Ed Ehlinger, M.D. Wendell Berry, and Dolly Parton. These are three people whose lives made a difference to us and to me and to your health, three people we lost in August.
Ed Ehlinger was a doctor who trained in both internal medicine and pediatrics, and who practiced public health. We met while he was the Director of the Minnesota Department of Public Health, a position he held for six years. He was a wild and sometimes goofy guy. He opened every meeting he chaired by talking about something meaningful that had happened on the date of the meeting, sometime in history, and always found through that a story that called people to do what was right and decent, and to work together to improve the public’s health and the common good. He spent his life trying to make the world a safer and better place, which included helping kids from all communities get immunized, but also included making sure that all people had an equal chance at having healthy lives, which mean focusing on historically disadvantaged communities as he and we also made sure every single person had access to the health care services that would improve health outcomes. Why are you telling me about some doctor in Minnesota, you might ask? Well, Ed served on many national organizations and chaired many national advisory panels, so he influenced all of us that way. And he also served as a friend and advisor to at least two Directors of the Rhode Island Department of Health, so he influenced everyone in Rhode Island. But his influence was deeper and broader than that. He taught us to care and to listen. He was a good man. I, and we, will miss him.
Wendell Berry was a Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, and thinker. He grew up in Kentucky and was on the path to literary stardom of a certain type – the bicoastal, New York publishing world intellectual type. He spent time at Stanford and NYU and won a Guggenheim – but then he rebelled. He moved his family back to the farm from which he came and began to think and write about who we are and who we are becoming, about the fundamental nature of the human project, which he thought was connected to the land, the places were we live, the people we live with, and how we care for life on this earth together. He thought community, for example, is locally understood interdependence of local people, culture, economy, and nature, rooted in trust, fidelity, and mutual responsibility – people living together interdependently and meaning to do so into the future. He didn’t write about health, much, but he taught me how to think about health, about how health has no meaning without community, hope and purpose. And for that I will always be grateful
You might also wonder why I’m joining the chorus of voices mourning Dolly Parton, and what she has to do with health. Okay, I’ve been a Dolly Parton fan for many years, but that is at least a little besides the point. As I listen to the nation mourning her, what I hear is what she meant to other people, the way she was lusty, happy, decent, good to everyone, full of energy and hope. I’m hearing how much we actually value those qualities in our public life, despite all the public grumpiness of too many of our political leaders. Health has no meaning and no value without hope, love, community and decency, and Dolly brought that to all of us. Dolly gave us a reason to be healthy. We’ll miss her. In fact, Dolly, we will always love you.
Life goes on without Ed, Wendell and Dolly. But it’s a little crazy to think of a world without them.
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