This photo of my family (self, younger daughter, older daughter, wife) was taken in the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center of the School of Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. October, 2003. I have forgotten who was remembered by the bust, but it's either Hygeia, Galen, or Aristotle.
What you can't see in this image is the only Byzantine glass mosaic in the world illustrating the history of medicine. It three stories tall and 66 feet long, and it's gorgeous.
The reason for our gathering in this august space was my daughter's White Coat Ceremony, an annual event for first-year medical students as they formally receive their first white coat. One reason for the ceremony is for them to understand that when the physician wears the white coat, it symbolizes knowledge, competency, altruism, and honor and symbolizes that in doctor-patient relationships, the patient always comes first. At the close of the ceremony, she recited the Hippocratic Oath to emphasize again the altruistic core values of medicine.
What can I say? I teared up. I was proud. I was a daddy.
I am filled with wonderful memories and am a most fortunate man.
TGB
