Dr. Alan Menter
Dr. Alan Menter's family traced its origins to Lithuania, with relatives settling in Ireland, Manchester, and Newcastle. His mother grew up in Dublin, one of about 100 Jewish families there, and his father traveled from South Africa to study medicine at Trinity College in Dublin, where the two met in 1939. Alan was born in Yorkshire, England, during the war while his father was doing a locum, and after the war the family returned to South Africa. He was one of four brothers and describes an idyllic though apartheid-shadowed childhood in South Africa, raised by a very Orthodox mother, active in Jewish life through organizations such as Bnei Zion, and involved in the anti-apartheid student movement while at university.
Alan met Pam, who grew up in Zambia and trained as a nurse, while he was in medical school. They married in 1966 and had four children. In December 1971 he took a fellowship in London, and in 1973 the family made the extraordinary decision to drive a Land Rover from London across Africa back to Johannesburg over six months, crossing the Sahara Desert and meeting local tribes along the way. Shortly after returning, he received an opportunity to come to UT Southwestern Medical Center. The family arrived in Dallas in 1975, intending to stay two years, and remained for decades. They joined Temple Shalom, celebrated their children's bar and bat mitzvahs there, and Alan became involved early with community fundraising, including the doctors' division of the AJC.
Dr. Menter built a leading career in dermatology, working alongside Coleman Jacobson before starting his own clinic and a residency and fellowship program at Baylor. Specializing in psoriasis, a disease his own family carries, he helped discover the first psoriasis gene, published in the journal Science in 1994, and founded the International Psoriasis Council. He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Psoriasis Foundation, and a tribute event in Dallas raised over a million dollars for research and fellowships. Outside medicine he collects antique first-edition books by African explorers, while Pam is an accomplished lacemaker who started the first lace school in Dallas. Among ten Jewish South Africans ever to play rugby for the national team, he remains devoted to his family, including his late brother Malcolm, and his grandchildren.
Full Transcript
hello what's your name my name is Alan mentor good evening this is the 25th of November 2013 and we're interviewing Dr Alan Mentor as part of the roots to boots project for the Dallas Jewish Historical Society Dr Mentor I'd like to start with asking you to please tell us about the historical origins of your family where they came from in Europe before coming to South Africa well I know my mother's rather well because we've done a whole encyclopedic review of my mother's history and my mother's Grand great grandfather came from vulner Lithuania wait oh I'm sorry where came from Wellness Lithuania he was one of
13 Brothers of whom 10 happened to be doctors and I've got pictures of them back in 1870 anyway the family part of them migrated to to Europe part migrated to Ireland support migrated to Manchester and Newcastle and my mum grew up in Dublin Ireland he was she was one of about 100 Jewish families in Dublin Ireland and then my late father who said he died when I was 19 he went to Dublin to do medicine from South Africa and he was a third generation also from obviously from the Lithuanian region but I don't have his history as uh coordinator as well as I do my
mother's he met my mum in 1939 while at Medical School in Dublin at Trinity and then when he was doing they got married and then I was born during the war in Yorkshire in England when he was doing a Locum there and after the war we all went back to South Africa so that's kind of the origins of the family and the name was changed obviously over the years was Rubenstein initially and to my mother's name and then it was changed in Ireland to green and her best friend actually growing up interestingly was the son of the only Rabbi in Durban and the rabbi's name
was Herzog and the son's name was Heim Herzog it's a Heim Herzog went when his father left my Herzog was chosen to be Chief remember I have London in the early 40s crime went from Israel with his dad joined the British secret service and then at 48 went to to Israel and became president of Israel thereafter so that's a little brief history from my mother's side so um how many children are in your family my wife and I have 14. I mean in your in your parent the parental family that my mother's family my my father had one sister uh who as I said my dad died when I was young my my aunt kind of almost took care of the four mental brothers that was one of four boys with my mother and my mother had three siblings one sister and who's actually still living in Dublin at the age of 90 and two brothers who have passed away and then you were one of four children I was one of four children I was the only one born outside of South Africa so when you went back
to South Africa the rest were born and said that the other three were born in South Africa and then I got married when I was 25 and then Pam and I have had four children tell me about your early life in South Africa what it was like growing up there well it was you know sadly it was a fairly idyllic type of relationship you know we sadly all just like the South here we all had servants growing up and fed when my dad died we had a wonderful guy his name was Elias he was a a black gentleman who did everything for us it was
