ONE LIFE

Biographical Interview
As told to Teresa McAleavy

I’m a surgeon. I’m also an instructor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. My specialty is plastic reconstructive surgery of the face, especially sculpting the nose.

I always found myself tending toward the arts. Prior to high school, I was an avid builder of model cars. I used to customize them; sometimes it would take months to build one car with very fine details. I would enter these models in national contests and won a number of awards for originality and design. I also built ships and model airplanes with gasoline-powered engines. I couldn’t fly them well because I couldn’t stand holding the controls and going around in a circle a hundred times, I’d get quite dizzy.

I used to go to the local butcher store and make odd requests – such as for animal organs. I would dissect them, and that would be my “Show and Tell” in sixth grade the teachers were taken aback, as were some of the students.

For me it was fun. I always liked to investigate things and work with my hands. I used to open telephones or car engines to see how they worked. Why not open up an organ to see what makes it function? I wasn’t convinced I wanted to be a surgeon at that point.

Later, in medical school, I built a plastic model of the brain, and it was mass-produced. It was used to teach students the anatomy of the brain in medical schools around the country.

As I finished my training, I became interested in reconstructive surgery of the face. With some other physicians from California, I have been interested in reconstructive surgery of the face, producing specialized implants that would change the shape of the face in someone who may have had an automobile accident or birth defect, or sometimes for cosmetic reasons.

When I combine my artistic talents and the needs of the patient from a medical or surgical point of view, the two things go hand in hand. I found a tremendous amount of self-satisfaction in helping patients and at the same time succeeding at making them look very natural.

At the University of Rochester I majored in studio arts and biology. I was able to follow both career paths, as far as my interests went, and eventually combined the two in medicine in reconstructive surgery.

I have three children – a son, David, and two daughters, Lisa and Samantha. My son and daughters show interest in what I’m doing. They enjoy questioning me about what I do at the hospital. When I’m preparing lectures and slides they are my audience, and insist on being there. They critique it at times. I can see many artistic talents in my children.

I’ve know my wife, Lynne, for like 20 years. She’s an artist, involved in painting children’s clothing.

We have a number of her things and mine – oil paintings and sculptures – in a home we recently built. We almost built the house to act as a gallery for our work.

I have two younger sisters. One is a dentist – my father has been a dentist for 40years. My other sister is studying to be a lawyer. My grandfather, Mort Jacobs, established a pharmacy in 1940 in Paterson. The pharmacy still stands and bears his name.

I enjoy sailing, and skiing. I find tremendous relaxation doing both. I sail many times by myself. You can still just sit back and let the wind carry you along, watch the waves and the sky, and almost be entranced by it.