JAN-B-5
MERC VISITING PROFESSORSHIP—
POSTPONED FROM AN EVENTFUL DAY SCHEDULED ON SEPTEMBER 11
TAKES PLACE IN GRAND RAPIDS ON A DAY NEAR MY BIRTHDAY
IN THE SAME INSITUTIONS, SOME FEW DECADES EARLIER
JAN. 15—16, 2002
I am airborne; at least I have got this far this time. The last time I had got as far as boarding the plane and was called back off the jet ramp, for the reasons I had already seen. As an eyewitness of the collision of the wide-bodied aircraft with a full fuel load into the Pentagon, I knew something was up. I learned later of the mesh of events in which my first attempt at going to Grand Rapids to deliver the series of lectures planned for a year in advance and with all the supporting materials mailed ahead for a context in which they would be used. I am now re-starting, a day that then was said to be memorable in infamy, in which America was under attack in its own institutions and on its own soil. In the three months that followed, the Taliban has been ousted, the al-Qaeda forces scattered, and not much else has changed in a world with hatred for some groups by others. I am going to be taking off again in two weeks to a center of one of the al-Qaeda cells just made public—in Mindanao Philippines. So, this struggle is not over, now is it ever likely to be. Nor should my work in the world, either, so let’s get on with it.
ARRIVAL ON NW THROUGH RAINY DTW TO SNOWY GRR
I came through on semi-empty aircraft, with a box full of the papers, audiotape series and coming itineraries for the forthcoming trips, which I was going to mail to my sister Martheen in London, Ontario. By coincidence, since they had extended their stay through Easter and had arranged a mid-January break to come home to Grand Rapids, they arrived on Monday. The organizers of this event for MERC (Medical Education and Research Center) heard that I had three sisters here and invited all three sisters to the dinner and my presentation for the evening. Shirl would pick me up, and Don would also come to the dinner at night, and Milly was interested in rounding up grandchildren for the thrill of coming to the suite reserved for her brother and having them take the unusual pleasure of a mid-winter swim in the health and fitness center’s indoor pool.
It got colder as I got into Michigan and the rain turned to snow in foggy DTW.
You may remember the circumstances of my prior planned visit. I was all ready to board the first of at least eight venues from Michigan to far-flung corners of the globe, ending in the Colorado elk hunt and a return close to midnight to run the Inaugural Baltimore Marathon with Joe the following day. Obviously, my plans—and those for most of the nation—were derailed big time, but I did try to get back into the schedule with a later arrival in India and the rest of the itinerary carried through, with even a capitalization on the glitch in returning early for a high surcharge and finding out that I could not get out of Texas on the day of my arrival from FRA to IAH—popping off in a rental car to meet the twins on an overnight visit.
When Shirl picked me up, I swung the large suitcase—packed with 60 race runner’s tee-shirts from all of my last years’ road races which she had suggested be turned into quilts. At Christmas time, I had brought up about 20 Marathon tee-shirts, but now I packed along all the others from 10 K to River Bank Run 25 K races, totaling over a hundred races I have run in the past 17 years. So, I could deliver the box of things I had checked in to deliver to my sisters and the tee-shirts and went off to visit Karen Snoeyink and her sons Austin and Caleb, who were home from school with sniffles, watching the snow come down in their very spacious yard in the woods where I had taken all the snow sledding photos at Christmas 2000. Martheen and Don are home to see to items at their own house and also to help Tom and Sheri, who reluctantly sold both their farmette home and their Cooper Creek properties and are moving to a new house. Both of them being realtors and having parlayed previous real estate into opportunities for college funds for each of their many kids, it would seem they are now feathering their own bigger nest as the whole crew is growing up.
THE TOWER SUITE OF THE AMWAY GRAND PLAZA
I am being put up in the VIP suite in the top floor overlooking the bend in the Grand River—a site not yet commemorated in granite as the place I was born, only about a hundred yards upstream in Butterworth Hospital (now “Spectrum West” in the MSU-affiliated hospital staffs that are my audience tonight.) It may be a good spot for Milly to entertain her grandkids, since someone should use the suite, since I will not be here very much.
