Lee Richard Brock – 50th Reunion Essay

Lee Richard Brock

4304 Lafayette Blvd

Fredericksburg, Va 22408

leebrock@juno.com

540-842-7556

Spouse(s): Wendy (1986)

Child(ren): Max (1987), Piper (1988), Hannah (1991), Zarah (1993)

Education: SUNY Upstate, MD 1973, McGill University FRCS(C) Ophthalmology 1979

College: Pierson

After chaperoning the 50th reunion of the class of 1919, I managed to get seaman’s papers and a job on the C. V. Seawitch to Bremerhaven, Germany. I hitchhiked and hiked around Europe and Scotland to return to Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York where classmate William Schuman was also enrolled. I did not like the hierarchy of medical school but enjoyed my classmates and the subject matter. I did my internship in Montreal where my brother Jay was an assistant professor in family medicine and I was able to obtain an ophthalmology residency at McGill which became available in the fall after my internship. This put a time limit on my plan to go around the world and instead, fate had me travel in North and Central Africa. During residency, I was able to work with missionaries in East and Southern Africa as well as with the Canadian government in the Eastern Arctic. After residency, I secured a position on the J.E. Bernier 2 on its third-year journey to be the first sailboat to negotiate the Northwest Passage, under Captain Real Bouvier, meeting the ship in Tuktoyaktuk at the delta of the MacKenzie River and ending four months later, in Vancouver. I worked for a year in Montreal, then traveled from the South Pacific to Australia, up Southeast Asia to India and Nepal. I began my practice in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1981. Wendy and I courted and traveled until our marriage in 1986. We have four children with whom we have also done some traveling while they were growing. I live in a wonderful house in downtown Fredericksburg four blocks from the library. While in Canada, Jay and I purchased a small cabin on Lake Memphremagog, just north of Newport, Vermont, where I spend six weeks (on and off) each summer. My family is into healthy eating and fitness, so I still hike and bike, around town and other places. While hiking in the Canadian Rockies, I encountered a classmate working at a general store near Jasper who had gone to Canada to avoid the draft. I swim at the same pool with classmate Bart Ballard. I was in contact with my roommate Brian Ibsen and occasionally talk with Bill Wickwire. Charlie Gaffney, my other roommate, graduated with the class of 1970; I did visit Charlie in 2001 after 9/11 while he was at Lehman Brothers, which visit I thoroughly enjoyed. A classmate who does glaucoma recognized me at a conference some years ago. Otherwise, I have not kept in touch with our class, though this will be my third reunion (I plan on going to the next seven). While I worked for George McGovern when I was in medical school, I have been a Libertarian for the past decade and have looked with a very skewed eye at the behavior of Yale’s present student body (O tempora, O mores).

Every day I count the wonderful blessings that have befallen me; attending Yale is one of them.