Gala Celebration At American Visionary Art Museum

By Bruce Hershfield, M.D.

[Summer 2000; Vol. 27, No. 1; Pg 1, 5]

On Saturday, June 3rd, 159 guests gathered at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum to celebrate the Maryland Psychiatric Society’s 50th anniversary. The chairpersons of the Gala Committee, Drs. Jonas Rappeport and Leonard Hertzberg, welcomed the guests. When APA President Daniel Borenstein spoke to the guests, he cited Maryland for having the first parity law in the country. Dr. Borenstein has been associated with Maryland since he was stationed at Edgewood Arsenal during his military days. He was followed by the APA President-elect, Dr. Richard Harding, who told the audience that his father had studied under Adolf Meyer in 1933. Dr. Harding thanked Dr. Theodore Kaiser, his former supervisor from his child training fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Both speakers described the important contributions of Maryland psychiatrists to the profession.

The speakers were followed by the installation of officers. The MPS outgoing President, Harry Brandt, M.D., thanked the officers who had served with him, acknowledged the chairs of the 17 committees and turned the podium over to the new MPS President, Lisa Beasley, MD. (See text of her speech on page 3.)

Dr. Jonas Rappeport of the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry then gave its award for the winning poster in the contest it had sponsored. Ms. Jaevon Williams, a student at Northwestern High School, and her family were present for this occasion.

After dinner, the awards continued. Paramjit Joshi, MD received the APA’s Bruno Lima award. It was accepted for Dr. Joshi by Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo. The MPS next gave a special advocacy award to the Governor’s wife, Frances Glendening. This award acknowledged her many contributions, including her work on suicide, women’s issues, and violence prevention. The next award went to Dr. Benedicto Borja for his success in recruiting 23 new members. Dr. Borja is an incoming chief resident at the University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Program. His wife, Dr. Czarina Santos-Borja, accepted the award for him.

The first annual MPS Lifetime of Service award was then presented to Dr. Lex B. Smith, who served as President in 1977-‘78. Dr. Smith described some of the work that he has done since 1961 and he emphasized the important role that is played by the Nominations and Elections Committee.

The last award of the evening was the MPS Distinguished Service award, which was given to Dr. Benjamin Carson, who is the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. During his remarks, Dr. Carson said that in his youth, he had wanted to be a psychiatrist. He described the Carson Scholar Funds; $1000 scholarships are placed in a trust for promising students and they are invested until the students are ready to go to college. He added that the scholarship project is now not only in effect in Maryland, DC, and Delaware, but it is beginning to move into Pennsylvania. Then Dr. Carson fittingly remarked that the fund exists “so that our young people in America realize that it’s okay to be smart and to be nice”.

After the formal part of the meeting was over, couples danced to the sounds of The Silverbacks.

MPS Presidents

From left to right- first row: Tom Allen, Art Hildreth, Lex Smith, Lee Crandall Park, Betty Robinson, Lisa Beasley, Leon Levin, Harry Brandt, Jonas Rappeport, Irv Cohen. Second row: Gerry Klee, John Chapman Urbaitis, Bob Gibson, Jeff Janofsky, Bruce Hershfield, Chet Schmidt, Tom Lynch, Neil Warres, and Len Hertzberg,