MEET LOCAL LEGENDS: By State

"I was nine years old-as surveys show, the 'normal' age for deciding when to be a doctor-when it hit me. Don't ask me why, but it did. With my grandmother's help, I saved my pennies until I could buy Dorland's Medical Dictionary and Gray's Anatomy from a chiropractor's widow. Then I trudged a mile-and-a-half home with them!"

"I have naturally liked helping people all my life, plus I was someone who wanted a profession. Being a doctor is a life profession, an art as well as a science, and you only understand the 'calling' until you've practiced for a while."

"I wanted to do something of service to others which, at the same time, would be constantly challenging and useful wherever I happened to be. I ultimately chose medicine because I thought I might spend more time in developing nations, but that wasn't the way it went."

"I like the practice of gastroenterology. I call it the "happy specialty." People don't usually die, and I often find myself interacting with three generations, grandmother, mother, and daughter, which I find rewarding."

"I was a history major who never thought of medical school. For five years after graduation, I worked as a paralegal, a patient advocate at a free health care clinic, on an assembly line in a jam, jelly and fruitcake factory and even tried to get into the carpenter's union before becoming a welfare case worker, which is what led me, at last, to health care. I decided I could make a difference, so I went back to school to become a physical therapist but a friend told me I'd have a hard time taking orders from a doctor. So I decided to go to medical school!"

"For me, restoring the patients to well being while they are in the surgical intensive care unit is one of the greatest rewards imaginable."

"I'm most proud of my time spent as Assistant Dean of Students. My legacy, I hope, will be that I helped some medical students become good and caring physicians."