Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:19 — 27.8MB) | Embed

Let’s take YAZ, Carl Albert Yastrzemski, to be precise. Without his talent, Yaz would be an ordinary guy. With it he is extraordinary, not just as a player, but as the inspiring person he or any of us “ordinary” folks might be. That is why he inspired us. Did Yaz have the natural ability of Ted Williams, or of dozens of other lesser players, like his teammates Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, and Wade Boggs? Probably not. In his first six seasons, Carl was a serviceable player whose home run total reached twenty only one time. Suddenly, in 1967, Yaz led his team to the World Series with one of the greatest seasons ever, winning the Triple Crown (batting average, home runs, and runs batted in), and the MVP, winning forever the respect of everyone. Did it stop there? No. Carl whacked 40 or more homers thrice in the next three seasons, and went on to a remarkable 23 year career that included a multiplicity of batting, fielding, throwing, and team leading exploits which make his moniker, “YAZ,” ring down the baseball ages. That was accomplished by a singular dedication to be the best player he could be, a seriousness of purpose and desire to excel, which made him a role model we all admired, and inspired us to lead a more focused life. Of all players, it may be that Carl Yastrzemski best fit the notion that we identify with ballplayers because of all athletes they most resemble in size and background any one of us. Another player of that ilk is Ian Kinsler who wasn’t picked until the 17th round of the draft several hundred rungs down the ladder, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps a la Yaz to become one of the most prominent players in the American League over a 14 year career, capped by winning a ring with the Red Sox 2018 Championship team. Listen here to my retelling of my interview of the centered Ian in the third base dugout at Fenway Park when he visited here with the Rangers in the midst of a torrid batting streak. That meeting led to my joking offer to Nolan Ryan, then the President of the Rangers, to hire me as a Rangers magic maker for the coming World Series. How about  baseballers off the field like Chaim Bloom, the astute Chief Baseball Officer of the Red Sox, who was the only one who believed me that I witnessed Teddy Ballgame’s 500 foot plus home run in June, 1946, prompting me to write a story about Chaim and Teddy, soon to be published. Another such baseballer is poet, author, playright, Sox Public Address Announcer, and raconteur, the gentle and talented, Dick Flavin, whom I address as “King Richard.” You’ll get to know him here. As you will meet at an event I attended, Mariano Rivera, Bud Selig, and Pat Courtney, Bud’s right hand guy. Not to mention brushing elbows there with Pedro Martinez and Joe Torre. I was also there long ago on that horrific evening when I heard “a sound never to be forgotten,” when Tony Conigliaro got beaned and blinded by an errant fastball. Happier times involved Juan. Marichal, the Cooper brothers, Mort and Walker, the Waner brothers, Paul and Lloyd, Tom Seaver and his long ago predecessor, Christy Mathewson, and the unforgettable Rickey Henderson. They’re all here, so please listen and share.

People, Always People.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:32 — 26.1MB) | Embed

Everybody knows Massachusetts is a blue state. It’s been a blue state for a long time. Can anyone explain why that is? Is there anything about baseball as played at Fenway Park that throws light on that puzzle. Let’s go back to late June, 1949 when the Yankees came to to town for a crucial three game series. Joe DiMaggio was set to play his first games of the season, having sat out half the year with a bone spur in his right heel. I was eighteen at the time and attended the first game with my father on a Friday night. Our pitcher was the blinding rookie left hander, Maury McDermott. He didn’t blind Joe who blasted a home run, followed that with two more homers and six RBI on Saturday, and finished the job with another round tripper on Sunday to sweep the Sox out of their minds, stunning the Sox loyals. You would think Sox fandom would aim death threats at DiMaggio. Instead, they cheered him to the rafters, demonstrating a fan characteristic in Bean Town, not in vogue elsewhere then or now, of giving merit its due. The same reaction was shown in a 1958 game I attended when hard throwing Detroit right hander, Jim Bunning, no hit the Sox, and left famous and failed for a day Ted Williams flailing weakly at his slants. That is what one does when a master shows his grit. That is the same Jim Bunning who later pitched a perfect game in 1964 for the Phillies, the first one in the National League since the 19th Century, was later voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and also elected United States Representative and Iater Senator from Kentucky, thus becoming the sole MLB player to be elected to both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Senate. As a politician, Jim Bunning compiled an eccentric ultra right wing record diametrically opposed to Massachusetts Blue State beliefs. Those accounts seem to be an accurate, albeit anecdotal, answer to why Massachusetts is and has been blue. One thing is for sure. When I get to talk baseball with a true baseball believer like my articulate and informed interlocutor, Jordan Rich, anyone listening is sure to learn a lot about baseball history, the guys who played it, and what that means in the context of our lives. They are all in this episode, from the charming “Little Professor,” Dom DiMaggio, the unfairly maligned, Johnny Pesky, the smooth fielding and the power hitting keystone sacker, Bobby Doerr, and partner in power with Teddy Ballgame, Vern “Shoulders” Stephens, of my youth; the power throwing right fielder, Dwight Evans, Hall of Fame slugger, Jim Rice, smooth center fielder and MVP, Freddy Lynn, elegant infielder and home run threat, Americo “Rico” Petrocelli, and Rick “The Rooster” Burleson of my mid-years; to Nomar, Youk, Dustin, Manny being Manny, brave Jon Lester, and the incredible Mookie, of my later years.

