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Sunday, March 4, 2018

In Memoriam: Earl Baker Wert, M.D. (1913-2001)

Earl and me cooling down after a race

Earl and me running on track

Earl was my closest friend, the best one I had in my life. I think about him often and wanted to let you know that there are good people in this world.  When he walked on I was very sad.  He was also a great person who made a lot of contributions to humanity.
 
Earl was a star on his high school track and football teams. He went to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and became a doctor in 1940. Earl served in the United States Army (1945-47) as a pathologist at the Army Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC.  In 1947, Earl taught pathology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. 

In 1948, Earl and his wife moved to Mobile, AL.  (where I later met him in 1983). Earl was elected Mobile County Coroner and held that position for three decades.  He used to tell me that I had a lot of muscle and that he would give me a free autopsy anytime I wanted it!
Earl was an expert in clinical and forensic pathology. He was good at finding the cause of death in homicide cases and he was a pioneer in the study of vitreous humor of the eye to help determine causes and time of death.  He was Director of Pathology at the Mobile Infirmary until he retired in 1986.  He was also a Past-President and Founding Fellow of the Association of Clinical Scientists.

Earl’s scientific presentations were always timely, informative, practical, and he used gentle humor. He used to talk to me about his work and he brought me to his birthday party at the Mobile Infirmary. We walked in wearing our running clothes, he blew out the candles on his cake and then we went back out to finish our usual run.

Earl played piano and sang in a barbershop quartet. He knew foreign languages (he was fluent in French, and proficient in German and classical Greek). He loved to travel (he and wife often toured Europe, sometimes with their children).  He liked history (he studied the naval blockade of Mobile during the Civil War and the Battle of Verdun during World War I). He liked athletics (he was good at tennis and was an avid runner). He took up running again at age 65, often competed in the Boston Marathon, and held five age-group records for the Pike’s Peak Race in Colorado. He was 30 years older than me.  He had many State running records.  I just had one State championship at age 47 for the two miler.

I met Earl in 1983 at running races in Mobile, AL.  We felt like we were friends for life the first time we met.  We ran races together, he took me to the Blue Angel Marathons in Florida, sleeping in a tent.  We went to New Orleans races. We biked together for 10 miles at a time.  He had birthday party races at his home in Dog River every year.  He paddled a canoe for miles on the river and once heard a thump – it was an alligator! He was twice president of the Port City Pacers, a large running club in Mobile.  We ran on the track together many, many times. Once when we were running I fell and hurt my finger.  Earl went in his shed and made a splint for my finger out of a piece of aluminum. 

When I moved away from Mobile in 1992, I came back to visit him several times. We remembered the good times we had running together. 
Because of all his athletic activities Earl was always strong and healthy right to the end of his life. He was a true doctor of medicine and human nature. 

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