was lunchtime, there was almost always food around. Bob had a favorite line, lifted straight from Wimpy in Popeye:

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Before one fall concert, our lead singer was nowhere to be found. Fuller didn’t panic. He simply offered to step in and sing lead with us if necessary.

Our missing singer finally strolled in just before we went onstage, so Bob never had to make his barbershop debut that night.

But I remember the gesture.

That was Fuller. He expected us to do the work, but he was always there—teaching, joking, telling stories, and ready to step in when we needed him.

A PLACE TO BELONG TO SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY

Many of my close friends and I found sanctuary in the beautiful music and the inclusive environment Fuller created.

Fuller once remarked:

“I was always surrounded by fascinating people. They were young people trying to grow up.”

Anita adds, “He loved you kids, and he loved being in Oak Park.”

She remembers that his students often stayed after rehearsal and hung around in Bob’s office.

“Each year there’d be a certain two or three that would love to hang around in his office. He liked that.”

Bob wasn’t looking at us as sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses. He saw us as young people becoming ourselves. He wanted to have a positive impact on how we grew—to instill an appreciation of beauty and teach us how to work together to create excellence.

Amy Anderson de Jong noted: “It takes courage for anyone to sing and he understood that.

Amy Anderson de Jong performs a solo at Fuller Fest. (Picture courtesy of Chris Hayewski)

PERFECT, QUIET STRENGTH

By the time we knew Bob, polio had been part of his life for decades.

His disability didn’t stop him, but neither did he pretend it wasn’t part of his life.

In Facebook reflections on his life, former student Raina Ryser recalled an incident involving a maintenance worker and Bob’s handicapped parking space.

The worker, apparently in disbelief that Bob was entitled to the space, said:

“Walk for me.”

Fuller refused to perform his disability on demand.

“I’ll be walking to lunch in twenty minutes. You are more than welcome to watch.”

Raina remembered:

“He answered with perfect, quiet strength.”

Richard Pekala Garrin, a fellow teacher, remembered the incident as well.

“Bob handled it like Bob would—with dignity.”

Karen Fuller, Bob’s daughter, remarked:

“Dad may have had physical struggles, but his even-tempered class and kindness were far stronger.”

Anita adds, “It didn’t bother him that much, but it sure made me mad. I just thought that was so tacky.”

We knew Bob walked with crutches, of course. But his musicianship, storytelling, humor, and mentorship were so much more central to how we perceived him that his disability sometimes seemed to disappear.

“He never, ever complained.” Anita remarked.

People around Bob sometimes seemed to forget his disability altogether. Anita remembers an acquaintance once having an entire conversation with Bob’s brother Billy, mistaking him for Bob. Then Billy simply walked away.

Anita’s reaction? “What do you think, there’s been some miraculous healing of Bob? They didn’t even notice.”

JOHN REGISTER — From “What?” to “Wow”

John Register was a brilliant teenager—a cellist, singer, and world-class athlete who just happened to also be black in Oak Park. While he excelled at OPRFHS, he also experienced discrimination.

Anita remembers Bob being impressed with John’s combination of athleticism and musicianship.

She recalls “Bob was in awe of John Register.”

In high school, like many of us, John found refuge in the choir. John remembers initially noticing Fuller’s disability.

Then he realized: “He’s our leader…The music was the vehicle to draw people out and what they were capable of doing.”

John was particularly appreciative of how Bob treated his choir as a meritocracy. Bob featured John’s beautiful, rich baritone voice in solo pieces with the choir. And he treated everyone with respect and kindness.

“He taught me and others how to honor people who are different.

John Register on the 1980 European tour with choir buddies Elyssa Rosen (center) and Jenny Collins (left).

After high school, while serving in the military, John continued to excel in athletics. Eventually, he contended for the Olympic team as an elite hurdler. Then a freak accident led to the loss of his leg.

Years later, after John’s amputation, Bob reached out to him and reassured him.

“You’re going to adapt to this. It’s going to test your mettle, but at the same time you’ll figure it out.”

John remembers what was remarkable about that conversation:

“There wasn’t...a call out to the disability. There was a call out for the opportunity.”

THE LONG ECHO — What his students became

Bob Fuller’s legacy lives in what his students carried forward.

An appreciation of excellence. A respect for beauty. A sense of how people can work together to create something remarkable. We internalized the music, but we also internalized his voice, exhorting us toward excellence.

Karen Rosen Thornburg still carries Bob’s voice with her. She became a leadership coach and explains how his influence shows up in her work:

“That stage taught me how to show up in front of a room, how to listen, how to connect.”

John Register spends his life coaching, mentoring, and speaking. He explicitly connects that work to Fuller:

“I think it’s an obligation—like how Mr. Fuller poured himself into us—that I have to do.”

And Amy Anderson de Jong explains that Fuller’s interest in each of his singers as a person rubbed off on her.

“I try to emulate his generosity in approaching each of us as unique people trying to grow up and finding our voices.”

And when his former students sing or play music, Fuller is still there.

Kirk Glienke, a jazz saxophonist who lives in Colorado, confided:

“When I sing with my choir, Bob is always there.”

Many of us can still hear the songs—John Edwards singing “Little David, Play on Your Harp,” Amy Anderson singing “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” along with our own alto, tenor, or bass parts and Fuller’s voice exhorting us toward excellence.

That choir room became our refuge, the place where our heart

s could breathe.

Amy also remembers the advice Fuller gave her when she decided to pursue music professionally:

“Don’t ever lose your love for singing.”

At the time, she couldn’t imagine that happening. Decades later, she understands what Fuller was telling her: protect the joy that brought you to music in the first place.

Even when dementia began taking memories from him, Anita says music remained.

“He could still play the piano.”

So, this is why we all came back.

We came back to relive the magic of the rehearsals, the deep beauty of the music, the warmth and humor of the stories, and the wisdom he imparted.

Stories. Laughter. Tears.

We came back from all over the country.

Bob conducting a choir of a hundred plus alumni at Fuller Fest. (Courtesy of Chris Hayewsky)

And we returned again in 2011 for another heaping helping of what Bob was serving.

And it turned out that we weren’t the only ones who needed those reunions.

Anita remembers: “It was just a shot in the arm. I mean, he absolutely loved it…That was one of the best things that ever happened to him, I think.”

Kevin Bry wrote a story about it in the Wednesday Journal.

“His former students can’t stop showing their admiration, appreciation and love for Bob Fuller. Like birds flying homeward, an image a number of his favorite choral pieces evoke, his students keep coming back to him.”

Reflecting on Fullerfest, Bob wrote:

“All of it represents the love we have for each other and for the music we continue to share together.”

The community Fuller created around music, stories, and excellence is his legacy. That legacy now ripples outward through the lives and work of his students.

OPUS scholarships honor Fuller and the other performing-arts teachers who shaped us by investing in another generation.

After nearly an hour of telling me stories about Bobby Scott, I asked Anita if there was anything else she wanted people to know.

Rather than telling me about Juilliard, Bernstein, Jonesboro, Oak Park, awards or music, she said:

“I sure do miss him. I miss him so much.”

______________________________________________________________________

CODA

Eventually we found ourselves back on the risers, watching Bob Fuller raise his hands.

A breath.

And we began with a beautiful major chord, the basses thundering resonantly at the bottom of our range.

Locus iste a Deo factus est.

This place was made by God.

Bruckner’s words were written for a church, a sacred place. Though an expert in sacred music, Bob Fuller probably wouldn’t have described a high-school choir room that way.

But some of his students might.

Something powerful happened in those rehearsals.

We learned to listen to one another. To work hard. To laugh at ourselves. To take our individual voices and make them part of something larger and more beautiful.

Fuller described us more simply.

“They were young people trying to grow up.”

And while we were doing that, Bob Fuller gave us a place where we belonged.

Bob Fuller basking in the love of his students on his last day of teaching in 1991. He still impacts our lives today. (Courtesy of Kevin Bry, Wednesday Journal, February 10, 2012)

Two of my closest friends from high school, Alec Rubenstein and Laurie Reisig-Riss—sailing on her dad’s boat on Lake Michigan in 1980. She and I had been friends since grade school playing orchestral music together.

Author’s Note: Looking back, I can identify a handful of people who quietly changed the direction of my life. Laurie Reisig-Riss is one of those people. I had a tumultuous childhood due to experiences of bullying and depression that left me with feelings of shame, guilt and depression. These friendships, teachers and mentors helped me survive and eventually thrive. I’ve chronicled their stories in my book Stunt Mole.

Laurie and I became friends in elementary school. We played together in orchestra, dissected a fetal pig together in middles school, and did a lot of fun things together. In high school, we spent several weekends planting seeds to restore the Illinois prairie, traveled to Europe with the orchestra, and even started a book club where we discussed the local author Earnest Hemingway.

She was a friend who accepted me as I was, warts and all. She always talked to me about her crushes and made me laugh.

A little over three years ago a group of high school friends gathered to honor Laurie who was fighting a fatal form of liver cancer. The cloud of COVID had lifted, but will still felt a little uneasy meeting in large groups.

The dinner was at La Notte, an elegant Italian restaurant that was part of the Oak Park Carlton Hotel. Built just before the great depression, the restaurant had the elegance of the gilded age but the weight of time left it dark and subdued. The owner of the restaurant met me, Marci and my brother Jim in the back room—an intimate, elegant space. He wanted to know how we wanted to handle the wine and the bill—and we were working this out as the first guests arrived. It was exciting to see folks some of whom I had not seen in forty years. From then the night flew by.

Me, Laurie and my brother Jim at dinner that night.

Soon, the wine was flowing freely and the conversations and laughter too. We eventually sat down and ordered dinner. Then, Laurie did something that would not be surprising to those who knew her. She held court. She asked each of us to give a detailed report about what was happening in our lives.

As we went around the table it dawned on me…what a fascinating group of people. And as I reflected back on it over the next few days—our friendships and our rich lives were forged in the crucible of the performing art program at OPRF.

The stories our friends told—of lives singing opera, building schools, teaching engineering, working in politics, making documentaries, working with transgendered youth, curing cancer. What an amazing amalgam of careers. And each individual with a story to be told.

On the flight home, I couldn't stop thinking about everyone around that table. I wanted to know each of their stories more deeply. I decided I would begin with Laurie.

Some of the amazing folks who attended dinner…Truman and Carol (Hume) Anderson, Susan Smiley, Wes Burghardt and Angela Stramaglia, Murray Coffey—and me, peaking over the top.

Sadly, a couple of days after I returned to Gainesville I called Laurie and learned she had suffered a stroke as she was returning from Oak Park to Madison. She was still lucid, still wanting to fight her cancer, and had checked into a rehab facility.

I told her about my writing plan. I wanted to interview her first. She sent me some pictures and I sent her a set of questions.

Then I learned she had checked into hospice. A week later she had died.

Understanding mortality is a major motivator—Laurie was the first of several of my close friends to pass away and it made writing down these stories more urgent.

Since then I have written the stories over thirty classmates and have completed a memoir of growing up in the Western suburbs. These are stories of people who supported me through my difficult childhood. In Stunt Mole I pose the question—what does it mean to be a hero?

These stories are hero stories, and Laurie was a hero to me. This is what I wrote about Laurie shortly after her death.

In Memory of My Friend, Laurie Reisig-Riss.

It is with sadness that I reflect on a lifelong friend, Laurie Reisig-Riss. Laurie died three weeks ago after a long battle with cancer.

At the time of her death, Laurie and I had been friends for nearly 50 years. We went to different grade schools--she went to Roosevelt and I went to Lincoln School. We had an teacher named Mr. David Wuersig who brought us together to play in an orchestra as fourth graders. Laurie took lessons from the same teacher as my brother, Mrs. Lois Yopp. We both remember thinking Mr. Wuersig was the coolest when he would bring pop music classics like Chicago’s 25 and 6 to 4 to play in our little kid’s ensemble. We also had to play Pomp and Circumstance ad nauseum for several middle school graduations.

I got to know Laurie better in middle school because we were finally at the same school. We had fantastic teachers there who expected a lot out of us. We shared an eighth-grade science class where we dissected a whole set of different organisms including an earthworm, a giant grass hopper and a fetal pig. A lot of the girls though it was gross but Laurie thought it was fascinating. It was a rite of passage for both of us to go through a tough middle school and particularly biology together.

In high school we continued to connect through our mutual interest in biology. We were both members of the Environmental Awareness Organization and Pollution Control Center. Instead of having study hall, members of the Pollution Control Center could sit in a small Harry Potter sized room under the steps of the first and second floors of our three story high school. The room was not monitored by a proctor so you could talk. Not much homework got done.

On the weekends we went out and collected seeds from plants from little patches of land containing prairie plants which were used restore prairie lands in other parts of the county. Our teacher, Ed Radatz, was amazing and a real character who would make us bring in treats for the whole class if we ever said anything he perceived as sarcastic to him, and also if we said the words shut up or were rude to each other. Laurie of course never had to bring in treats but I was a frequent offender.

We had a group of close friends that we played chamber music with. My music teacher was Brenda Wurman and she taught using the Suzuki method. She taught a group of fantastic violinists including Cathy Pacer, Sara Warner, Amy Anderson, Janice Bosco and Brooke Townsend. Her violists were me and Michael Como, and sadly he and I are why there are viola jokes in this world. The cellists included Laurie and my brother Jim and were all part of the Lois Yopp studio. Brenda and her husband Hans Wurman, a pioneer of the Moog Synthesizer and a fantastic pianist, would break us into various types of ensembles to explore classical music. Brenda led us playing Suzuki songs and as we got older Hans eventually conducted us playing chamber music in the musty basement Saint Johns United Methodist Church, on North Marion Street in Oak Park.

