During times like these, I run the risk of being a cynic. Everything I read mentions “evildoers” and the necessity of “realpolitik.” I start to wonder if my faith in the essential goodness of man is misplaced.
Then I read about Michael Kelly and Dr. Arthur Guyton, and I am reminded of lives that offer a lot of reasons to be optimistic about humanity.
Unfortunately, the reason both men were in the news is that each of them died last week. However, considering what two men could accomplish is reason to think that there are many more people like them.
Kelly, a columnist for the Washington Post, was embedded with the Army’s 3rd Battalion. He died when a Humvee he was riding in came under Iraqi fire.
Just the fact that Kelly was in Iraq tells a lot about what kind of man he was. How many high-flying columnists with two kids and a comfortable life decide to head to the front lines?
For Kelly, it was returning to his journalistic roots. He made his reputation during the first Gulf War. He arrived in the Middle East as a freelance writer. The New Republic magazine agreed to take a few of his articles on spec. Those articles later won several awards and formed the basis of Kelly’s book, considered by many to be the definitive history of the first Gulf War, “Martyrs’ Day.”
His career took off afterward. He edited The New Republic, the National Journal and is credited with revitalizing the Atlantic Monthly.
As a columnist, he had little patience with politicians whom he felt put career ahead of the public interest. An uncompromising hawk, he despised tyranny.
Guyton, 83, longtime chair of the biophysics and phyisology department at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine (UMC), lost his life in a car accident.
Most people would be happy with only a fraction of the achievements that could be credited to Guyton. He wrote the definitive physiology textbook, “The Textbook of Medical Physiology.” It has been used by medical students in dozens of countries for over 45 years. That alone would be enough to fill most careers. However, it is just one of Guyton’s many accomplishments.
When he was a medical student at Harvard, he discovered a way to measure and differentiate ions in a solution. Several medical breakthroughs flowed from this new method. Now, virtually everything that is known about blood pressure and the way the heart flows can be traced to Guyton’s initial discovery.
Just wait-there’s more. After graduation from Harvard Medical School, he began a surgical internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. However, World War II interrupted his studies, and he left to serve as a physician for the U.S. Navy, garnering a Commendation Citation for his work.
Shortly after he was discharged, he was stricken with polio. His right leg and shoulder were left permanently paralyzed. While recovering in Warm Springs, Ga., he designed a leg brace, a hoist for moving patients and a motorized wheelchair featuring a “joy stick.” These inventions earned Guyton a presidential citation in 1956.
At first glance, Kelly and Guyton were very different men. However, they shared a few striking similarities.
They both never lost sight of their roots. Kelly grew up in a middle-class family in Washington, D.C. He spent many Saturdays in the newsroom with his father, also a journalist.
As Maureen Dowd wrote in Sunday’s New York Times, “He had many important jobs but no phony airs. He went to parties at his local firehouse way before 9/11.”
Guyton had his choice of prestigious positions. Instead, the world’s best physiologist returned to Oxford to teach at the medical school where his father had served as dean. When the school moved to Jackson, he moved as well.
They both had a talent for creative thinking. Kelly could be alternately caustic and compassionate, sometimes within the same article. One his famous lines described Ross Perot:
“H. Ross Perot made his way onto the national stage, barking like a dog and occasionally biting off small pieces of himself.”
Guyton refused to accept conventional wisdom about physiology. As a result, he revolutionized the field.
Both of their lives ended tragically, but one would be hard-pressed to find people who lived fuller lives or provided a better example of what people can achieve.
Wilson Boyd is a senior economics major.