Interview with Dr. Edward Fisher

Interview with Dr. Edward Fisher

Fisher, Edward; Gashurov, Irene

Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut

2019-08-30

In Copyright

Dr.-Ed-Fisher.mp3

2019-08-30

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

91:52 minutes

4c2d8557-c66c-4b45-aacd-fd0bab228155

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Edward Fisher
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 30 August 2019
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(Start of Interview)

EF: 00:02
Okay, so who I am? This is Edward A. Fisher, F-I-S-H-E-R. Some people put a C in there. I am sitting in my office at the NYU School of Medicine, where I am about to be interviewed willingly for an oral history project that the library has initiated.

IG: 00:25
Thank you. It is a pleasure. So maybe you could begin by telling us about your upbringing. You know where you grew up, who your parents were, what they did for a living, whether they encouraged you to pursue your education, what expectations they had for you, for your siblings, that kind of thing.

EF: 00:49
Okay. Well, I grew up in the Bronx, and my father came back from World War II, 1946. My parents got married on January 13th. They said 13 was their lucky number in 1946. My brother, my older brother, was born in December of that year, and I came along four years later in November 1950. My father, actually, during the depression, this was not easy. He worked his way through night school. Actually, at NYU at that time, they had an uptown campus where the Hall of Fame was, or still is. It is now part of, I think, Bronx Community Hospital. The university sold that site years ago, and it was called the University Heights Campus because it is actually high up. You can look up when you go north on the Major Deegan, and you can see the statues of the Hall of Fame. But in any case, he worked his way through-through night school, and then was drafted almost immediately after, and was initially stationed in Florida, where he was in a special unit. Because when you enter the army back then, I do not know if that is still the case. Besides the physical exam, they give, like, an IQ test, and he scored very high on that. And he was sent to a unit to get special training in Florida. And one of his fellow unit members, who became his friend, was one of my mother's brothers. And so, actually, a lot of people in this unit were New York Jews, because the meritocracy system was in play. You just had to get a high score, right? And-and so when my mother came down to visit her brother Gabe, my-my future uncle introduced his friend Bernie, Bernie Fisher, to-to his sister. They started to correspond. So, they-they-they shortly after that, Pearl Harbor caused all sorts of changes. As you know, we entered the war then, so all of these special units and, you know, surplus people who are having a good time in Florida were all now shipped out into combat units. So, my father wound up being shipped out shortly after to the South Pacific, Philippines, Borneo, New Guinea, and he was there for the entire duration of the war, including getting malaria and being sidelined for a bit, but of course never got sent back. So, it was terrible. But all during that time, my-my mother wrote. They corresponded, and they- she kept the box. My father died- actually be 25 years next month. He died in- at age 78 in 1994. My mother kept the box of letters, the correspondence that they had, until the day she died. One of my regrets is-is that she had asked me to have her buried with those letters, and I forgot. And I still have that box of letters. Of course, I have never opened them because she wanted them to be essentially seen by nobody. They were private, and so I actually love this box of letters, and I discussed recently with one of my cousins. Are you know I certainly do not want to get the casket opened up, but maybe they can just dig out some dirt and put this letter down where the case where the letters casket is? But off topic and-

IG: 04:56
No-no-no, but it is very interesting. You know, I would be really curious to open them and read them. Because it is a connection to-

EF: 05:02
Well, they are found up in a ribbon.

IG: 05:03
No, I would that was- would be my connection to my parents.

EF: 05:08
Yeah. So, but yes, it definitely is. I do not have a casual attitude towards that box, but so when my father came out finally at the long end of the tunnel four years later, even though he had a college education, well, you know, he was a man of his times. You know, if you get married, you have to provide for your family. Your wife should not have to work outside the home, and so although my mother pleaded with him to take the GI Bill of Rights, and he was very good with numbers, and he was an economics major at NYU to take an accounting course, you know, be a professional, he said, "No, I have to go back to work. And so, basically, he wound up working in a pawn shop. Worked in it. Not he did not own it. He worked in it because how did he work his way through college? He actually worked in a pawn shop in the (19)30s, and so when he was looking for a job, he went back to that world, and he got a job, and he was, you know, very on the ball and whatnot. He eventually became the manager, and-and for the next 30-plus years, he worked at a pawn shop on the corner of 125th Street and-and Park Avenue, which is okay. So, my mother, and then he never, and that is what he did for the rest of his life, and well until he retired when he was about 70. My mother went to my mother, so my father, they were probably born a few blocks away from each other in Harlem; they both were born in Harlem. My mother's family are they are Greek Jews from Thessaloniki, or what they say Salonica.

IG: 07:11
Yeah.

EF: 07:12
And when my grandparents came around 1916 or so, they-they-they moved. They lived all over, all over New York, but where my mother was born was actually at home, meaning in the apartment on 115th Street between Park and Madison, and there is still a market underneath the railroad tracks there. It is called La Marquetta now because it is in Spanish Harlem; that is where my grandfather had a fruit stand. My mother is one of seven children. My grandmother, who wound up living with us in the Bronx when my grandfather died when I was three years old, was illiterate in all languages. Okay, not just in English, and so she was not educated, and- but of course had what I would call worldly wisdom, and was-was actually one of the great influences on my life, and but my mother went to a vocational high school, may have been called Manhattan Vocational High School, and I found her certificate. My mother died in 2008. Going through her stuff, I found her high school diploma. She had a certificate in sewing. I had a laugh because she barely can sew a button, so I do not think she was a summa cum laude graduate of the sewing curriculum, but and-and then she [crosstalk]

IG: 08:48
Not-not very into it.

EF: 08:51
And so-so-so no pun intended. So, but so she was someone who did not go on for formal education, but it is interesting the contrast. My father, although he might have had a higher IQ, you know, you know, in that sense, he was not someone who was an appreciator of the arts. A very bright man. I read the newspaper every day, but I never saw him like reading a novel or on TV. You know, he watched Ed Sullivan, the New York Giants football game, but not turning on, you know, some of the-the theater and production. My mother, on the other hand, although she did not go on for a college education. Was always reading novels, wrote poetry. I found a whole box of poems she had written, and-and-and just had a different side to her. That so my parents were-were really quite different in that sense.

IG: 10:00
Maybe-maybe there are poems in that box

EF: 10:04
About?

IG: 10:05
Maybe their poems-

EF: 10:06
Oh sure.

IG: 10:06
-in that box.

EF: 10:07
Oh, sure, that is right in that, in that box as well. So-so, I grew up with an older brother, my grandmother, my mother, and my father, my father's family were-were more classical Eastern European Ashkenazic Jews from what is now Belarus, but near Brest-Litovsk, where his family was from. Depending on the year, it was either part of Poland or part of Russia.

IG: 10:34
The orders were shifting.

EF: 10:35
And so, they came. His parents came around, also about 1915 or 16. There was a major difference in my-my parents' childhoods. My mother was one of seven. Close family. You can imagine. You know, it is it is all sorts of stuff is going on at all times. She is two sisters and five brothers, two daughters and five sons of the seven. My father's mother died in the flu epidemic, the World War One flu epidemic, when he was an infant. I do not even think he was one year old. His father could not take care of him. His father, I think, had like a little candy store. Okay, but by then they might have moved up to the Bronx or out of Harlem, whatever. But I was going to say so. So, they were both born in Harlem. The irony, flipping forward, when-when I came back to New York in 1995 was to be a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and there I am, okay, taking Metro North, getting off at 125th Street and Park Avenue, the building, even though the store was not there anymore, the building that my father worked in for 30 years, the pawn shop, was still there, and it had the strut coming out that had the remnants of the three chains, the-the Dutch Guild of Pawnbrokers, their symbol were three brass balls hanging down, so that was on the shop called Trilex because it is Triborough Bridge and Lexington Avenue, Trilex Pawn Shop. And you can, I cannot, I will not take the time because-

IG: 12:15
No-no-no that is very interesting-

EF: 12:16
By 5:30, I have another phone call.

IG: 12:18
-New York history.

EF: 12:19
So, I get off the train. Of course, I know exactly where I am getting off. But I am looking out there, and there is the building, which is no longer a pawn shop.

IG: 12:28
Right.

