Thank You! MPS Lifetime of Service Award

Bruce Hershfield, MD

[Fall 2003; Vol. 30, No. 1; Pg 5]

Let's face it. They don't give "lifetime of anything” awards to young folks. So, if I have something to say, I should say it now. The next chance I get could be when receiving an "Afterlife of Service" award, and then it will be too late. I'll try to be brief, but this is the time for me to say what is in my heart. I don't want to be like the condemned man Ben Hecht described in "Child of the Century." When the warden asked him if he had any last words, he said, "Not at this time.”

I want to thank you for doing so much for me since I came to Maryland and joined the MPS in the 1970s. I can't imagine how I could have changed in the ways that I did without the society. So many of you have encouraged me on so many different occasions. There are too many for me to thank each of you individually, but I do want to mention a few.

First, I want to remember those who are no longer with us. Sir Isaac Newton, who was judged to be the 2nd most important person in history in a book called The 100, said that if he could see farther than others it was because he had stood on the shoulders of giants. In my first year in Maryland alone, I met Kent Robinson, Iz Tuerk, and Raphael Nigrin. Psychiatry has changed a lot, or at least the words have, but the tune's the same and they knew how to play it-- and how to teach it.

Second, I want to acknowledge my predecessors, the presidents, editors, assembly reps, and previous honorees. I have known Lex Smith, Tom Allen, and Jonas Rappeport for at least 22 years. Tom and Carol Allen were the ones who welcomed us to Baltimore in 1974. Jonas befriended me during that first year here. I have known Lex since at least 1981 and he has helped me on many occasions. I am pleased that you would include me in their company. I have known almost all of the 54 presidents and I've watched them in action at council meetings since 1981. They've all been good. Everyone of them. And so have the Executive Secretaries and Directors-Florence McGee, Carol Antlitz, Heidi Bunes, and Jennifer Gajewski. This is the kind of consistency that builds strong central, unifying positions, sound legislative action, treasuries that are deep, and reputations.

I also want to thank my family, starting with my great- grandparents and grandparents, even my great-great grandparents. They had the good sense to leave Europe when they could and to come to the new place, to break with tradition. They knew that this was the place to do it. Lincoln said, "We can nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth" and they knew that he was right. We all know THAT. I owe a lot to the people in each generation. It's clear to me that my wife, who has been with me through all of the steps of this trip, has had to put up with a lot.

I wrote in the introduction to the booklet that the MPS published when we had the 50th anniversary gala that the MPS and the APA, by providing a common center for psychiatrists, had saved us. I still believe that and I've had several more years to think about it. But what have they saved us FROM? I think that they have, by giving us a place to safely discuss issues with each other, saved us from self-absorption. That is always a danger in our field. This is particularly true in private practice, where the isolation could lead us down all the wrong paths. It's also true in administration, which has its own powers and therefore its own corruptions.

So I want to close by quoting from the cure for narcissism that Walt Whitman, whom I think was America's greatest poet, prescribed in the poem that he paradoxically called, “Song of Myself;”

Thank you for allowing me to tell you how much the opportunity to be of services to the society has been of service to me.