almost like a second father to us but he couldn't live with us so the apartheid era was something I was always very concerned about upset about and all of us at University were very much part of the anti-apartheid movement we had something there called the student representative council which was considered by the government the Africana government which was obviously the private parted government it was considered Communists like many people here who were you know anti you know the mainstream were considered Communists so but I enjoyed every minute of growing up I played to all of us through very much into soccer and rugby and all
the other things that South Africans like to enjoy so it was very idyllic period growing up provided when stayed away from you sad apartheid era were you in a public school environment or was it a problem totally Public School very few of us very few of my friends went to public went to private schools the governmental private public schools were superb we had every facility even in the you know in the 50s when I was in private excuse me when I was in elementary school and then in the late I graduated from high school in 1958 I mean we had every facility we had multiple
Sports grounds we had art schools we had swimming pools so we were a lot of money was given by the government and by the local you know school districts to education sadly again it was Apartheid which was only white kids ruled out in the school what was Jewish community life like very strong the Jewish community life in South Africa was as strong as it is in Dallas growing up when we had her bottom we had benazion and we all went to school I was from my mum was very very Orthodox I never ate Trey I never ate but I never had anything I never had
anything that's related to Pork until I was until we went to England and my wife and I migrated to England for a few years so it was a very Orthodox upbringing my father himself was not very Orthodox but my mother was so you know we went to short every week we went to you know every possible Affair as I said every Sunday morning he went to HarborOne and the three four mental Brothers all grew up that way tell us how you met your wife well I was in medical school and Pam was a nursing school she grew up in Zambia and she basically came to
do to nursing college After High School and she was you know part of the grips all the doctors and medical students and socially she was part of a big social group that I knew some of the people and one day I called her up to invite her out and six years later we got married we got married in Temple Shalom and actually that Rabbi married us is now in Australia so then we lived there we got married in 1966 uh first two kids one in 68 and then as I said we went to in 71 week and 70 we had our second son and then
I had a scholarship to go to London for a couple of years and he went to London in 1971 December 71 and then in July of 73 we decided to come back to South Africa and we took a Land Rover rather stupidly I suppose my mother wasn't happy with us with our two little kids who were five and three and drove from London back to Johannesburg for six months across the whole of Africa which was says my mother would sing with sugar that must have been an incredible experience yeah we had no cell phones in those days we had nothing just you know padded food
which we found water for and cooked over and opened fire whenever we could find it what was your most memorable experience of that trip probably the Sahara Desert we you know we took our time we had I mean we had very little money in those days but it didn't cost us very much except for for petrol or gases and we took had a lot of Land Rover spare parts and we could swap there because Land Rover password was so you know so sought after in Africa so we so the probably the best experience we had was crisscrossing across the Sahara Desert looking for old caves
with cave paintings which was truly spectacular and then watching the kids climb the sand dunes in the Sahara in the Sahara Desert so and then actually staying in huts and places we went to we've met the local tribes people and I gave out free medicines which I brought with me and they put us up on little huts and getting to know the local people wherever we went and the different tribal you know traditions and the different tribal dresses and dressing our kids in little traditional African costumes and not having a haircut for six months was kind of fun as well we've got a wonderful scrapbook
and we took recordings of the kids so every now and again with their British accents and those days so we played back and then I had an opportunity to come to UT Southwestern shortly after I arrived back in December I got an opportunity to come here so we came for two years and 37 years later we're still here so that's what brought you to Dallas was the UT Southwestern yeah there was a fellowship teaching program there in the Dermatology program was just starting so I came and loved every minute of items without felt it was a good place to bring up our kids so we