I am told that even if none of the local physicians show up in response to the flyers and publicity sent out (one even appeared in my cousin Stewart’s hands when he took Florence to see the doctor, and he showed him the flyer that he had received.) Florence had had what sounded like vascular insufficiency symptoms in her legs and saw an orthopedist who had scheduled her for a back operation to correct what was called stenosis of the neural arch. After they had sent me the records and asked for my advice in a second opinion, it seems they have cancelled the scheduled operation and are now going through the vascular workup suggested—and after the DSA she will be undergoing interventional radiology with the placement of a few stents to dilate the vasculature on her right side before re-evaluation of the other side. So, it seems they might be coming as well—so, if nothing else, we may fill up the house with Geelhoeds! Many, I believe, may be as curious to see the new Van Andel MERC as to hear the cousin who either made good, or is out advertising for a retirement job, depending on the prejudice of the audience. Since everyone knows I would be coming back home as soon as I finished school, and I have obviously been a slow learner in still not having graduated for the final time, it may be time –right around a birthday marking the passage into another decade—to announce that I would be taking some position in Grand Rapids after all—coincident with retirement. This would be equivalent to seeking “flag rank” before retirement from the service. But, I think anyone who can see the schedule of events that are booked to follow this visiting professor gig can detect that retirement it is not, and “settling” in one fixed spot for the foreseeable future is also not part of the pattern.
“MERC:”
A NEW ORGANIZATION IN AN OLD, RESTORED,
HISTORIC PRESERVATION BUILDING---
A “ROOTS” TOUR OF THE BERKEY AND GAY FURNITURE FACTORY
ON “CANAL STREET” GRAND RIVER BANKS,
HERE MY FATHER HAD STARTED IN THE FURNITURE BUSINESS
IN GRAND RAPIDS, “FURNITURE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD”
MERC is the Medical Education and Research Center, a newly named organization, replacing GRAMEC, the Grand Rapids Area Medical Education Consortium, which had first arranged my visit on September 11. This new replacement reflects a new housing of a consortium of hundreds of live-in health students from Ferris State, MSU and Grand Valley State—medical students in the MSU and PA and allied health students in the other institutions who now have this restored historic preservation building. This is an administrative building for the MERC, with gathering places for students, restaurants, snack bars and a total of 480 condo type accommodations, now used by the students sent here to Grand Rapids on rotation from the MSU and other institutions sending to the health care center of the new amalgamated health care programs from central Grand Rapids. After five years, these facilities will be available for sale to the public, along with access to the gym and fitness center, and all the adjacent parks and waterfront boutiques which makes this historic structure a good preservation project. A law firm with someone named Mika as one of the partners along with Pioneer, the developer of this property, moved into the spacious office earlier this week.
BERKEY AND GAY,
A HISTORIC PIECE OF THE LIFE OF GRAND RAPIDS,
AND MY FATHER’S STARTING POINT IN FURNITURE
I looked down the long rows of timbered pillars, where the guild furniture of Berkey and Gay was first made, and when the furniture classic went belly up in the Depression after its 1898 start and expansion through this classic old building, the furniture guilds helped the war effort by building gliders for troop transport in the war effort. Gliders my Dad had made were used to carry 18 troops each over the beaches of Normandy and towed to be released over occupied France. More of the troops killed were done in by the crashing of the one-way trips of these gliders than were killed by the enemy intercepting them, but it was probably a safer, if not less frightening transit into the most massive battle of the war than storming Omaha Beach—if “Saving Private Ryan” can be used as an example.
As I was brought over by Dr. Bill Stawski and met Amy Staskiewicz, the coordinator who had received all the phone calls on September 11, when my first scheduled attempt to come to (at that time) GRAMEC were aborted by my eye witness status at the Pentagon. There, among a lot of health care students, were classic pieces of Berkey and Gay furniture, along with the headlines of the Grand Rapids Press on Berkey and Gay during its heyday as the industrial center of Grand Rapids craftsmanship. I was intrigued by my short “roots” tour, but said that I would like to do it again when all four of my father’s children were gathered here, as they would be coming later. This is almost like the “time capsule” of photographs found inside the plastered wall of the old Whiting Street house my grandmother lived in, which produced scores of photographs of my father’s families and even down through tinted wedding portraits of my parents and baby pictures of the four siblings who would be gathering here shortly. This is one of those rare walks back through time from a couple of generations later, with the classic grandeur of this solid buildings still remaining intact and perhaps even improved over the earlier status in the industrial revolution era of small town USA at the turn of the previous century, when new possibilities were opening the world to those willing and energetic to work, starting with this Midwest ethos as the prime mover.
The restaurant catered the dinner we were served as Don and Martheen and Shirley arrived, and Doug and Milly came later, having scooped up Brenda and Tony and Jeff, who came up to my suite and used it as a place from which to go for a swim in the heated indoor pool and Jacuzzi of the Amway Grand Plaza. I could see the sunset over the Grand River Bend I had previously seen as I ran the Grand River Bank Run. Lights came on outlining the bridges over the river, the same bridges I had once seen as a kid, when I looked down to see carp and gar pike in the dirty river---the same places, like the Pearl Street Bridge, from which my parents would later watch the salmon and steelhead coming up river in the cleaned up river as part of an ecologic revolution for the better.