EF: 12:28
And actually, it was finally just torn down within a few months ago to be developed into some tall office building, or I do not know what it is going to be. But any case, it is a big pit right now. I am looking, and there, you know, you get these flashbacks. There, there is the-the pawnbroker Guild chains. That is where my father worked, and I used to hang out there sometimes on the weekend because it is open on Saturdays. So there, I get off. It is like memory lane. I get off where my father worked, and then depending on how I walked, and then I deliberately would walk this way. I go right on the block where my mother was born, and then I go to Mount Sinai. So, there I am coming back as a professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, starting out in the Bronx with my father working in a pawn shop. My mother was born at home on 115th Street. It was just one of those things that every I never lost some sensation, sensation, in that route.

IG: 13:25
Right.

EF: 13:26
But so, my father was sent to live with relatives, who they maybe that is when they moved to the Bronx. They lived with cousins. He had his father had a- I forget whether it is actually must have been a sister because he grew up with-with the Turners, and the Turners took them in and raised them, but the way he described it, and he was not someone to have long conversations or certainly not open up. My mother did, so I am a hybrid. You know, my father's good with numbers and math and stuff, and so am I. So is my brother. But I read books. I love music. That is why I have an audio system here. You know, and I have piles of books that I never get to finish, but I like flipping through them. Any case, he was brought up, and as he got older, they-they-they made him sleep away from like the where the family lived. They-they eventually got a house in the Bronx, and he was downstairs. In fact, when his cousin, when the son of-of the of his aunt and uncle, he went off to medical school. Actually, graduated from here in 1923 and became a family doctor in the neighborhood in the Bronx where I grew up, and so it was a it was a townhouse, right? The top floor was where the family lived.

IG: 14:54
Yeah.

EF: 14:55
Ground floor was where the doctor's office was, and then there was a basement. Which was like the playroom for the two kids of this family. My father that was his residence still. When they moved to here, my father went with them. My father said that he actually slept in the exam room because back then, when you were a family doctor or GP, they called them GPs. You actually did some surgery in your office, typically tonsillectomies, a few other minor things. So, what would be you would have a bed set up. It was not an exam room; it was like a recovery room. So, some-some poor kid would come in, get a little ether or chloroform, okay, to knock them out, and then they have. I actually have my-my father's cousins. I used to call him Uncle. My uncle Jack. I actually have his surgical instruments. He gave them to me when I went to medical school as a like a souvenir. These things that you actually go in and grab the tonsils and just like pull them out. Then you want to make sure the kid does not does not bleed to death. So, they would they would go and and-and recover in this room. That was apparently for a while my father's bed, so he had to get up by 6 o'clock each morning, because that is when they did the surgery. You have to do it the first thing in the morning. Keep the kid in the office till 5 o'clock at night. If he did not bleed to death, he goes home. If there were complications, obviously they would have sent him to the hospital.

IG: 16:18
Right.

EF: 16:19
So, any case, my father was-was the other. He was part of the family, but he was not, and so he had really no role model of a conventional family. So, it was interesting growing up with him, because you know, as a kid, I did not appreciate it as much as I do now. You really learn a lot about your parents when you become a parent yourself. And-and so he was learning as he was going along because he did not have really conventional role models. Okay, so now we-we lived in what was officially a one-bedroom apartment. There were five of us, and my grandmother slept in the living room on a Castro convertible, and as I got older, my job was to help grandma to open the bed, which meant I opened the bed, got to pull it out. Okay, and it is just classic because then my grandmother gets ready, and she had the-the glass on a table next to the bed, and she popped out her dentures.

IG: 17:22
Right.

EF: 17:22
Just one [crosstalk] whole row of false teeth. And I remember [crosstalk] is- just has glasses in there, and my grandma goes to sleep, and that means we could not watch TV or anything after or whatever 930 at night because grandma's sleeping. So, she was in the living room. My brother and I slept in the one bedroom, the official bedroom, but we had no closet space because my parents took over the dining room. So, there was a small kitchen, a swinging door to a dining room, and the dining room was-was open to the living room. So, to make that into a bedroom, what my father did, he actually made it himself. He made a bookcase that filled up the whole opening between the dining room and the living room. So then, on the living room side, there was a bookcase. On the dining room side was just a wooden plywood wall that was painted, and that was their bedroom. But of course, the dining room has no closets, so they took the closets in the official bedroom. There were two. My mother had the one on the left. My father had the one on the right, which meant my brother and I had no closets because the hallway closet, where you would put towels and things, was my grandmother's closet.

IG: 18:37
So where did you put your stuff?

EF: 18:38
All of our stuff had to go folded up in drawers, in the in the in the bedroom. So-so-so, I live in- in Westchester now in Scarsdale. It is a small house. It is a three-bedroom house. I feel like a rich man. You know why? I have my own closet. It is unbelievable.

IG: 18:56
It is wonderful. It is a wonderful story, and it gives you such a picture of-

EF: 19:00
And there was no privacy there. It was my-my brother who had a weight problem, and only until he retired. Now he is pretty thin, but only until he retired and really went to the gym and and-and took some discipline. He had a weight problem his whole life, and so my parents, of course, would yell at him to-to not eat so much. So-so it was so lack of privacy that that what-what he figured was, so he opened the refrigerator door, and-and then of course he takes something out, and he closed the door. That rhythm. Remember, you know, of course, another phrase: you wait for the other shoe to drop.

IG: 19:40
Yes.

EF: 19:41
You have this expectation. So, my parents would be in the living room, but they can hear this, and they yell out, "Charles, stop eating!" So, what would my brother do? I used to see him do this. He had opened the refrigerator door, propped it open with his knee, and just be gorging himself.

IG: 19:56
He is smart.

EF: 19:57
The ready whip, the ready whip can. Squirting that directly into his mouth, and then, then eventually would close the door, but they would not associate with that. It was that unprivate. We had one bathroom. If you want to take a bath within 10 minutes, get out of there. You know, just classic, right? So, my brother and I did well in school, and back then. So, you went to New York City public schools, right? So, you know, they had you can skip a year. They had the SP program where we skipped over eighth grade. So, my brother and I, we were in those programs, and so he goes off to Bronx Science, which fortunately was in our neighborhood, so we did not have to schlep to Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech or something, and then I went off to Bronx Science. My brother went off to Harpur College, and even though I was a much-much better student than my brother, and I wanted to go to MIT or Caltech or whatever, my father basically said, "You know, you are going to where your brother went to school." That is how I wound up at Harpur College or in Bangor, because my brother went there, and I realized later on that a big part- my-my father had he had pride. I do not know if that is the right word, but he basically had pride. He basically did not want to admit that he could not afford anything else. He basically said, "Okay, Edward, you if you want to go to a private school like NYU or Columbia, it has to be in New York, and you are going to stay home, you know, to save the living expenses, and you would commute." Actually, 40 percent of my class at Bronx Science, then 40 percent of the class went to CCNY, not CUNY, went to City College. Okay, 40 percent. So, it was many of my friends and my brother's friends were living at home for college and taking the subway, and here I am growing up in this place where-where there is no privacy, we are all crowded together, and I said to myself, "There is just no way that I got to go to an out-of-town school." Said, "Okay, will you go to a SUNY school?" And so, he gave me my choice, Binghamton or Stony Brook. Now Stony Brook was known as the science school. They had hired a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from-from Columbia, and they built really strong programs in math, science, and eventually opened a medical school. Binghamton Harpur College was the public Dartmouth, or they said the public Swarthmore. This Nelson Rockefeller wanted to make that. We were told the sort of the demo that you can have a high-quality liberal arts school and still be publicly supported, and so I was gravitating going to Stony Brook because I knew I was going to at least start off majoring in the sciences. Turns out I took a meandering route anyway, and then the-the deal killer was, and the same thing happened to me with my kids. [inaudible] was when my parents said, "Oh, you would not be that far away. We can come out and visit you.

IG: 23:03
Oh no!

EF: 23:04
Now they never visited my brother in Binghamton because it was just too far.

IG: 23:11
Too far.

EF: 23:11
And so, they just took them up at the end of the year, collected them.

IG: 23:15
Yeah.

