Mary Ann's Story, Fall 2025

When I was growing up as a child, I really didn't have any idea of what my life was going to be like; I really didn't imagine that. My family didn't have a lot of money, and there was no family business or, you know, career pathway that I might have been expected to follow. No one was really asking me what I was going to be when I grew up. But, um, I think what really sort of derailed any thoughts that I might have had about my future life was my father dying suddenly several days after his 48th birthday. His death was certainly nothing my mother, my younger brother, and I were prepared for. Uh, there was no money, and my mother had never learned to drive, so the next few years, we were learning survival skills, including driving lessons for me and for my mother. And then my mother went back to work as a nurse, although she hadn't done any nursing for over 16 years.

Um, so my main task, though, was applying for colleges that would offer me full scholarships. So, I've been a good student, and I was very fortunate that I ended up going to Brown University on a scholarship. Um, during the summers, I worked as a waitress, which is where I first met Ralph, who eventually became my husband. During college, it was sort of like, let's get through four years and then figure out what we're going to do. Um, teaching seem to be a good thing, and I thought I could probably do that pretty well. So, I ended up getting a full scholarship at Yale, and I did a Master of Arts in Teaching there, and I trained to be a biology teacher. And then my very first job ended up being here in Massachusetts, in Brookline, at a public school that was very progressive and very innovative. So, Ralph and I stayed in touch during our college years, and when he was in Senegal, in West Africa, in the Peace Corps. Um, so when he came back to the US, we reconnected, we fell in love, we got engaged, and married. And then we started our life together on Long Island, and we were both teaching there.

So one day, we were coming back from a weekend ski trip, someplace up in Vermont, and I was complaining about getting bored grading 125 biology lab reports every week. So, Ralph said, “Is there something else you like to do?” So, I told him, “I would like to be a doctor,” and he said, “Well, why don't you do it?” Um, I really didn't expect that at all because as a kid and a teenager, even though I spent time in hospitals, um, I had never really wanted to be a nurse. But, becoming a doctor was something that I had never even dared, um, imagine. So, I wouldn't have gone any further without Ralph’s support. So, I went to medical school at New York Medical College. Later on, I became a pulmonologist and then a radiation oncologist, and I worked at several medical centers on Long Island. And then I received a job offer here in Springfield. So, I worked in Springfield for 27 years, and then I retired from medicine around nine years ago.

So, when I think about my life growing up, becoming a doctor was something I never could have imagined as a child. Um, it definitely wouldn't have happened without Ralph’s support, and his willingness to go where I wanted to be or where my work required has been a gift that really exceeds any value. Um, I could never growing up, I could never imagine having a husband, a daughter, a son-in-law, and now we have a wonderful grandson named Avery who just turned two years old a couple of weeks ago. So, um, I've gotten to have a very rich, complicated life that I never could have imagined at 5 years old or at 16 or 25 or 30 or 75, and now, after 80 years, um, it’s still amazing me now.