AC_1965_Web
66 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z G U Y E R GUYER BERNARD THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. Biology 4 AEA at Edinburgh 4 M.D., University of Rochester 4 M.P.H., Harvard FAMI LY 4 Wife, Jane I. Guyer 4 Sons, Sam and Nathan 4 Daughter, Katee 4 Grandchildren, Hanna, William, Owen, Jonah and Grace ADDRESS 4 305 Tuscany Rd. Baltimore, MD 21210 CONTACT 410 366-2760 410 218-5379 Bguyer1@jhu.edu PROFESSIONAL LIFE: I was fortunate to get to Antioch, coming from a poor, working-class, immigrant Jewish home in Detroit.We came to the U.S. in 1945 from Uruguay where my family had spent the war and where I was born. My father was a peddler, and no one in my family had ever gone to college before me. I attended Detroit public schools, a product of the revolution in high school science education that followed the launch of Sputnik. I was directed toAntioch by my high school biology teacher, Alex Mercer, whose wife Bessie was an Antiochian. I spent most of my after-school hours in a high school biology lab doing special projects. Scholarships helped us to afford college. Antioch was a great place for me because I had been raised in such a sheltered environment. I waived out of introductory biol- ogy courses and started with a class in embryology where Stephen Jay Gould wasTA.Mario Capecchi (now a Nobel laureate) was our chemistry TA; he was brutal but taught us to be good scientists. I was influenced by Ed Samuel, who guided us with a gentle hand, encouraging us to think and experiment. I was a sci- ence building kid and regret that I missed out on so many of the other great educational opportunities that Antioch offered. One of my best experiences was spending AEA at Edinburgh doing biochemistry and physiology with world-class scientists. During that year I also met Jane Mason; we were married in 1966. My parents were never happy that I went to Antioch or with the women that I met there! Later in life, however, they became very happy with Jane and our three kids. I grew up at Antioch.With co-op medical jobs in Chicago, Cleveland and Rochester, N.Y., I had to learn how to take care of myself, earn a living, pay the bills,make supper and love. The chance to work in hospitals and then in biomedical science labs gave me a chance to think about a career that would work for me. I loved combining work with school. I also had great experiences work- ing on a kibbutz in Israel in the sum- mers of 1963 and 1964. The people I met at Antioch have become life-long friends. In 2004, after learning of the death of my original Antioch roommate, Steve Straker, I tracked down many who started out in Mills in 1960 and organized a reunion; Sandy Davis (since died), Steve Goldberg, Steve Longstreth, Bob Merrill (died),Tom Newberry,Mark Post and I attended. By then, Bob Brody and Steve Ross had already died. I was in touch with both of their widows. MyAntioch education, including the Edinburgh experience and the Henry Ford HS prelude, prepared me for a career that I characterize as “exceeded Expectations!” My medi- cal school experience at Rochester, though,was rocky.On the one hand, I did become a pretty good pedia- trician and epidemiologist, but on the other, suffered through a rough period at medical school, I hated the humiliating style of teaching, got caught up in campus protests against the Vietnam War, and nearly got kicked out of medical school for participating in a unionization effort at Strong Memorial Hospital.A bright spot was the year that Jane (then a Ph.D. student in anthropology) and I spent in Nigeria; I found a niche for myself in child public health, and our first child was conceived there. It’s hard to condense a 40-year career into one paragraph. I trained in pediatrics at UNC Chapel Hill; entered the public health service, serving two years at the CDC and three years in Central Africa (small- pox eradication, Ebola virus, child immunization); completed a pre- ventive medicine residency and M.P.H. at Harvard; and spent nearly a decade directing the maternal and child health (MCH) services for the
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