He was there front-row center, which wouldn’t be so remarkable except that he was 94 years old and still telling me jokes. After a year of hematology fellowship at Georgetown, I stayed true to my childhood dream and applied for a position Staurosporine mouse in clinical practice with a prestigious group of Washington internists. I was deeply disappointed to find that they selected someone else, presumably on the grounds that they needed a cardiologist more than a hematologist. In my disappointment, Rath took me under his wing and encouraged me to stay

at Georgetown with the terse statement, “You can always go into practice.” As further inducement, he doubled my salary from $6,000 to $12,000 a year. Charlie was generous of spirit, but not so generous of PF-562271 cell line money. At Georgetown University Hospital, I was an instructor and then assistant professor of medicine and also head of hematology research. I spent 50% of my time teaching, 50% seeing patients, and the other 50% doing research. I was spread very thin

and my math wasn’t very good either. Two things became apparent to me. First, I was not the triple-threat academician that I was supposed to be and, second, that I enjoyed seeing patients in a hospital setting and I gradually lost my desire to go into private practice. Nonetheless, the pace of my position and the frustration over being unable to fulfill my research responsibilities was getting to me. Then, in 1969, I received another life-changing communication. It was a call from Paul Holland and Paul Schmidt at the NIH Blood Bank informing me that the Australia antigen GBA3 I had studied was now known to be associated with HBV and that they would like me to

return to the NIH to pursue studies of transfusion-associated hepatitis (TAH). I jumped at the opportunity and have never looked back. I was married in 1965 during my hematology fellowship to Barbara Bailey, a woman I had met during my fellowship at the NIH. It was a good marriage, but, sadly, ended after 12 years. However, two joyous events emerged from that marriage: the birth of my son, Mark, now an M.D./Ph.D. embarking on his own research career and the subsequent birth of my daughter, Stacey, currently a teacher in Colorado. My children have been wonderful from day one and are a source of great pride. They have given me four grandchildren, one of whom was born prematurely at the Hep-DART meeting on Kauai, weighing only 1 pound, 15 ounces. Miraculously, he is now age 10 and will soon be attending his third Hep-DART meeting. In 1984, I met a collaborator who has never entered the lab or participated in a study, but who has collaborated intensely in my life. I speak of my current wife, Diane, who has put up with the long hours and anxiety-ridden deadlines incumbent on a research career and who has done so with grace and elegance. She has been my staunchest advocate and has had more faith in me than I have had in myself.