anniversary of the identification of AIDS. Here is a Mary Hitchcock ICU footnote to your excellent article.

In July of 1981, we admitted a male flight attendant with atypical pneumonia and oral candidiasis. His homeopathic physician in New York City had said fresh air would be good for his shortness of breath, so he visited family in New Hampshire. Ann Collier [a DMS '78, who was mentioned on this page of the feature about AIDS] was the senior resident on the case and had just read the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report item mentioned in your article. She correctly suggested a diagnosis of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. I believe Ann presented this as one of the first cases of what was later classified as AIDS at the 1982 American College of Physicians meeting. Ann went on to an infectious disease career and is much published in the field.

As I recall—though these details may not be accurate—the patient's initials were the same as the initials of a person in the book And the Band Played On, about the spread of HIV/AIDS. The patient, who flew frequently between New York and Miami, died in the MHMH ICU after weeks of failing to respond to therapy. I was covered with his blood on multiple occasions, from starting arterial and central lines. I was afraid for years to have an HIV test, but fortunately when I did it was negative.

I believe Lin Brown, who is still on the faculty at Dartmouth, was my resident. And I think the other intern on the team was Andy Pavia, who went on to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

David Conard, M.D.
Housestaff '81-83
Mill Spring, N.C.

Magnificent legacy
I was interested in the box on page 22 of the Summer Dartmouth Medicine. It quoted a 1963 issue of Hitchcock Highlights newsletter. The change from Hitchcock Highlights in the '60s to Dartmouth Medicine today has been spectacular.

I joined the Hitchcock Clinic (at age 29)

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in August 1955, as an orthopaedic surgeon with Drs. Staples and Russell. I had completed my military service (in Korea) and was therefore eligible to receive a $7,500 salary in my first year as a member of the Clinic. My wife and I bought a tiny house on Turnpike Road in Norwich, Vt., for all of $18,000.

The friendships and rapport among the Clinic members were incredible. Now I read of those—most since deceased—who brought the Clinic to the excellence of today: Rad Tanzer, John Bowler, Dumps McCarthy, Brian Burke, John Milne, Elizabeth French, and others. They should be remembered as pioneers of health care in Hanover.

It is so gratifying to see that the positive ethic of excellent health care is being promoted so magnificently today.

Robert C. Shoemaker, M.D.
Claremont, N.H.

A tale of two schools
Westshire Elementary School in rural West Fairlee, Vt., is as racially and ethnically non-diverse a place as they come. It is probably a little whiter than the average whiteness of the very, very white state of Vermont. The faculty at Westshire understands both the anomaly this represents and the handicap it imposes upon Westshire students as they begin to confront an adult world enriched and challenged by diversity. Diversity and prejudice are related issues!

On Wednesdays during the past school year, I spent my mornings with eight Dartmouth medical students in the On Doctoring course, and my afternoons with a dozen-plus Westshire third-graders. At the end of the year, an opportunity presented itself to bring the two groups of students together.

Henry Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and was then just finishing his first year at DMS, joined me at Westshire on May 28. He was greeted enthusiastically by principal Mary Bronga, who gave him a quick tour of our beautiful, pre-K through fifthgrade school.

Ms. Bronga then sat in as the fifth-graders grilled Henry for almost half an hour on his life as a child in Vietnam and on his and his family's adjustment to the challenges of life in the U.S.

Next, Henry joined the third grade, where I was engaged in my weekly reading of the second Harry Potter book. In The Chamber of Secrets, the bigotry of a few "pure-blooded" witch and wizard scholars at Hogwarts plays itself out in their disdain and hostility toward the "Mudbloods" from non-wizarding families. That fiction was not a bad prologue for a visit with someone of quite different ethnicity!

We quickly wound up our Harry Potter reading so the kids could interact with Henry. Since the third grade had just finished studying the American Revolution, Henry played Q&A with them, displaying—to the delight of the quite knowledgeable students—a fairly astonishing grasp of the characters (Paul Revere, John Adams, and Nathan Hale among them) whom the class had been