05-DEC-B-2

TRAVEL TO NORFOLK, VIRGINIA TO ATTEND THE PHYSICIANS FOR PEACE BOARD MEETING AND MEET WITH DIRECTOR GENERAL SCONYERS AND PHILIPPINE SURGEON JUAN MONTERO AND SUSAN PALMER, STAYING IN SPORTSMAN’S HOUSE OF DR. MONTERO’S,

AND GETTING THE LIONIZED GRAND TOUR OF TIDEWATER, VA, FROM FREEMASON ABBEY TO THE NEW MONTERO’S OF ELIZABETH CITY, NC

December 19—20, 2005

What a superb two days in Norfolk! I had been asked to hang in by a telephone for the Medical Operations Committee of the PFP (Physicians for Peace) to describe briefly the plans for the Rwanda mission in March. I had already forwarded to them the plans and the probable participants, and when Juan Montero had asked if we might be able to meet in Manila to discuss their use of the SAR (“Search and Rescue”) 186-foot ship from the Philippine Coast Guard to be used in the PFP mission to Palowan, I was eager to see the mission in the Philippines. I would already be down there on the MMI mission in Mindanao and could meet with the group in the return via Manila. When Juan Montero invited me to come down to be his guest and go over many of the other items in which we share interests, I packed up the photo albums and drove down to Norfolk, 225 miles and four hours from GWU.

I made it through the Hampton Roads tunnel under the Chesapeake and around the large Naval Base there and then got twisted around until I found the Llewellyn Street on which the building called the Wainwright Building in which the PFP is housed. I got parked and went to the earlier meeting with the Director before their MOC (Medical Operations committee) was scheduled at 4:00 PM.

The new Director is Retired Brig General Ron Sconyers, former Press Secretary of the Air Force Secretary. The chief Administrative secretary Susan Palmer, is also from DC, and is joined by a number of new folk such as grant writers and other administrators. This was run as a small “cottage industry” as a charitable arm of the interests of Dr. Horton, a partner in plastic surgery of Bill Magee and another with close connections to Paul Adkins and GWUMC. But, one of the construction magnates who was on the PFP board died and left one seventh of his estate to the PFP, which amounted to ten million dollars, which they could use for the interest alone to run good administrative processes.

Dr. Juan Montero is my host, and had talked with me by phone when he had heard I had been to Mindanao where he was born. He is a thoracic surgeon who had focused on the hiatus hernia treatment by Nissen fundoplication as a long-term partner of Dr. Hotchkiss, who went on to become President of the AMA. The life story of “Juanny” is easy to recollect, since he wrote an autobiography in 1982 “Halfway Through” as the success story of a Philippine immigrant. HE became President of the Philippine American chapter of the ACS, and along with Richard Fuhrman, was the first winner of the “Surgical Volunteerism Award of the ACS.” He has established the Chesapeake Clinic for the migrant workers here in Tidewater and goes to The Philippines twice a year to volunteer in projects a lot like mine. In seventeen months he will retire and do this full time, as well as the political activities he has in support of the governor in Virginia. He may go to Iowa to help campaign for Mark Warner the former governor of Virginia (and a GW grad who was the commencement speaker for my MPhil; graduation two years ago) to speak on behalf of the crisis in malpractice and the almost fifty million uninsured health care population in America. He is a Republican in the strongest part of the Tidewater which is getting to be a more Republican state all along, but would support the Democratic governor for a presidential bid.

WE adjourned from the MOC Board meeting, and then left to dinner at a converted church (like the one in Atlanta) which is called the Freemason Abbey (the Freemason name coming form the street it is on.) So, we were seated in a “pew” of this church converted to a restaurant and ate well while talking of many issues we saw in front of the PFP.

I went home with Juan Montero and met his wife Mary (Meri) and we toured the house which is a sportsman’s paradise for the four growing sons that they had, each of whom were the consecutive presidents of the Great Bridge High School classes. At home they could play racket ball and indoor volley ball, as well as the tennis courts and golf greens. Juan has a collection f caps form each of the golf courses he has played on display. And he has the distinction of a four-time hole in one golfer. The prize for his first “Hole-in-One?” An Eddie Bauer Bronco II!

Their four sons are also in interesting places—two doctors, one lawyer and a restauranteer. The son Paul is –of all places—at UCHSC in Denver among all my friends and has the current GWUMC protégé of mine Eric Sarin as his chief resident. He will be coming home next Wednesday to be at home for his brother’s New Year’s Eve wedding—catered by the other son, who has a brand new restaurant that opened only a month ago at Elizabeth City NC, and a large catering business, with 107 employees. I got a chance to check out that part of the family too since we went to the remodeled McPherson House in Elizabeth City, NC the following day by driving through the tidewater through the Great Dismal Swamp with roadside signs cautioning against the NC black bear population along the roadside.

We were seated in a prime location in the new remodeled restaurant and talked with each of the employees including the CEO, executive chef, two sous chefs and the wait staff. It would be a good place to go for dinner in the area, as many folk have discovered in the Tidewater area already. So, the Montero family is in good condition and asking me to return as soon as I can, and I will try to do so. WE will rendezvous in the interval in Manila and look over the PFP connections there, including the Rotary president woman who is the head of the largest of the newspaper publications in the area who is heading up the PFP Philippine chapter. I may get a chance to see, again, the Philippine Coast Guard’s 186 foot SAR ship, which I had inadvertently photographed when I went to Manila Bay and took pictures of little nudnik kids diving into the Bay in front of the white Coast Guard vessel behind them—now going to be used in Palowan as a mobile base of operations for future PFP missions.

The enthusiasm of PFP for my participation and the Surgery and healing in the Developing World on-line text can be seen in the following 05-DEC-B-4, and 5, including another mutual friend Muhammad Akhter, who was DC health Commissioner and then the CEO of the American Public Health Association now heading up the InterAction Council a group that has a clientele like mine. It was to visit Muhammed Akhter that Paul Antony left our meeting last week, so the circle is drawn tighter all the time!

Juan Montero said that I was an obvious natural for the Surgical Volunteerism Award of the ACS, and as the original awarded, he can nominate a successor—like my nominations of the successors for the MMHOF in Rick Hodes and Jill Seamans. He asked me to forward to him what I could to help support the nomination and I sent him a “letter” which probably will get shipped through the Christmas mail by “Parcel Post!”

I left Juan Montero’s office to drive north the four hours to DC, and went through the Hampton Roads Tunnel, happy to see that there is a signal relay such that cell phones still work while I drive under the Chesapeake Bay mouth, as Air Craft Carriers leave from this Norfolk Naval Base over the top of me, as I will be running 365 feet over the Chesapeake Bay in May when I do the Governor’s Bay Bridge 10 K race on the first Sunday in May. So, I have been ON, Under, and high OVER the Bay all within the same year.

I got the last copies of the full version and the abridged year-end 05 letter put together before arriving home late to pack the last items into the Audi to continue my long road trips of this holiday period. Tomorrow starts the longest of these, a continuous eleven hour solo commute to the northern suburbs of Chicago in mid-winter at the Christmas Rush. So, stay tuned as I drive through a week of three thousand ground level miles to four destinations.

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