EF: 23:16
I said, "I got a choice: Binghamton, Stony Brook. They are going to come visit me, Stony Brook. Forget the science stuff. They have science up there. I am going to Binghamton." So that-that is how I got there. So, I go up to Binghamton, and yeah, it is 1967. My brother graduated in June of (19)67. I started in September of (19)67. So, we did not overlap, but so, we so my parents were Binghamton parents for eight continuous years. So, I was my mother's baby. There were only two of us, okay. And until the day she died, I was her baby, right? And so, I- we go up there, and it was it was starting to become a really popular school, and you know they were bragging already that oh there were people who turned down Cornell to come to Harpur, et cetera, et cetera, and so, yes, that year, a higher percentage of kids who were offered admission accepted it, so they ran out of the dormitory space. So, we pull up, and I am in a triple. They had a triple for us, and there were these two huge guys. I was this little skinny guy. I was about 150 pounds then. Probably I was about 5' 8", 5' 9"; I eventually grew to be six feet. Now I am shrinking again. But I was this little skinny guy. These two big guys had already been there. So of course, one guy took one closet. One guy took the other closet, and so they had to make some room in each closet for me to have a little space, and then my dresser was stuck between the two beds, and of course I got the top bunk. My mother, she was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, you know, like, oh my baby, you know, and-and so that is how I started in Binghamton.

IG: 24:57
I see that recurring theme in your life [crosstalk]

EF: 25:00
No closet. [laughs]

IG: 25:01
It is a search for a closet space. [laughs]

EF: 25:04
So then-

IG: 25:05
Yeah.

EF: 25:06
So, I am there, and you know, if they, it is my future father-in-law. You know, of blessed memory. Also, he died in 2011. He would say, repeat. If they give you lemons, you make lemonade. So, I did not feel as bad as my mother did. I was actually so glad just to not be home that, and I was 16 because with all the skipping and whatnot. So, a lot of kids from the New York City schools were 16, and the kids from the Upstate were 18. We were, we were worlds apart. Back then, the drinking age, believe it or not, in New York State was 18, so we could not even get a beer, let alone drive. And the girls could not care less about us. You know, an 18-year-old girl, a 16-year-old guy. It was not until I was a senior. Okay, so-so I do the best I can. Okay, so there was a little bit of, you know, after a few weeks, some people actually did not show up. They wanted to make sure some people got late admissions into Dartmouth or God knows where, and they-they ditched Binghamton, and-and so some rooms opened up. So, I get called down to the-the office saying you-you can move to another dorm. I forgot exactly the name of the dorm because there was an opening there. So I go to this dorm, and yeah, now I have my own closet. Now my roommate, though, is acting strange. Now this is in the (19)60s. This guy dropped a lot of acid. He was an LSD freak. In college, I just mainly got involved in marijuana. Occasionally took amphetamines before, you know finals and things. But I actually did not take any hallucinogens. I think partly because of-of seeing what-what can happen. This-this guy over the next few weeks, actually after I moved in, became essentially catatonic because, see, apparently even, I am a physician now. What I have, what I have heard, is that if you do enough LSD, you can deplete the neurotransmitter serotonin, and-and actually you know have what-what would happen to him. So, I told the resident advisor. I mean, this is (19)60, so I had a wide margin of tolerating behavior. So, I did not really care that he was taking drugs or whatever. But when he clearly was like, you know, looking like he was frozen, you know, I went and got the resident advisor, and then they that- he called the infirmary. They-they came over and literally just put him on a stretcher and took him away. Then I never saw the guy again. So, what happened to him was his-his parents were called, and they-they put him in a private psychiatric hospital and, you know, carted him off for a few months, you know, and-and people tell me that, you know, he did recover. He finished school somewhere else and became a very successful Wall Street investment banker.

IG: 28:13
How fun!

EF: 28:13
So meanwhile, there I am now. I have two closets. I have two closets, and I did not actually like being in a single room.

IG: 28:21
Yeah.

EF: 28:21
And-and so when so I put in a request that for the next semester, if there was an opening, if there were two singles, if there was a situation to be combined with somebody else, and so that is indeed what happened. They- I got I moved again. Now I moved for the third time in my first six months at Harpur, and my my-my first roommate who-who was not either gargantuan taking up my space or catatonic was a guy named Jim Blake, James Blake, redheaded Irish American from Jamestown, New York, famous for where Lucille Ball grew up, she was the most famous, not only redhead, but the most famous, yeah, most famous product of Jamestown, and so that was my first exposure to this foreign culture of upstate New York, because as you know, I mean, we have the New York City area, which is its own world, and you got the rest of New York State, which is like a Midwest state, which is like being the Midwest. So, it was a lot of fun, you know, living with which, and we roomed for a few for-for a few semesters, and then Hinman College, I think that is what it was called then. So that was like the new place, and it had the suites. That was the first place with suites, and so I had some friends actually from Bronx Science who went there because a lot of kids from Bronx Science went-went to Binghamton, and so they said, "Hey, you want to join us to live in the suite? I said, "Hey, that would be neat. I will try that. So, I moved up to Hinman, and-and at some point, I guess the last year I lived off campus in-in Endicott, across the bridge. When you go off the campus, there was a there was a pub that opened up called the Other Place. I do not know if it is still there, but it is on the it is on the eastern end of the campus, right off what was then Route 17, which is what Vestal Parkway, whatever they call it now, and then you go over the bridge into Endicott, and you walk up, and that area where I lived, it was it was funny. It was settled originally by-by Germans, and so the-the names were famous German musicians and authors, but the-the people where you know they worked in the in the shoe factory, they were not, they were not educated. So here I am. I am I am reading Goethe's Faust, in Litton Cop 101, and there is they say it is Goethe Street because that is how it is spelled in German, G O E T H E. Yeah, and it gets even funnier because they-they called it Beethoven Street, not Beethoven Street, and so-so I lived in that part with the real people, you know, and with my friend Ray Smith who went off to dental school, and-and that was fun living-living you know off campus as well. So those were my- that is how I got started in Binghamton. My brother went there. I did not want to go to Stony Brook, and then and-and but once I was there, I-I got engaged in a lot of things because what was good about it, in in maybe even now, but first of all, it was a small school, so I have actually never really warmed up to this Binghamton University, Bearcats-that whole fiasco with the athletic department to get some prominence-and that was terrible. Okay, but- and as it grew and grew and grew, my brother, when he went to Harpur College, they might have had a master's program. That was the extent of the graduate program in-in liberal arts, not in experimental sciences, and there were about maybe 600 students altogether. By the time I got there, okay, we were up to about 900. All right, and so it was a totally different feel. There were no fraternities. If you wanted, I was, I was on the track team because we had no athletic scholarships, and they competed with peer schools in the area, which means that they were as bad as you. So, the games were exciting. You know, it was not like we were playing Notre Dame. You know, we were playing Cobleskill Community College, and so we. It was great. And then I was a photographer for what they called then the Colonial News, which became the Pipe Train.

IG: 32:45
That is right.

EF: 32:46
And so, and so I learned how to do darkroom photography, and I still have my Nikon F that my father got from the pawn shop for me to use. So, I so I took a lot of pictures. I had a radio show, HRW. You are listening to WHRW 90.9. I think it was-was on the FM dial had a jazz show every Sunday night. I never-never would have been able to do those things. I think in-in-in some fancy-smancy school, the radio program came about where I was in a class and a friend of mine who is like the general manager of the station said, "Hey, do you know anything about jazz?" I knew nothing about jazz, but I said, "Why do you ask?" I said, "Oh, our jazz, our jazz guy just quit, and we have a slot on Sunday nights." I said, "Oh, I could do that," and so he says, "Do you have an FCC license to be an engineer?" I said, "I do not." I said, "Well, that is not a problem. Here is what you do: you start off just being the announcer and programmer, and-and someone will be actually running the equipment, and then we will teach you, and then you can go take an exam, get certified." So that so-so now I needed to learn about jazz. So, they had a great vinyl record music library, and they had it divided into, you know, pop rock, you know classical, and that jazz. So, I would just take an armload of jazz stuff. I heard of a few people like Louis Armstrong or whatever, but I took it was alphabetical. I would take chunks. Every dorm had a stereo in the lounge back then, and so just a standard console stereo, just like your parents might have had in their living room. And so, I would, at night when no one was in there, I would go down in my bathrobe to the dorm. It was a coed dorm, so you could not just walk around in your underwear in the two different wings, and so I would go down there with the records and start auditioning them. Then I make playlists, and they would be ready for Sunday night, and so I did that week after week, and I really learned a lot because there were-

IG: 34:53
[crosstalk] some of your favorite-

EF: 34:55
Back then, there was, you know, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery. The modern jazz quartet, and they still are. I mean, I have 1000s of albums at home still. I have just accumulated them. My wife, do not get her started. She when- I come home, or if a package comes in the mail and it is more albums- she says, "Why do you need any more?" And she just had a high school friend. They went to high school together in Roslyn on Long Island. Stayed for a few days, and her friend Susan, and so she even, whenever we have somebody over, she-she puts them up to make some comment to me to-to point out I have too much stuff because then Susan says, "Ed, I notice some of the albums you have are not even out of the wrapper. When do when do you think you left time to listen to them?" I said, "Did Jill tell you to say that?" That is my wife named Jill, and-and-and she says "Yes." Okay, well at least you are honest. Okay, but no, the- they there was an instant connection with-with these Felonious Munk. I love Felonious Munk. The offbeat, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da. You can see actually on my, I play through, and there is Jazz 24.