Laurie with Jenny Cappelli during our European concert tour, fellow string players and friends since grade school.

I played in the symphony orchestra with Laurie and we had an opportunity to travel in Europe. We spent the first days at a youth hostel in Germany, then travelled to Kitzbuhl Austria and eventually to Lucerne Switzerland. We played in various venues and it was interesting to see our friends off the chain of their parents for the first time. There was a lot of romantic drama on that trip and some drinking drama as well. I tried my first beer in Kitzbuhl but was not keen on the flavor or smell and for the most part behaved myself and I know Laurie did as well. A fun memory was going to the Prater (amusement park in Vienna) with Laurie, Amy Anderson and Janice Bosco and riding go carts on a wooden track. I also fondly remember eating lots of Toblerones and pretzels with various toppings.

Eventually we were both recruited to sing in the A Capella Choir by Robert Fuller who was a new teacher at OPRF high school. Mr. Fuller was extremely charismatic and great teacher. I eventually dropped out of orchestra and spent most of my time singing. Some of my deepest friendships from high school involved people in the choir.

Laurie had very eclectic musical tastes, though she was classically trained through and through. We had a close friend who played guitar named Alec Rubenstein. I remember going into Chicago with Laurie, Alec Rubenstein and Kevin Brubaker to the Old Town School of Folk Music and listening to a folk musician named Jim Post. This guy was very funny and had some raunchy songs. We were straight-laced kids and went away with some interesting ear worms, one of which is still with me 40 years later, and I won’t write it down because it is not appropriate! But funny never the less and still in my head all these years later! Laurie took a lot of interest and was kind of a groupy for a band some of us had formed with jazz and rock instruments. The electric viola was my instrument. I know that she has continued to pursue her interest in jazz music and has enjoyed playing jazz on her cello.

I loved her parents who were very supportive and interested in what Laurie and her friends were doing and thinking. Several times they invited me and Jim for dinner at their house and were interested in what we were learning about in school and what we thought about current events. Her dad took us sailing a number of time s on Lake Michigan where we enjoyed the cool air and the beautiful Chicago skyline.

Laurie continued to play music through college and eventually became a professional musician teaching cello and playing in numerous ensembles. I on the other hand dropped my viola and singing and went off to Florida become a pediatric Oncologist. We have met wonderful life partners, raised beautiful families, and stayed in touch through the years.

Outside of raising her two boys with her husband Terry, teaching cello students and being a faculty member at a summer music camp in Haiti were some of her favorite and most rewarding experiences. She cherished the relationships she made with the Haitian kids. She took a lot of pride in the progress of her cello students and regarded teaching as her favorite and most rewarding activity. Its not surprising to me that she considered teaching and helping people in Haiti among her most rewarding experiences. Kindness and helping others is just how Laurie rolled

Laurie loved teaching the cello. She took pride in working with students in Haiti.

Music brought us all together and is a glue that has held for decades, as we are now 40 years from our graduation. A group of us met in Oak Park to have dinner with Laurie in the spring as we wanted to see her and support her as she was battling cancer. Laurie seemed so tickled to see everyone and during desert she went around the table of 20 and asked each person to update her on what they were doing as well as fun facts about their families. It was like she was holding court and it was like our friendships had just picked up from when we left off in the late 1980s. Our high school friendships persist because of the rich experiences we had together due to our fantastic parents, brilliant teachers and strong public schools that emphasized academic excellence and outstanding performing arts.

I always found Laurie to be a very kind and fair person who rarely said anything bad about anyone. She was always interested in new ideas and was a deep thinker, an optimist and a great friend. I will miss her.

That’s me as Curly McClain in OPRFHS’s Oklahoma! I look pretty confident. I wasn’t. Performing in this show helped me find my voice and realize what I was capable of being.

I grew up in River Forest, Illinois. My parents moved there because at the time River Forest and Oak Park had arguably some of the best public schools in the country. I benefited greatly from outstanding schools, and particularly from my deep involvement in the performing arts.

As an adolescent, I carried shame, depression and painfully low self-esteem. No one knew about these struggles, not my parents, my siblings nor my friends. Singing in the choir, performing on stage, playing my viola, and my teachers…especially my teachers… gave me a place where I belonged. I could take risks, experience beauty, and begin to imagine that I had something positive to offer the world.

In ways I did not fully understand at the time, the performing arts helped save my life.

Forty years later, I still support our performing arts program and have set up a Facebook page called OPRFHS OPUS Friends of the Performing Arts where I tell the life stories of my teachers and classmates. As I have interviewed my classmates and told their stories, I have learned how so many of them were also carrying similar burdens. Like me, they found refuge in the people, the spaces, the community, and the beauty of the performing arts.

People sometimes ask why a pediatric oncologist spends so much time advocating for the performing arts. The answer is simple: after thirty years of caring for children with cancer, I have come to believe that medicine alone is not enough for kids to heal.

The kids who flourish have adults who believe in them, places where they belong, opportunities to discover their gifts, ways to express joy and grief, and communities that help them become themselves. I have come to believe that performing arts programs provide these benefits to teenagers.

A Place to Belong and Find a Voice

As children advance from middle school to high school, many are struggling with questions of identity: Who am I? Where do I belong? Does what I say matter?

The performing arts provide a safe place for students to be accepted as they are. These communities are particularly helpful to children coping with difficult home lives, academic struggles, disability, neurodivergence, questions of sexual orientation or gender identity. A quality that makes a student feel out of place in the rest of the world may be the very quality that makes their contribution to the performing arts essential.

Orchesis was and is a dance troupe that platforms inclusion, collaboration, and courageous creative expression. We honored our teacher Diana Ivas who led this group with a tribute to her legacy this past April. I wrote about the remarkable spirit of this event in She’s the One.

Through music, dance, theatre and writing, students find their voice. They learn that some emotions and ideas that are difficult to say in words can be expressed more effectively through music, dance, or acting.

Creating beautiful art together creates a sense of community. Students who dance together become family. Singing in choir leads to harmony outside the classroom. Performing orchestral works forges lifelong friendships.

Looking back, I realize that the performing arts were a community that loved one another enough to create something beautiful together. Looking back, I think that experiencing that love was what helped me begin to heal.

A Place to be Brave, Collaborate and Develop Resilience

Performing arts programs teach the value of cooperation and collaboration. No orchestra succeeds because of an individual player. No play succeeds because of one actor. They teach students how to lead first by cooperating and collaborating with others.

Performing arts programs also provide places for students to be courageous. Auditioning takes courage. Singing solo exposes vulnerabilities. Collaborating to create something beautiful requires faith in others.

The performing arts also teach students how to recover from mistakes: a missed entrance, a forgotten line, a fall, or an onstage gaffe. Performers learn to keep going, finish the piece, return to rehearsal, and avoid carrying yesterday’s mistake into tomorrow’s performance.

Joe Fournier, a self-professed introvert, mugs for the audience at the end of Kansas City where he brought the house down. Joe is now a professional artist and musician and for many years was the political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. I told more of Joe’s story in An Introvert Who Brought Down the House.

A Place to Encounter Beauty and Transcendence

By expressing someone else’s story through music, dance or theatre, the arts help students understand the thoughts and feelings of others. I found this particularly helpful in my development as a young physician.

I remember experiencing chills and tears of joy while singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with my choir in a medieval church in Austria. The hair on my arms stood up. I became lost in the moment, and my voice became part of something larger and more beautiful than anything any one of us could have created alone.

Scientists call this response frisson, or aesthetic chills. Performers know the experience: the intense exhilaration of creating beauty together. For a young person struggling with shame, depression, or low self-esteem, such moments reveal that life contains beauty, that they are capable of helping create it, and that they are not alone.

OPRFHS orchestra members on European tour in 1979. Experiencing the Austrian winter together and performing in resonant medieval churches gave us the chills!

Finally, the performing arts provide the opportunity to create legacy. Creating together fosters lifelong friendships, memories of performances and careers that matter. By inspiring kids to do great things as adults requiring courage, cooperation and faith in others, performing arts programs can change the world.

The Legacy of Our Teachers

Our teachers—Robert Fuller, Jack Wirtz, James Eitrheim, Diana Ivas, Richard Pekala Garrin, Ron Holleman, Patricia Cheney, and Mike Nielsen—inspired students to carry their lessons into the world. These teachers inspired so many and have far-reaching legacies. Seeds planted through creative expression in high school have blossomed into lives of purpose, beauty, and service.

The legacy of a great performing arts program is more than additive, it’s exponential. By carrying courage, collaboration, empathy and discipline into communities, again and again, performing arts programs change the world.

In every generation there are those who question whether the arts are worth supporting. Yet every generation is enriched by adults whose courage, empathy, creativity, and resilience were first nurtured in rehearsal rooms, on stages, and in practice halls.

OPUS: Honoring People and Creating Opportunity

Since we graduated over 40 years ago, alums have worked together to celebrate the legacy of our high school performing arts teachers who did so much to launch our careers in music, business, health care, education, politics, and other consequential fields. We call our group OPUS and we have put on several reunion events where we have gotten back together with our teachers and performed.

For the past three years OPUS has been raising funds to sponsor scholarships in honor of our beloved teachers including Robert Fuller, Jack Wirtz, James Eitrheim, Richard Pekala Garrin, and Mike Nielsen. Recently, we have held tribute events honoring teachers still living, including Patricia Cheney, Ron Holleman, and Diana Ivas. Along with the scholarship the recipient receives a booklet with bios of our teachers so they are not forgotten. And to highlight our teachers’ legacies, we have also told the stories of performing arts alumni who are making a difference in this world. These stories paint a compelling picture of what a vibrant performing arts program offers their communities and the larger world.

Trevor Schonman was our first OPUS scholarship recipient. He is studying voice at NYU and is an up-and-coming jazz vocalist.

Updating the Rooms Where it Happens

As OPRFHS students in the 1970s and 80s, we had remarkable athletic and performing arts venues. Those spaces have aged and no longer meet the needs of today’s programs. Happily, the school has developed a facilities improvement plan to meet student needs for decades to come.

The first two Imagine Plan projects, focusing on academics, athletics, commons spaces and some dance and theatre facilities, are complete. The nonprofit OPRFHS Imagine Foundation raised more than $12 million through philanthropy and grants to help fund the $102 million Project 2.

Now the school is turning its attention to constructing the third Imagine Plan project, Act 3, a brand-new performing arts wing with band, orchestra and choir classrooms, a black box theatre, practice and rehearsal rooms and more.

In the next few months, the Board of Education will determine the size and timing of a referendum to fund Act 3. Then the community will decide whether to invest in renewing the places where the next generation of artists, musicians, actors, dancers, and storytellers will learn and create. Raising funds through philanthropy can reduce the size of the Act 3 referendum, significantly increasing the public support needed to make the new wing a reality for OPRFHS students.

OPUS and the Imagine Foundation have begun talking about how our two organizations might work together to support performing arts students at OPRFHS. One is building the opportunities, the other is building the spaces. In many ways this collaboration is the perfect synergy supporting human possibility and the spaces where it blossoms.

Together we ask two important questions: What kind of community do we want to become? How might we foster that community?

OPUS and the Imagine Foundation complement each other. Both invest in the possibility of beautiful futures for our students, their communities and the world.

Some of the faces of the OPRF performing arts community in 1981. Decades later, I learned that for some of us, this community felt more like family than their own home did.

What Comes Next

Over the coming month I’ll tell the stories of our teachers and classmates that made the OPRFHS performing arts program such a crucible for possibility. You will hear about Robert Fuller who overcame polio to become a revered choir teacher, Diana Jordan who became an actress and advocate for actors with disabilities, and John Register who overcame adversity to become a world-renowned inspirational speaker and expert on leadership. These stories about how the arts produce compassionate heroes will become a pillar of Heroes, Heartwork and Healing. Every one of these stories is different. Yet together they answer the same question: How do the performing arts help ordinary young people create extraordinary lives?

Curtain Call:

After more than thirty years in pediatric oncology, I know that medicine can save lives. But survival and flourishing are not the same things. Young people also need places where they can belong, discover their voices, practice courage, trust others, and experience beauty.

I found such a place in the performing arts program at OPRFHS. At a time when I was carrying shame, depression, and painfully low self-esteem, the OPRFHS performing arts program gave me a place to rebuild. I now understand that many of my classmates found something similar there.

Sometimes the adults who help save young lives work in hospitals. And sometimes they teach biology, stand before a choir with a baton, direct a play, accompany a frightened singer at the piano, or encourage a student with stage fright to step into the light.

OPUS and the Imagine Foundation are complementary efforts that are part of a shared legacy: honoring teachers and creating opportunities while renewing the places where future generations will learn, rehearse, belong, and become.

Buildings matter. Scholarships matter. In the end, both exist for one purpose: to help young people discover the magic inside them.

Did the performing arts—or a teacher, coach, director, or other mentor—give you a place to belong or help you discover something in yourself? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

Before there were selfies—Marci, Mia and Mike, near the Gauley River in West Virginia.

There’s that old cliché that says with some friendships it feels like you are picking up right where you left off. After 30 years, that’s the way it feels for me to talk to my Oberlin pals, Michael James and Mia Kang. They met as college students, fell in love, and somehow never stopped talking. Mia explained how Michael captured her heart by engaging in deep conversations.

Michael and I were fellow premeds in the biology department. We took many classes together, and became study partners. I enjoyed Michael’s quiet confidence and gentle nature. It was not much later that I met Mia. Mike towered over Mia, but from the beginning they somehow fit together.

Before there was Harry Potter there was Mike James, Biology Major Extraordinaire and my friend.

