January 2022

All is well after the Christmas rush. Emilie and her husband, Ted Carter, were in from Baltimore with two grandsons,Tommy, 5, and Will, 8 months. The boys are a hand, only to be outdone by our granddaughters, Annie, 6, and Eleanor, 5. They came up with our daughter Brooke from Nashville with her husband, Ben. We spend time with them at different points in the year as we enjoy Nashville and consider it our Florida equivalent. Our son Charlie was in after the holiday with his wife of five years, Maggie, who were off to a pre-surge planned trip to Columbia over New Years. They were married in Baltimore and we had a fun local reception and various dinners, etc. at New Years Eve 2016 with family and friends. It was an interesting experience to be in Baltimore with many of our close friends from Chicago at that wedding. A great time was had by all.

Bean and I transitioned to Delaplane, Virginia by May 2019. I retired from a large group orthopedic practice and faculty position at Northwestern University after 31 years. The time in Chicago was wonderful for all of us. I still teach ethics and professionalism to the orthopedic residents (by Zoom due to COVID). We last visited Chicago in July 2019. I hope to return to live when the pandemic subsides. We opened a small solo hand orthopedic surgery practice in Middleburg, Virginia, which is running at an easy pace. Bean runs the front desk and finances. I answer all of the phone calls. It’s a team effort.

I am also doing some consulting in the health care world and was part of a digital start-up health care venture out of Boston called Cohere Health, which started in 2021. I have only met my colleagues by Zoom and look forward to one day visiting the office in downtown Boston.

Time is also filled with family, bad golf, horseback riding, and tending to a small farm in Northern Virginia. We participate in outdoor fishing and still do some wing shooting and are enjoying the fourth quarter of our life together. We hit 41 years of marriage last June. We are going to keep moving along as I observed in Chicago with patients and friends that activity keeps the mind alive. Full retirement has not treated some of my patients' friends from Chicago well. We enjoy what we are doing together.

COVID has slowed down travel and other life activities but we are very blessed to have moved to a rural area where we can be outside most of the time.

I will look to connect as we come to Baltimore with some frequency for family as my siblings are there, mother is at Blakehurst and one child and two grandsons are in Glen Arm.

It continues to be a great run. I am sad in some sense that we moved in 1987 to Indianapolis for my hand surgery fellowship and then to Chicago in 1988. We had a great life there though between Winnetka, Chicago, and the northern suburbs as the kids got into horses. I spent a good amount of time and coached with Fred Stuart who I have known since the days of Boy Scouts and McDonogh 72 and the Panners. He was a source of news for me for years. I recently connected with Tuck Washburn and I keep up with Franklin Morton, who, with his wife, Debbie, were part of the family when we all lived in Chicago.