IG: 36:09
Yes, oh, Jazz 24.

EF: 36:10
But then-

IG: 36:11
Yeah.

EF: 36:11
So then, the-the-the albums back then, besides the cover art, which people like, and you know, you can buy picture frames now to put the albums in, but the liner notes were very, very good, and I learned a lot from Orin Keep News and and-and Ralph Gleason, and I still remember some of the annotators of the albums. These are jazz historians, and so they did not just say, "Oh yes, we have 10 lovely tunes here." They-they-they really got into a lot of education; they slipped in a lot of education on the liner notes. So, I would diligently read the liner notes, and I would parrot it. So, I am announcing, and I tried not to be pretentious, but I would basically, you know, take what they wrote and say it. My brother, my brother actually was on the radio. He did some-some announcing for a classical, and my brother knew nothing about classical music then or now, for that matter, and so it was very funny because back around that time the mayor of New York was-was Wagner, okay, and-and-and so of course the-the great German opera composers Wagner, Ricard. You do not even say, Richard-Ricard Wagner. It was sort of like that Goethe and Gerda. So, my brother, we had a reel-to-reel tape player, and he had a tape made of him announcing a show, and he is so proud he brings it home, he plays it, and he is announcing. And now we will hear from Richard Wagner, you know, he overtures too, and he garbles, butchers the name of the opera as well, and so that was pretty fun. So, from then though, I-I started to actually get a love of or knowledge of classical music. Now, how did that happen? Well, I started to go buy some jazz albums to play at home, and back then, of course, I mean we had, you know, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, you know Cream, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They were the, you know, billion-dollar sellers, and so I listened to those too. So, I have a huge collection of-of-of rock from that era as well, and listen to the (19)60s and (19)70s channel on Sirius FM, and so, but I, but the-the jazz albums and the classical albums did not really sell, even though they were issued. They-they were not really moneymakers for the stores, so they would then keep on reducing the prices.

IG: 38:29
I see, I see.

EF: 38:34
So, I would go in, and there would be, you know, the latest Beatles album was $3 in mono, $4 in stereo. So, I would buy the mono version, okay, save $1, and then I would see there is a bin of Toscanini conducting Beethoven. I heard of Beethoven. Who's this Toscanini? 29 cents, 59 cents. You know, brand new albums. There was one in the Vestal Plaza. There was a, there was a record store. So, and they had a free bus to get the college kids over to Vestal Plaza. Okay, so I take the bus over. I go in and [inaudible]. It was a piano organ store with all with a record department. And so, I would go over to the bin, pull out the jazz album, so I still have the price tags on. You know, Felonious Monk, 99 cents, and then I have all these classical albums, Hayden, Beethoven, because I had to take music appreciation at Bronx Science, even though it is Bronx Science. We actually had a full year of music appreciation. Mr. High Resnick, he actually wrote the textbook for the New York City public schools at the time for music appreciation, so he played us Dvorak, he played us Hayden, he played us Beethoven, Mozart, whatever. So, I knew the-the big names, and so I started buying these albums and say, hey, this is pretty good because, you know for-for so I go in for-for $5 instead of buying one Beatles album and maybe a Cream album. I would come out with 6, 7, 8, classical and jazz albums, take them back to the dorm, play them at night when no one was around because people did not want to hear that music anyway, and then that is how I got to really learn about classical music.

IG: 40:15
How wonderful. And kind of self-self-educated because of what you were doing on the radio, that that is really remarkable. What do you remember? What were some of the students that you were working with on the radio? Do you remember their names? Because I might have, I might have interviewed them.

EF: 40:34
Yeah, I remember zero. Even the guy who gave me my entree. Oh, so-so-so after a while, I had to go eventually take the test, and-and so I went down to on one of the school breaks. The Federal Communications Commission, which gives these licenses, had an office down on West Street, way down, you know where-where the World Trade Center eventually was built. This was pre–World Trade Center. I remember sitting for the exam; at the end of the exam was a practical, where-where you had to transmit Morse code in case all else failed in the emergency alert network. Apparently, every radio station still had a backup Morse code, and you had to be able to send some simple messages on that. So, I still remember after the written exam I took, had to go into another room. There was the examiner, you know; you did not see him because you were transmitting this electronically, and he graded whether or not they gave you some messages, and you had to transmit it, and that was the final thing. So, I was so proud. I got in the mail my FCC third-class engineer certificate. Then I was able to have my own show. Not only do the announcing and the selection of the music, but I did all the engineering as well.

IG: 41:53
Tremendous.

EF: 41:53
I just loved it.

IG: 41:54
Tremendous.

EF: 41:54
Yeah.

IG: 41:54
And how long did you do? What were the years that you did that?

EF: 41:57
That was- I probably started that in my late sophomore year and did all the way through to the end,

IG: 42:03
So (19)69 to (19)71 or?

EF: 42:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do not remember either the newspaper-

IG: 42:10
Yeah.

EF: 42:10
-or the-or the-the radio station. I have had a limited. I have had a limited ongoing relationship with classmates from Binghamton. I know-

IG: 42:28
But you had such you had such big friends there.

EF: 42:31
Yeah, and it is, it is interesting. I I am a speaking of the pop music. If you cannot be with the one you love, you love the one you lived, so then I went off to medical school. I actually went to two different medical schools.

IG: 42:46
Tell us about that. What did you study at Harpur, also?

EF: 42:50
Well, I started out as a chemistry major. Why was that? Well, my brother was a chemistry major. Okay, and turns out it is ironic because I run a big laboratory program here, and I eventually got a Ph.D. in biochemistry at MIT, which is a laboratory science. Okay, so I-I did not like the laboratory component, so I sort of wandered for a little bit. I love Spanish literature, so my mother and grandmother spoke a dialect of Spanish called Ladino. This was the form of Spanish at the time of the Inquisition when the Jews were thrown out of Spain, and it was their equivalent of Yiddish. It was their everyday language, no matter where the Sephardic Jews went.

IG: 43:32
And this is a family from Thessalonica.

EF: 43:35
That is right. That is where they were. But no matter where they were, Sephardic.

IG: 43:37
[inaudible] were speaking Ladino in Greece.

EF: 43:40
Oh yeah, of course. It was like speaking Yiddish.

IG: 43:42
I did not know that.

EF: 43:43
It is like, you know, the Russian Jews speaking Yiddish.

IG: 43:46
Yes.

EF: 43:46
Or-or any-any other Eastern Europeans. So Italian-Italian Sephardic speak Italian and Ladino. The Greeks spoke Greek and Ladino. The Bulgarians spoke Bulgarian and Ladino. Wherever the Sephardic went, they kept as their home language, their family language, Ladino. So, I grew up hearing Spanish all the time. So, I studied Spanish, and I actually took the Spanish honors program for majors, although I was not a major for one full year. Professor Erdman [George E. Ersman] was one of the major teachers I had. I remember his name, and because I was, I was sort of wondering what I went to college when I was 16. What the hell did I know? And starting to I was immature, even though I did all those other things. I actually I ran track. I did this now. I was actually very immature, even for a 16-year-old, and-and so I was starting. I said, you know, I do not really want to be a chemistry major, and so I took a lot of literature classes. I-I really was at a loss. I actually left in my junior year. Actually, took a few weeks off, terrified my parents, because so my father would give me so I had a Regent scholarship, which paid all the tuition, but I had to pay some room and board, so he would give me cash. He was in a cash business, a pawn shop, to go to the birth store's office and actually give him give him the bills right there. So, I decided that, you know what, I am not going to go pay. I am going to use this. I am going to go to Mexico. I am just going to take bus after bus to go to Mexico. So, I go up to college. They drop me off, and then I go a few days later when I got this brilliant plan together. I went to the Greyhound station in downtown Binghamton. Got on the bus, and I decided. Well, you know, my brother was a graduate student at Penn State in chemistry, then I would just stop off and say goodbye to my brother, okay? Because it is more or less on the route.