Mia met Mike the first day of school when he was doing something not advisable. He and his roommate were disassembling a fire alarm so that they could throw a frisbee in the hallway.

It wasn’t until the next semester, when the two attended a party at Keep Cottage—all the way on the other side of campus that their romance bloomed. This is how it went down, according to Mia.

Mia: I had hardly spent any time with Michael—or really anyone on my hall except the people who were still awake at one or two in the morning.

Then there was a party at Keep Cottage.

We started talking.

And we just... kept talking.

By the time the party ended, everyone we’d come with had already gone home.

I remember walking back to Barrows Hall with Michael. Sometime during the party, someone had taken his size 13 Nikes and left behind another pair that looked identical—but were about three sizes too small.

So, Michael walked all the way back from Keep Cottage to Barrows through the snow in his socks.

Mia: When we got back to Barrows, we sat on the couch in the first-floor lounge and talked until the sun came up.

After that, it wasn’t exactly planned, but every night for the next week or two we’d meet in that lounge after the library closed and just talked until morning.

That’s how we began.

Bill: Wow, that’s a wonderful story.

Mia used to wait until the last minute and then stay up all night to write her papers. She always got an A. Me and Mike were in awe of her. Still are.

OBERLIN YEARS

So I knew Mike and Mia as a couple, though we were friends individually as well. Michael was my study buddy. He, Ned Cabot, and I suffered through the Biology curriculum—well not really suffered, but it was hard and we enjoyed working together. Michael and Ned eventually left for Sea Semester at a time when I was in England, Junior year. I asked Mia what it was like to have her two closest pals away from her for a whole semester.

Mia: I got a postcard from you from England. Also, Michael used to write these crazy letters on-board the Westward.

Bill: That must have been quite an experience, being on that boat all that time.

Mike: Yeah. It was pretty amazing, actually.

Mia: I think it had a profound impact on you. It was an experience that really shaped you. You dealt with so much stress on that boat. Sometimes it was literally life and death—or at least it felt that way. At that age, it was an incredible adventure.

Bill: What’s an example of a life-or-death experience you had on the boat?

Mike: Well, the Westward is a schooner-rigged sailing research vessel. In the first four weeks of sailing in the Caribbean had been uneventful. There weren’t many storms. We mostly focused on doing science and supporting different research projects. But on the leg from Jamaica to Miami, storms would pop up suddenly in the middle of the night, and they were intense.

If you made a mistake, you could put the entire boat in jeopardy. There were some mistakes made on those nights. It was difficult to communicate and to make decisions quickly in the storm.

During one of the tacks, a crew member accidently released the sheets on a sail, which meant they completely lost control of a massive sail. The sail flapped uncontrollably which was very loud and we could feel a strong shudder below decks. The twenty-five pound cleat at the end of the sail swung wildly across the deck at head height. They did get the sail under control, but that cleat could kill you if it hit you in the head.

MCAT CELEBRATION DINNER

My most vivid memory of Mike and Mia was when they took me to Cleveland after I finished my MCAT exam. They were sitting in their car on Oberlin Avenue just outside the physics building and whisked me away. I wrote about this in my Memoir Stunt Mole. However, there was a key detail of the story that I left out.

Bill: I wanted to circle back to something. There’s this famous story in my mind about you two taking me out to dinner after I finished the MCAT. I wrote about it in the book, but you remember it a little differently than I do, and I’d love to hear your version.

Mia: It’s similar. But I remember one part that you left out. Right after dinner...You chucked everything up.

Bill: Was it in the restaurant or in the car?

Mia: Nope. Outside the car.

Bill: Really? I mostly remember that you had ordered enormous amounts of food.

Mia: We always order lots of food. You don’t have to eat it all. French pastries and good seafood have always been two of my favorite things.

Bill: How many pastries did we order? How many did I eat?

Mia: I remember it was two-for-one because it was right before closing time.

Bill: And then you had me order this bucket...It was literally a bucket of seafood. Frogs legs too. I remember they had a kick to them…

Mia: I’m sure we had dessert too. It was probably chocolate mousse. Back then that was my favorite.

Bill: Where did I throw up? It must have been mousse…sent me over the edge!

Mia: What I remember is that it happened outside, by the sidewalk. In the parking lot. I remember feeling really bad afterward because I thought, Oh my gosh, he must have been so stressed out. Maybe we should have gone the next day instead.

Bill: Yes, but waiting a day, the excursion might not have been as memorable! And ironic that as memorable as it was, I forgot the key event—somehow in our memory we bury life’s little traumas.

POST OBERLIN

After graduation Mike and Mia’s paths diverged. Mike worked for several environmental consulting firms in Boston, helping investigate hazardous waste sites and Superfund cleanups. Mia entered Northeastern University School of Law, discovering she loved teaching legal writing far more than corporate law. The demands of graduate school and two careers eventually pulled them apart. They genuinely tried to build separate lives. Yet they never could replace what they had found during those long Oberlin conversations. At the Oberlin five-year class reunion, Mia discovered that the fire was never gone.

We were trying to move on with our lives. Then I saw him... and I thought, ‘This isn’t over.’” ‘ I realized I couldn’t just walk away from what we had.”

Mike’s career wandered through environmental consulting firms, Duke University’s Master of Environmental Management program, Research Triangle Institute, and projects supporting the Environmental Protection Agency, including working on the clean-up standards for the infamous Love Canal Superfund site. Eventually, he and Mia worked in Washington DC where she could pursue her law career, and he could work on environmental projects.

Throughout those years Michael kept searching for work that felt less bureaucratic and more meaningful. The fact that many of the Superfund sites got locked in legal battles and were never completed was frustrating to him. Eventually, he moved out of the environmental world and began to work with Corporate Image, an offshoot of his family’s printing business, which he found to be refreshing and fun. He particularly liked working with the designers.

“They were a completely different group of people from scientists—creative, imaginative, and enjoyable to work with...”

After working in printing for 26 years, Michael turned back to environmental issues. For the past four years, he has worked with the local Soil and Water Conservation District to help farmers reduce nutrient pollution to surface waters.

Mike: Conservation work in agriculture is important. We need to find a solution for growing food without degrading the soil and the environment.

KIDS

The birth of their first child, Brian, was a turning point in their lives. Being new parents shed a different light on both of their careers, and they both realized that they needed change.

Mike: Then Brian was born.

We were living in Washington, D.C., and while he was an infant, our fourteen-hundred-square-foot apartment worked just fine.

But once he started walking—and then running—we realized we needed something different.

He was tearing around that apartment and the halls of the apartment building like a maniac.

We started asking ourselves, Do we want to buy a house in Washington?

The answer was maybe. We looked.

Did we really want to raise a child DC? With both of us working so many hours?

The answer was no.

So, we decided to leave Washington.

Since I was already working for Corporate Image, whose headquarters were in Des Moines, we moved to Iowa.

After Northeastern Law School, Mia practiced corporate law in Boston before joining the Department of Justice during the Clinton administration, working under the austere and principled Janet Reno. She loved teaching law students and believed deeply in justice, but after becoming a mother she found herself yearning for something no legal career could provide—the ordinary, everyday moments of raising her children.

One day, while learning to walk, Brian fell.

“The moment everything changed for me... he started crying, stood up... and ran right past me. Straight to his dad. And this made sense – Michael worked from home and had more time with him. And I remember thinking, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ I wanted the everyday moments.”

That was the moment Mia knew what mattered most. She became a stay home mom. She focused on her family, including providing the very safest, healthiest food for her family. This decision made all the difference.

Mike chillaxing with his kids, Brian, Emma and Colin.

SOCCER

Mike, too, wanted to spend quality time with his kids. He did by coaching their soccer teams.

Mike: I went through the coaching courses, got my license, and coached three teams for fourteen years.

Soccer has become a life-long passion of all three children. They all still play in adult leagues.

Mike: You always wonder whether your kids or some other child on the team will go on to do well. My claim to fame is that I coached Caitlin Clark in soccer for two seasons.

Mia: Do you know who she is? (laughing)

Bill: Yeah, I sure do. She’s impressive.

Mike: She was impressive when she was nine years old. She was the only girl that they let play on the boys’ soccer team. She was also playing basketball at the same time. She’s pugnacious—a talented athlete.

Mike: The funny thing is, for years I didn’t even make the connection. I kept hearing about Caitlin Clark and how incredible she was at basketball at Iowa State.

Then one day our son Colin came home and said, “Remember that girl who played on our soccer team?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He asked, “What was her name?”

I said, “Caitlin.”

He goes, “Yeah... that’s her.”

I said, “No way. Caitlin’s a soccer player. She’s going to the Olympics for soccer. That can’t be the same person.”

Then suddenly it clicked. I remembered that I had to pick her up from basketball practice a couple of times to bring her to our soccer games. I thought, Wait a minute... that’s the same Caitlin!

Mia and the kids at Brian’s graduation.

PHILOSOPHY

Though Mike and Mia left Oberlin decades ago, Oberlin never really left them. One of the great gifts of a liberal arts education is not simply what you learn but how you learn. Curiosity becomes a habit. Asking questions becomes a way of living. Both Mike and Mia carried that habit into every stage of their lives.

As a result of this approach, Mia thoroughly enjoyed law school and approached law problems differently than most of her colleagues.

Mia: And I loved law school, which isn’t everyone’s experience.

The first year was incredibly intense because you must learn an entirely new language. You’re reading forty-page judicial opinions and trying to figure out what the actual legal principle is.

That took some adjustment.

Every night I was reading cases, doing the assignments, and trying to understand how legal reasoning worked.

It took me about three months.

For the first time in my life, I actually did every single reading assignment. I had never really done homework that way before.

Then it finally clicked.

Once I figured it out, I loved law school. It felt like a continuation of a liberal arts education, only in the world of law, legal rights, and government.

I honestly think everyone should have some exposure to legal education. People ought to understand their rights and how government works.

Like Mia, Michael approaches life with a beginner’s mind, interested and curious. The biology student who spent hours memorizing trees with me eventually became fascinated with prairies, bees, chestnut trees and fungi. He helped manage the restored prairie on 80 acres of farm ground, started a 100-tree chestnut orchard, managed bee hives and eventually grew his own mushrooms.

Weekly forest walks with his dog turned from botany to mushroom identification, and eventually mushroom cultivation.

Mike: Well, Scout and I were going to the Brown’s Woods Park every week. Scout’s mission was to hunt small animals. Mine became looking for mushrooms. I didn’t know anything about mushrooms at first, so it became a self-directed learning project.

Eventually I started growing them myself. I grew shiitake and oyster mushrooms on oak logs because I wanted to understand their entire life cycle—how they grow and what conditions they need.

Listening to Mike and Mia, it becomes clear that their marriage has never depended on one grand decision. It has been built through hundreds of small acts of flexibility, curiosity, and mutual respect.

Mia explains: “I am learning, still learning, to go with the flow and change course as life unfolds.”

I still feel very close to Mike and Mia. Neither has changed much over the years, and they are still up for anything. And now, like me, Mike has retired and plans to travel with Mia and enjoy experiences together. This summer, they plan to spend two weeks in Georgia and then will be heading to Korea for a couple of months. On their dance card they are looking at trips to Patagonia and possibly a trip with me and Marci to Greece. Their lives are wide open. Michael explains…

“We’re definitely up for adventures. One reason we’re trying to do Patagonia and Nepal sooner rather than later is that we want to do those trips while we’re still physically able.”

Looking back, I realize the greatest gift Oberlin gave us wasn’t simply an education. It was curiosity, the ability to reinvent ourselves, and friendships that have lasted a lifetime. We no longer spend nights talking until sunrise. Over the next four decades, those conversations became the foundation of a marriage, a family, and a life of shared purpose.

Today, the conversations have simply changed. At twenty we dreamed about careers, graduate schools, and changing the world. Today we’re dreaming about Patagonia, Korea, Greece, grandchildren, and afternoons spent walking beside old friends. Those dreams are just as exciting.

And somehow, after all these years, it still feels like we’re picking up exactly where we left off.

Mike, Mia and their happy clan, Brian, Emma and Colin, enjoying the beach in Georgia.

As a medical student, I worked at the Indian Health Service Hospital in Keams Canyon serving the Hopi Indian Reservation.

Author's Note:

During medical school I spent time working on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. I arrived expecting to learn about medicine. Instead, one afternoon, I met one of the Hopi’s traditional healers.

I had the opportunity to interview this medicine man and published the story in the Hippocampus, our medical student newspaper. I took notes and reconstructed our conversation immediately after the interview.

Decades later, after caring for children with cancer and working alongside remarkably hard-working nurses, psychologists, social workers, chaplains, and child life specialists, I realize that Joe was teaching me something much larger than medicine.

He was teaching me that healing can take many forms. Humility, compassion, careful listening, and service are key, and transcend culture.

I first heard about him from one of the nurses at Keams Canyon Hospital. “Joe is a medicine man. You should go talk to him.”

Keams Canyon Hospital sits at the base of a dusty brown-rock canyon at the edge of the Hopi Indian Reservation. The Hopi are a Pueblo people whose ancestors are associated with the remarkable cliff dwellings and petroglyphs of the American Southwest. Living for centuries atop three mesas, they have preserved many cultural traditions despite profound historical change.

Joe worked as a janitor at the Second Mesa Community Health Nursing Office, a simple four-room clinic with two exam rooms, a waiting room, and a nurses' lounge. I asked the nurses to introduce me to Joe. He was wearing a short-sleeved pullover and blue jeans, with a turquoise-studded belt buckle under his ample belly.

We saw patients at the Community Health Nursing Office in Second Mesa. It was there I met Joe, a Medicine Man who worked as a janitor.

