A festschrift

Early in the summer, we had a double celebration, the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine was upgraded to a School of Public Health. For political reasons it was named the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, SEPHPM for short. At the same time, we had a slightly premature celebration of my 90th birthday, which we called a festschrift. It was a delightful celebration, at which former students, colleagues, and family members said and wrote all sorts of pleasant things.  

Here is a record of the festschrift. It begins with my brother Peter's reminiscences, and concludes with my own memories, greatly condensed from my memoirs.

[Unfortunately the PDF of the festschrift will not transfer to my blog]

Lehonde Lucas ('Frosty') Hoare, MB, BS, FRCS, FRACS (1926-2016)

The sad news reached me a few days ago, that Frosty Hoare has died. He was my medical school class mate, my good friend from 1944 when we first met, a regular at our Sunday tennis parties when we got our lawn tennis court operating in 1946, and my 'best man' when Wendy and I married in 1957. His wife Betty, also a regular at the Sunday tennis parties, was Wendy's matron of honour. Whenever we were back in Adelaide after we left, we almost always dropped in to see them on our return visits, and Frosty came to visit us in Edinburgh and in Ottawa.  It's true to say that our lives were intertwined. He was one of my oldest and closest friends. His death reduces to a small handful the ranks of the 49ers, the 1949 graduates from the University of Adelaide medical school.

He made his medical career in surgery, set off to train in the UK very soon after we graduated at the end of 1949.  I remember a pub meal with him and Frank Bell, another class mate and embryonic surgeon, in London in 1952 or 1953. Both envied my suntanned skin -- I'd just returned to London after a back packing holiday in Europe -- and although I never mentioned it, I envied them their postgraduate diplomas and their certainty about the career paths they had chosen. In the early 1950s I didn't yet know what I wanted to do with my life.

Frosty knew what he wanted to do and set about doing it with commendable determination. He realized, for instance, that as a consultant surgeon the entire state was his bailiwick, not just the metropolitan area,  and that it would be useful to be able to fly to remote rural regions. Accordingly he took lessons, learnt how to fly himself so he could fly to rural consultations.

He and Betty lived quiet, unassuming lives. Whenever Wendy and I saw them, for instance at a class reunion in 2005, they retained their youthful good cheer.

The photo shows our wedding group on 14 February 1957: L-R: Frosty Hoare (best man) John, Wendy, Betty Hoare (matron of honour)