IG: 45:56
Right.

EF: 45:56
So, I take a bus from Binghamton to State College, PA. He had a change, I think, in Scranton. You know, I was the only person on this bus. The driver is talking to him, and you know, he drops me off, and then I go see my brother. My brother and I are not particularly close, and so he was surprised to see me in the first place. And there were no cell phones or anything. I just, I just pitch up. I just show up. And what-what are you doing here? He said, "I am going to Mexico," and so he-he keeps cool. But he-he says he had to go to the bathroom or something. What he did, he ran to a phone booth, called my parents collect, and so now my parents are going berserk. You have got to talk them out of it. Blah blah blah blah. I never made it to Mexico. I stayed at State College, PA for a week or two, and then ate a lot of ice cream. They-they had [inaudible] school there. They had their own they had their own creamery, and so then I eventually took the bus back to Binghamton, but then I did not do that well that semester because I was late starting. I was three weeks late when I started my classes, so-so I do not very well. It is amazing I got into medical school because that semester was not so good. So now I still have this problem. When am I going to graduate in?

IG: 47:10
Right.

EF: 47:11
So, in order to, so I took chemistry, actually all the-the lectures lecture courses that you needed, but I did not take the lab courses because I did not want to take the lab, and so because I took all the lecture courses, I had to take math along with that. If you were a chemistry or physics major, I had to take a lot of math courses through advanced calculus and so. So, I did a simple calculation. Wait a second! My remaining semesters, I have enough time to actually graduate as a math major if I take these courses because I already had so many credits in math. So, I graduated as a math major. As a, I actually liked it, but as a practical necessity, if I was going to graduate on time, okay, I was not going to be a Spanish literature major. I got that out of my system; I loved it, but I did not see that happening. [crosstalk] And then, and then, and so, so, so I graduated in math, and so now, so how did I get to? Why did I go to medical school? Well, of course, like all you know, Jewish parents of that era. Oh, my son, the doctor. So, they, of course, encouraged me. But that, if anything, would drive me the other direction. I made an independent. I thought, who knows how much I was influenced by my parents, hoping I go to medical school. I thought I made an independent, very practical decision. So, there I was, a math major, and we had very good teaching faculty then, and I am sure you have now.

IG: 48:48
Remember any names?

EF: 48:49
Well, my advisor was-was Charles Houghton. He was a Mormon from it might have been from Utah, and he became my independent. I did an independent research project supervisor, and then we had a professor from North Carolina, Prabir Roy, who was a real major recruit. Is when they were now starting to expand the graduate school for PhDs, and it was not really a research university then, so they have to start going out and getting research faculty from big-time schools, and he was a famous mathematician, apparently from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and so I remember that was big news in the math department when-when Professor Roy was coming. So, he was on my examining committee for my independent project, and we had Allen Ziebur, who taught differential equations. So, I remember these people because the math classes were very small. It was very sort of tight department, and-and so I thought these guys were brilliant, and maybe some of them were, but certainly from that perspective, being a little Moshe Pipic, you know. Now I was 17 or 18, and ooh, and they went to Harvard, and this guy went to Princeton, and ooh, these guys are geniuses. I said, you know, I am probably not as smart as these guys. I mean, of course, from my perspective, how could I be? I was knee high; knee high to a grasshopper. Even if I were, I would not know. And here they are teaching here at this, you know, nice school, not a big research department. So, what if I go get a Ph.D. in math? I will wind up teaching maybe at Bronx Community Hospital College or Cobleskill or God knows where. I do not know if that is really what my fantasy is. If I go to medical school, though, I am guaranteed to have a job, and I do not have to decide what kind of job it will be for years because medical school is a standard curriculum. So, you enter; everybody takes the same courses, more or less, for four years. Then you decide what field you are going to go into. Pediatrics, surgery, whatever, psychiatry. Then that is choose up another few years of required training. Then after that, you can go into a subspecialty. You can go into cardiology. You can go into knee surgery. That choose up another few years. Then when you are all done with that, you still have these choices you can make? You can work for the government. You can work for an insurance company. You can go into research. You can have a private practice. You have incredibly diverse opportunities. I said, "You know what, I do not really know what I want to do for the rest of my life. I am only 19 years old, 20 years old at that time; I want to go into something where I know I will have a job, and it could be in almost any facet that I can think of, and I could become a professor," which I eventually did. I thought I was actually going to be a practitioner, just a private office in-in the Bronx, where I grew up, maybe a little nicer than that neighborhood, but you know what I mean. And so, I applied. I decided to apply to medical school. I had never taken a biology course, though. I am a senior. I had not taken even one biology course. So, I took my first biology course. Got a C in that. I could not stand it. The way it was taught, it was, you know you dissecting sharks and formalin formaldehyde preserves. There was no real excitement of molecular biology yet or things like that. So, and then when so I applied to, I started applying to medical school. I did not know there was a premedical advisor who puts together a consensus letter from all the premedical courses you took, because I did not know that till one of the medical schools wrote back saying, "When are you getting your letter from your committee? And I, what committee? So, I asked other people I knew who were applying to medical school. I said, "Well, have not you seen Dr. Professor Wilmoth [James Wilmoth]? I think it is his name. He was a biology professor. I said, “No.” Why would I have ever heard of this guy? First of all, I never took a biology course, and I was not a pre-medical student, so I went to see him, and he said, "Oh, like where the hell have you been? If you want to apply to medical school, you were supposed to come in at the end of your sophomore year, and there was a whole formal process where I then start collecting sound bites." He did not say it that way, but essentially sound bites from your professors. And I assemble a composite letter, and that is what goes out. I say, "Well, can I get the composite letter?" He says, "Hell no." Basically, I said, "So what do I do?" He said, "Well, first of all, I will give you. You are not the first one who has done this? So, I have a standard letter where I explain to the school why I am not sending a letter, just that you decided late, and-and so there is no way to put a composite letter, and you just get choose four or five professors to write individual letters, and-and those will go to the schools," and that that is what I did, and so-so that is how I got to medical school, so I started.

IG: 54:02
Yeah, yeah.

EF: 54:02
So, I was in the SUNY system, and again, not coming from-from money, the best choices for me to go to would be Buffalo, SUNY Buffalo, upstate or downstate. So, I started at Downstate. I had a full tuition, not a scholarship, but for financial need. They-they called it something else. I did get some merit award for $1,000, and then I got the rest was some need-based thing, and so I paid nothing. I started out in Brooklyn. What I found was that the-the clinical training that I would get in the third and fourth year I thought would be lacking for all sorts of reasons. It is a, it is a, it is a, it is a first-rate school. If it was anywhere not New York with Columbia, NYU, and Sinai and Cornell, you know it does suffer from being in the shadows, but it was a perfectly good school with very bright students. I certainly was not the top of the class, but I decided then that I was going to try to transfer to here to NYU, where I did graduate from. So, one of my diplomas up there is-is my NYU School of Medicine, and so I-I-I-I transferred to basically get the clinical education that I would get at Bellevue Hospital as a medical student, and then because the tuition here was more, my need-based award went up, and so I avoided, even though this was is a private school, you might know ironically, now there is no tuition at NYU. They raised [crosstalk]

IG: 55:47
I do know that at Columbia and at NYU as well.

EF: 55:51
Well, Columbia is for it is for some people. NYU is for all the students.

IG: 55:55
For all the students.

EF: 55:56
All the students. All independent of financial need. So, but back then the private schools they were more expensive than the public schools were not so much more. So, I came out with essentially no debt from medical school, even spending the two years here. And so, I thought I was going to go off to, at first when I started medical school. I thought I would be an internist. That is the most back then. That was the most common career choice: primary care, internal medicine, and be in the New York area. Somewhere along the line, I lost my interest in internal medicine because it was basically taking care of people with degenerative disease, and I got more interested in pediatrics. And so, I actually, and so I, so I applied for residencies in pediatrics, and then I thought again, knee-jerk, while staying in the New York area, I am a New Yorker. I mean, I am going to stay here. So, I applied to all the hospitals for pediatrics training, and then one day when I was stepping over a homeless person, and there was dog crap all over. I say, maybe I should see some other part of the country.

IG: 57:07
Right.

EF: 57:07
So, I put in before the deadline a new round of applications, all in the Midwest and the Southeast, because to me those were exotic places.

IG: 57:16
Exactly. Yes.