I had to tend to patients, a panel consisting of several children with colds and earaches, a woman with a urinary tract infection, and an elderly man with hypertension.

While I examined one woman’s son, she told me “I came into the clinic today itching all over. When a spider goes to the bathroom on you, it can make you itch like that. I just saw Joe and he brushed me off” She flicked her fingers against her arm like a small broom. “You know how he does it, with the little brushes.”

Patients were scheduled only for the morning. I sat down for lunch with two nurses. Joe brought a bucket of fried chicken in. It looked better than my peanut butter sandwich.

“I understand that you practice the traditional medicine of the Hopi. I wondered if you could tell me about it.”

“I can tell you some things, but other things are secret.” Then, he walked out of the room. I could see him straightening the examination rooms.

“I went to a medicine man once,” said Delphina, the nurse that I had spent the morning working with. “He used the crystals. With them I saw many things that I had not seen before. Certain things in my life made more sense.”

“How much did he charge you?” Her nurse colleague asked. “I know a medicine man who charges $800 to look at the crystals.”

“He charged me $20.” Delphina explained that she had lupus and was on treatment with prednisone. Although she had received modern training, she had great respect for the powers of traditional medicine.

The nurses left the clinic as the day was done. Joe continued to clean. I asked him if he wanted me to help. He shook his head. He whistled what sounded like a country and western song. I waited for what must have been a little more than an hour.

His cleaning done, Joe ambled into the room and sat facing me, straddling the back of the chair. He picked up a hand purse I had bought from one of the locals who was showing her wares at the clinic. He studied it carefully.

“It is Paiute. The Paiutes have been given land on our mesa because they helped us during one of the Navajo raids. You see, all this land used to be ours.” He gestured at the expansive horizon that dropped away out the icy window beside.

“Our ancestors built the pueblo houses. You’ve seen them, out toward the Grand Canyon, out by Flagstaff. Our elders still go to those places.”

He gazed at me with soft pride.

“Joe, how did you become involved in medicine?”

Joe stretched and leaned in. “My uncle was a medicine man. When he was approaching the end of his life, he had to choose one of us to succeed him. There were four cousins. The first one, he was kind of wild. My uncle thought that he would abuse his medicine power. The second one was too proud of himself. The third was an alcoholic, and got drunk all the time. I had also been a drinker, but I got my life together. I was quiet and my uncle liked that.“

“Over the next six or seven years, he taught me his way. One day, my aunt called me to his house. My uncle was dying. He was lying in the middle of the room with his hands at his sides. I thought he was showing me where he wanted me to sit. I sat by his right hand. He looked as if he wanted to speak to me. But I could also tell that he was about to die. Then he lifted his hand and put it on my head. I could feel his power flowing into me. When he died, I felt his spirit pass into me.”

“I never told anyone about my power. But people started to show up at my door for services.

“What kinds of things do you do to cure people?” I asked.

Joe deliberately rubbed his hands together, and then held his hands out as if touching an invisible patient. “Sometimes I rub my hands together and then touch and rub the area that has the sickness. I can cure by touch. I also use the crystals. I can see clearly into a person’s illness using the crystals. I can tell when they are not telling the truth. They help me see the future.”

“Sometimes I use prayer and songs to help someone heal. When someone is in the hospital recovering from surgery, I tell them to pray to our God. He’s the same as your God and everyone else’s—we just have a different name for him. I tell them to pray, and believe that they will get well.”

“For certain types of problems, I fast. This gets all the bad energy out of me and renews my power.”

“Where do you see your patients?” I asked him.

“They come to my home. Sometimes, when I come home from work, they are already there waiting for me. Sometimes, I see patients until 10:30 at night. Then I eat my supper. Since I only have one room, I have to take some patients outside to discuss confidential matters.

“Do your patients ever come to you with non-medical problems?”

”Yes. They come to me when their marriage is breaking up or when they are trying to end their life. "I say to them ‘When you have these thoughts, look at your children. They need you. They suck from your breast. One day you will hear my words Look at your children. They tell me later that they remember my words. They also hear my voice saying ‘Don’t give up. Keep going!’”

“I like my patients to relax. I sit down with them like this, and talk to them with a very even, soft tone. I try to make them laugh. I want them to feel they can tell me anything. Anything they tell me is confidential. Sometimes, just by getting them to talk about something, it gets out and takes care of the problem.”

“Do Medicine Men specialize? Do you refer patients with certain problems to other Medicine Men?”

“I do this all the time. If it’s a problem I cannot handle, I send them to Keams Canyon Hospital. I tell them ‘go right now. And do what the doctor tells you.’”

“What do you see as shortcomings in “Anglo” medicine.”

“I do not see any shortcomings. After all, it is up to a person to decide what kind of medicine works best for them. I send people to the Anglo docs all the time.”

“What do you charge for your services?”

“I do not charge for my services. If I cure the patient, they can pay me in any way they feel comfortable. For instance, they may want to bring me dinner. Or they may give me cash. The Navajo are used to paying the Medicine Men up to $1000 for services. They often ask me what I charge. When I say I do not charge anything, they often leave me money anyway. I am getting a lot of Navajo patients.”

“Do Medicine Men hold a position of honor in the Hopi culture.”

“In the old days we did. Today, no one holds a position of honor. There is much jealousy among my people. Instead of honoring a person who has power like mine, they talk badly about that person. We do not honor each other any more.

“Do you have any children that you will pass your medicine powers on to?”

“I do not know if I will pass the medicine to anyone. The children today are bad. They forget about their elders. They want to put them in homes as soon as they get old.”

“Thank you, Joe, for sharing these things with me.”

Joe looked at me warmly. “I can see in your eyes that we share a common gift. What you want from life will be yours. Continue to work hard. You will get where you want to go.”

I drove down the twisting icy road away from Second Mesa, The sun was glinting off the snow near the San Francisco range, where the Hopi Kachinas retire for the winter months. Driving to the compound, I felt as if I had been handed an extraordinary gift.

Thirty years later, I still think about Joe.

Mostly, I remember the way he carried himself. He cleaned the clinic before caring for his own patients late into the evening. He never claimed that his way was the only way. He listened carefully, referred patients when they needed hospital care, and accepted whatever gratitude people chose to offer in return.

Over the course of my career, I have met extraordinary healers from many walks of life—nurses, physicians, psychologists, chaplains, social workers, child life specialists, artists, parents, and patients themselves. They practiced different disciplines, but the best of them shared the same qualities I saw in Joe that winter afternoon on Second Mesa: humility, compassion, a deep respect for others, and a commitment to serve.

His final words to me have stayed with me ever since.

My buddy David Dewitt in action in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

This weekend I had the privilege of speaking at the funeral of David DeWitt. David was one of the finest pediatric critical care nurses I've ever known. He was an amazing dad, colleague, and dear friend. I wanted to share a slightly expanded version of those remarks because his story deserves to be heard. Every hospital is fortunate if they have someone like David—the colleague everyone hopes will be at the bedside when things are at their worst. If you've spent time in a hospital, you've may have met someone like him.

My friend David DeWitt, who died at age 57 after living with cancer, was a phenomenal nurse. He was a fierce advocate for his patients, meticulous in every detail of their care, and a pillar of the outstanding nursing team in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Just as important, he was warm, playful, and deeply kind—the sort of person who made long, difficult days a little lighter.

I first worked with David years ago in the pediatric infusion center, where we quickly discovered we had a lot in common. Our children went to the same school, my son Ben was classmates with his daughter Jordan, and we both loved talking about our kids. David was incredibly proud of his daughters, and every time we talked he wanted to know how my family was doing

David with his daughters, Jordan (our left) and Jamie (right). He was an amazing dad.

We also shared another passion: eating! In particular, we both loved Jimmy John’s sandwiches.

My favorite was the Number 9, and every time I ordered it I’d say, “Number Nine... Number Nine...” in my best Beatles voice from the White Album. David was one of the few people who actually got the joke.

One day we were ordering for the whole team and I gave David my credit card because it was going to be on me.

When the sandwiches arrived, he got to the bottom of the box. No number 9!

“What? How could you?” I acted as though I had been mortally wounded.

He tried to make it right by offering me a six-pack of Diet Coke. I refused. A second sandwich arrived 45 minutes later, but the damage had already been done.

For the next twenty-five years—literally every time I saw David—I found some way to mention Number 9 or Jimmy John’s. Even after he became a respected trainer, I’d tease him about it in front of the new nurses.

As far as nursing goes, David was Superman. Jimmy John’s was his kryptonite.

If David ever got tired of hearing that story, he never let on. He always laughed right along with me.

Hey, if you thought that story was finally over...sorry, David. One last time...

Looking back, I think I kept telling that story because David and I understood something important about friendship. We knew how to laugh at ourselves and how to let our friends laugh with us. That was part of what made him such a joy to work with.

One of the things that made me happiest was when my son Ben became a nurse and was assigned to David as his preceptor. Ben held David in the highest esteem. He learned clinical excellence, bedside manner, and the quiet confidence that comes from truly mastering your craft. As a pediatric oncologist, I trusted David with my patients. As a father, I couldn’t have asked for a better nurse—or a better man—to help launch my son’s career.

I’m not the most religious person, but I like to think heaven was made for people like him. Not because he was perfect. In fact, if they’re ordering Jimmy John’s up there, I’d recommend they let Saint Peter handle the order.

But if someone needs extraordinary nursing, a warm smile, a calming presence, or simply a good laugh, David will be exactly the person they’ll be looking for.

I’ll miss you, David.

And every time I order a Number 9...I’ll think of you.

In medicine, legacies are built one patient, one family, and one young nurse at a time. David's legacy lives on in the people he trained, including my son, and the countless children whose lives were better because he cared for them.

That’s a life worth celebrating!

Hey David, let’s order some Jimmy Johns!

My sister, Alice (left), was and is a force to be reckoned with. Ever in motion, frames couldn’t catch her. With my brother Jim (center) and me (right) July 7, 1967, Jim’s Birthday!

My family had many funny tales about my angelic, thumb-sucking little sister, Alice. Legend has it that when she was four, a friendly old lady said to my mom “Such a cute little girl! What is her name?”

Channeling the voice of a demon she snarled “My name is Alice, you dumb dumb!”

In first grade she became famous in our neighborhood for dismissing annoying kids and her pesky brothers with the “dance of the middle finger.” Tauntingly wagging her butt, she pumped her arms like pistons, middle fingers profanely extended.

Alice was one of a long line of indomitable females in my family, including my grandma Anna and my mom. She inherited from them an amazing ability to cook, a love of nature and a green thumb. But more so they were inspiring women leaders—my grandmother lost her husband and raised four children through the great depression and got them through college, working as a school teacher and city clerk. My mom was the executive director of CARE—providing care packages to children and families throughout the world before she devoted much of her adulthood raising us kids.

But when we were kids, Alice was the little girl with the stuffed grimy pink dog, Goggy, tucked under her arm and her thumb firmly planted in her mouth. She was the younger sister who wanted desperately to be included in whatever we older boys were doing.

For years, I thought the story of Alice was that she was fearless.

But after interviewing her, I realized the more interesting story is not that Alice was fearless. It is that, repeatedly, when something important needed doing, Alice stepped forward. She did not chase titles. She solved problems. She built teams. She earned trust. Leadership kept finding her.

“I think being the youngest completely shaped me,” she said. “You’re always trying to keep up. You’re always trying to prove yourself…I think being the youngest makes you push harder to be seen. You don’t have as many credits in the bank as everybody else, so you’re always trying to prove yourself.”

One of my favorite stories involves a cardboard-box clubhouse that Billy Bower, Charlie Maienza, and I constructed in the vacant lot. Alice wanted in. Billy informed her that she could join only if she agreed to become our slave. Undeterred, she returned with warm chocolate chip cookies made in her new Easy-Bake Oven and successfully negotiated her way into the club.

“I made those cookies just so I could be included,” she said.

Alice always wanted to be part of the action. And if there is one word that describes Alice throughout her life, it is determined. The Alice remembered by our neighborhood was not the thumb-sucker with Goggy. She was legendary for her feistiness.

She was competitive, athletic, and utterly unwilling to back down from anyone. She describes herself as a little kid this way:

“I wasn’t a shrinking violet. I would take people on.”

Those who stepped into Alice’s fury included a neighborhood bully who had a crush on her but pulled her friend Jessie’s braids. She punched him in the stomach so hard she knocked the wind out of him.

Alice and me at her high school graduation.

As we grew into young adulthood, our paths remained surprisingly intertwined. Alice followed me to Oberlin, where she flourished. She studied government and Spanish, immersed herself in student leadership, spent time in Mexico and the Soviet Union, and discovered that she had a gift for bringing people together.

At Oberlin, she joined dorm leadership and became a Resident Assistant, helping mentor younger students. After college, she worked on Capitol Hill, first for Senator Paul Simon and then for Senator Bob Graham, eventually becoming Chief Legislative Correspondent. She then went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she studied diplomatic history and conflict resolution.

Her career in international trade began in Washington, but one of the most important leadership laboratories of her life came overseas.

When she and her husband Ted were living in Vienna, the American Community Preschool attached to the embassy was threatened with closure after the Embassy Employees Association fell into financial trouble. Alice, Ted, and other parents protested. The embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission finally said, in effect: if you care this much, you run it.

So Ted ran the Embassy Association, and Alice ran the preschool.

“I was flying by the seat of my pants,” she said. “I kept thinking, How do you run a preschool?”

The answer, as it turned out, was the same answer Alice would apply again and again: organize people, build trust, fill the rooms, raise the money, and keep the mission alive.