fortunately came with the green card so we were eligible to stay you know from the from the beginning so our kids have been up here they are very and we would go back our son Colin he who was three when we arrived back in South Africa from our trip he you know barely had any memories of anything related to South Africa but he wanted to do anthropology over his life so once he qualified and university is as with an anthropology degree he went back to Africa for a year and 15 years later he's still working there really as an anthropologist yeah there's an organ there's
a world heritage site there called The Cradle of humanity which is a few million years origin and he works there and teaches there and digs there so things going full circle so when you came to Dallas did you know anybody here from South Africa there was only one family we knew here and there was Eddie and Sandra melmidt an Eddie Eddie was medical school and we had just talked to him about coming here and it's very kindly he allowed us to stay in with our three little kids in his house at in Sandra and they had kids we stayed with them for a couple of
weeks before we found out in our own little house but that was the only South Africans we knew when we arrived in 70 August of 75. so what were your first impressions of the Jewish community in Dallas when you arrived a little bit soon thanks to Eddie Eddie had sisters that were part of the Jewish Community here and Sandra was very involved so we got to know them fairly quickly and you know we basically I played tennis with a lot of them he was obviously very involved in my work and you know I chaired one year with one of my my medical colleagues the the doctor's division of the I think it was the AJC for fundraising so I got very involved very early very very very early on Richard Saxon was
the the other guy who coach shared everything with me then so I think that was within the first five years I got involved with me we joined Temple Shalom fairly early and all the kids were abundance with all Batman's for their Temple Shalom did your wife find it as easy to to integrate into the community I think she did I mean she obviously got you know had the three little kids to take care of and but she got very involved she started a book club very early which is still going strong is a big bridge player and so she got involved in that area fairly
quickly were there anything any significant difference African Jewish community good question very very good question the tremendous amount of similarities everybody knew everybody else the you know a lot of people gave a lot back to the community in both places the big difference really was that whereas the Jewish Community here gives to Israel a lot they give a lot within within the Dallas area where a South African jury gave almost everything to they gave something to to the local community like sponsoring kids to benazion and have won them and and the shows but they were I think per capita the South African Community gave more
to Israel than anybody else around the world Israel was very much a greater part of their living whereas here obviously everybody's very comfortable living here as we were not all that accountable living in South Africa hence the you know I think a lot of the functions that were done with to raise money for Israel and when we arrived here for instant Dallas coming from London it was a very small town in 75 we had I think 100 pounds left in the bank in our in our bank in London which was a lot of money for us in those days and I went to the local
bank here and I asked for them to transfer the money and they couldn't do it they had to send me downtown to get the the money transferred so it was a small I mean no one there was very few people from outside of Dallas let alone quite unquote foreigners from Europe or from from Africa that were here but it grew I mean we we've loved Dallas ever since we arrived it's grown up as a you know as a big community and yet it's got many many features that make it a smaller Community without being overly overly busy are there any particular um Traditions or South
African Traditions that you've brought with you from your Homeland to Dallas that you still practice that that might be that we might not know about South African Traditions that will not learn about we don't know about here in uh from the Jewish community in particular of anything different that you might do and really specific food the communities are very very very similar I mean very very very similar I don't think there's a single aspect of our upbringing or adult lives in South Africa that were not very similar to what we did what we found here really I mean outside of the fact that everybody wanted
to get Israel at an early age I think that was probably something that was I mean the sporting way of life there was very different obviously you know everybody was committed massively to rugby which was the national sport day was obviously here that aspect of it is not is not a significant part of one's life from a religious perspective uh I we certainly didn't have the array of what we call Schultz temples there we just had the oneorthodox show and then the One reform so we didn't have I mean Dallas johannesburg's a big city and there was a fairly large Jewish population in Johannesburg probably