After very generous introductions and a full attendance from the residents, I gave a talk on African goiter. It was well received along with some interactions with each of the residents.
Then, we four sibs posed for photographs in the same place my Dad had worked and where he no doubt pushed around the finished furniture products of the same kind, as were on display, and in the same spacious redevelopment places of this downtown historic landmark. One of the students came over to learn that I was a guest lecturer whose father had worked here, and he shook my hand saying it was a great honor to meet someone whose father had worked in the very space he now lived as he was doing his health care studies. A lawyer from the firm came by and learned of our interest and proudly showed us the interior of the law offices with the heavy timbers of northern Michigan’s virgin hardwood forests supporting the whole structure.
So, my sisters and I celebrated my birthday in this “roots tour” for the first time all together since we had gone north to visit Amy and Shirley’s new granddaughter in McBain Michigan—not only the first time we had all got together since my Dad’s funeral five years ago tomorrow, but also the first time probably ever we had got together to make a trip for family focus.
I returned to the Hotel after we had parted and got ready for the next day’s lectures, and an appearance in the Butterworth (Spectrum West) as visiting Professor one hundred yards from the bassinet where I started this long trip now six decades ago until Saturday’s marking of the passage to a new—would you believe SEVENTH decade!
I gave the Grand Rounds, and then heard each of the surgery residents’ presentations and commented on each. It was a standard vesting professor role, with the added feature that I seem to have once been one of them, giving them aspirations toward being “wannabes.” I met classmate Lew DeKryger whom I had talked to when I was last here about twelve years ago when I discussed his farm. He sold the farm and had a hip replacement, commenting that he had made the same decade transition last month. I saw Dan De Vries whose father used to be a very busy GP working out of Blodgett when I was there in the ER, and Dan was an intern—now getting ready for retirement. Bill Haeck, a busy surgeon on the Butterworth staff and aged 92 had had a stroke and his funeral was yesterday. His kids were in school with me and they had each rendezvoused for the funeral. I saw Fred Dornbos and he insisted on taking me to lunch and the airport afterwards so that I could go to his northeast condo and see his wife Carol. She had had a vaginal hysterectomy last month and is still recovering, with a plan to go to Florida for two months next week and then on a medical mission to Mexico. We discussed going to Haiti at some time together, and caught up on all details of the twelve years since I had last been up with both sons and we had gone to their cottage on White lake and caught salmon and lake trout from his Grady boat. They insisted that I take the kids out again, and I would surely like to some day—anywhere together, and Michigan would be a god start. They are both involved in a thing that each of them started and now run called Safe Haven, a refuge for abused women. They started with one live-in counselor, a Calvin music graduate, and a budget of $34,000, but it is now over half a million with eight full time employees and over fifty advisees getting therapy in abusive relationships.
What has airline increased safety awareness done to impact on the ordinary traveler coming from such an ordinary airport as Grand Rapids in a snowstorm, you ask? Well, I was “randomly selected” to be searched, so my bag was opened behind a screened off security area, and they went through everything I had checked in already—like my Dopp Kit and the contents of every package. Then I was searched to include a check on my belt and taking off my shoes. The attendant then has to take the checked bag, since I cannot touch it again after the hand search. I made my way to the X-Ray area, where, again, I had to have my carry-on searched, but I had to take off my shoes again and they were sent through the conveyor belt under the X-Ray tube—despite the fact that nothing had set off any alarms. I then handed my boarding pass at the Jetway and once again had to get back for a hand search, which concluded with going over all things and asking me to remove my shoes, yet again. Really guys, I feel very safe now, but isn’t this redundant to be stripping my quite ordinary shoes three times in 45 minutes and witching fifty feet of each search that had preceded it, and all of these areas inside the “controlled zone” where I could not pick up anything if I had wanted to?
I left in a good old-fashioned Michigan snowstorm to head back on Continental through Cleveland and BWI where I will need to get back to Derwood to defend it in court tomorrow in a schedule I do not yet know. T had been a very good “Homecoming Visiting Professorship” and I am glad it worked out for this time. I am doing more this next week after my birthday—probably ideally celebrated in this “Rots” reminder of that cold winter day some few decades ago now. I will be going to York Pennsylvania for an overnight lecture series, and will see what I can get accomplished in the brief interval before I start up the far-flung travels from, Mindanao to Malawi to Havana, each of which follow in rapid succession coming up hard ahead!