Rick Pyeritz, M.D., would be joining us in practice. I was elated, as I had been anticipating this day long before we had arrived in Bryson City. When I entered my family medicine internship at Duke University Medical Center, I was one of only four men in my class of twelve—and the only one from the deep South. My welcome to the world of the erudite, academic, Ivy League nonSouth was abrupt and, to say the least, memorable. During our first day of orientation, the first-year residents walked over to the hospital for brunch. On the way back, I was walking with Lloyd Michener, M.D. Lloyd was a Harvard graduate who many years later would become the first residency-trained chair of the department of family medicine at Duke University. We were chatting about how varied our medical school experiences were. At Harvard he had seen a lot of medicine but hadn’t had much hands-on experience. In contrast, during my medical school days at Charity Hospital in New Orleans I did everything. Well, maybe not everything, but I did a lot.