“C’mom along and listen to….”

People,  Always people.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:42 — 21.7MB) | Embed

Well not exactly, but I thought so when I met beautiful dark and enchanting Octavia sitting next to me at Fenway Park. At first I thought she might be Cleopatra, but it turned out her husband’s name was Cecil and not Caesar. Cecil who? Cecil Cooper that’s who, a rookie then, but a player who came mighty close to making Octavia’s words that day come true when she said, “My Cecil is going to become a SUPERSTAR!” Plenty of those in Boston Red Sox history, and plenty of them on this podcast like twirling and whirling hurler Luis Tiant, man for all seasons and any situation, Tim Wakefield, a player maybe greater than Ted Williams, known as Big Papi, the one and only David Ortiz, and that colorful, courageous, proud, and unhittable Dominican, Pedro Martinez. I pose the question to myself why is it that these diamond heroes playing a little boys’ game become so important to millions of us. You’ll be interested by my answer. Jordan posed another question to me on how do we know which guys who used PED’s should be admitted to the Hall of Fame, and which guys shouldn’t. You may be surprised by my answer. C’mon along and I’ll tell you what it’s like to sit in one of those luxury boxes high above the field of play. How about Wade Boggs and Manny Ramirez, two of the best hitters ever, and Roger Clemens one of the best pitchers ever?I tell of their exploits here too. Jordan speaks of the almost forgotten Tim Naehring, one of his heroes growing up. How did Pedro’s first game as a Sox cost me over $200, and the threat of dismemberment or divorce. Now that one is a story you don’t want to miss!

People, always people!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:36 — 20.7MB) | Embed

The New York Yankees may have won the most pennants and World Series in baseball history, but no team has taught us more about life and how to live it than the Boston Red Sox.

Let’s start with a few facts one needs to know, to know the truth of the above statement. In the early years of 20th Century the Red Sox won every one of the five World Series in which they played, four of those in the teens, the last in 1918, making them the dominant team in that era. In the early years of this century the Red Sox won every one of the four World Series in which they played, in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018, making them the dominant team of this era. That is represented on my dresser by four Waterford Crystal etched baseballs made by that iconic company, gifted to me by my baseball loving wife, Lois. In the eighty-six years in between the last of those victories in 1918 and the win in 2004, the Sox suffered a drought which bid fair never to end, a drought often called “The Curse of the Bambino,” a reference to when the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to support their owner’s Broadway ambitions. Sure, the Red Sox offered lots of thrills, great players, four AL pennants, many disappointments, and NO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, in those many years, despite taking every one of the four World Series in which they competed in 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986 to the full seven games. I attended a game in the 1946 Series against the Cardinals which the Sox lost 12-3, a harbinger of their loss in the 7th game aided by the intrepid base-running of Enos Slaughter, and the continuation of Ted Williams’ Series long slump in which he batted a minuscule .200, with nary an extra base hit! Let’s take 1967, the year of the “Impossible Dream,” when Hall of Famer, Carl Yastrzemski’s incredible play won the pennant for his upstart team, and the triple crown and MVP for himself. Carl continued his heroics in the Series, but the team fell victim to the speed of Lou Brock and the power pitching of Bob Gibson who won three games. How about 1975 when Carlton Fisk slammed a walk off homer forever caught by the camera as Fisk willed it fair, to win the sixth game against Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine,” a game often cited as the best game in baseball history. This win made torturous the Sox loss of the seventh game on Joe Morgan’s bloop hit to short center field. Let us not forget 1978 in passing when Bucky “F——-g” Dent, as he has come to be known in these precincts, hit yet another blooper into the net atop the “Green Monster,” to do the Sox out of the AL pennant and the World Series. Or 1986 when Bill Buckner found a way to misplay a LIttle League ground ball to first into a Mets win and World Championship for them. Them, always them, for eighty-six long years, them!

