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I'm really proud of his entire life. I'm just sorry it was so short.
[ MUSIC ] Doug was one of the most creative
scientists that I've ever met. He was also one of the most energetic
people I've ever worked with, and that level of energy was contagious.
Once he got out of college, he just came home and said, "By the way I'm going to Africa.
I'm going to be in the Peace Corps, and I'm going to Swaziland.
I got out my atlas and looked up where Swaziland was.
He was there for three years without electricity, without running water,
very difficult situation, but he loved teaching. He became head of the, of the science
department at the high school he was working at.
So when he came back, I asked him, I said, "That
was a tough, tough time for you, wasn't it?" He said, "Dad, those have been
the best years of my life." One of the things that he did for my
kids that I really miss is that he used to, at night my daughter would
ask, "Where do you love me to?" and he would always pick a country and say,
"Oh, I love you to Swaziland," where
he was in the Peace Corps. And then he would tell her about the
country, tell them about the food or about what the weather was like
there, what the people were like. It was a special thing to already,
kind of, put that global perspective in their heads when they were very young.
We felt very strongly that we as a school, even though a state institution,
we should reach beyond the borders of the state and do global health.
What struck him is that he felt that at UAC he could really make a larger difference
in more people's lives from working here. He felt that this was going
to be the right fit for him. With the Pissarro award, because
it was a Global Horizons scholarship, I was able to travel to the
kingdom of [inaudible]. With those relationships that I formed
I was able to prepare a Fulbright, a U.S. Fulbright application, and I was
recently awarded a U.S. Fulbright grant. I knew Doug, and I know what he was trying
to do, and Doug's [inaudible] is a loss to maybe hundreds of thousands
of people on this earth. What he would've done over the next, over
the next 30 years, we will carry this on 30 years
and beyond, and it will have a permanent, some kind of a lasting impact on the face
of public health in general, and also on this school.
[ MUSIC ] We're very grateful for the family that
he gave us and the work that he did. I mean, I still, I still have people, I
still have faculty here, still have students and people that talk to me
about his impact on them. The first thing that I wanted
to tell them was thank you for the wonderful opportunity
that they bestowed upon me. Our school is dedicated to
improving the health of the whole world. We're the University of Illinois,
and we take that mandate seriously. Wellness and disease know no boundaries, and
for that reason, public health cannot either. Humanitarianism cannot know boundaries either.
There's just an extra level of excitement when you?re going to Kenya or American Samoa.
I think many students, first of all, have a basic wanderlust,
you know, a desire to see the world. The Pissarro Global Horizon
Scholarship really opened the door for me. Through this award, in a sense
generations of students are going to benefit and carry a little bit of that spirit
of excitement and scientific rigor with them forward, and really I think
that's the perfect legacy for Doug. [ MUSIC ]