George Nemeth, Gloria Ferris, and Tim Ferris were there when Joseph Michael Foley, MD, Met the Bloggers, Friday, May 26th, 2006, at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Dr. Foley became a nonagenarian this past March. He is a physician, a teacher, a researcher, a humanist and the father of six, an Irishman from Boston who made Cleveland his home back when it was billed as “the best location in the nation.� As a clinical neurologist, his work centered around aging, and it is his name that appears on the University Foley ElderHealth Center on Fairhill.
The discussion starts with his story of coming to Cleveland to develop a clinical program to “do something about the nervous system.� Notable names that crop up are those of Marcus Singer of Cornell University, who would not take the fifth during the McCarthy hearings; Douglas Bond, dean of the medical school at what is now CWRU; and Tom Casey, the first black resident at the hospital and a former professional football player from Manitoba.
From psychiatry and dementia and the geriatric units, the talked progressed to “the stupidity of war� as seen by Dr. Foley in three “shows� in Sicily and a final “show� at Normandy and then on to the “psychological and physical residue of war� at the military hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Foley points out three things he learned about war:
1. The first casualty in all wars is truth
2. War gets good people doing bad things
3. As the horrors escalate, so does the indifference of the population
We learned about his coffeehouse groups—he belongs to two of them—and got the lowdown on people with axes to grind. The section on respecting the demented and giving them their dignity as human beings is very valuable—knowing people not only for who they are now, but for the lives they have lived. He makes the distinction between those who are afflicted with neurological disorders of aging and those who aren’t, and gives hope for both. He points out the importance of staying involved and listening to the proper news.
There’s a section on words, declamation, Boston Latin, and William Henry Marnell, the classical philologist. The anecdote about Honey Boy Fitzgerald and the eloquent James Michael Curley wraps with Dr. Foley’s rendition of a hard-to-find Curley imitation of the “…sings the drunkard’s song…� routine. The discussion races to a close with Dr. Foley’s enumeration of all the notable Clevelanders who have gone on to make medicine great.
After the sound board was shut down, Dr. Foley remembered two good things that came of the Second World War and that also made for immense cultural change:
1. “War shakes up the whole population,� and people who would normally have spent their lives in one place wound up all over the country.
2. It gave us the GI Bill.
Please enjoy getting to know Joe. Perhaps we’ll try take II in a half year or so, God willing.
Part 1. Time: 13.09
Part 2. Time: 16.26
Part 3. Time: 16.22
Part 4. Time: 12.12
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