Yes, I lived through a lot of this, from my first game with my Dad in 1935 onward. You can tell yourself that it’s only a game, that it has no real affect on my life. But you know what? We live every moment, whether we’re out there at the game, seeing it on television, or listening to it on the radio. During this podcast, Jordan Rich tells of not being able to sleep after the Buckner game. That is more typical than atypical. It shows how passionately millions of baseball fans are invested in their teams. As I’ve tried to show above, one might truly say Red Sox fans are greatly invested, perhaps the most invested, and certainly the most disappointed fans of all, a feeling lately repeating itself when they lost a playoff series against the Astros they should have won to reach the World Series.

So what does all that have to do with life? I believe that although baseball is not life, it simulates life in its ups and downs, its triumphs and defeats, so that if you are passionately invested in it, and FEEL those ups and downs as they unfold, sometimes often in any single game, it teaches you, mostly subliminally, to deal with life’s ups and downs, the good and bad, as your own life unfolds. One might say that the upside of the downside of baseball is that the true follower grows and becomes a better person. I FEEL that is true!

People, always people!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:43 — 17.1MB) | Embed

Who was beautiful Priscilla Howe? What has she got to do with handsome Ted Williams? What do I have to do with either one of these two talented people? You’ll have to wait until the end of this note to get to that part of the story, and listen to the podcast to get the whole story.

Let’s start with something more serious, that being the central place baseball held and still holds in American life, in fact a glue that holds it together, as “Rudy Giuliani The First” reminded us as the Mayor of Gotham, days after the Twin Towers were felled. How stuck the diamond game is to our national culture was yet again shown during the pandemic.

Detroit, home to haters Henry Ford and Father Coughlin, was a hotbed of anti-Semitism in the years before and during WWII, when Henry “Hank” Greenberg, two time AL MVP, played there and demonstrated that Jews were no sissies. This handsome 6’ 4” giant home run champion held off the haters with his fists when necessary, joined the service before Pearl Harbor, rose from the ranks to be a Captain, served four years, returned in 1945 to lead the Tigers to yet another pennant, went on to rise to GM and then part owner of the Cleveland Indians, and crossed the line to help Marvin Miller and the players win free agency! Did “Hankus Pankus,” as he was known, personally support, on the field of play, Jackie Robinson in his quest to break the color line? Yes, he did. Did he nurture his lifelong friend, Ralph Kiner, to be the NL Home Run Champ seven consecutive seasons to become worthy of election to the Baseball Hall of Fame? Yes, he did. Was Hank Greenberg the greatest American Jew of the 20th Century? Arguably, yes he was, as the hero to millions of American Jews in an era when anti-Semitism was rife.

You want to know about the Boston Braves who departed Boston for Milwaukee in 1953 taking away from Boston Hall of Fame stars like the winningest lefty in MLB history, Warren Spahn, feared slugger, Eddie Mathews, and maybe the best MLB player ever, the late “Hank” Aaron, not to mention four time twenty game winner Johnny Sain, who could well be in the Hall of Fame. The Braves had acquired other stars to play in Boston, like Paul and Lloyd Waner, known as “Big Poison” and “Little Poison,” Hall of Famers both, two time NL batting champion, and yet another Hall of Famer, Ernie Lombardi, NL 1948 MVP, Bob Elliott, slugger Wally Berger, and many others. Listen and you shall hear.

You want to know about the woeful NFL Boston Yanks whose main claim to fame is bringing to Fenway Park opposing football superstars like Sammy Baugh, Bob Waterfield. Sid Luckman, and Don Hutson to treat us to gridiron thrills. Listen and you shall hear.