EF: 57:16
You know, Cincinnati was exotic. Okay, Ann Arbor, Michigan. So, I wound up going to Duke, and so I did my residency at Duke, and then it occurred to me when I was there that, well, so I thought I would be then a private practitioner in pediatrics. So, I had done research rotations and things when I was in Binghamton. I went. I actually stayed in the chemistry department one summer worked in a lab. I went to Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Worked in another lab. So, I had some-some research interest, but nonetheless, I thought I was just going to hang up a shingle, as they would say back then. So, when I was in my second year of residency, they sent us to doctors' offices to see what you actually do when you are in practice, and I came back. I remember sitting with my advisor, Professor Sidbury, and saying, "Dr. Sidbury, I do not see. I do not see how I can do that for the rest of my life."

IG: 58:16
Why? Why did not you like about it?

EF: 58:19
It, you know, it is a satisfaction. So, I do clinical medicine now, as-as we call a hobby, because there are certain satisfactions you get from it that you cannot get from doing anything else. But it is a different part of you are of, you are of, you are of you are being. It is not. It is, you know, I like puzzles, mysteries, coming up with hypotheses. What if? What if? What if? And basically, the-the difference is. So, I went from residency to graduate school. So, there was a huge culture difference. When I got to graduate school, I-I was explaining to some friends what the difference was. It says so in medicine: the concept of malpractice is that if you look at everybody, what everybody else looks at, you are supposed to see what everybody else sees. So, for example, if you are my patient and you tell me you have a cough, a fever, a runny nose, and if I do not think that-that one of the possibilities is pneumonia. I am not, you know, there is something wrong, right? So, everybody, every doctor you come in, and you say, doctor, I have this cough and fever, and it hurts when I cough over here. Let us rule out pneumonia, okay? So, you look at what everybody else looks at, and you see what everybody else sees. One of the Nobel laureates, this Sen Georgi, he finished his career actually at Brandeis. He was made major discoveries on how muscles work. He said, "The goal of a scientist is to look at what everybody else Looks at and see what nobody else sees." They are diametrically opposed. That part had way more appeal for me than the than the first part. There is nothing wrong when I go see a doctor. I want to see a good doctor. Okay, I want him or her to be really into seeing what everybody else sees. Okay, so but it is basically something that did-did not appeal to me as much as, ooh, you know, figuring out what the hell is going on. How does this thing work here? Hmm, wow. So, I have a hypothesis, and when I was a kid, I would take things apart. Of course, I would break them because I could not put them back together. But I want to know how things worked. So-so Sidbury. So, I took a time out. Actually, one of the pieces of paper I am just finally getting. I did not have these things up for many years, by the way. So, this is a new experience for me to see these things. I have my master's of public health diploma that still needs to be put up. The reason why-

IG: 1:01:00
From where?

EF: 1:01:00
From-from Chapel Hill, from University North Carroll Chapel, down the road from Duke.

IG: 1:01:05
Okay.

EF: 1:01:05
So, I was telling Sidbury, Professor Sidbury, that I do not see why I should go continue on clinical training in pediatrics, because at that time in those days, if you finish two years of residency, you can do some specialty training, and you would get credit for your third year and-and be board certified, board eligible, because you needed three years of clinical training. So-so I stopped at two years because that is all I needed. Because I figured I will be in some specialty where I will do research, so I will, I will finally fill in that third year, and but let me take time out from the clinical training and learn something that will be useful for any type of research I would do. So, I went down to Chapel Hill to get a master's in what's called epidemiology, which is statistics and patterns of right. I figured that is useful for anything, and also, they had a training grant, so I actually got paid more to be a graduate student at Chapel Hill than to be a resident doctor at Duke Hospital. At Duke Hospital, I was making $9,900 a year. Okay, and as a graduate student at UNC with a medical degree, I was making $13,000 a year. And

IG: 1:02:21
And this was in the early (19)70s.

EF: 1:02:22
This was by now 1977.

IG: 1:02:25
Seven.

EF: 1:02:26
Yeah. So, and UNC being such a big jock school, type that Binghamton University wants to emulate at one time or wanted to. Actually, no matter what department you were a graduate student in or an undergraduate, you had to take physical education. So, I went and took tennis for two semesters. I never learned how to play tennis because where I grew up in the Bronx, we had no tennis courts. Okay, that was a suburban sport, right? So-so there I am. I am thinking this is great, and then-then it started to come to me. You know, I want to get some more research training, and Professor Sidbury, who was very influential in my career, he I went back to him, and he said he just got a flyer because we had no internet then. How did you know that? He got a flyer from MIT about a program they had in collaboration with Harvard Medical School that if you had an MD and some clinical training and wanted to learn how to do research in metabolism, biochemistry, and nutrition, they would fund it, and they would now I would get paid $14,000 a year to be a student at MIT. So, I applied and was accepted. So, I go up to MIT, and that is where I got my-my PhD. And because of that, I was also a part-time fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, which gave me the credit to get my board certification in pediatrics, and so I did wind up finishing my training.

IG: 1:03:46
Were your parents very proud of you at this point?

EF: 1:03:49
Only when I got my first real job, okay, when I was 34. So then, of course, so now I am at, you know, ground zero of molecular biology and science, you know, MIT and Harvard. I mean, so they, my professors there, convinced me I should go do a postdoctoral fellowship. Okay, so I did that in genetics, molecular genetics at the NIH. In fact, my lab head there-they were having a symposium in honor of his 90th birthday. He is still working as a scientist, and so. But how did I get down to the NIH? I called my good mentor, Professor Sidbury, who by then had left Duke, and he was the scientific director of the National Institute of Child Health Human Development, one of the 13 or so components of the NIH, and he said, "Come down here. I will get you a postdoctoral fellowship." And so that is what I did. I went down there. So finally, when I was done with that, I applied for jobs, and I became an assistant professor in the genetics division of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which is the pediatrics department of the University of Pennsylvania. So, my first job, a real job. I remember calling my parents, saying, "I am going to go to Penn to be an assistant professor." Finally, it is a miracle. miracle. They have got a job.

IG: 1:05:11
A miracle.

EF: 1:05:12
miracle. And so then, so then I morphed into a preventive cardiologist of all things. So-so I was in Philadelphia, and-and by then I was married, and had one kid, two kids, three kids, and I switched from the University of Pennsylvania to a smaller school called the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Used to be called Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, because, you know, for a long time women were excluded from most medical schools, and so there were a few schools around the-the country that would take one. Just way, there were a few schools that took, you know, African Americans because, okay, so Albert Einstein was founded in (19)55 to have more medical schools that would take Jews, even as recent as 1955. So MCP, which was the abbreviation, went bankrupt. It is a long story, and we-you have other questions you want to ask me, I am sure. And at 5:30, I have a conference call. So, they went bankrupt, and I needed a job. Three young kids. My wife did not make much money, and so I applied around. My parents were still alive, living in the New York area. My in-laws live in New York, and-and so and I told my PhD mentor, who is now in New York, Professor Jan Breslow, he is at Rockefeller University. I told him, I need a job. I need a job. So, Valentin Fuster, who's a very famous cardiologist, who's at Mount Sinai was-was starting a at that time this 1995 a-a research institute, and he wanted to get research-oriented physicians in the cardiovascular area in this institute, so Breslow gave him my name because I called Breslow said I need a job Fuster had called Breslow said “You know any people I can recruit?” So, he put us together. He offers me a job. I go to Mount Sinai. Fuster is an amazing man, but he-he just has no meetings longer than 15 minutes, and he has my CV, and he is just flipping through it. And he says, "You are great. You trained with Breslow. That is all I need to know. He says you are great," and we shake, and that is it. I get a job. So, I go there. When I go there, from the time I accept the job, and months later when I finally show up, he says, "Well, you have to. By the way, you have to do something clinical." So, I had at that point not done much clinical anything because I was actually in the Department of Biochemistry at MCP, and so I said, "Okay, Dr. Fuster, should I speak to somebody in the Pediatrics department?" And he says, "Well, why would you do that?" He said, "Well, because I was trained in pediatrics." He said, "You were?" I said, "Yeah," and it was clear he missed that on my CV, so I was not going to like point it out to him because he is my boss. He said, "No, it is better that you do something in the medicine department because that is where I am, and to guide your career, your promotions, your pay, you have to do something in the medicine department, so I said, "Okay, well, I know about cholesterol metabolism, so that is preventive cardiology. Maybe I can do something in preventive cardiology." So, he says, "Good idea." So, he calls up the head of preventive cardiology, and I apprentice with them. I literally apprentice with them. So, I am running my lab. So, I am the director of lipoprotein research of the Cardiovascular Institute of Mount Sinai, and then I go over to the clinical building, which is that- the one that they had then that still I have, but they added to it was 5 East 98th Street. Don Smith, very nice man, very experienced preventive cardiologist, soft-spoken, originally from Arkansas. Actually, went to Duke and Harvard, trained at Duke, and so-so. But he just had this nice. He is a real Southern gentleman, and so I would go in. He would send me in to see a patient. I would come out, present the patient to Don. Don would go in and, by asking the patient all sorts of questions to show me what I forgot to ask, and then we would go outside, discuss the patient, then we would go back in. So, I did that for a year or two. Then it progressed to the point where Don said, "Okay, you are ready to see patients on your own, but see them on the days that I see patients. So that way, if you have any questions, if it is an unusual case, whatever, I am still here." So, I did that for another year or so. Then it was like it was like a graduation ceremony. He says to me, "Ed, you know, I see patients Tuesday, Thursdays. I-I want you to see patients Monday, Wednesdays. Because that way we can advertise. We have a preventive cardiologist available four days a week" which is very unusual, and that was his real, you know, obviously indirect vote of confidence in me, that I could see patients without him being around, Monday, Wednesday. So that is what I started doing. So, I built up a practice at Mount Sinai, and every now and then, as the internet became more available, people would look up my credentials, and they wonder if they were seeing the right Dr. Fisher because you were trained in pediatrics, and I would say, "You are, you are in your second childhood. That is why you are seeing me." Okay, and so then, it gets even to me even better because I so I have no formal training in cardiology and have no formal training in internal medicine, but I now have in this endowed professorship called in academics the endowed chairs of the most procedures, right. So, one of those things says it makes me the Leon H. Jarney Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine-

