MEET LOCAL LEGENDS: By Medical Specialty

"At Beth Israel in Boston I met people in the hospital and clinic who taught me so much about medicine and life. Here was this devastating illness, AIDS, that nobody really understood, but there was also a tremendous need and opportunity to help fight a baffling disease."

"I wanted to go to medical school when I graduated from high school, but my college did not have a "pre-med" major... so, eventually, I moved to New York City and had the opportunity to run residential facilities for mentally ill homeless people for seven years. I decided I needed more education to have more power to help people, and that becoming a physician would give me that power."

"When I was doing my doctorate in microbiology, I got extremely interested in immunology, especially of leukemia and lymphoma. But after two years of pure research, I missed working with people, so I went to medical school. I wanted to help people with cancer."

"I went into medicine with the idea that I could help. My mission has always been to provide care to people who might not have gotten it otherwise."

"My grandparents and parents inspired me to help other people. They lived lives of service, my grandparents helping many Polish immigrants to survive the Depression and my parents carrying on in their tradition."

"For me the most important reward is to know you made a difference in your community, that you contributed something and helped others."

"I was curious. My father was a physician, my mother a nurse who didn't go to medical school because it was the 1940s—and told me never to be a nurse."