George Poehlman-1963
BIO & Pictures
Update Christmas 2009

Back from Haiti January 29, 2010
 
 
 
 

 

Betty & George Poehlman
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 Our son Jon, his wife Mary Bennett, our daughter Christin Bellian, Betty & me, our grand-daughter Lindley and Christin's husband Ken Bellian.
Cameron, Christin and Ken's younger son is asleep in bed.
BIO

Biography – George Poehlman - February 10, 2003

After graduating from David H. Hickman H.S., I, along with several others from our class, did six months of active duty with the Army National Guard.  On return from Fort Gordon, Georgia, I traveled to India to spend six months with my parents who were working there through a University of Missouri exchange program.  Returning to Columbia in the summer of ’64, I began college in the Engineering School, graduating in the summer of ’68.  I married Betty Stout that September, two days before starting Medical School at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Betty taught English at Hickman during my medical school years. I received my MD degree in 1973.

We then moved with our two children, Christin and Jon, and I began my training in Family Medicine in Fairfax, Virginia outside of Washington, DC.  Upon completion of residency, I returned to Columbia to join the faculty at the medical school where I stayed for two years.  In 1976, we returned to Virginia, to Leesburg, also just outside of Washington, DC, where I went into private practice and where Betty and I lived for sixteen years while raising our children.

In 1993, I left private practice and returned to teaching, joining the faculty at East Carolina University School of Medicine.  At ECU, I directed the Department of Family Medicine’s medical student teaching programs for two years, then directed their residency training program for four years.  In 1999, with both of our grown children married, Betty and I accepted positions with the Mission Service of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and were assigned to eighteen months at a small mission hospital in Embangweni, Malawi, in south central Africa.  I was one of two physicians serving a population of 100,000.  Betty and I became very involved in the battle against AIDS, starvation, and poverty in this extremely friendly but destitute country.  Since our return to the US, we have continued to work towards helping those we came to know in Malawi and have returned each year to provide continued guidance and support.

Back to North Carolina, I initially worked for a Community Health Center in the Sand Hills region of the state, but since we found that we spent almost every weekend traveling to our condominium on the Atlantic Ocean beach at Pine Knoll Shores, we decided in June to leave Southern Pines and live and work at the beach.  I am doing Urgent Care / Primary Care in an office in Cape Carteret, NC and in off time, Betty and I continue to travel and look for ways to carry on the work against AIDS and poverty in Africa. I’m also into fitness – biking, kayaking, swimming, whatever is physically demanding and out of doors.

Our two children are near us. Our daughter Christin, the mother of our two “gifted, if not talented” grandchildren, lives with her physician husband in Fayetteville, NC and our son, Jon, and his wife have just returned from a year in Africa where they conducted HIV/AIDS research for his dissertation in Medical Anthropology.

Though my Dad passed away in 1995, my Mom is still enjoying life in Kirksville, Missouri, near Joyce, my sister. Until last year, we still had a “home” to visit in Columbia. Since we no longer have ties to Columbia, we look forward, instead, to seeing friends and renewing relationships at the reunion in October of this year.
 
 

January 29, 2010

Hello, all,

First, it was wonderful to arrive home to lots of messages from friends and family.  It was definitely unlike any other experience and we have lived in a fouth-world environment while in Malawi.  This devastation and all its resulting problems is simply unfathomable – even when you have seen it first-hand.  No people should have to endure so much human tragedy.

While I would like to say we served thousands while there, our team was only able to help one person at a time.  Coordination problems were inevitable; supplies were limited; transportation was a nightmare; hunger and thirst existed; and suffering was immense.  And, it will be like this for too long into the future.  In fact, I wonder if it can ever be restored, and if restored, can it be done more safely to prevent a similar event?

A photo attached shows the very gifted team I worked with, including Dr. Jack Allison, Asheville; George Danenberg, RN, Texas; and Livio Valenti, on loan from his job in Cambodia from the UN.  The nurses and an assistants  came from St. Louis.  All of us together made an effective team while working under the canopy of Grace Tabernacle Mission Home's church.  Interestingly, in the course of the week there, I saw it develop from an enclosed church site of 33 acres to a tent city, expected to house 15,000.  Now, at home,  Google Earth allowed me look, first-hand, at the new community establishing itself at Grace -- tented roofs are evident.

I visited and saw the children at an orphanage, Ryan Epps Children's Home, founded by NC congregation at Horne United Methodist Church in Clayton.  The children are living outdoors between two walls in a space about 20 by  40 feet.  The church emailed yesterday that tents and supplies arrived there by way of a cargo plane on Wednesday.  I am grateful for that effort as these children, and the additional almost million children separated from family, are truly vulnerable.  And, the social services as well as human resource required to take care of them will be an ongoing cost to Haiti for years to come.  (Photo of the kids is also attached.)

Regarding the work in the field, it was “making do”, at best.  Betty apparently wrote of the young child intubated before being carried on to, actually, the ship Comfort.  What she didn’t know to write is that when all had failed in getting a line into this child, anywhere on its body, I went for directing the line into bone marrow.  That is not an easy procedure, ever, but I feel simple amazement that  it was done under such circustance.  Right now, I’ve asked some of my Army colleagues to attempt to learn his status, still aboard Comfort.  As I was leaving, his father, from whom he was separated, came to me to ask his whereabouts and condition.  I hope Charles lived.  I will attach that photo, as well.

It was quite a week and I hope to return to Haiti sometime soon – with Betty going along to hold the babies, somewhere.  As she said half-heartedly, I can’t teach this time [as there are no schools].

There is nothing much to work with in Haiti. Any chance for reconstruction of this nation and rebuilding of their society must come from others.  I can’t even imagine how this will come about except to wonder, like always, if it is simply “one person, one school, one church, one home  at a time”.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers,

George 

p.s. a couple of pictures of  collapsed structures.