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| Earl and me cooling down after a race |
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| 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.