Later, in Frankfurt, Alice threw herself into school and community work. She served on the PTA and became one of the fundraising chairs for major school events, including Apple Fest and an international cultural festival that raised tens of thousands of euros for the school. She also became an officer in the American Women’s Club of the Taunus, where she helped lead a charity event that raised about 25,000 euros for an immigrant integration program.

“I really threw myself into volunteer work,” she said. “It almost became a full-time job. Maybe that was a little crazy. But I love being busy. I need it.”

Back in Washington, Alice also found community and leadership through Women in International Trade. She became president while still in her thirties, took on leadership roles throughout the organization, and built a network of colleagues who remain part of her professional life decades later.

“It was an incubator for leadership and was critical for my success,” she told me.

In addition to being a master gardener, she is a master team builder. She excels at helping organizations solve problems, navigate change, and bring people together around a common purpose. For Alice, leadership is less about being in charge and more about helping a group accomplish something meaningful.

“Leadership is really about relationship-building and making people feel like they are an integral part of the organization and the team,” she said. “It’s about getting people focused on working toward a higher purpose.”

Those principles and drive have carried Alice from the little girl trying to keep up with her older brothers to Senior Vice President of the United States Council for International Business, where she now helps guide one of the nation’s leading international business organizations.

Alice sees as her most meaningful accomplishment, is the family she and her husband Ted built together. The two met while studying at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and went on to create a life that has spanned both Europe and the United States.

Their daughter, Hannah, became an engineer and now works for Booz Allen Hamilton. Their son Dylan transformed a series of YouTube shorts into the beginning of a promising filmmaking career. His short film Portrait of God attracted widespread attention, and major studios have so far acquired rights to develop two of his projects.

Like their mother, both Hannah and Dylan seem unafraid to pursue ambitious goals. Looking back, it is hard not to wonder whether some of Alice’s determination found its way into the next generation.

Alice with her fam, Dylan to left, husband Ted and Hannah to the right.

In spite of her success as a business executive, I was surprised when Alice conceded that, like me, she feels uncomfortable when she has to speak publicly.

“I like leading,” she said, “but I don’t like being in the spotlight.”

For someone who always seemed so fearless to me, that confession felt wonderfully human. Maybe we had the story wrong all these years. Alice wasn’t fearless. She just didn’t let fear win.

One of my most frustrating and ironically also my favorite thing about my sister was how she always teased me. I tried to capture that in my memoir Stunt Mole. Alice was ruthlessly witty and spared me no empathy. She always knew exactly how to put me in my place.

And Alice has never stopped teasing me. My wife Marci loves when Alice visits because she treats me exactly the same way she did when we were kids. My brother Jim gets the same treatment. No title, degree, promotion, or accomplishment has ever granted either of us immunity from Alice’s laser wit.

And yet beneath the teasing is something deeper. She notices. She remembers. She shows up.

The thumb-sucking little girl with Goggy never disappeared. She simply grew into a woman who crossed oceans, built communities, raised a family, led international organizations, and helped countless people find common ground.

And while we were all wondering whether Alice was fearless, the truth is more impressive. Like the rest of us, she has her doubts and fears.

She just refuses to let them stop her.

A quiet morning at camp before our next season starts.

Hey y’all,

I’ve decided to take the week off from sending out a long-form post.

Tomorrow wraps up the Epilepsy Session at Camp Boggy Creek, and Marci and I will spend the day finishing our packing before the movers arrive on Tuesday. It feels like the right moment to pause, catch our breath, and get settled into this next chapter.

This move feels like the beginning of a new season, not just for our family, but for this newsletter as well.

The good news is that I’ve got some stories I’m really excited to share. I’ve written a companion piece to Stunt Mole about my sister, Alice, whose spirit has been inspiring me since we were kids.

I also interviewed my Oberlin classmates Mike James and Mia Kang. They’re the friends who took me out for seafood after I finished the MCAT, and during our conversation they reminded me of something that happened that day that I had completely forgotten, and told me about their fascinating post-Oberlin lives.

Waiting in the wings are stories about my lifelong friend Laurie Reisig Riss and one of my favorite teachers, Richard Pekela Garrin.

We’re also preparing for Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month with a new series of interviews and essays. One project I’m especially looking forward to is teaming up with my friend and former mentor and colleague, Dr. John Graham-Pole, a pioneer in Arts in Medicine and Pediatric Palliative Care, for a podcast conversation about pediatric oncology. Together we’ll explore why people choose this work, what keeps them going, and the remarkable children, families, and caregivers who have shaped our lives.

Once we’re settled into our new home, regular posting will resume.

Thank you for traveling this road with me. Your encouragement, thoughtful comments, and friendship have made this journey far more rewarding than I ever imagined.

See you soon.

— Bill

Welcome to Stunt Mole, my memoir about growing up in River Forest, Illinois in the 1960s and 70s, and the long, winding journey toward becoming a physician, musician, teacher, husband, father, and storyteller.

When I began writing these stories, I thought I was simply preserving childhood memories before they faded away.

What surprised me was what happened next. Over the past year, hundreds of readers have joined this community. Along the way, I have reconnected with old friends, interviewed classmates and mentors, shared stories about anxiety, depression, healing, music, medicine, and family, and discovered that many of us carry similar hopes, fears, and struggles.

One question I hear often is:

“Where should I start?”

The answer depends on what kind of stories you enjoy. Some readers come for the childhood adventures. Others connect most deeply with the chapters about anxiety, depression, and healing. Many are drawn to the music, friendships, teachers, and mentors who helped shape my life.

As Stunt Mole approaches the completion of its serialization and begins finding readers in book form, I thought it might be helpful to create a guide to the journey.

[For readers who prefer to experience the story in book form, the print edition of Stunt Mole: A Midwestern Memoir of Music, Mischief, and Mindfulness, A Boomer Boy’s Epic Journey with Depression is now available: Order Here

At its heart, Stunt Mole is a story about learning that caring for others begins with learning to care for oneself.

It’s about childhood adventures and near disasters, music teachers and neighborhood bullies, panic attacks and first kisses, mythology and mindfulness, friendship and family, medicine and meaning.

Some chapters are funny. Some are painful. Many are both.

Throughout the memoir, certain themes return again and again:

• The healing power of music and mentorship

• The search for belonging

• The quiet heroism of ordinary people

• Learning to live with fear and vulnerability

• Discovering compassion through failure, friendship, and love

If you’re new here, you do not need to begin at Chapter One.

Below are several good entry points depending on what kind of story you’re looking for.

🌟 Suggested Starting Points

If you enjoy reflective childhood memoirs:

• Adventuring with Billy B.

• Storytime with Dad

• Living on Park Avenue

• Ice Cream Wars

• The Marlin Bros

• Stunt Mole

• We Held the Stars in our Hands

If you’re interested in music, creativity, and the arts:

• Refuge

• Auditions

• The Curtain Call and the Kiss

• Sweet Victories and River Dances

If you connect with stories about anxiety, vulnerability, and healing:

• Panacea

• Journal of a Panic Year

• Paddle or Perish

• The Parade

• Coke Dances and Crushed Dreams

If you enjoy coming-of-age journeys and spiritual searching:

• Poetry in Motion

• Losing My Religion / Finding My Way

• My Ulysses

• Into the Great Wide Open

📚 Reading Chronologically

Stunt Mole

Before you Begin

Stunt Mole—Author’s Note (Why I Wrote This)

Stunt Mole—The Process

Part I — Childhood Adventures

Chapter 1: Adventuring with Billy B.

Chapter 2: Storytime with Dad

Chapter 3: Living on Park Avenue

Chapter 4: Ice Cream Wars

Chapter 5: The Marlin Bros

Chapter 6: Stunt Mole

Chapter 7: We Held the Stars in our Hands.

Part II—Fear, Shame and Finding Refuge

Chapter 8: The Parade

Chapter 9: A Not-So-Safe Haven

Chapter 10: Piano Lessons

Chapter 11: Billy Flatfish

Chapter 12: Grandma Anna’s Magic Kitchen

Chapter 13: Playing with Fire

Chapter 14: Gaining Allies

Chapter 15: Coke Dances and Crushed Dreams

Part III — Music, Friendship, and Finding My Voice

Chapter 16: New Strokes and Musical Folks

Chapter 17: Sweet Victories and River Dances

Chapter 18: Panacea

Chapter 19: Auditions

Chapter 20: The Curtain Call and the Kiss

Chapter 21: Refuge

Chapter 22: Not Ready to Duet

Part IV — College, Anxiety, and Awakening

Chapter 23: She Blinded Me with Science

Chapter 24: Poetry in Motion

Chapter 25: Tripping at Charlie’s Cave

Chapter 26: Losing My Religion, Finding My Way

Chapter 27: My Ulysses

Chapter 28: Journal of a Panic Year

Part V — Toward Healing

Chapter 29: Paddle or Perish

Chapter 30: Into the Great Wide Open

Chapter 31: The Come Back Inn

Epilogue

New chapters are currently being added weekly.

🌿 The Ecosystem Around Stunt Mole

These reflections, interviews, memorial essays, poems, and conversations expand the living world around Stunt Mole — honoring many of the people, relationships, teachers, artists, and communities that shaped the journey.

🎙 Companion Conversations

Many chapters are paired with interviews and reflections featuring people whose lives intersect with the memoir and its themes.

These conversations include: musicians, physicians, teachers, artists, lifelong friends, mentors, siblings and fellow travelers

Featured conversations include:

• Alex Wurman: Deeper than Words

• Gavin Wilson: Balm in Gilead

• Murray Coffey: Two Roads

• Kang Chiu: Stay Curious and Engaged

• Joe Fournier: An Introvert Who Brings Down the House

• Mark Carroll: The Long Way Home

• Bill Bower: Catching Up with Billy B.

• Jim Slayton: My Brother Jimbo, Unplugged

• Kevin Kimata: Bodhisattva

• Diana Ivas: She’s the One

• Ned and Jennifer Cabot: Sempre Libera

• Kevin Bry: Puppies in Flight

• Mike James and Mia Kang: To Follow

• Alice Slayton Clark: To Follow

🌙 Reflections and Memorials

• George Jones: Hearts on Fire TEDx Talk

• George Jones: Ninety Rings

• Laurie Reisig-Riss: To Follow

• Richard Garrin Pekela: To Follow

New Conversations and Memories are Added Weekly

❤️ Why I’m Sharing These Stories

For many years, I carried these stories privately.

When my children began struggling with panic attacks of their own, I realized these stories might help them understand where some of those fears came from…and how healing, friendship, music, and mentorship helped carry me through.

Writing down these stories was cathartic and helped me understand my fears—and the ways family, friends, teachers, music, and mentorship helped pull me through a challenging childhood. Long before I understood what anxiety and depression were, I was slowly learning how to navigate them.

My hope is that readers may recognize pieces of themselves and the people they love in these stories as well. Helping one person makes it all worth it.

We don’t heal alone. We heal through helping one another.

📚 Stunt Mole Is Now Available in Print

As the serialization nears completion, I’m excited to share that Stunt Mole: A Midwestern Memoir of Music, Mischief, and Mindfulness is now available in print.

The print edition gathers the complete memoir into a single volume, while this Substack continues to feature companion interviews, reflections, and new stories that expand the world around the book.

Order the print edition here.

🎭 A Note About OPUS

A portion of the proceeds from Stunt Mole and this Substack supports OPUS performing arts scholarships at Oak Park and River Forest High School, honoring the teachers whose kindness, creativity, and mentorship helped shape generations of students.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and being part of this growing community.

—Bill

Stunt Mole completes its serialization on Heroes, Heartwork & Healing this summer just as the book begins reaching a wider audience in print.

If these stories have meant something to you, sharing the publication with friends, schools, book clubs, or arts communities truly helps.

Depiction of a Panic Attack from the booklet When Your Body Feels Unsafe by Life Inside my Mind.

People who have experienced anxiety tend to recognize one another. We share a common language: panic attacks, sleepless nights, racing thoughts, and that persistent feeling that something is terribly wrong even when, to others, everything appears perfectly safe.

When I first discovered the writing of , I recognized a fellow traveler.

What struck me most was that although we are separated by a generation, we were speaking a remarkably similar language. The details differed, but the panic, fear, uncertainty, and search for healing were instantly recognizable.

As a kid in the 1970s, I used to love staying home from school to watch the Chicago Cubs play. My mother eventually realized I was faking illness. What she didn’t know was that I was developing crippling separation anxiety after a period of bullying at school. The reasons children and adults experience anxiety may differ, but panic attacks feel remarkably similar.

I was reading while traveling in Costa Rica with my wife, Marci. Within a few paragraphs, I found myself nodding. Here was someone writing openly about anxiety, panic attacks, grief, and healing as lived experience.

Looking back from the verge of retirement, I can see how anxiety shaped my life. Panic attacks and depression once felt overwhelming and permanent. Over time, meditation, music, exercise, supportive relationships, and meaningful work helped me find steadier ground. Those experiences also taught me something about suffering, making me a better spouse, parent, physician, and friend.

Years later, when some of my teenage and young adult children began experiencing panic attacks of their own, I found myself sharing stories I had rarely discussed. Those conversations eventually led me to write about anxiety, first for my family and later for a broader audience.

This is what drew me to @Life Inside My Mind. Here was someone doing something remarkably similar: transforming her own struggles with anxiety into practical guidance and encouragement for others.

What struck me about her work was not simply her honesty, but her generosity. She has created a community for people who often feel isolated. Her writing combines vulnerability with practical wisdom, helping readers understand what is happening in their minds and bodies while reminding them that they are not alone.

Over the past few months, I have come to know her as someone who reads widely, promotes the work of others generously, and genuinely wants to help people. I am honored that she has included my work among the writers she recommends.

What I admire most about her writing is its elegant economy of words and laser focus on practical ways to help others suffer less.

