A Doctor Without Borders

Around the world with my Anglo-Belgian Epidemiologist mother-in-law

Mary Godenne packed her steamer trunk for the Congo, where she planned to practice tropical medicine on the subjugated people in that Belgian colony. But she never made it.

Instead, she sailed the ocean blue to complete her M.D. residency at Yale Medical School, helped develop and administer the Polio vaccine, and met Jack McCrea, a genetic-brainiac just in from Australia (via Scotland). Appropriately, the pair would conduct a DNA recombination experiment that would produce my wife: An Australo-English-Scottish-Belgian hybrid who is a rare orchid indeed.

When Claire and I began dating, in Knoxville, Tennessee, you could say I was already on a world tour.