Today at Saint Francis I officiated the Burial Office for Barbara Reeder, the wife of Maurice Reeder. After the committal at Druid Ridge Cemetery in Baltimore, I told Dr. Reeder that one of the things we have in common is William Beaumont General Hospital in Fort Bliss, Texas. I’d read that he had interned there.

“When were you there?” I asked him. “1958 and 1959,” he said. “Ha. We were there at the same time. I was born in 1959.” “What month were you born?” “May.” “I was there from June of 1958 to June of 1959. At the end of my internship, I concentrated on obstetrics and delivered 150 to 200 babies,” he said. “There’s a good chance that I delivered you.”

So it may be that today I helped a man commend his wife out of this world who fifty years ago brought me into it.