even more small numbers than we had in Dallas when we arrived so it was a smaller community that we arrived I think from a traditional perspective uh you know things were very very similar do you Miss South Africa not really I love living here I mean as I said we've lived here since 1975. uh the one thing I do miss I think every South African probably misses is the ability just on a weekend to go to the game Park and veg out as we would call it and get away from everything and watch the animals and a Land Rover for six hours a day and go to bed at 10 o'clock at night without TB without cell phones and get away from you know a hustle and bustle of everyday life so we we go there like Pam grew up and Zambia last year this year was his 70th birthday and she hadn't been back for 52 years so our son
arranged for us to get over on an eight day game watching trip in Zambia her home country and we went to two spectacular new game Parks so every animal who never wish to see with nobody there so that is an experience that I think and all our American friends and European friends that we've gone with over the years just I think find it a very major major some people call it life-changing it really is so that's so you've traveled back to South Africa not as not as much as we used to you know with the kids here and our two little grandkids that we now
have so I mean I travel a couple hundred thousand miles every year from my work so sometimes there's conferences in South Africa and Pam will come with me if it's going to be you know more than a couple of days and so between us we've gone back I would think probably every other year yeah whether that'll continue obviously one day if we live long enough we live with the kids are teenagers our two little grandkids or three and and eight months old we would probably love to take them there but I don't think it's worthwhile taking little kids there at this stage until they can
understand it okay were there foods that you enjoy there that are different from what we have here yeah I think this very traditional Dutch kind of food and also from different parts I mean South Africa has a pretty diverse community people from different parts of the world so there's a very thriving kind of food rituals there one of which is is a jerky called Bilton whichever South African lives then there's the color of the barbecue is called the Bry Place brine means to to burn fleisman is is meat and it's a very similar open fire but very different uh very very different cooking utensils very
different food they have big sausages which they call boerevos I mean sausage Buddha is from the Africana background and the meats and things are all very very different so to some extent most South Africans I think probably would love to have and there are local people around the country who try to bring those kind of dishes to the US but the meat is not the same because it's derived from from Antelope from Deer that's very very different to what we have here is the biltong made from Deer is it oh yeah it is from Impala from Springbok Springbok is the national deer of South Africa
and when you represent your country in this in a sport it's called you you're called a spring work so we were able to check the deer and get uh get the kosher built on there was and I'll tell you a funny story about the kosher side of things I thought I mentioned that my mom was was really really Orthodox and she she made the best chopped liver I think of anybody and that we knew of it everybody used to climate us to to get my mother's chop liver so every year before price up we would she would send me my bicycle to go to the
Jewish the one and only Jewish Butchery there to get the to get the liver so she could make it so I was about 14 or 15 and I stopped to go play some sport on my way to then by the time I got there he had no liver left absolutely no level left so what am I going to do my mother will kill me if I don't come home with liver so she can make chop Liverpool for cider tomorrow night so uh he said I'll tell you what you'll do Ella he says don't ever tell your mother this he says I'll send you to a
good friend of mine who's has a butcher around the corner and I did not know that this was not a kosher Butchery so I got the letter I bought her back to my mum and he said don't tell your mother where you've got it it took me 20 years before I finally owned up and I bought them on kosher uh I love it for my mother so where that was but as I said we when we went to London for my two years of fellowship and we went to London in 71 the very first so I was 30 years of age before we ever tasted
anything that was pork related never had bacon until we went to London at age 30. what are the names of your children Keith member of my late father Colin named after my grandfather and kerith which is a name that pan found in what was the name of the book k-r-i-t-h and one of the famous Jewish books was an old Jewish name called kirith sir Keith Conan and kerith and which is the one that is living in Africa that's Colin that's the second son he's the one who lives in Africa and he now spends he made a South African physician actually and she spends half a time working in Canada so he spends half his time doing research at some of the
some of the universities in Canada then takes all the kids students back with them to Africa and we're we're in Africa is he working at the Cradle of humanity which is a world heritage site between Johannesburg and Pretoria okay and what did the other children doing Keith the eldest is a philosopher writer and he went to school here locally the two boys when we arrived in the seven in the in as I said in 70 75 passing I just started here and we were very much anti-apartheid so we said we're not going to go to a private school which we didn't and the kids are
