THAT’S THE WAY IT IS
Just a short entry on two items of news. President Obama has nominated a fellow board member of mine on the Board of the Catholic Health Association, Regina Benjamin, MD as Surgeon General of the United States of America. Dr. Benjamin has served about two years with me on the board and it seems that at every other meeting some mention was always being made of a new accolade and/or recognition she had received since the last meeting. As most of you know, she is an African-American woman who attended Catholic schools and graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans, a university begun by Mother Katherine Drexel for African Americans many years ago. After completing medical school and beginning her practice, Dr. Benjamin was moved by the lack of access to health care of the rural poor in Alabama and Mississippi and she began to open clinics to care for them. Admired and loved by the Archbishop of Mobile, her home archdiocese, she was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award, the highest papal award a bishop can bestow on a lay person. Her participation in the work of the Catholic Health Association has been of the highest calibre. We will miss her but I know that every board member will like myself be proud of her and wish her well in her forthcoming responsibilities.
Secondly, the news of the death today of Walter Cronkite saddens me somewhat. I always trusted that man and turned to him as the principal source of my television news for many, many years. I would occasionally see him in retirement when I used to sail in and out of Edgartown Harbor on Martha’s Vineyard many years ago. Walter has now signed off for the final time on this earth and for him as for all of us, “that’s the way it is.”
+RNL
Tags: Catholic Health Association, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award