IG: 1:11:04
How did you get that?

EF: 1:11:05
-without training, because if you have something, this is what I love about the academic world, which-which is unfortunately becoming more limited because academic medical centers are big businesses, and so it is much more corporate, but basically, in an academic institution, if you have something of value to the intellectual environment, there can be all sorts of-of, we will say, I would not say dispensations, but workarounds, and so in my case, so-so my next door neighbor in Mount Sinai is named Glenn Fishman, who's the chief of cardiology here. When Glenn came here, he wanted my research program here. So, it is funny: I came, I started NYU, I would come back, and he also wanted me to start a preventive cardiology program; this was the ultimate endorsement. So, he knew my background. He knew I was not trained in cardiology, and I was trained in pediatrics. He says, "I want you to start a preventive cardiology program, and bring your research program in lipoproteins and atherosclerosis." And I said, "Well, I am only going to come if I get, you know, a nice lab, this and that, and an endowed chair." I wanted an endowed professor because I was already a full professor, and so I wanted like a promotion. And so, a donor, Mr. Charney, gave money, and so they carved out the chair from there. And so, because I am already in the Department of Medicine in Cardiology up at Mount Sinai, I now come here in cardiology and medicine at NYU, and I get actually the best chair in cardiology because the whole division of cardiology here is the Leon H. Charney Division of Cardiology, and I am the Leon H. Charney Professor. Now, why is it not the chief of cardiology the Leon H. Charney Professor. When I retire or give up this chair, that is what will happen. But for now, what happened was, he came first, and then Mr. Charney gave the gift. They gave him another named chair, and it would be an insult to the family that gave that chair for him to drop that because that would mean that, you know what, that other chair is better than the one you gave. You do not do that, and well, you are a fundraiser. You do not do that. It is just like what happened at Avery Fisher Hall. Geffen comes to give more money. They had to work out a deal with the Fisher family to not just rip there. They ultimately did rip their name off, but they got paid off $30 million or whatever. Here, the original hospital is the Tisch Hospital, still on the side there. The Tisches gave a rather, by today's standards, a rather small donation to get their name there. By comparison, the new hospital, that big thing, the Kimmel. family, Mr. and Mrs. Kimmel, gave 160 million dollars. So, but they could not get not that I know that they asked to, but it was never on the table that their name would now be for the whole. It is really one hospital. Right. They are connected, just the way Columbia has the Milstein Pavilion, okay, and Sinai has the Klingenstein Pavilion, the Guggenheim Pavilion. They have to preserve the previous recognition from that philanthropy, and not just go to the highest bidder. Because any then donor would say, "Oh, someone just has to give more money than me, and you forget to take my name off the building." So, I got the Leon H. Charney chair, although it will at some point become. Whoever is head of cardiology will have that chair. But for now, the timing was such that I actually got the best chair in the in the by name in the division. So that is how I got here, to be across from you, being interviewed from starting out. It is it is been you know, a lot of people think, you know, because I tend to be quiet, believe it or not, and unassuming. Whatever the phrase is, that they just think that. Oh, yeah, from Bronx Science, I knew always that I wanted to be a professor and would be, you know, this. And I just view my life more or less as a pinball put in play, and yes, I had some.

IG: 1:15:47
But do you feel obviously, you have had agency in your career decisions in your life, or do you feel that you have been this pinball?

EF: 1:15:58
Well, no, not right. That is right, not powerless. What I have had is some people who have, like I kept mentioning Sidbury, Professor Breslow, who I mentioned a little bit. I have had some-some-some mentors who have helped me, but more in the sense of once I decided I was going to go in a certain direction, I was able to figure out what-what I needed to-to achieve that goal. Like if I want to go research, you cannot lose by getting a degree from MIT. That was smart. Actually, coming here to NYU was smart because that the head of pediatrics here was a personal friend. People just have more connections in the bigger places. He, I told him I was interested in Duke. I am in his office. He picked up the phone, called his friend Sam Katz, and said, "Sam, I have a really good medical student up here at NYU is interested in your program," and then that-that paved the way, and then, you know, Sidbury calling to my attention this opportunity at MIT, and that going to MIT has opened so many doors, you know. So-so I think that that was one thing that back then I felt I did feel, whether it was fair or not, that that coming from a state college just did not have the cachet, and it was true. And once I got to know the kids applying to medical school, eventually I-I found that subculture. Maybe we had one kid who got into Columbia that year. His name was Michael Weingarten or something. He had like a 3.9 before. This was before grade inflation. I mean, to be on the Dean's list then, you just needed a 3.0, which is of course like failing out these days. So, there was this. We-we did not have a track record as a school yet. We did not have enough kids going to the top, you know, law schools, medical schools, graduate schools, for people to-to pay attention to our applications. You know, an aspirational school when I was there to go to medical school was NYU. You know, I was so excited when I came here. You know, where-where people who went to Yale, if they- I had classmates here who went to Harvard. This was their safe school. They felt like, "Gee, my father went to, you know, Stanford, and I am here. I am at NYU, so it is this relative." You know, it is like Glenn Fishman. He grew up. His father was a very successful contractor. I went to Cornell for engineering, and-and-and-and Glenn grew up in a very nice house with a swimming pool in Huntington and Long Island, and Glenn told me he-he does not feel very successful. He is the chief of cardiology. He went to Stanford. Okay, does not feel successful because the house that he has for his own family is smaller than the house he grew up in. So, my cousins and I, we laugh at how our parents made it so easy for us to feel successful. I told you about the apartment I grew up in. Okay, I have a three-bedroom house on a quarter of an acre, but I got my own friggin' closet. I am a success. I am a success. [laughter]

IG: 1:19:18
You are a success, and you are a fantastic storyteller. I really enjoyed listening to you, and I think that we are nearing kind of the end of the interview. And I always like to ask the interviewees to give advice to young students who may be listening to this tape and just giving them some guidance in life. What are the most successful attributes? Do you think that have guided your career? Have made you a success? What do you, what do you think is important for them to sail through?

