Thank you, Mort!
Our friend Morton Meyerson died on August 5th in Dallas at age 87. Kudos are coming in, with reports of his generosity in scholarships in Fort Worth and Montana and his funding medical and psychiatric research. Nobody mentions his extraordinary contributions to us in Ethiopia.
In 2005, I received an unexpected email from Morton’s secretary. She simply wrote: “Morton would like to meet you. Next time you are in the US, let us know and he’ll fly to NY to meet you, or you can come to Dallas.”
I had never heard of Mort. I searched his name and learned that he had been President of EDS, Ross Perot’s computer company, he had been the chief technology officer of General Motors, and that the symphony hall of Dallas is named the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall. I told myself that if this guy wants to meet me, I should take it seriously.
That summer we were both in New York at the same time. I was staying at the YMCA with 2 of my sons. I had an appointment to meet Mort at his apartment, but did not trust my kids alone in our room, so I brought them with me. Turns out that was a great move. He welcomed us, served us tea, and we chatted. He had read Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Dr. Paul Farmer. (Tracy’s mom was my high school teacher).
Mort wanted to get involved in global health, but did not think that Paul needed his help. He was looking for another Paul Farmer. Many people pointed him to me.
I explained what I do in Ethiopia, both with JDC and as a personal volunteer at Mother Teresa’s Mission, and our great challenges. I showed him photos on my computer. He expressed interest in funding me. “First you need to see what we do with your own eyes,” I said. We looked at our schedules. “I’ll be in Israel in January of 2006,” he said, “I can fly down.” “Ethiopian Air has two flights a day,” I replied.
In January Mort flew in and followed me around for several days: seeing patients at Mother Teresa’s Mission, meeting patients with twisted spines, and meeting patients with AIDS and cancer I was treating. I could not tell what he thought, but told myself “he’s seeing what’s really happening, let him decide.”
Hours before he departed he sat down with me. “You’re doing amazing stuff, I’d like to help you,” he said. “I’m sending a note to my staff right now, and we’ll be in touch.”
Some weeks later, he sent an email to his mailing list – I never saw it. But it said something like “Rick Hodes is doing amazing work in Ethiopia. Please donate. I’ll match whatever you donate, with no maximum.” We ended up with several hundred thousand dollars. We turned my personal volunteer work at Mother Teresa’s Mission into an official JDC program, working with the Missionaries of Charity, with the blessing of the Ethiopian Ministry of Health. Our spine and heart program was born.
One other key event took place around this time. In 2004, a young man named Matios had come to me who needed surgery for scoliosis. I sent his medical information to an organization in New York which sometimes helped me. They wrote back “We can’t help, but we sent his files on to a group called FOCOS.” FOCOS, founded by renowned spine surgeon Prof. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, was working to help spine patients in Ghana. FOCOS accepted Matios, but noted that surgery would cost several thousand dollars, to pay Ghanian doctors and hospital.
Matios’ dad worked at a private school. The school sent a note to all parents, asking them contribute. Amazingly, it seems that every family gave something. Some gave a few cents. Some gave the equivalent of $10. And I ended up with enough money to fund the surgery, which was successful. In 2005, Matios had a minor complication and I sent an email to Dr. Boachie-Adjei to report this. At the end I wrote “By the way, I am in New York at the moment visiting my dad who is ill.” He wrote back addressing the complication, and added “Friday is my admin day, please come to my office on E 82nd Street.”
We spent most of the day together. By the end of the day, we decided we could work together, and if I could come up with money, we could send patients from Ethiopia to Ghana for surgery by Dr. Boachie and his visiting international teams.
Five weeks later, Morton showed up in Addis Ababa, and jump-started our fundraising! We registered our nascent spine program with the authorities, who gave us their blessing.
Dr. Boachie and I kept in close contact. I sent medical records by email and by CD, and we chose our first patients. In April, 2006, I walked out of my Passover seder early to work on passports and immigration visa forms. The following day, we sent 5 patients and 1 staff member to Accra for spine surgery. Dr. Boachie and his team flew in, and performed our first 5 surgeries. We sent another group in December.
By the end of 2006, we had 20 new spine deformity patients and we’d performed 11 surgeries in Accra. We could not believe our success. We did not realize that this was the tip of the iceberg. 19 years later, we have evaluated over 6000 spine patients and done over 1700 surgeries.
Last year we evaluated over 800 new spine patients and did 94 surgeries, the majority performed inside Ethiopia. Over 1000 Ethiopian health professionals have participated in our trainings. Just this week we were in Dessie, a mountain town 250 miles north of Addis Ababa.
We evaluated over 100 spine patients, and identified 5 with ankylosing spondylitis, a treatable form of complex deformity.
We have put Ethiopia on the world spine map, and some of the top surgeons in the US and Lithuania, have travelled to Ethiopia to operate on our patients and train our surgeons. Other patients have gone to Ghana, India, the US and Canada for traction and surgery by some of the best spine surgeons on the planet. The Fox Study follows the most difficult pediatric spine surgeries in the world; half are our patients! 12 surgeons have completed post-graduate studies in spine and 3 surgeons have completed a full-year surgical fellowship at the best spine hospital in India.
Our patients have gone on to marry and give birth successfully, become engineers, an architect, nurses, a chemistry student in Italy. Fourteen year old Kaleab Tadesse who had congenital scoliosis is now our JDC Country Director. I have been awarded the Blount Award, the humanitarian prize from the Scoliosis Research Society, the foremost spine deformity group in the world. We have left Mother Teresa’s Mission, moved to a government hospital, and are building a national spine center.
Did Mort see this coming? I believe had a vision about our possibilities. Mort – it was you who helped get this off the ground. Thank you, my friend. Rest in peace.