She recently published When Your Body Feels Unsafe, a beautifully illustrated guide that distills her experience with anxiety and panic attacks into practical strategies for breaking the cycle of fear. She dedicates the book:

“To those who fight battles in the silence of their own minds. Your exhaustion is valid and your courage immense, and this space is for you.”

That dedication captures the spirit of her work. Her compassion is deeply human. I find myself at home reading her Substack, and I suspect many of my subscribers will as well.

I asked her a series of questions about anxiety, writing, community, and what she has learned from her journey.

Here is our conversation.

1) You launched Life Inside My Mind to help people living with anxiety, panic attacks, and other mental health challenges. In a relatively short time you’ve built an engaged community. What has surprised you most about your Substack journey?

Without a doubt, what has surprised me most is the profound, unwavering support from absolute strangers. I never started Life Inside My Mind to build a massive subscriber list or generate an income. I started it simply as a sanctuary, a place to release the heavy things I had been carrying silently offline and to offer a hand to others trying to manage their own anxiety. I reached that initial goal, but I never anticipated the beautiful reciprocity of this space. To write from such a raw, vulnerable place and have so many people not only resonate with the work, but leave comments that genuinely touch my heart, that has been the greatest, most unexpected gift of this journey.

2) In one of your essays, you wrote about being the oldest sibling and the sense of responsibility that came with that role. Looking back, how did being the oldest child shape who you became—for better and for worse?

For worse, because I spent so much of my youth helping to raise my siblings, my Mom died months ago and my Dad is currently on treatment for cancer so I am currently navigating a deep caretaking exhaustion. While my feelings might evolve down the road about having kids, right now I simply want to enjoy my life with my husband without the heavy responsibility of raising another person. But for better, that role wove a deep, instinctual generosity into my character. It made me fiercely protective and caring in all my relationships, constantly looking out for my friends. Because I had to mature so quickly, I also find myself naturally drawn to the company of older people, simply soaking in the wisdom of those who have lived more life than I have. Ultimately, being the eldest gave me the beautiful gift of being needed. It provided a profound opportunity to serve the people I love, and to this day, my favorite thing is when my siblings reach out because they are sick or just need someone to listen. I will always love being their safe harbor.

3) You have written about not initially understanding what was happening when you experienced panic attacks. How did learning what anxiety was—and realizing you weren’t alone—change your relationship with it?

Finding a name for what I was experiencing didn’t magically erase the difficulty of living with an anxiety disorder, but it absolutely eased the heavy, isolating frustration of fighting it entirely alone. More than anything, the diagnosis shifted my perspective into deep gratitude. I am part of an anxiety support group, and sitting in that space taught me a sobering reality: not everyone has the resources to access therapy, afford medication, or even receive a proper diagnosis. As I continue to navigate and conquer my own journey with anxiety, I carry those individuals with me. They are a constant reminder of the privilege of treatment, and they keep my empathy incredibly grounded.

4. How has writing helped you understand or cope with anxiety, fear, and uncertainty?

Writing is the only space that truly sees the unmasked version of me. It holds my deepest emotions, my heaviest regrets, and my quietest guilts. For a long time, the page was the only place I could turn when I felt I had no one else to listen. I am profoundly grateful that I started journaling at such a young age, because I honestly don’t know how I would have navigated those heavy years without it. Today, writing is how I regulate my nervous system. When it comes to fear, the simple act of naming it on paper makes it instantly less terrifying. Our minds have a habit of magnifying our worries in the dark, but writing forces those thoughts into the light, allowing us to process them practically. By the time I put the pen down, the overwhelm is gone, and I am almost always surprised by how small the monsters actually were once I took them out of my head.

5) Writing about mental illness requires a great deal of vulnerability. Has sharing your story publicly changed your own healing journey in ways you didn’t expect?

Absolutely! My doctor once told me that a major root of my anxiety disorder is emotional suppression. Growing up and honestly, even to this day, I was taught to never cry in public and to always remain prim and proper. For years, I hid my irritation, anger, and sadness, even from my own family. I mastered the art of the poker face, leaving my journal as the only witness to how I actually felt. Sharing my story publicly became the ultimate unmasking. Stepping into this vulnerability has allowed me to beautifully reconnect with my younger self, it feels like I am finally sitting with her and giving her permission to show the world exactly how she feels. And beautifully, receiving messages from people who relate to that exact struggle hasn’t just validated my writing, it has become a profound part of my own healing.

6) One thing I admire about your Substack is how generously you promote and collaborate with other writers, many of whom write about topics very different from your own. You clearly see Substack as a community. Where does that philosophy come from?

It really began with my very first subscriber. When my publication started gaining rapid traction, I wanted her to experience that same momentum, so we began holding weekly meetings to share best practices. Soon, others started reaching out to ask how I grew my community so quickly. In those conversations, I realized something fundamental: I just want us all to win. We are all writers pouring our time and hearts into this space. Interestingly, even though my background is deeply rooted in sports, I have never liked competition. I truly believe that offering your support is the greatest gift you can give, because the feeling of being supported is absolutely priceless. Today, I am incredibly intentional about who I collaborate with. I choose writers who share my core values, which makes the work feel entirely stress-free and joyful. Ultimately, promoting others is simply my way of giving back. I wouldn’t be where I am without this community lifting me up, and I want to return that exact same energy.

Each Month Life Inside My Mind reviews and recommends her favorite reading. I feel honored to have made her list.

7) You seem to genuinely enjoy connecting with fellow travelers and helping readers discover new voices. What have those relationships taught you about people, writing, and yourself?

More than anything, it feeds my deep love for learning. Connecting with so many different voices means I always have a fascinating new topic to share in my daily life. I am constantly starting conversations with, “I just read an article about...” I genuinely love discovering things I previously knew nothing about, whether it’s the fact that the Pionono pastry is an homage to Pope Pius or the beautiful, communal nature of nude Korean spas. Immersing myself in different cultures and beliefs keeps me endlessly curious. But beyond just gathering trivia, reading these diverse stories is an active practice in empathy. It teaches me how to truly understand perspectives that differ from my own while maintaining a deep, unwavering respect. Ultimately, these relationships have taught me how to stay incredibly open-minded and beautifully grounded.

8) You mentioned that Bodhisattva was the piece I wrote that resonated most strongly with you. What was it about that story that spoke to you, and what lessons did you take from it?

I absolutely love the kind of friendship you have with Kevin. It isn’t the typical connection that forms simply because you share a bunch of surface-level similarities. It is so much deeper than that, and honestly, it’s exactly the kind of friendship I find myself craving right now. I have a few close friends, but they’ve moved to different countries. Between the time differences and their new responsibilities as parents, we rarely get to talk. I’ll admit I am having a hard time making new friends, largely because I am highly selective with my energy. What spoke to me most profoundly about that piece was that you and Kevin held entirely different beliefs and it never hindered your bond. You didn’t let those differences breed resentment. Instead, you actively chose to respect each other’s individual truths while remaining fiercely supportive. That level of grace is so rare. The greatest lesson I took from it is the importance of holding space for perspectives that don’t fully align with my own. It reminded me that instead of disliking someone for how they view the world, we should lean into curiosity and try to understand exactly why they are built that way.

A couple of old dogs.

“Some conversations don’t feel like interviews. They feel like two people comparing maps from the wreckage and somehow still laughing at the absurdity of being alive.”

— Christopher Carazas

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of joining for a Substack Live conversation. Chris is the author of Now That I’m Still Here, a memoir about surviving abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, grief, and ultimately finding a path forward.

We initially connected because our writing explores some of the same territory. Although our stories are very different, we have both spent time wrestling with anxiety, depression, shame, and the mysterious ways people find their footing again.

What struck me most about our conversation was how often we found ourselves nodding in recognition.

Chris writes about what he calls the “Dark Passenger”: that critical inner voice that tells us we are not enough. I recognized that voice immediately. Mine spoke a different language, but it carried a similar message. For much of my life, the Dark Passenger arrived in the form of shame.

Many years ago, I experienced panic attacks, periods of depression, and on two occasions, suicidal thoughts serious enough to get my attention. Chris has written openly about his own struggles with depression and recovery. One of the things I admire most about his work is that it is ultimately directed toward helping others. As he put it during our conversation:

“I want more people to stay. I want more people to get help.”

Listening to him describe his journey, I was reminded that while the details of our stories differ, many of us end up asking the same questions.

How do we move forward? How do we quiet the voice that tells us we are broken? How do we stop living in the past without pretending the past never happened?

As we talked, I realized that both of us had independently arrived at remarkably similar answers. For Chris, part of the answer has been running again, playing guitar, walking with his dog Shadow, reconnecting with friends, and seeking treatment when he needed it.

For me, the answer has included martial arts, music, meditation, walking, therapy, singing, and maintaining routines that keep me grounded. None of these things erase pain. None of them magically cure depression. But they create space between us and the Dark Passenger.

One of the most important moments in the conversation came when Chris observed that writing alone was not enough.

“Writing is good. Therapy is good. But I also needed a way to break free from the psychological abuse and deprogram myself from it.”

I found myself agreeing. Writing has been enormously helpful in my own life. Writing Stunt Mole allowed me to revisit old wounds with compassion and perspective. It helped me understand how childhood experiences shaped me. It allowed me to transform shame into a story.

But writing is only one tool. For me, meditation has been equally important. Music has been equally important. Friendship has been equally important.

The older I get, the more I appreciate that healing rarely comes from one thing. It usually comes from a collection of practices, relationships, and habits that slowly move us toward health.

Along the way, I have come to believe that compassion plays a special role in that process.

Compassion is one of the few things that heals both the giver and the receiver.

During our conversation, I found myself reflecting on something I have observed repeatedly as a physician, a writer, and a fellow traveler through anxiety and depression: compassion heals.

Much of Chris’s writing is rooted in a desire to help others feel less alone. In many ways, so is mine. His book, my memoir, this Substack, and much of my career as a pediatric oncologist grew from the same realization: that suffering becomes more bearable when it deepens our compassion for others.

Perhaps that is one of the hidden gifts of hardship. We become more attentive to the struggles of the people around us. More patient and understanding. More willing to sit beside someone in the dark until they find their footing again.

Looking back, I suspect that compassion may be one of the most powerful antidotes to shame. Shame tells us to hide. Compassion invites us to connect.

Another theme that emerged was forgiveness. Chris writes movingly about forgiving people who hurt him. Not because they deserved it, but because he deserved freedom from carrying that burden.

“I forgave her not because she deserved it. I forgave her because I deserved it.”

That idea resonated with me. As I’ve written and reflected on my own childhood experiences, I’ve become less interested in blame and more interested in understanding. The people who hurt us are often carrying wounds of their own. Forgiveness does not excuse harmful behavior. It simply allows us to stop dragging it into every room we enter.

Perhaps my favorite part of the conversation, however, was the simplest.

Two writers who spend a lot of time discussing serious subjects ended the conversation by introducing our dogs, discussing dog poetry, and exchanging terrible dad jokes.

There is probably a lesson in that too.

Life contains suffering. It contains grief, shame, and fear and loss. It also contains dogs, music, friendship and laughter.

The goal isn’t to eliminate darkness entirely. The goal is to make sure darkness doesn’t become the whole story.

Near the end of our conversation, Chris spoke about wanting to become a better version of himself than he had been over the last few years. Then he said something important:

“If I stay in that space, then they win. And I don’t want them to win.”

That struck me because it is, in many ways, what both of us have been writing about all along. Simply becoming a little better, a little wiser, a little kinder, and a little more fully ourselves.

Or, as Chris’s book title reminds us: We’re still here.

Ok, lets go! So what’s next?

Appreciate Chris throwing me this bone to chew on.

Me, circa 1985, on the Root Glacier near Kennicott, Alaska. At the time I was headed toward environmental work and wildlife biology, not medicine. Those years will be the focus of my next memoir, The Grizz.

I have always noticed that when I am writing, good things happen in my life. Most significantly, I met my wife Marci after starting a medical school newspaper called The Hippocampus. Being semi-retired has given me the time to write regularly, almost daily. This process brings me joy.

Over the past year, I have posted nearly 100 pieces, including over 60 essays/interviews and the serialization of the 31 chapters of my memoir Stunt Mole: A Midwestern Memoir of Music, Mischief, and Mindfulness—A Boomer Boy’s Epic Journey with Depression. As of this week I have retired from pediatric oncology after more than three decades caring for children with cancer.

Looking back over the past year, my posts have fallen into three broad categories. Some honored kind people who showed up for me during a difficult childhood and who remind me of the same grounded, compassionate people who care for children with cancer and blood disorders. Others explored how hardship can lead to philanthropy, service, and helping others. Still others focused on leadership, teamwork, and building communities that help people thrive.

In the process, I discovered that Substack is less a social media platform and more a supportive community. Along the way, I learned a few things I didn’t expect.

1. The stories that were the hardest to write and post were the most impactful.

I worried that the stories I found inspiring might feel depressing to others.

After all, pediatric oncology is different from most professions. We work with children who suffer and sometimes die. Likewise, my memoir explored depression, panic attacks, loneliness, and failure—subjects that are not exactly light reading.

Yet readers leaned in. Some of my most meaningful interactions came after sharing stories about my own depression and panic attacks. The posts I was most nervous about publishing often generated the deepest conversations.

What surprised me most was the kindness. I found a community of writers and readers who genuinely seemed to care about me as a fellow human being. Finding that warm and supportive community has been one of the great gifts of this journey.

2. Writing helped me understand my own life.

I originally began writing Stunt Mole for my children.

The process turned out to be far more difficult than I expected. I hated many of the early drafts. At first, it felt like I was simply unloading a mountain of personal information that might be revealing but not especially useful.