EF: 1:20:00
Yeah. Well, I have certainly worked hard and need a certain ability, which so you have to choose your parents carefully. What we say in genetics because ability is what you are born with. But of course, what you do with it is-is something you can be proud of, and and-and so that is when I look at these these-these, of course. course, they do not see it on the tape. I am looking at some of my diplomas and awards. I-I-I know why I got them. Okay, it is from-from-from the effort on-on top of whatever ability that I had. So, you do have to work hard. I think Binghamton now, even though I do not like Binghamton University and the Bearcats and whatnot, certainly has achieved a reputation as a high-quality educational institution. So, it will not be a barrier to if you do well to going on to whatever type of career you want. Okay. Now, the-the key though is how do how do you know what you want when you are in college? Because you might think you are all grown up, but you do not know diddly squat even today. I have three kids. I see what they, what they have gone through deciding what they want to do. Now, I think the advice reflects institutional. At NYU, we have a very competitive medical school to get into, even before the free tuition. The average GPA over the past few years has been 3.97, and the score on the MCATs is in the 99th percentile. The average. But the average that I think is most important to answer your question is- the average age of the incoming student is 26 now. In my era, you went to business school, you went to law school, you went to medical school right after college. You were 21 or in my case, 20. What the hell do you know? You are committing yourself to a long period of training, and somewhere along the line, you might decide that you know what? I do not want to be a lawyer, but wait a second. I went to law school, a law degree, and you wind up in a career that you regret but feel trapped in. So, my advice is-is-is taking the advantage of youth. Take a few years to work. You will make a little spending money. You will get some experience. You will think it over. And this is what schools want. They want people coming to medical school; they want people coming to law school. They want people coming to graduate school who really know this is what they want to do, and you need to have some life experience before that. So, although your parents might say, you know, this and that, or you might feel that this pressure to do something right after college that is going to get you on the road to Nirvana, whatever. No, I would, I would say you want to, you want to really put your finger on your pulse, see if that is really two years from now. Get a job working as a technician in a medical school. Most of my technicians that I have, I hire right out of college. They are trying to think whether they want to go to graduate school, go to medical school, go to law school. Even they have gone to all different things, and they really have valued having this time just to sort of, I would not say decompress, but just to put their head in another space, so not to rush into anything because you really are young still. If you start medical school when you are 26, okay, you-you are five years older than when you are 21. But in as they say in the big scheme of things, if you really then committed to it, and you know that is what you want to do, then you do not feel trapped because as I said before, at a minimum, you are going to be putting in seven years of hard work, four years of medical school, three year of three years of a residency, and-and if you go to law school, it is not as long. But my friends whose kids go to law school, they do three years. They go to become an associate in the New York firm. They are working 18 hours a day for years, for six or seven years before they are eligible to become a partner, so it is almost like they are they are auditioning for six or seven, working super hard. If you do not feel totally committed-

IG: 1:24:35
Committed.

EF: 1:24:36
-that as your career, could you imagine what torture that must be? So, and then Dr. Breslow would-would tell me I love cliches. My mother spoke in cliches. I love cliches. My wife says, "Oh, if I say these cliches, my mother's first name was Rini. My wife will say, "Yes, Rini." I say, "Hey, do not make fun of cliches. They are very compact and efficient." Exactly for me, but cream rises to the top. So yes, you are not going to be successful at-at getting everything you want. But if you keep trying, I think you know if you have the ability and you have people who will give you recommendations. You know, when you are younger, those are important because you-you have not established yourself. You will eventually get opportunities. And what do I mean by that? I have a technician here in the lab. He-he did okay in college by today's standards, not as well as-as-as to make him competitive for the best medical schools. So, he is from the New York area. Of course, his first choice is to go to some school like NYU or Sinai. These are all these schools were in a bubble. They are in the top 20 in the country. So, I said, "Cyrus, okay, I am not putting you down or anything, but let us let us just face it. You did not do as well in college, and there are lots of reasons for it. You are a bright guy, but you like to use it at Syracuse. You were in a fraternity. You were a little bit too much of a party guy, and okay." And he has taken graduate courses. He has done well in to-to show that he does have the ability. So, he has done that the right thing, the right way. He got a good letter from me because he is a very good technician. But I tell him apply all over. If you really want to be a doctor, we got 140 medical schools. If you are willing to go, not to put down Nebraska, I just always throw that out. If you are willing to go to Creighton University, any accredited medical school is already a certain level of quality. Yes, we have rankings, but to be an accredited medical school, you are you are you are above average, and so that is your foot in the door. When you look at people who win the Nobel Prize, it is amazing how many of them have not gone to Harvard, have not gone to Yale.

IG: 1:26:48
To CCNY, for example.

EF: 1:26:50
That is right. They are, they are one of the biggest producers.

IG: 1:26:52
Yes.

EF: 1:26:52
But from all sorts of places. So, if you have the ability, you just got to get in somewhere into the system, and then if you graduate on top of your class at Creighton, you are going to get a residency at Columbia Presbyterian, and then from there you do well. You are going to get your fellowship at MGH, and you are going to keep on going. So as long as you know, I live in Scarsdale, where we have these parents who live through their children. If they do not go to certain schools. They-they get the U.S. news rankings, and I-I remember hearing them saying that, you know well, the minimum school that I will be happy with is Vanderbilt or Northwestern, and-and-and-and-and so they are not taking into account what's the best fit for their kids. They are also not taking into account is that you can be very-very successful without going to those schools. In fact, what's ironic is I point out to them that did not you go to Brooklyn College? Oh, that was different then. It was different. Here they live in this big house in Scarsdale. Right. Did you go to Brooklyn College, or and your wife she went to Skidmore, right? That is not so prestigious. And then I say, you know, I started out at a state school, and so that is my-my. It might have more questions, but my last piece of advice is what's been liberating to me for letting my kids choose wherever they wanted to go to school. You know, within certain reason, that would be good quality academics was. I went to Harpur College, and I am the Leon H. Charney Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine. Right.

IG: 1:28:27
That is, that is a great finale. That is a great finale.

EF: 1:28:31
Right.

IG: 1:28:32
Thank you. It is a privilege interviewing you.

EF: 1:28:39
But I would just have to add, it is like it is a takeoff of U.B. Blake going back to jazz. He wrote some classics like "I am going to sit right down and write myself a letter," and he also said, "I am just wild about Harry." Did not say he wrote that. 100th birthday party. He said if I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. So how does this relate to this? Is because, yeah, now I am sitting here. I am clearly successful, and but back when I was at Harpur College, I did not think my prospects for success were a lot of days. I had my doubts. Let us just put it that way, especially when I was on my way to Mexico. [laughter] Well, and so-

IG: 1:29:28
Have you ever been to Mexico?

EF: 1:29:30
Finally, only two years ago, I bought a guayabera, and I wear it with-with great fun. But I would say that, and I tell I have to give like mentoring talks to assistant professors and to postdocs, and I tell them, you know, I have to, have to admit, if I knew how well I was going to do, I would not have worried as much back then when I was in your position. So, I say, I know it is easy for me to tell you that-that. It will work out if you continue to apply yourself. But you know, it is and it is there is an element of truth in that. In that, when I was in your position, I had the same concerns as you do. So even though now I have confidence and I have real achievements, I say to myself, "Gee, if I knew I was going to do as well as I did when I was an assistant professor, I would not have worried as much as I did," right? So that-that is just part of human behavior.

IG: 1:30:30
I think so.

EF: 1:30:31
But-but it was liberating. So, it gave me not only a great-great education. So, we did not really talk about that. What did I feel? You know, was the strength of the school was not only the opportunities to get involved in running track and being the photographer and all this sort of stuff because it was just an open an open set of possibilities. But the quality of the education was extremely high, and when I went off to MIT, I felt well prepared. When I went to medical school, I felt very well prepared, and so.

IG: 1:31:07
That is what a lot of your peers say about their Harpur College education.

EF: 1:31:14
Yeah, so I assume these will be edited, right?

IG: 1:31:17
These-these will be edited. No.

EF: 1:31:19
No, I mean, I mean, you could cut it off at the-

IG: 1:31:23
well. I mean, because-

EF: 1:31:24
-when you said it was a great way to end the interview, you can end it there too.

IG: 1:31:27
No, I think what you said after that was also extremely valuable, and also the plug for Harpur College Education. So, we are going to continue-

EF: 1:31:40
Which I, which I will continue to refer to my undergraduate school as, and not BU.

IG: 1:31:44
Your peers share similar feelings about Harvard College and the naming of that.

(End of Interview)

2019-08-30

Irene Gashurov

1971

Dr. Edward Fisher

Dr. Edward Fisher grew up in the Bronx, New York, and graduated from Harpur College in 1971 with a degree in mathematics. He earned his medical degree through SUNY Downstate and New York University, completed his residency at Duke University, received an M.P.H. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and went on to earn a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A leading preventive cardiologist, Dr. Fisher established a research program focused on lipoproteins and has held appointments at Mount Sinai, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, and served as an endowed professor at NYU. He currently practices preventive cardiology at NYU Langone Health. Dr. Fisher and his wife live in Scarsdale, New York, and have three children.

Audio

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