OK, let’s talk about Priscilla Howe. Petite, charming, talented enough as a band singer to appear on the Arthur Godfrey show, and regularly at Boston’s well-known Rainbow Room, impressionable enough to be impressed to take a liking to me to the consternation of the leader of her band, one Sammy Dale, who had a Mickey slipped to me which could have killed me. Listen and you shall hear!

Taking Priscilla to one of Teddy Ballgame’s last games ever late in the 1960 season seemed like a better bet to escape harm. I predicted for Priscilla what Ted was about to do which he promptly did. Listen to what he did! That caused my podcast partner and good friend, Jordan Rich, to say on air, “You really know how to impress a chick,” adding, “Thank you Chuck Estrada, wherever you are.” Who is Chuck Estrada? What is he doing in this story? Listen, and you shall hear:)!

People. Always people!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:39 — 16.2MB) | Embed

An eighty-two year love affair! That is next to impossible, especially considering that a romance that began in the teen years would now be over one hundred years old! Oh, I forgot, this is a love affair with a ballpark, the most iconic one in America, Fenway Park in Boston, where my Dad first took me at age five in 1936. I have attended there ever since, now more than eighty-two years ago. Could I have known that in addition to the many diamond thrills I enjoyed there, a day at the pinnacle in my late coming literary career would occur there in 2013, a day that added some famous names to the growing list that career brought to me, usually face too face. All that In this short seventeen minute podcast? Oh yes! So better you listen, because what is here written is only enough to whet your taste buds.

The Red Sox, under the leadership of their three owners, the liberal and brilliant entrepreneur, John Henry, the veteran and successful baseball executive, Larry Lucchino, and the well-known entertainment mogul, Tom Werner, brought to Fenway a series called, “The Great Fenway Park Writers Series,” a first in MLB history. Under the guidance of its founder, the late George Mitrovich, politico and idea guy, many great writers stood at the podium in the uppper reaches of Fenway Park to tell about their books. I never thought that I would get the call from George, but I did. George wanted me to talk about my 2013 baseball and cultural history book, “American Jews and America’s Game.” I chose the irrepressible dentist, Dr. Charles Steinberg, far more adept at pulling rabbits out of hats than teeth out of mouths, to be my guest on the show. Charles is the same guy who oversaw all those extravaganzas at Fenway you saw on television with a huge American flag draped over The Green Monster, otherwise known as the left field wall, and former Sox players from the year one trooping in from deep center field to surround the mound. Charles wowed me and everybody there in answer to my convoluted and idiosyncratic first question invoking Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, and his uncle, famed Viennese psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud. That made it easy for me to get along fine with the now warmed up and softened audience, each required to buy a copy of my book to gain admittance. In the audience were luminaries like Pulitzer Prize winning Boston Globe columnist, Kevin Cullen, who also wrote a best seller about famous mobster, Whitey Bulger, after emerging unscathed but unsettled from his South Boston lair some years before. Kevin and I continued our conversation, begun at the event, later that Wednesday evening at a party at the home of socialites and broadcasters, the late Smoki Bacon and the late Dick Concannon.

Sitting with Kevin was the biographer of Ted Williams that very year, Ben Bradlee, Jr. I suggested to Ben that his marvelous biography on the “Splendid Splinter” could be understood as telling about the greatness and deficiencies of Ted Williams on its surface, and those of the United States subliminally. Ted, after all, was a great player, a storied fisherman, and a courageous wartime flier, as well as often being loud, vulgar, ugly, and violent, sort of a mirror image of America.

My stay in the ether surprisingly continued two days later when Kevin featured me in his Boston Globe column that Friday. He wrote there too about Sox southpaw relief pitcher, Craig Breslow, whom I had talked about on Wednesday, dubbed by many as “the smartest man in baseball” because of his degree in esoteric science subjects at Yale University, and about the entire pennant winning hirsute Red Sox squad. Kevin wrote they looked like rabbis, observing that, “Those beards are working,” as they drove toward their World Series victory. Talk about free publicity!

This podcast ends with a few words about my favorite Sox players, Mookie Betts, now alas the leader of the Dodgers, and the colorful Ted Williams way back, a harbinger of the next podcasts which will take you further into the fascinating world of baseball. See you there.

