50th Reunion Essay – Paul Abrams
Paul G. Abrams
2125 1st Avenue, #1501 Seattle, WA 98121
Email: pabrams2001@gmail.com
Phone(s): 206-310-6685
Spouse/Partner(s): Marguerite Lindstrom Johnstone, Yale M.Phil. (1977- 1999)
Education: Yale School of Medicine, MD, 1976. Yale Law School, JD, 1976
Career: Oncology Research, NCI; CEO/Chair/Executive Director of 3 Biotechs, 1 Med Device Company (1985 – )
Activities: Travel, Film, Scuba, Politics, Human Rights Residential
College: Ezra Stiles
The Trumpet Summons Us Again
Although punctuated by inevitable ups-and-downs, I had felt until two years ago that mankind was making progress, largely through the triumph of reason over superstition, finally lifting large swaths of people out of poverty, and the slow but steady impact of media breaking down barriers between people and culture.
Today’s onslaught against truth, against science, against integrity feels like an attack on my DNA, a genome molded and strengthened by Yale. I suppose I have always been a bit of a generational chauvinist; after all, we had front row seats marching and helping to win legal civil rights, stopping an immoral (and counterproductive) war, we had the Beatles, and Stones, and Led Zeppelin, and Simon and Garfunkel, and Muhammad Ali, and the pill, and pot, and Calvin Hill… and now, after being raised on stories of our fathers fighting fascism abroad, we have to fight it at home. Along the way, some of our generation forgot the lesson of the quagmire, and mired the next generation in the quicksand, forgot our history lessons and wiped out $4.5T in wealth of mostly the struggling middle class… and, so now, as my first inspiration (who wasn’t an athlete), JFK, said in his 1961 inaugural, the “trumpet summons us again.” Perhaps, we can restore facts, science, truth, justice and integrity to their prior status. I hope before leaving this earth to at least see it underway. I feel I owe it to the next generations, and to my own feeling of self-worth.
My love for our Yale education was its celebration of the great questions, philosophical, political, scientific, economic and psychological. My love for my Yale experience was discovering, discussing, debating and doing something about them with my classmates, as part of a long tradition. I have always felt very rich because of it. For someone who arrived from a public school to a setting with many prep school students, finding my two next door neighbors were California’s presidential scholars that year, and wondering in those first days what cosmic oversight had landed me here, I quickly came to feel at home. Thank you.
Personally, I have been very fortunate, and feel very thankful. No illnesses, yet. The rest, much to do with Yale: great lifelong friends, and a wife (yep, Yale—graduate student from the U.K., many good years, but didn’t last the distance), turned me into lifelong reader and film lover, a career that by happenstance caught an early wave of biotechnology after finishing medical school and law (at Yale!!). Reinventing myself now too with another recent start-up in the part of the field I had chosen (immuno-oncology) that is now taking off. Also, cofounding a start-up in online media in Africa, goals to build awesome business and give the young black Africans working in it, whose parents and grandparents never had a chance, the opportunity for good salaries, career growth, and to create nonextractive wealth for themselves.
(One said she would describe herself as “talented, optimistic, and driven.” Uplifting on the one hand, very poignant on the other, thinking about how many generations of her ancestors never were allowed the chance to feel like that. One only lives once. It is a travesty to rob anyone of their opportunity for fulfillment. It’s long past time people, especially those in power, acted with that in mind.)
Love traveling, have been all over, but still feel the excitement of a young child about to get something new when the pilot announces, “we are about to land in XXX.” Last major trip to Burma and Cambodia.
Regrets: not recognizing until later that I am a bit ADD, once understood, I was in better control of myself just by realizing when it was rearing its head. Not being fluent in several languages. Premature death of youngest brother a few years ago. Mostly, though, not realizing, as it was happening, how fast life goes by.
Future hopes: health for myself, family, friends, everyone. Deepening connections with close people, continuous personal growth (“be the person your dog thinks you are”), perhaps meeting a woman with young children, society getting back on path to justice and mutual respect, experiencing the wonders of new technologies, writing script for heralded film, learning new language… and, to continue laughing at the absurdity of it all, probably the one constant in my life.