It was during the revision process that things changed. As I refined the stories, I became fascinated by a central question: What is a hero?

Thinking about that question forced me to examine the roles my parents, teachers, friends, and mentors played in helping me through a tumultuous childhood. Interweaving themes from The Odyssey, one of my favorite stories, added richness and fun to the project.

Gradually I stopped seeing myself as the center of the story. Instead, I began to see myself as a traveler encountering challenges, failures, and lessons along the way. My journey was full of wise mentors and brave fellow travelers, friends who showed up for me.

I started writing to help my children understand me. In the process, I wound up understanding myself a little better too.

3. People are hungry for hope.

One of the surprises of the past year was discovering which posts resonated most strongly.

Stories with hopeful themes consistently outperformed those that were merely informative or reflective. Posts like Panacea and Balm in Gilead connected deeply with readers.

More recently, some of the fastest-growing pieces weren’t polished essays at all. They were simple Notes sharing ideas about anxiety, aging, resilience, and well-being—ideas readers found useful and passed along to others.

That taught me something important. People want more than just information. They want hope, wisdom, and practical information that will make their lives better. They want reminders that healing is possible, that kindness matters, and that difficult journeys can lead somewhere meaningful.

4. Heroes are everywhere.

One goal of this Substack has been to shine a light on ordinary heroes. Fortunately, there is no shortage of them.

I have written about teachers, nurses, physicians, patients, parents, musicians, classmates, and friends. Some are widely recognized. Many are not.

The people I most enjoy writing about are rarely famous. They are simply the people who showed up. Folks who cared, helped, encouraged. Folks who made life better for someone else.

The process of telling these stories has been deeply rewarding. Every interview reminds me that courage and kindness are far more common than we often realize. In many ways, this idea is the thesis of the entire publication:

Heroes are everywhere if you are looking.

5. I am writing like I am running out of time.

I feel an urgency to tell these stories before they disappear. In the musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton raps that he is writing like he’s running out of time. That lyric reminds me of me me.

As I worked on Stunt Mole, my children were becoming adults. My parents and many of my teachers were gone. Friends are aging. Some are ill. Others have already passed away.

Part of that urgency came during the pandemic, when I watched my children struggle with anxiety and isolation. Their experiences reminded me of my own childhood struggles. I wanted them to know where they came from. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone.

Part of it came from retirement. After more than thirty years in pediatric oncology, I found myself reflecting on the people who shaped me and the experiences that defined my life.

And part of it came from realizing there is still so much left to write.

Stunt Mole ends with me heading not toward medicine, but toward environmental work and wildlife biology. What happened next?

That story becomes the focus of the next installment of my memoir, The Grizz, which explores how experiences in the Alaska and Florida wilderness ultimately led me back to medicine and helped me discover my calling.

There are also many more hero stories to tell.

I want to continue interviewing people who have shaped my life and others who are making a difference in medicine, education, the arts, and philanthropy. I want to write about OPUS, the scholarship project honoring the teachers who helped my classmates and me discover excellence, teamwork, creativity, and belonging. I want to write about leadership, service, healing, and community.

In short, I am not done. There are still heroes to celebrate, lessons to learn, and stories worth preserving. As I begin this new chapter of life, I am deeply grateful to all of you who have followed along.

So pull up your chair. There are still so many more great stories to tell!

The Come Back Inn in Melrose Park, Illinois, was a favorite meeting place for me and my friends in the 1970s and early 80’s. Courtesy of the Come Back Inn Facebook Page.

The Come Back Inn is gone now.

As it can be with time, what was once inn is out. The mounted moose, the peanut shells, the Kodiak burgers…all disappeared years ago beneath the tides of progress. But when Kevin Bry and I talk, somehow we still end up back there: under the moose’s heinie, drinking beer, talking about girls, theater, parents, fear, Lincoln, law, writing, and what comes next.

Some friendships move in straight lines. Ours never really did. It wandered through choir rooms and backstage hallways, Coke Dances and cast parties, summer departures and middle-aged reunions, through decades of theater, law, medicine, teaching, parenting, loss, and storytelling. Looking back now, I realize that Kevin was present at many of the emotional thresholds of my life long before either of us fully understood what was happening underneath the surface.

My brother Jim became friends with Kevin first. Our mothers knew each other through the League of Women Voters, and Kevin started appearing around our house when we were kids. Jim was serious and studious. Kevin was theatrical, mischievous, and endlessly entertaining.

“I think when I first came over, you were a little irritating to me,” Kevin laughed when we recently talked. “You bugged me a little bit. But somewhere along the way—probably junior high or high school—things changed. I started looking forward to going over to your house not just to see Jim, but to see you too.”

Kevin seemed to know everything about junior high before I got there. He warned me ominously about “initiation,” a kind of low-grade hazing ritual inflicted upon unsuspecting seventh graders.

“There’s a tree in front of the junior high where they hang boys by their underwear,” he once informed me gravely.

Years later, he admitted he may have exaggerated things slightly.

“I probably made it sound worse than it actually was,” he said. “I didn’t really participate much in it. But there were kids like you and Mark Carroll that I liked, and I wanted you to be ready for it and able to handle it.”

Humor was Kevin’s native language. Looking back now, I think humor was also one of the ways many of us survived adolescence.

At Oak Park and River Forest High School, our friendship deepened through the performing arts program. Kevin was one of the stars of that remarkable ecosystem; an actor, singer, dancer, soccer player, and writer who seemed equally comfortable playing gang leaders, comic characters, Shakespearean figures, or wisecracking troublemakers.

I first saw him electrify an audience in My Fair Lady. Later came Riff in West Side Story. Grease, A Man for All Seasons, Fiddler on the Roof, and Orchesis performances under the guidance of the legendary Diana Ivas. Like many of us, Kevin found something sacred there.

My friend Kevin was a darling of the high school stage. Here he is singing Greased Lightning with my high school classmates.

One time, backstage before a performance of Oklahoma!, Kevin had found me quivering with nerves before the curtain rose.

“Good,” he told me. “You need those butterflies. Just don’t let them scatter—get those puppies flying in formation. That’s the trick.”

Flying puppies.

It was such a ridiculous image that I immediately laughed. But beneath the humor was something genuinely wise. Kevin had a way of transforming fear into movement, panic into play.

“Most of life at that age operates on a pretty ordinary level,” Kevin told me. “But through the creative and performing arts, we started getting pulled toward a more sacred level of experience. And when that happens for the first time, it’s really marvelous. It changes you.”

He paused for a moment before continuing.

“The fun, the social connection, the creative reward of performing and singing…all of that opened up this wonderful, sacred, social, creative part of life. Once I experienced that, I knew it was something I never wanted to lose touch with.”

Diana Ivas, especially, helped many of us feel safe in artistic spaces at a time when boys dancing and performing in musicals was still viewed suspiciously in many circles.

“We always knew she had our back,” Kevin said. “It was a different world back then. Dancing or being in stage musicals was not always accepted for guys to do. But with Diana, we always felt safer.”

He described her leadership perfectly.

“She had this kind of gentle force. She didn’t yell, and she didn’t need to yell. She insisted, gently…but insisting nonetheless…that we take the work seriously and serve the story.”

That phrase stayed with me afterward: gently insisting. It seemed to describe not only Diana, but eventually Kevin himself.

Kevin always kept a notebook or journal next to his bed. Long before Substack, long before memoirs, long before either of us fully understood what we were trying to preserve, Kevin was documenting his life.

“I started keeping a diary consistently sometime in high school,” he told me. “Since then I’ve written almost every night. Over the years, the diaries just pile up.”

Then he said something important. “For me, it’s a way of showing myself that I’m taking my own life seriously—that I want access to my experiences and feelings and thoughts.”

That instinct…to rescue experience before it disappears…eventually led Kevin toward playwriting. After building a successful legal career, Kevin returned seriously to theater around the turn of the millennium, creating original works about Clarence Darrow, Abraham Lincoln, racial integration in Oak Park, and forgotten figures from OPRF history like Lewis Pope. Again and again, his work centered on underdogs, moral courage, history, and storytelling.

“I was interested in Darrow because he was the ultimate attorney for the underdog,” Kevin explained. “He never failed to give a case his best effort, all the while being a flawed human being.”

Kevin writes and then acts in his plays about underdogs and those who give them a hand up. Here he is depicting Clarence Darrow (Courtesy of the Wednesday Journal)

That phrase could describe many of the people Kevin admires most—including Abraham Lincoln. One of Kevin’s most moving theatrical experiences came while performing his Lincoln-and-Shakespeare piece at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Lincoln served as a legislator and later lay in state after his assassination.

“Standing there, imagining that moment in history, something really came over me emotionally,” Kevin recalled. “It felt almost spiritual or transcendent.”

I understood exactly what he meant. Kevin and I had always shared a fascination with Lincoln; not just the president or political figure, but Lincoln the storyteller, Lincoln the melancholic, Lincoln the self-educated lover of Shakespeare and ordinary conversation.

Like many friendships between boys and young men, ours rarely involved direct conversations about fear or emotional pain. We talked through theater, jokes, music, storytelling, and hamburgers instead.

One of my favorite memories appears near the end of Stunt Mole. Before I left for New York to work at the French Woods Festival, Kevin and I sat beneath the mounted moose derrière at the Come Back Inn eating Kodiak burgers and drinking beer while I tried to imagine adulthood.

“Generally speaking, as friends, we didn’t fully know the depths of what each other was going through,” he reflected. “Most people experience things privately.”

When Kevin later read Stunt Mole, he told me he had been surprised by some of the anxiety and shame I carried privately during those years.

Then he added something that has stayed with me.

“One of the valuable things about reading your book was that reminder…that everyone is probably dealing with struggles underneath the surface that you may not know about.”

Now, decades later, Kevin works as a house parent helping disadvantaged children at the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. The mischievous kid who once terrified me with stories about junior high wedgies now spends his days helping vulnerable children feel safe, guided, fed, encouraged, and cared for.

Kevin and his wife Gabby, enjoying a treat in their new home in Hershey Pennsylvania. They are taking a break from their new jobs working with underprivileged children.

In retrospect, maybe that evolution makes perfect sense.

Somewhere along the way, the actor, lawyer, playwright, teacher, father, and friend became exactly the sort of hero our teachers had been trying to help us become all along.

Near the end of our recent interview, after talking about theater, Lincoln, diaries, Diana Ivas, friendship, and the strange passage of time, Kevin grew quiet for a moment.

“I really value having you in my life,” he said.

Simple words. No performance. No curtain call. Just the truth.

And maybe that’s what friendship finally becomes after so many years pass. Nothing grandiose, simply continuing to show up in each other’s stories.

Kevin’s Substack is called Breaking Bry. Check out some of Kevin’s writings here. https://substack.com/@kevinbry

When we were kids, my friend Billy B.’s older brother Brian rode up on his bicycle and showed us a Polyphemus moth he had found in a vacant lot in our neighborhood.

Named for the Cyclops in The Odyssey, that moth was enormous by Illinois standards, with great eye-shaped markings on its wings. I remember staring at it in amazement. It was one of the first moments I can recall looking closely at something fragile and wild, seeing beauty and feeling genuine wonder.

Over the years I’ve found wonder and beauty in many places: in children facing cancer with extraordinary courage, in teachers who changed lives without realizing it, in musicians who helped me find my voice, in friends who showed up when I needed them most, and in quiet moments of healing and connection.

Heroes, Heartwork & Healing grew from a desire to tell those stories.

Some come from my memoir, Stunt Mole, which traces my journey from a curious kid growing up in River Forest, Illinois to a physician, husband, father, musician, and writer. Others come from more than three decades caring for children with cancer. Many celebrate artists, teachers, philanthropists, and everyday heroes whose kindness and example continue to inspire me.

At its heart, this publication is about the people who lift others up.

Over the past year this publication has grown into a gathering place for readers interested in storytelling, healing, creativity, service, and finding meaning in ordinary lives.

If you’re new here, I thought I’d offer a short guide to some favorite pieces from the archive.

New here? Start with Why I Write.

Then follow whichever path speaks to you.

Stunt Mole: A Memoir of Growing Up

The heart of this publication is Stunt Mole, my coming-of-age memoir about growing up in River Forest, Illinois, finding refuge in music, navigating anxiety, and eventually discovering a path toward healing and purpose.

• Author’s Note

• Adventuring with Billy B.

• The Long Way Home

• Stunt Mole Reader’s Guide

Medicine and Healing

For more than thirty years I cared for children with cancer. These stories honor the caregivers, patients and families who changed me forever.

• Carrying Malaya’s Light

• Bonnie’s Spark

• Remembering Andrew

Music, Art, and the Things That Save Us

Music has been one of the great healing forces in my life. These stories explore friendship, creativity, and the ways art helps us make sense of the world.

• We Shared a Season

• Balm in Gilead

• Deeper than Words

Celebrating Others

Some of my favorite pieces shine a light on remarkable people whose lives continue to inspire me. These include teachers, artists, physicians, patients, community leaders, and everyday heroes. Many grew out of my work with OPUS OPRFHS Friends of the Performing Arts, a volunteer effort honoring the educators who shaped my generation while supporting scholarships for talented young artists.

Two Roads

She’s the One

Introvert Who Brings Down the House

Mindfulness, Mental Health, and Finding Our Way

Many of my most personal essays explore anxiety, meditation, resilience, and the practices that helped me heal.

Mana in the Monteverde Mist

Journal of a Panic Year

Paddle or Perish

Thank you for being here.

Whether you’ve come for the memoir, the medicine, the music, or the stories of remarkable people, I hope you’ll find something that speaks to you.

