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2007 Donald E. Cummings Memorial Award Lecture

My sincere thanks to the AIHA awards committee for selecting me as the recipient of the 2007 Donald E. Cummings award. Donald Eddy Cummings was one of AIHA’s founding members and served as its third president. He studied at West Point and received a BS degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Donald Cummings began his research in 1928 at the famous Saranac Laboratory in New York studying tuberculosis. He left the Saranac lab and began developing dust control methods for the mining industry. In 1938, he began teaching industrial hygiene at the University of Colorado Medical School. Donald Cummings died in a plane crash in 1942 on his way to examine manganese exposures in a Nevada mine. AIHA established this award in 1944 in his memory. Many of the early recipients were the founders of occupational medicine, toxicology, and industrial hygiene and included: Alice Hamilton, Phil Drinker, Ted Hatch, Warren Cook, Henry Smyth, and William Yant. My selection as this year’s recipient is due in a large part to the efforts of mentors, friends, and colleagues who provided wonderful guidance and opportunities for me. It is not possible to thank each of these persons, but I would like to acknowledge that three of my former professors have received this award, including Dhorman Byers, Ralph Smith, and the 2006 award winner, Steve Levine. I would also like to acknowledge the three individuals who have most influenced my life as an industrial hygienist and as a person. The first is my mother, Florence. She was the most remarkable human being that I have had the opportunity to know, and her values and work directly impacted my decision to become an industrial hygienist. My mom was born in 1925 into a poor immigrant, Jewish family living in Somerville, Massachusetts. She graduated Somerville High School with high honors and won a scholarship to one of the state universities. However, her parents told her that they needed her income and could not afford to let her leave home for college. She worked at a local department store until she married at the age of 24. I was born a year later and shortly after my birth she developed a severe case of ulcerative colitis, which was diagnosed many years later as Crohn’s disease. She was among the earliest patients to receive ostomy surgery. She was sufficiently ill that the first year of my life was spent living with her best friend and husband. Despite the advice of her doctors, she gave birth to my brother 5 years later. My mom went on to spend the rest of her life caring for individuals having had ostomy surgery. She was a founding member of the Boston Ostomy Association (the second oldest ostomy group in the nation). She spent the early years of my life visiting women in hospitals who were depressed and sometimes suicidal after having ostomy surgery. She would often bring my brother and me with her to show young women that there was still a fulfilling life possible for them. The rest of her life she would provide a leadership role for ostomy groups both in the United States and throughout the world. She raised funds for the creation of the Ostomy Association of India and for the first nurse to come to the United States to learn how to care for ostomy patients. This nurse lived in our home while she studied in Boston area hospitals. My mom also founded an ostomy group for gay and lesbian members. She spent years raising funds for ostomy supplies for developing nations and was a director of Friends of Ostomy Worldwide when she died. Living with my mom taught me compassion, a desire to help others with my career, and never to feel sorry for whatever small obstacles came my way. My great uncle, Dr. William Stone, came to the United States at the age of seven with his older brother (my grandfather). While his older brother worked, Bill went to school and obtained a college degree in education. He went to Europe and fought in the trenches during World War I, came back home, married, and started a family. He applied to and was accepted at Columbia University for a doctorate in anatomy and