Lessons of our fathers.

First, let me begin by apologizing to Beth McNally, our vice president, to my mother and to my wife, and to all the other women who may be offended by the title of my talk today. I mean no insult or discrimination. Rather, I chose this title because I would like to dedicate my comments to the memory of my own father, Franklin Epstein (Figure 1), who was a long-standing member of these associations. Over more than 50 years, I don’t believe he ever missed a meeting, and I grew up hearing the stories from Atlantic City and even visiting there myself as a child. My father was vice president of the ASCI in 1970 during the tumultuous days of Vietnam and stood at this podium when a vote was taken to denounce the war. He was on the editorial board of the JCI, and I note that his certificate for that service was signed by Paul Marks, the ASCI president in 1972 and the father of this year’s Korsmeyer Award winner, Andy Marks. My father was sitting here in the audience three years ago when my election to the vice presidency was made public (Figure 2); he had been too polite to ask me or anyone else about the result of the ballot before it was publicly announced, and I had been too preoccupied to tell him that I had been elected. I will not soon forget the proud look in his eye, and I regret deeply that he did not survive long enough to join us today. The heritage of my family is replete with contributors to academic medicine. My father-in-law, Jack Myers, was a member of these societies, president of the American College of Physicians, and one of Soma Weiss’s three chief residents at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Jack’s wife, Jessica Lewis, a renowned hematologist, was one of the first women admitted to the ASCI. Jessica’s father, Warren Lewis, was the editor of Gray’s Anatomy for three editions, and both he and his wife were long-standing members of the Johns Hopkins faculty. I keep on my shelf my father’s and my father-in-law’s copies of Gray’s Anatomy,