And perhaps, like that Polyphemus moth all those years ago, help you pause for a moment and look a little more closely at the wonder around you.

Through these stories, I hope not only to celebrate the people who have lifted others up, but to inspire more acts of creativity, compassion, mentorship, and service.

—Bill

I was given a replica of the end of therapy bell at my retirement party. Iddy Bitty, who will be seeing a lot more of me, wanted to ring it in celebration!

This week I began my last few days of caring for children with cancer. For most of my career, I imagined retiring at 62. Now that the moment has arrived, it feels stranger and more emotional than I expected. I’m going to miss work that has felt sacred and has required my whole mind, body and spirit. The children and families I’ve cared for over the years have taught me more about courage, humor, resilience, and grace than I could ever fully repay.

I knew that my daughter, Sara, our youngest, would have completed college at this point, and so hopefully all of our kids would be out of the nest. My father, a clinical oncologist and cancer researcher, retired at 61. He moved to Sanibel with my mom and became a naturalist and something of an expert on native plants, as busy in retirement as he had been in his medical career. He was active to age 75, when he died from pulmonary fibrosis. And my favorite teacher and mentor, Dr. Richard O’Brien, retired at 58. He was an amazingly effective leader, funny and a storyteller. He used to tell us ”get out of here. I’m not paying you overtime.” He would jot down on a piece of paper the name of a trail and the directions to get to it, and really emphasized life outside of medicine. An avid bird watcher, Dick O’Brien retired so he could bird the world. Both men taught me that medicine could be a calling without becoming an entire identity.

So 62 seemed like a sweet spot. Still, it feels strange to step away when I know I still have much to offer clinically. And yet I am stepping away for an opportunity to be with my wife in Eustis where she is medical director at Camp Boggy Creek, a Paul Newman camp for children with medical illnesses. Marci stepped away from her highly successful career as a general pediatrician in Gainesville. She was coaching the girls in volleyball and was frustrated that she was unable to attend some of the games because she was on call. She realized that the kids needed one parent who could be a consistent presence and willingly and enthusiastically filled that role through much of their childhoods.

Her selfless shift allowed me to focus more deeply on my work; to lead an international trial for Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia and eventually build and lead a division. Running a division on top of managing a large panel of complicated leukemia and lymphoma patients challenged me intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Marci managed the kids’ lives and still had the energy to support me when I came home exhausted and distraught. She helped me cope with nights full of patient calls, the existential sadness of losing patients, and helped me through two hip surgeries. I loved being present in my kids lives and enjoyed their volleyball games and plays, even played music and sang current pop songs with them. But I never felt the pressure of managing their busy lives. Marci took that on willfully and did it masterfully. I am so grateful to her gift to our kids and me.

Now that our kids are out of the house, the Camp Boggy Creek position is a dream job and opportunity for her to use her training to positively impact kids. Marci is the perfect person for this role with boundless cheerful energy, substantial pediatric know-how and an infectious personality to recruit the best medical volunteers. She’s got moxie, why I fell in love with her! And now I have a chance to support her the way she supported me.

For much of the past year, Marci and I have been living apart while she worked at camp and I finished my responsibilities in Gainesville. Retirement will finally allow us to share the same home again and begin this next chapter side by side.

I will care for our pets, who can’t live on site at the camp. I will cook and clean and try to make up for all the years Marci did the lions share. I hope to support camp as a medical volunteer during cancer, hemophilia and sickle cell weeks. I will be her uber volunteer. And I hope to fill in my spare time with a lot of writing and music.

Though I published the final chapter from Stunt Mole earlier this week, I plan to continue to post companion interviews so you can hear the interesting life stories my friends and classmates have had. I am working on the subsequent volume, The Grizz, a book about finding one’s life’s purpose. So while one chapter is ending, another already seems to be opening.

The plaque I received from the Department of Pediatrics at the university of Florida says “In recognition of extraordinary service and a lifelong commitment to servant leadership and child health.” I had a goal when I came back to Florida to be part of making University of Florida Health/Shands Children’s Hospital one of the best in the country in order to serve children in our community. And I have loved working at the University of Florida. I had the opportunity to work with incredible servant leaders including a number of outstanding chairmen, and fellow division chiefs, clinicians, nurses and support staff. We now have nationally recognized programs in most of our subspecialties.

But I am most proud of my division and the servant leaders that work alongside me every day. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Joanne Lagmay for taking the helm and leading the division into the future. We have built an internationally known clinical and research program but most of all a center where children and families get outstanding, patient-centered care. We are a team that is making a difference in this world.

I may be stepping away from the hospital, but I am not stepping away from the things that drew me to medicine in the first place: compassion, storytelling, teaching, music, mentorship, and the privilege of walking beside children and families during difficult moments. The mission, I hope, will not.

After decades inside hospitals and clinics, the horizon suddenly feels a little wider.

And with way more trees and less IVs.

Bill and Marci in our happy place.

Old Unc strolled the neighborhood like peace personified.

Author’s Note: Today is my final Tuesday as a practicing pediatric oncologist.

It feels fitting that I’m posting the final chapter of Stunt Mole at the same moment one long chapter of my own life is ending and another is beginning.

I’m deeply grateful for the children, families, colleagues, teachers, friends, and loved ones who helped shape the person and physician I became.

In the years that followed, I traveled far. I explored wild places, fell in and out of love, and finally stopped trying to live someone else’s idea of a meaningful life. I wasn’t lost anymore. I had arrived—not at a destination, but at myself. Slowly, I discovered my own path. The journey itself, the way I traveled it, became the point.

It didn’t happen all at once. First, I had to learn how to heal, how to offer myself the compassion I so easily gave to others. Then, I had to do the work: the daily practice of letting go, telling the truth, staying present even when it hurt. For me, this has been a lifelong process of learning to care for myself.

Eventually, I found my way back to medicine. Not out of duty, but from a place of clarity and calling. I became a pediatric oncologist, dedicating my life to helping children and families face some of the hardest moments imaginable. I see that work as sacred. It demands my whole self. And I love it.

Strangely, beautifully, it was my own childhood, and the very pain I thought would break me, that prepared me for this path. Those early struggles taught me to listen carefully, to stay calm in chaos, to lead with my whole heart. Because I survived what I did, I can sit with dying children and still hold hope. I can guide my team through darkness, knowing I have the strength to endure.

And I walk a path my father first blazed as a pioneer in medical oncology. He and I are more alike than I would have admitted growing up. The older I get, the clearer that becomes—especially as I try to tell this story.

This isn’t the story of someone who always knew where he was going. It’s the story of someone who wandered, stumbled, doubted, and slowly, painfully, found his way.

I wrote it for my kids, but it’s really for anyone who has ever felt broken or lost.

You are not alone.

Ned and Jennifer, together in their happy place, on the water in Harpswell Maine.

When I was at Oberlin, I was learning how to breathe. All around me, people seemed freer than I was; more certain, more adventurous, less afraid of being fully seen.

Ned and Jennifer Cabot were Obies living boldly.

Ned entered my life in the organic chemistry lab, where everything had structure, except him. Ned wasn’t sure how he ended up in that class. “I majored in biology for all the wrong reasons. It was the only hard subject I had in high school. But what I really loved was ecology. Being outside, learning about the natural world.”

Even then, he moved through the world with a kind of fearless improvisation that made ordinary life feel slightly less governed by rules. He showed up one day to organic chemistry lab with half his beard and mustache shaved off. I worked beside him for half the lab before I noticed.

“Dude… what happened to your face?”

“I thought you’d never notice!” We laughed until our cheeks hurt.

Ned’s mind always seemed tilted toward possibility and absurdity. At one point he had a small business writing custom limericks. Another time, according to Jennifer, he announced himself in their dormitory hallway by dramatically flopping onto a mattress in her doorway.

“The shenanigans started from the minute I met him,” she told me. “And thank goodness—they never stopped.”

She had arrived at Oberlin with her guitar and folk songs, leaving her dorm room door open the way freshmen did back then. She glanced up and suddenly there was Ned, sprawled across a mattress in the hallway outside her room as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

“My heart just… something happened,” she said.

Outside of class, Ned played bass on the quad, covering The Police and The Clash. Ned and Jennifer were part of a world that felt just slightly out of reach, not because I wasn’t welcome, but because I wasn’t yet at ease in my own skin.

Jennifer’s path began with music, like mine. But hers unfolded with a confidence and commitment that I didn’t yet have. “I grew up as a folk singer with my guitar. That was my world. Then a teacher said, ‘I hear in your voice the ability to sing opera.’”

She still sounded amazed when she told me this. “She played Messiah, and I was blown away. I couldn’t believe the human voice could do that. Within a year, I was applying to conservatories.”

There was courage in what she was doing. The willingness to step onto stages where failure would be public, immediate, and impossible to hide.

Life around them felt alive in a way I was still learning to inhabit. There was music. There was laughter. There were leeches. Ned brought them home from biology class and put them in the bowl with our goldfish, Mondale, Jackson, and Reagan.

From Stunt Mole—Chapter 30 Into the Great Wide Open

“We found one after it escaped,” Ned said. “It was covered in dust bunnies, like a little fur coat. We put it back in the tank, but it was never quite the same.”

Jennifer didn’t hesitate. “I was completely freaked out.”

That house, like so much of Oberlin, was a little bit cuckoo.

While I was wrestling with fear, of being seen, of being wanted, of not being enough, Ned and Jennifer seemed to move forward without that same paralysis. Not because life was simpler for them. But because they kept moving toward their goals. And they had each other.

After Oberlin, their paths diverged. “We wrote letters every week for two years,” Ned said. “They’re still tied up in the attic. Our kids can read them when we’re gone.”

Jennifer visited him in the Dominican Republic, where he had gone with the Peace Corps. “I realized on the first day I wasn’t going to teach them anything,” Ned told me. “They already knew how to fish. So I just went fishing.”

Ned as Peace Corp Volunteer in the Dominican Republic.

There was humility in that answer. Ned hadn’t gone there to conquer anything. He had gone to participate. At first, he simply lived there. He fished. Built a boat. Learned the rhythms of the village. But over time, the experience widened into something larger.

“We started a solar project. When I left, it was just beginning. Two years later, the whole village had electricity.”

People who had never had lights at night suddenly did. Radios played. The darkness receded a little. In the most literal sense, Ned had helped bring light.

I had thought about the Peace Corps myself once. The idea pulled at me deeply; the adventure, the service, the possibility of stepping outside the life I thought I was supposed to live. But so did fear. I worried about finding myself far from home, trapped inside my own anxiety with no clear way back.

Ned went anyway. And even though I never followed him there, his way of moving through the world changed me. Summer of junior year, he invited me on a canoe trip down Maine’s Allagash River. We paddled through wilderness for days, encountering cold, clean water, pine trees, moose, loons (the bird kind, not me and Ned), silence, stars. I loved being outdoors, loved the feeling of moving through untamed places with no schedule except the river itself.

Until then, I had assumed my path was fixed: medical school, medicine, responsibility. But the river introduced another possibility. That a life could be shaped by exploration, uncertainty, nature, and service outside conventional boundaries.

That trip helped send me toward Alaska, which was my own version of the Peace Corps, though closer to home. And later toward the Eckerd Foundation, working with children in crisis. Not international adventures. But bold ones for me.

Jennifer’s career eventually carried her onto major opera stages around the world, though she never carried herself like a diva. Just someone still amazed by what the human voice could do.

Jennifer graced stages throughout the world as a operatic Soprano, taking on lead roles singing with stars like Placido Domingo.

“I made the finals of Plácido Domingo’s competition. I didn’t win anything, and I was upset. Then he came up to me and said, ‘What are you doing on January 30th?’” That question changed everything. “I ended up singing with him in a 10,000-seat arena. It opened so many doors.”

But it was a magical moment in Chile that she remembers.

“The audience went absolutely crazy. They throw flowers when they love you. I was just standing there, covered in flowers.” She paused when she said it. “That’s when I realized—the audience creates something bigger than you can do alone.”

In different ways, both of them seemed drawn toward experiences that dissolved the boundaries between people; music, poetry, travel, teaching, sailing, community.

Ned and Jennifer lived together in Berlin when the Wall came down. “We were standing on it with hundreds of people,” Jennifer said. “They started spraying water to get people down, but I had to sing the next day. I said, ‘We have to leave. I can’t get sick!’”

Even in the middle of history, life kept moving. Now, years later, that same current carries them forward. “We’re not saying goodbye to that phase of life,” Jennifer told me. “We’re just saying hello to different new things.”

Even now, their lives still revolve around small acts of openness and invitation. In front of their house sits a little poetry box, modeled after the neighborhood “little free libraries.”

“People leave poems, or take poems,” Jennifer told me. “Sometimes there are handwritten ones. Sometimes kids leave things.”

Ned smiled. “It’s sort of on the honor system. Which is probably why we like it.” It felt completely consistent with the life they had built together; art not sealed away in concert halls or universities, but left out in the open for strangers to stumble upon.

Jennifer Sailing with their two kids, Casey and Bonnie.

Ned smiled when he described what comes next. “We’re going to sell the house, buy a bigger boat, and sail around the world.”

That sounded exactly like them. Wide open.

Ned showing his son Casey how to read a map.

Over the years, their lives have carried them from Oberlin practice rooms and leech-filled apartments to fishing villages in the Dominican Republic, opera houses in Europe and Chili and raining roses, the fall of the Berlin Wall, raising children across continents, teaching students, coaching sailors, and now toward another horizon entirely.

They already have a name for the boat.

Sempre Libera. Always free.

And somehow, after all these years, they still are.

Ned and Jennifer at the Jug Bay Preserve on the Patuxent Rivers