Blum, Robert W.

On the day that I graduated Howard Medical School, my parents gave me a laminated plaque of a paper I wrote in the third grade: “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Doctor.” Why I wanted to be a doctor I have no idea; though I did not come from a medical family, it was something that was always there. I chose Howard for all the wrong reasons. Having grown up in an upper-middle-class Jewish community in New York City, I went to a small high school and a liberal arts college that were extensions of my urban upbringing. In college I became politically active, and for medical school I wanted an environment different from my childhood experiences. Howard and D.C. fit the bill.

The Vietnam War was in full swing, and the Embassy of South Vietnam was up the street from where I lived. It seemed that every week there were new demonstrations; I joined the Medical Committee for Human Rights, providing health services for the marches. I prayed that no one was injured on my watch; I was a first-year medical student.

The spring of that first year was when four students were killed at Kent State. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators poured into Washington. Every school closed—except Howard. I gave an impassioned speech at a school forum, where I argued that Howard should close as well. Suddenly, at the back of the room, a diminutive classmate of mine stood. “Orangeburg. Remember Orangeburg?” The room was silent. I had never heard of Orangeburg. Howard stayed open.

Less than a month later similar killings occurred; this time it was Jackson State in Mississippi—a historically Black institution. There was no march on Washington, no school closings, and other than Howard only one university in the Washington area had a memorial service. Howard did close with the Jackson State killings and held 10 days of mandatory Black awareness. Undergraduates and graduate students were mixed together and sent to classrooms across campus. It was a tough time to be white. It was all a critical part of my education.

My political activism shifted from demonstrations to community programs; for the last three years of medical school I participated in and then ran a national student project placing teams of health science students on reservations as employees of tribal health councils. Native American Indian health has been a professional thread ever since.

Of the things I was pretty sure about in my early medical school years, not going into pediatrics was one. I was most interested in family practice, with a goal of returning to work with the Apache. That was until I met a 3-year-old redhead who was hospitalized with a terrible disease (rhabdomyosarcoma). I fell in love. I stayed late to play with him and to talk with his parents. My script was written; and as is true for most all who go into pediatrics, young children were to be the focus of my work—or so I thought.

At the end of my medical schooling I went to Hawaii for a pediatric externship and was placed on Maui with Dr. Marion Hanlon. Maui was heaven, but try as I might, I never could figure out what Dr. Hanlon saw in teens. The externship only confirmed my interest in young children.

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