Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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Ecdication “I must remember the things I have seen. I must keep them fresh in my memory, see them again in my mind’s eye, live through them again and again in my thoughts. And most of all, I must make good use of them for in tomorrow’s life.” (Canada Wide Photo Dr. Tom Dooley . . . more than mediocre. And what sights this man must have seen. Born in 1927 into a comfortably wealthy St. Louis family, Thomas Anthony Dooley III denied himself the prosperity which was easily within his reach as a promising society doctor. Volunteering instead as a U.S. Navy doctor, he first saw service in the midst of the 1954 mass evacuation of 610,000 anti-Communist refugees from North Viet Nam. After his Navy duty, he established MEDICO (Medical International Co-operation) to bring hospital aid to the underprivileged in remote areas. In several Laotian villages, just a few miles south of the Red China border, he made daily house-calls to his patients in the guerilla-infested jungle. This man was an American — but entirely removed from the complacency of that way of life, taken up with the challenge of placing himself under the double yoke of a foreign people, the burden of deadly disease and Chinese Communism: on the one hand, leprosy and malnutrition infected the bodies, and on the other, the deadly communes and persecution of peace-cherishing people just as surely eating away at the very core of humanity. And in the center of it all was the rambunc- tious Dr. Dooley, engrossed in one of the most daring vocations ever to present itself to an American. It is not difficult to imagine Tom Dooley as he lay dying of cancer in a Manhattan hospital last Janu- ary, when he perhaps was summing up the value of his life. Perhaps, too, after a few regrets that it was all over for him at so early an age, he might have made a hypothetical inquiry about his life: “What if I had never accepted the challenge to become more than just another society doctor—what would I be now?” What indeed would be the present state of the hundreds of afflicted Laotians whom he has helped, or of the thousands more who will now receive attention from the new men instilled with his spirit? In evaluation of the answers to these questions, the editors of this book respectfully dedicate their ef- forts to the one man who exemplifies the courage to meet the challenge and rise above the common measure of mediocrity.