When I was in the seventh grade, many, many moons ago, I had begun to think I wanted to be a writer. At that time, there was a gentle lady in my hometown who wrote articles that were published frequently in the Saturday Evening Post . She was on my newspaper delivery route and each month I would stop to collect my fee. I would get the money and usually a couple of cookies. One day, I told her that I thought I wanted to become a writer. I remarked that my parents subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post and that each week, I looked to see her article. In other months, when I stopped to collect, she would talk with me about her writing. One month, she gave me a scrapbook that included copies of her published articles. Another month, she gave me a small book of poetry, which, as she told me, was written by another local lady. So I read the poetry book. I concluded that poetry was not something I could appreciate and it was even less likely that I could create it.
Before college, I had written articles that were published in my hometown newspapers. By the time I started college, a few of my teachers had written textbooks we were required to purchase and use in their classes. When I bought one, I would take it to the author and get it autographed. They were not poetry. I still have a few of them that I have kept for about 60 years and seldom read again.
In college, I worked as a writer in the college public relations section. Occasionally, I could supply a news article to one of the city newspapers that reported events of my college. And they would pay me a trifling amount of money for the printed articles. As I moved around campuses and then into the Army, most of the books that my instructors had written disappeared. I was adding new ones, some of them on topics that were pretty obscure.
Once out of the Army, I got my job in Chicago, joined some journalism clubs, and met some of the local writers and editors who worked for newspapers, wire services, and television stations, and I contributed to Chicago publications. Occasionally, I got something published in magazines directed at all sorts of topics. I still held my notion that I should acquire the books of any of my acquaintances.
But my jobs were about medical topics. Part of my early tasks were preparing public relations articles for medical societies. I would try to collect a speaker’s draft and write a news article about what he planned to say to his audiences. Of course, there were slides and charts and references. And many times, the article was delivered and then submitted to a regional or national scientific publication. I must confess that some times when I got a copy of a manuscript, I was completely lost as to the substance, so I cultivated friendships with radiologists who were kind enough to tell me what some of the articles meant and to scan my news draft to be certain that I got my text clear and reliable. And for all of my superficial efforts, I also learned that many of those who prepared a manuscript for a scholarly society also had written books about their area of radiology. Occasionally, some of those with whom I became friends would give me a copy of their books. By then, I knew that academic radiologists were obligated to grind out enough manuscripts to fatten a bibliography and to contribute a segment of annual publications in their department. My other restraint in collecting books was an awareness that the price of most of the radiology texts was much too high and created a financial struggle with my own limited budget.
I spoke out at my ignorance to write clinical and scientific articles. But in just a few years of my career, I began making speeches about the economics and politics of radiology. Once in a while, I would be invited to contribute an article on my topic to one of the radiology publications or provide a broad range of my essays for other medical journals. So my bibliography began to fatten. And often, I shared a byline with radiologists.