Jay M. Saccone, MD – 50th Reunion Essay

Jay M. Saccone, MD

156 Cloudview Trail

Sausalito, CA 94965

jaysaccone@gmail.com

College: Timothy Dwight

Fifty years—gone in the blink of an eye, seems like. Twenty-five years ago I was brief: “I’ve spent a bit of time practicing emergency medicine and now happily divide my time between Sausalito and London. Yes, it’s that simple.” Not much to add, but two thoughts recur.

First, I’m struck by how much of what evolved came about by sheer happenstance—luck, really—very much reinforcing the old saw that “life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” I ended up in California, on a hill in Sausalito, the result of a casual conversation in a bank line. That led to a summer rotation in San Francisco as a med student, thence to a lucky match for internship and residency, and, hey presto, the Derby kid morphed into a California lad. I was a founding partner of a large (300-plus) group of emergency docs and served on the board and executive committee for about nine years. When I started my 30-year sentence I had a full head of hair and was (arguably) a half-way reasonable guy.

For the last 30 years I’ve divided my time between Sausalito and London, commuting nearly monthly. That also happened purely by chance—a brochure in an airline lounge. “When a man tires of London, etc.…” Too true in my case. I’ll miss The Smoke a bunch when I sell, which duff health may soon oblige.

Second, age has reinforced what I daily observed in 30 years of practice: the sheer fragility of life. A few months after graduation, we lost our classmate and my roommate Hank Iglauer. You probably saw his cartoons in the Yalie Daily. He’d entered the Reserves (so as to not get drafted) and contracted meningitis. Gone in 36 hours. (His death in part induced Senator Eagleton to investigate barracks overcrowding.) Thirteen years ago we lost Doug Groome, another roommate, to lung cancer. Doug was a mainstay at WYBC, a Tang Cup (remember that?) stalwart, and a dear friend as was his wife Zita to whom I introduced him. Daily, closing time draws nearer.

I had a fantastic time at Yale. Never worked harder, learned a lot. Don’t think that would be the case today. Rampant PC snowflakery, curated by young Pete Salovey and his grim band of administrative flotsam (Dean of Hurt Feelings, Provost for Stubbed Toes, etc.) is all the rage. His treatment of Erica and Nicholas Christakis in 2015 was a national disgrace and flagrant administrative malpractice. Recall that Erica’s crime was to suggest students use common sense when selecting a Halloween costume—not the Uni party line. Subsequently, her husband was barracked for over two hours by more than a hundred “students,” some of whom made verbal and physical threats. Four deans and administrators clucked nearby. Emoji Pete did nothing. In 2017 he gave gongs to two of the gang. Calhoun: instead of using the precious currency of the university—words, imagery, communication—he went the Lady Macbeth route (“out, out damned spot”—didn’t work well for her, either), but demurred from pulling Elihu’s name off the place. Recently, a minor kerfuffle in a law school dorm threw Pete yet again into full-abasement mode, shrieking about “discrimination and racism at Yale.” Meanwhile, an admissions wallah vows to vet all applicants for their sense of “social justice,” cudgel barely out of sight. On current trajectory, I reckon in a few years Yale will offer about an hour of pedagogy a week; the rest of the time will be devoted to privilege-checking, bias-training, self-abasement, soft toys and safe spaces. Pity.