As we pass the one-year anniversary of life with the coronavirus, I asked classmates who work in the medical field to share personal reflections and stories. Bill Kinnard is an intensive care unit (ICU) physician in Colorado who writes: “It is all about the nurses and the respiratory therapists. I watch countless brave actions every day in the ICU. These are people who in ‘normal times’ spend nights, weekends, and holidays caring for the sickest of the sick. Without hesitation, any nurse or therapist will grab some protective gear and hustle into the room of a patient in need.”

Ann Neumeyer is a doctor at the Lurie Center for Autism at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and works mainly with children and adults with developmental disabilities who shares: “For the past year, each day I’m privileged to enter many homes virtually during this pandemic and see my patients in a new way in their homes. I do want people to know that individuals with autism and developmental disabilities are profoundly affected by this pandemic. Children and adults with autism have challenges with schedule changes, and as we all know, nothing stays the same during the pandemic. As a result, we see so much more anxiety, depression, and distressing behaviors.”

Jim Howe is a surgeon in Iowa who writes: “The impact of Covid-19 has caused us to take extreme caution wearing masks and face shields, carry out hand-washing, and doing appropriate testing and screening to protect our patients. Since I work with cancer patients whose surgeries cannot always wait, I was able to continue work without much of a pause. In Iowa we were not overwhelmed with cases the way many urban centers were, so we are grateful for that.”

I hope that you have heard by now that the class of 1982 has launched a new class project: the Class of 1982 Racial Justice Initiative (RJI). The RJI directs funding to the Dartmouth Center on Social Impact (the former Tucker Foundation) to provide stipends for undergraduate research related to racial justice, training about systemic racism for students engaged in social impact internships, and fund racial justice internships as part of the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program. The RJI also creates the first academic enrichment endowment—the African and African American Academic Enrichment Fund—for the 50-year-old African and African American studies program at Dartmouth. This new endowment is intended to support activities that encourage civil dialogue about race and racial injustice and promote anti-racist study. Thank you to the following classmates who served on the task force that created and launched the RJI: Rachel Froman Bettencourt, Barry Caldwell (co-chair), Denny Ellison, Jenny Chandler Hauge (co-chair), Linda Jackson, Brian McDonough, Judith Service Montier, Neville Scott, Robin Shaffert, Martha Solis, and Nicole Stent. For more information and to donate, google “Dartmouth Class of 1982 Racial Justice Initiative.”

—David Eichman, 9004 Wonderland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; dme4law@sbcglobal.net; Jenny Chandler, 3506 Idaho Ave., NW Washington, DC 20016; jchandlerhauge@gmail.com