Alumni
Cotton Lecture Andrew Cameron ’87, Mark Neumann ’81 Deliver 2013 Cotton Lecture Andrew Cameron ’87 and Mark Neumann ’81, P’13
Dr. Andrew Cameron pulled out a letter from a yellowed envelope, written longhand on a sheet of composition paper. The letter was dated June 4, 1987, just a few days before his graduation from Gilman, and the writer was Peter Julius, who taught and coached both him and some of the students now listening in 2013. The message, obviously, had stuck with Cameron for 26 years, important enough not only to save but also to pass on to boys who weren’t even born until years after his Gilman graduation. “You are self-made. No one else decided for you to forego the easy way. Take the credit yourself,” Julius wrote. “But to whatever extent you credit Gilman for your success,” he continued, “remember that you are one of a very lucky few. You were the beneficiary of a fundamental inequity, one that I hope you do whatever you can to reduce rather than perpetuate.” Those connections to lessons learned at Gilman, and the need to find happiness in whatever professions boys choose, colored the remarks of both Cameron and
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Mark Neumann ’81 at the 33rd annual H.K. Douglas Cotton Lecture April 10 in the Alumni Auditorium. The lecture annually features business and career lectures for students in the Upper School. Cameron certainly has a stressful and difficult job; the 1987 graduate is now the top liver transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Lifelong alcoholics, tainted transfusion recipients, even children with congenital defects walk through his door, all of them needing the good fortune of a matching liver donor that might never materialize, and usually needing one fast. “You get medievally sick, and then you die,” Cameron said about liver failure. “There’s no drug that can help you at that point. No matter who you are, or how you got your liver problem, you just die. Unless someone else, a total stranger, decided to save your life. That stranger, who you will never know, has said ‘when I die, I want to donate my organs.’ So, at the last possible moment, we can put a liver into a very sick person. And then when we’re done, up all night, tired beyond belief,
gilman bulletin
7/23/13 6:02 PM