Chapter 09: A Calling to Treat Leukemia
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Description
Dr. Bodey concludes the interview by discussing his early inspiration to practice medicine, which stemmed from a missionary conference he attended in his youth. His father was a missionary, and his uncle was a missionary doctor in Africa. He also mentions other key influential figures in his life, including Dr. Charles Mangel and Dr. Emil J. Freireich, who both provided mentoring and professional collaboration throughout his career. For Dr. Bodey, being a physician who treats leukemia was his true calling.
Identifier
BodeyG_01_20030303_C09
Publication Date
3-3-2003
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD , Oral History Interview, March 03, 2003
Topics Covered
Inspirations to Practice Science/Medicine; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Faith; Mentoring; On Mentoring
Transcript
Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD :
Yes he did. I went into medicine because I wanted to be a medical missionary. I was a young boy. We had a mission conference in my town, and my father was a pastor, and I went to this missionary conference. I just felt that God was calling me to be a medical missionary, and actually that’s why I went to medical school. But, somehow things didn’t quite work out that way. I had a particular interest in China, and of course by the time I got to medical school, I wasn’t possibly going to China. I did volunteer at one point to go somewhere else, Ethiopia. They had some needs there, but that didn’t work out. So I got involved in leukemia and so on. I felt that that was really what God wanted me to be doing, and so that’s what I ended up doing. But I really didn’t start out because I wanted to be a doctor, as I wanted to be a missionary.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
But you could be a missionary without being a doctor. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD 0:07:12 .2 Oh, yeah. Sure. But I wanted to be a missionary doctor. My uncle was a missionary doctor in Africa.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Was there anybody—aside from your father or perhaps your uncle—who had a major influence on your career? Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Yes. Dr. Charles Mangel, and I think he’s still maybe active in Leavenworth, Kansas. I sort of lost touch with him in recent years.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Is that the Mangel Clinic? Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD M-A-N-G-E-L, Charles Mangel. He has an interesting family association. He also grew up in Allentown, in Pennsylvania, where we lived a good bit of our life. His grandfather was a bishop in the church in which my father was a pastor, and his father was our family physician. He primarily was a radiotherapist and had trained with Howard Kelly, who was the first head of gynecology at Johns Hopkins. And, the father, a very dignified man and a very excellent physician, he was our family physician. So he had an impact on me. His son was a couple of years older than I and a friend of my older brother. But he was sort of my advisor. He went to Lafayette College. He went to Johns Hopkins. He advised me. He was the one that got me to go to the National Cancer Institute and provided a lot of very helpful advice to me over the years. I can remember still that when I was a first-year medical student, he was an intern at Johns Hopkins. He worked six and a half days a week, 24 hours around the clock. Saturday afternoon he would have me come over to the hospital, and he’d spend an hour or two on showing me some of the patients and giving me some assignments to go read something about this disease and all. So when I started my second year of medical school, I was way ahead of everybody else because of what I had learned. He played a very important role. Let’s see, who else?
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Even in later years?
Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD :
Hmm?
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Even in later years than NCI and down here? Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Well, Dr. Freireich and I have had a very close relationship over the years, and of course he did an awful lot to help me get established in my career. We worked closely for many years, not so much lately, but for quite a long time we worked closely together. Some of the things that I did are in part a consequence of our discussions or rounds. He had quite an important role in my career.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
So you would discuss things at—I guess I would like to follow up on that a little bit. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Well, for example, I told you I did this paper on the relationship between neutrophil and infections. We had a discussion around some patient who was neutropenic and all of that, and I don't know—and as a consequence of this discussion—excuse me. I don't know why my throat’s giving me so much trouble.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Because I’m making you talk for two hours. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD (laughs). But it sort of came up. Well, it would be a good idea to look at this quantitatively, and I think he actually was the one that sort of suggested it all be something worth doing, and then I took it from there.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
So obviously a mentor—mentoring relationship. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Yeah. Well it was more than just a mentor. We’ve been very good friends over the years.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Uh-hunh (affirmative). He came up a lot in the interview. Maybe I should—maybe we should stop now. I don’t want to wear out your voice. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Yeah. Well I need to get together with you if you have some of this other information as well, because that will save me a lot of effort, and if you don’t mind sharing what you have.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
I’m happy to. You might have to fill out the researcher form because of some of our procedures. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Yeah. No problem.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
No problem. I did want to ask you about your papers. Are you a keeper of your files? Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD What kind of papers?
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
I think Dr. Freireich saved every document—maybe not, but I was surprised when I interviewed him. He had the correspondence from the sixties. I mean, those kinds of correspondence are especially rich for a historian. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD I don’t have any of that. I’m the opposite. I throw everything out. We clean our files several times over the years, so I don’t really have much of that sort of thing.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Well if you do come across something from that, those are the kind of things—of course, photos, or reports that may not have been saved in the system somehow. Those are especially rich historical materials. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Unfortunately, that I don’t have much of. My secretary’s always complained about all the files and all of that. Just keeping copies of my papers—
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
You do have almost 800 articles that I would— Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Over 1,000.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Oh, well I was only able to find a little under 800. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD I wasn’t the one that wrote all of those papers.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
But you’re part of them. Gerald P. Bodey, Sr, MD Yeah. My name’s all over them. That combines peer review to papers in journals, teaching aids, chapters in books, and all that sort of thing. It’s over 1,000 now.
Lesley Williams Brunet, CA:
Well, why don’t I give your voice a rest, and just to get it on tape, I do appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. I’ll turn off the tape for now. (End of Audio 4)
Recommended Citation
Bodey, Gerald P. MD and Brunet, Lesley W., "Chapter 09: A Calling to Treat Leukemia" (2003). Interview Chapters. 984.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/984
Conditions Governing Access
Open
