Life is like a road. Mine had hills and valleys, with some steep climbs, but mostly it has been a good, flat road with just a few potholes. My birth was one of those. I was premature and had jaundice of the newborn, a condition where the bile made by the liver is not adequately eliminated. I was underweight and had the color of an overripe orange. The hospital would not release me for three weeks before I got to go home to Hinterstoder, Austria, as World War II raged all over Europe.

Our little alpine village was 26 miles southwest of the city of Steyr, which was one of the sites where the Germans built Panzers (Tanks) and, therefore, a frequent target of American B-24 bombers that came directly over our town on their way to bomb Steyr. I recall several occasions while I was playing in my outdoor sandbox, my mother would quickly take me indoors whenever a squadron of bombers passed overhead, despite the limited protection this action would have offered in the event of a direct strike on our home.  Of course, that would not happen because they saved all their bombs for the tank factories. Occasionally, on their return trip, they would dumb empty gas canisters that my father was grateful for, as they usually contained a few gallons of aviation fuel that supplied his motorcycle, which he used to make house calls to the farmers as their local doctor. That ended, however, when the war came to a close in 1945.

Then came the first day of school, another milestone memory burned into my brain. I saw it as the day I lost my freedom. Before I could run around and climb the mountains, pick Edelweiss, the legally protected wildflower of the Alps, and play all day. Another wonderful memory was of my first opera. The drive to Linz, where the opera house was located, was a very memorable experience. We got caught in an epic snowstorm and barely made it. The opera was Mozart’s The Magic Flute. It made me a lifelong Mozart aficionado.

In 1953, my family immigrated to the USA. Europe seemed to be a dead end for us. After the war, my father was unable to practice medicine because Austria considered him a foreigner, and only Austrian doctors were permitted to obtain a license to practice. The flight was highly exciting as we had to make an emergency landing in Reykjavik, Iceland, as one of our engines caught fire. But we thwarted death one more time and soon landed at LaGuardia in New York, where we left almost immediately for Chicago, and I started fifth grade. Not speaking much English, I sat there for three months silent, but immersion works, and I started talking. After my father finished a required internship, he got a job in one of the country’s largest insane asylums, with 7000 patients, in Peoria, Illinois. We lived on the 200-acre facility where I had a paper route. Some of my customers included Napoleon and Queen Victoria, which was quite an experience.

High school was the next milestone. I specifically remember my sophomore English teacher, as well as my Latin and Spanish teachers. The highlight for me was my Valedictorian address to the students, parents, and teachers of Limestone High. It was, as I remember it, filled with platitudes and was longer than it should have been. After high school, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in medicine. I completed my pre-med studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Medical school at the University of Illinois was a disappointment; it mainly consisted of reading and memorizing. It didn’t get interesting until the clinical years as a junior and senior, which I did at UCLA. One of my major milestones was meeting my wife-to-be. She was a Spanish major but had an after-school job in the business office of the UCLA emergency room. Being fluent in Spanish, she spent a year in Madrid, and she was frequently utilized as a translator. I had seen her do that and immediately decided I must meet this girl. The first opportunity was a Spanish speaker who worked at a nearby restaurant as a dishwasher. He arrived at the ER with a hand injury while washing dishes.  This was my opportunity and I called for a translator. I played it for all it was worth. I took a complete history, including all the family illnesses, and then, for the finale, I did surgery on his hand. She bought it all, hook, line, and sinker, and thought I was the most thorough doctor she had seen.  And the rest is history, which led to the next milestone. We married on June 22, 1968, at the end of my internship, and we are still going strong in 2025. Part II to come soon.