People, always people!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:49 — 36.4MB) | Embed

Nonagenarians have an advantage over others of lesser years. Starting life in 1932 or earlier they have witnessed a large part of the 20th Century and a significant portion of this one, and all the stupendous changes in society and the world over in that period of time. They are experiencing a change now they never thought they would witness. That is the threat to our own democracy, now extant for close to 250 years, and to democracies all around the world. All three principals in this podcast are nonagenarians who have lived in or near Brookline, Massachusetts for most of their Iives. They are Justin “Jerry” Wyner, now 97, former Moderator of the Brookline Town Meeting, Marshall Smith, the founder of Paperback Booksmith, and the force behind the Paperback Revolution of the 1960’s, and my classmate at Brookline High School, Class of 1948, and myself. Marshall and I will turn 91 in 2022, God willing. All three of us have made a mark professionally, Jerry as the CEO of Shawmut Mills, his family’s highly successful business, and is known for his participation in Jewish affairs locally, nationally, and internationally. Marshall is a successful entrepreneur in whatever field he enters, especially in books, which he regards as indispensable to the populace of a democratic country. In my work as a lawyer, and now as an author, I have always loved American democracy and freedom, and have done what I could to protect it. Each of us is still fully engaged in life and work.

Let’s take Jerry and Town Meeting first. This is where democracy starts. As the French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, author of “Democracy in America,” observed when he visited America almost two hundred years ago, “The town….exists in all nations….It is man who makes monarchies….but the township seems to come directly from the hand of God. Town meeting….bring(s) it within the people’s reach.” Indeed! Jerry Wyner invoked as a precedent to the first vote of any town meeting in the country, the vote of the Brookline Town Meeting to bring home the troops from Vietnam, the action of the very same Brookline Town Meeting in 1773 opining on the Boston Tea Party.

As you will hear from me on this podcast, and as you have read, local institutions everywhere have been attacked in the last few years. The divisiveness in the country has been seen lately for the first time ever in the Brookline Town Meeting. The constructs of democracy gifted to us by our founders are under threat of dissolution in all corners of the land.

Marshall Smith, a man who doesn’t say a lot but does a lot, recognized when he founded his first paperback bookstore in 1961 that “democracy is founded on the knowledge of its citizenry.” Thus he took as his mission to broaden the scope of paperbacks to cover a multiplicity of subjects. Not long after, under the impetus of Marshall and others, the number of paperback titles grew exponentially in number and subjects from 3,000 to 30,000, including titles in fiction, non-fiction, history, political science, science, and other subjects. That signal event has been dubbed, “The Paperback Revolution.”

Both of these gentlemen are personal friends. Their families and friends are more than interesting. My own interactions with each of them are informative, and sometimes humorous. I think you’ll enjoy all of that on this podcast, as well as the discussion of the present crisis.

I thought I should devote this note to the sections in the podcast of existential importance – the threat we face of losing our cherished democracy, the longest lasting
democracy in the world’s history.

People, Always People!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:03 — 28.4MB) | Embed

Within a month after the horrific events of 9/11, I wrote a story entitled, “Baseball, Brookline and  Giuliani,” There existed then another Rudy Giuliani who resembled the one seen lately aspiring to become the mayor of Kiev in the Ukraine. That Rudy Giuliani was a terrific DA, and then a terrific mayor of New York City. A few weeks after 9/11 he was seen rallying Americans at the World Series, and intoning accurately that, “Baseball has an amazing grip on people. It is a unifying force.” That Rudy was a real unifier, not the divider his alter ego became.

How right Rudy was! America came together in those almost now forgotten days,  perhaps for the last time. What is it about baseball that has such force. It can’t really be defined. It has to be experienced. It lies in mysterious regions, like music. One way to approach it is in the telling and retelling of ordinary folks‘ baseball experiences. That is what I tried to do in the story. That is what I tell about in this podcast. Like how “Bunny” Solomon got to catch for his grammar school team when regular catcher, “Wiggy” Wiggins fell out of a tree and broke his wrist. “Bunny” had “a proud moment” when out of the corner of his eye he caught his Dad proudly watching behind the backstop! Like how Pops conductor, Harry Ellis Dickson, would sit with his friend, famed movie star and comedian, Danny Kaye, in the press box at Fenway Park, munching hot dogs and talking baseball. Like how Bob Sperber, longtime innovative Brookline Superintendent of Schools, was given a “Fifty is Nifty” birthday party by his workers, the motif of which, as shown by the Red Sox themed paraphernalia they created, was his love of the Red Sox and dislike of the Yankees of his native city. And what about Broookline folklorist and School Committeeman, Owen Carle, whose hilarious baseball recollections include his grammar school principal, Charles Taylor, giving him a baseball to make a serious point; French philosopher Albert Camus; his violinist mother, Florence Owen Mills; the megaphone toting public address announcer of the lineups for that day’s game at old Braves Field, Eddie O’Brien; his bottle collecting to make a profit with later rabbi, Al Rubin, at the 1936 MLB All-Star Game, which turned out not to be very profitable, and his trip with the the local nine to play the Young Men’s Polish Association of Manchester, NH, where his outfield collision with budding artist Billy Maynard resulted in Billy’s tooth sticking in Owen’s hand. That left the team with only eight players. Who won? Did Billy ever get his tooth back?

