Williamsport Hospital School of Nursing - Oak Yearbook (Williamsport, PA)

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Coodies, while the little girls stood wide-eyed and amused. Well this happened four times and on the fifth ccasion the doorbell rang, and he was busy in the cellar, but Jennifer, his first born, opened the door and saw lese kids and instantly knew what to do. She whipped upstairs smartly, to his room and took down his measured coin collection and passed out those precious items to the children with reckless abandon. I never saw a happier guy recounting this tale. And, there are other stories, the bathroom story, the picnic Story etc. However it was in his terminal illness,. that he demonstrated to all, what kind of fibre he was made of. In a long year of attrition he lived intimately with nausea and vomiting, with insomnia and anorexia and the daily spectacle of his stamina being slowly sapped away. He was savaged with four operations. In his final months he was left with hemiplegia and hemianopsia. He gallantly strove to master an encumbering brace so he could walk again. Once when I visited him in Memorial Hospital and he embarked upon a course of noxious chemicals to arrest his disease, he told me with tears in his eyes, Frank, I think I am going out of my mind. Despondency, yes; despair, never. In this frenetic life with its mad ataxic pace, it is salutary sometimes to pause and assess what really is important, what really has a meaning, what truly is imperishable. When you view the scene of a thirty-nine year old physician stigmatized with an incurable infirmity, the outcome of which he knows too well, tossed into the crucible, from which he can only be released by final dissolution, and ruthlessly ripped from all mortal joys, then some of your cherished suppositions and prejudices take a rude jolt. This then, is a Requiem for a real Heavyweight. In all that agony he never whined or pitied himself or railled against, or cursed his fate. His sensorium was clear to the day before he died. Characteristically enough, his last request to me was, Please don ' t let my secretary go; try to find a place for her, she is excellent. She STAYS John. The County Medical Society, The Community at large, and the Crippled Children ' s Society have lost a sterling member. We extend to Dr. Louise Sabol, his wife, and his two cherubs; and his mother, Mrs. Helen Sabol our profound condolences on their titanic tragedy. f ,4. v : Break, break, break; On thy cold gray stones, Oh, sea; and I would that my tongue could utter; the thoughts that arise in me . . . . but, Oh for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still. Alfred Lord Tennyson Throughout France this year, they are celebrating the bi-centenary of the birth of Napoleon. There are all kinds of pageants and commemorations going on. Napoleon is said to have brought glory to his Country! He is deemed by some, as the World ' s greatest military genius, and by others one who made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. He surrounded himself, however, with some able lieutenants. The ablest of these is reckoned to have been Marshall Michael Ney. Ney played a great part in some of the victories -- Marengo, Austerlitz, the Peninsula Campaign, etc. He, also was the man singularly responsible for converting the diastrous rout from Moscow, into an orderly retreat with a magnificent rear-guard action. He lies today in the city of Strasburg in the Province of Alsace. This is the same city mark you, which gave to the World Dr. Albert Schweitzer. On his tombstone are inscribed these simple words: Michel Ney, Marechal de France Le Brave des Braves That is my epitaph for John R. Sabol, The Bravest of the Brave . When God measures a man, he slips the tape around his heart. Irish Proverb Francis V. Costello, M.D.

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1 schools ledical Three fold the flight of time from first to last; Arrow swift the present swecpeth; Deliberate slow the future creepeth; And, motionless forever stands the past. Anon Death, as it must come to all men, came to Dr. John R. Sabol on Sunday morning, July 27, 1969, ter- minating a busy career and a bright future, with a swift, steady and engulfing malignancy. From the day one year ago when he learned of his impending doom, his course was a magnificent and valiant retreat from the relentless ravages of four operations, debilitating disease, decline and final demise. Thereby hangs a tale. Born May 29, 1929, in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pottsville, he attended the loca and successively graduated Pottsville High School, Dickinson college, and qualified at Jefferson M College with the class of 1957. He served his internship, and held a residency in Orthopaedics at the Geisinger Medical Center, Danville. Two years he spent in Philadelphia, at the Graduate Hospital and the Childrens Hospital as part of the program. He became a Board Certified Orthopaedic Surgeon in 1965 and a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery in 1967. He began his practice with us in Williamsport in the summer of 1962. This foregoing is known as a CURRICULUM VITAE, an account of what a man has done. It does not tell you how he did it. In the long road to a vocation in medicine no one ever vouchsafed him a nickel. He received no grants, financial aid, or anything prepared or prepackaged and slipped to him on a platter. By dint of frugal saving, and steady work, he climbed up the hard way through a series of jobs, some of which were quite menial. He alternately was a busboy, a shoestore clerk, a surveyors devil holding the upright stick through the hot summer. He worked as a part time mailman, a laborer with a construction gang, a drugstore clerk and a Hospital orderly, etc. This man really wanted to be a Doctor. I meditate no flowery panegyric on John, nor does he need any encomiums heaped upon his head. In our association over the past seven years it became pristine clear that here was a quiet, diligent professional gentleman, utterly reliable, and possessed of excellent clinical judgement and a good pair of hands. His many patients will attest to this. He had a real tenacity in his work and could never abide the status of pretty good ; it had to be the best. But this was, as I learned, only one-ninth of the ice berg showing, the other eight -ninths I was to discover through the years. He had, in addition, a warm gentleness and an indomi- able courage. He was a soft spoken man devoid of any bombast or belligerency. Who among us has ever heard him utter a profane word? or assail someones character? or rant in temper tantrums? With all bis serious mien and cryptic speech, he had beneath, a delightful sense of humor. One day enroute from the Wellsboro Clinic to the Coudersport Clinic he was traveling ajong Highway 6 with the Brace - maker beside him. He was stopped by a State Trooper to be informed that there was a dangerous detour and construction ahead. Just before he drove off, and with an absolutely deadpan face, he informed the Trooper that he thought the car following down the road a half mile was a stolen one and should be investigated. That car, of course, carried the Pediatrician and the Shoemaker and the Physical Therapist. It was weeks before they discovered why they were interrogated, searched and delayed by the State Trooper. There is a beautiful legend told about Roman days, called THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. It appears that when the vandals laid seige to Rome and its environs, a band of these brigands appeared at the Villa of i Patrician lady demanding her treasures and jewels, or suffer the dire choice of impalement by a spear. She stared those thugs down and disappeared momentarily, to come back with her two fine sons, and in presenting them said, These are my jewels. Change the sexes and you have a picture of Jolin Sabol, who lived for his wo rk, his family and especially his two young beautiful daughters with those dark flashing eyes. The single poignant and devasting thing that made him disconaloate was the realization, not that he would die young, but rather, that he would never see those two daughters grow up. He delighted in telling stories about them, and this one, I particularly relish. It seems that one Halloween the trick and treat gang of ragamuffins would regularly appear and ring the doorbell and Jolm would dispense lollipops, pennies and other

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