Festschrift for Dr. Jeffrey A. Norton

Excerpt

Jeff Norton is a remarkable human being; a college football, lacrosse, scholar athlete who in 1969 received the most outstanding student athlete award from Dartmouth College. Jeff went on to medical school at the State University of New York (SUNY), where he graduated in 1973. This was followed by a residency at Duke University under the guidance of Dr. Samuel Wells and Dr. David Sabiston (Fig. 1). He interrupted his residency in 1976 and later autographed a note to Dr. Sabiston, “Kindest regards and many thanks for your guidance.” He was interested in coming to the National Cancer Institute where I was working with Dr. Steve Rosenberg. The recommendation provided by Dr. Samuel Wells in 1975 was remarkable and prophetic, “Do not look at how slowly he walks and talks, do not worry about the size of his shoes, he is the real deal, take him.” How right it was for me to do just that. When Jeff arrived at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1976, he was no longer the student athlete of Dartmouth days but was actively competing in marathons (Fig. 2). A clinical associate at the National Cancer Institute, he worked in my laboratory under Dr. Rosenberg, the chief of the surgery Branch of the National Cancer Institute, along with several clinical associates destined to be future leaders (Fig. 3). In the front row you see Dr. Alfred Chang, who went on to a stellar career at Ann Arbor, and Dr. Earle Austin, a pediatric cardiac surgeon with a similar distinguished career.

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