As for me, I have many baseball memories, marking the seasons of my life and how my character developed. My words ending that story of a generation ago seem as true now as they were then:

“For sure that grip and that force are being felt all across America every day and every night in these baseball days following the trauma of 9/11, somehow diverting us, helping us to heal the wound, and making us yet again feel whole as a people”

Listen and meet these people.

People, Always People!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:16 — 18.6MB) | Embed

John Gallagher Jewish? Sounds Irish to me. The John Gallagher who was the President of the world famous Longwood Cricket Club where tennis is king and was deplored for its policy of not admitting Jews as members? The very same. The guy who wore a custom made mezuzzah with a Star of David and a shamrock embedded in it, not to mention attending more Bar Mitzvahs than most Jews, knew lots of Yiddish phrases, had his own yarmulke, and sent his daughter, Amanda, to pre-school at nearby Temple Emeth where Rabbi Zev Nelson led the congregation? Why not? It was Zev Nelson who taught John Jewish history as a a kid, befriending him when John’s forty four Jewish classmates at Baker, the local public school, left him and two others not Jewish alone, when they attended Nelson’s Jewish history class. “Three is not a baseball team,” as John puts it, so he snuck into Temple Emeth and joined that class, thus becoming Jewish, sort of. Enough to later become a Shabbat father in Amanda’s class, the only Irishman to be so honored. John says, “That is how I became an Honorary Jew AND an Irish Catholic. It shows Brookline’s egalitarianism.” At least in South Brookline, it might be said. Brookline has had its own racial problems. But not lately at Longwood which has outgrown its earlier bad rep, and now, as John proudly points out, is an oasis, open and equal, fun and friendly, moderate and not boisterous, respectful to all, the only requirement for admittance being a love for tennis. John’s Irish credentials include his stepfather, “Last Hurrah” Mayor of Boston, James Michael Curley, and his grandfather, the erudite former counsel to the Boston Globe, Francis T. Leahy. That gentleman took John into his home when his father passed early, where he reaped the benefit of learning Latin and locution at his grandad’s knee, and the pleasure of interacting with his forty four first cousins, and other members of the Leahy clan. John learned the art of getting along in a large family so well that he became an all-time integrator of peoples.

The world lost a great doctor and humanitarian when Dr. David Link unwillingly and prematurely left the world a few months ago. As an expert in vaccination he would have brought help to many souls in this pandemic. Leaving the profitable private practice of his early years to take up the far less remunerative practice of pediatric primary care and public health for the less affluent here and abroad, allied with his work as the Head of Pediatrics for over thirty years at the Cambridge Health Alliance and the Mt. Auburn Hospital. In that role, David traveled often to Africa and Europe to improve health systems. The Jewish Community Relations Council commissioned David and his team to visit  Dnieperpetrovsk, the city of Peter the Great, to introduce the vaccine for Hepatitis B so Ukrainians could get there what we get here. His team won 10,000 patients to that vaccine. Revisiting some years later, David was happy to see the  plan had been legislated into law so the vaccine was available country wide. His major interest was children. Loving music learned from his Viennese Mozart loving family, David said maybe he could save a kid who would become a Mozart – that if Mozart could have been saved from his early death from kidney disease at thirty five we would now have over 1,000 of his works instead of only 600. In my own case, it may be I owe an existential debt to David. When I developed an invasive melanoma above my left eye a few years ago, he told me in no uncertain terms that, “Anyone who has a melanoma in or around Boston who doesn’t go for care to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute is nuts.” I went. I’m here. Thank you Dr. David Link!

People, Always People!