the best and when they went when they went to Keith and Collins when I went to Junior High they said they couldn't take the gang Warfare that was going on there so that's when they went to private school to St Marks Anderson Keith played tennis through High School played tennis and college at William and Mary and then our coaches tennis part-time and writes rights essays books Etc whereas Colin is the more the scientists from a you know from an anthropology perspective and our daughter kareth she's kind of the most probably outgoing natural one of the Lord she was nine months old in the Iraqis so
she's probably as Texan as anybody else does and she said she wasn't going to go to private high school so she went to Hillcrest around the corner here loved every minute of it did all the cheerleading issues and things like that and finally got married when she was 32 and she now just she and her husband live in Hermosa Beach near Manhattan Beach in California and they have a business and a business there and she works now part-time with a little baby what type of business do they have they have I mean they have a special car rental business and Carl and she also works
as a manager for a store that sells children's clothing terrific so you're still very actively involved in the medical profession probably to my my tender age probably more than I should be I I initiated an international group of psoriasis which is the disease that our family actually has that I kind of spend most of my time working on research-wise and teaching wise so I started a group called The International psoriasis Council back about nine years ago which is hopefully the leaders in the world of Dermatology related to psoriasis research and treatment and it got a lot bigger than I thought it would so I still
travel to Latin America a few times a year to Asia Pacific and to Europe and of course across the U.S teaching and putting meetings together and we just had an event a month ago where they had a life lifelong Achievement Award for myself here in Dallas where we had about three four hundred people show up and it was they used me as a vehicle to raise money for research and we raised over a million dollars for psoriasis research and fellowships so that was kind of a nice culmination what do you do when you're not working or is there ever a time when you're not working
well like everybody I suppose I'm overly committed to what I love to do every time I say I'm going to slow down perhapses what are you going to do if you slow down I'm very involved in politics I love International politics so I collect first edition antique first edition books for African explorers that I've got a collection of which unfortunately I haven't read most of them but everywhere I go I try to look for that and my wife is a is a lace maker so she collects empty glazeboggan so when when we travel we try to collect lace models from say Belgium from France or
from different parts of Europe and living and again I find a book and so obscure place that I can put into my library so one day hopefully when I do slow down I'll be able to involve myself more than that terrific is there anything that you'd like to add that we haven't asked you about that you think would be important as part of the Legacy for your children to remember about you and for the community to know about you well I mean that's a good question I think I miss my Rugby which I I played International Rugby for South Africa was only 10 Jewish people
ever played rugby for South Africa very much the Africana sport and it's about seven eight years ago they had a special event in Cape Town at the Jewish Museum in Cape Town where they put and they use that as a fundraiser for Israel they put together history and pictures of all the 10 South Africans Jewish the Africans had played rugby for the country and that was a very special event that I went back to and I put a picture of you know and writes probably the main picture in our clinic and our teaching clinic in our residency program that we run at Baylor which shows
the 10 Jewish springboks and I people who know nothing about Rogue we still want to know what's what that's all about so that was a very special event in my life wonderful yeah anything else no I think I'm I've probably given you a background and okay well what I haven't mentioned what I haven't mentioned is obviously my dear daughter-in-law who lives here it was Jenny who comes from Jay and I who comes actually from from Nevada Keith was teaching at University at University of Nevada unov University Nevada Las Vegas and he was teaching English and writing he met Jenny there's a student and they came
back here and I adored Jenny and that they gave us our first grandchild his little daughter now they found the name Pruitt which I never found out where they found Pruitt from but she's she's just about ready to turn three and she lives here in Dallas so she's somebody that would love to see her home on weekends and then our daughter kareth who went to uh to California her husband's name was Carl he was at Hillcrest High School here with him and they have a little daughter they're named after Pamela's mother from Scotland called Annabella so what I called I pre attack or I've always
called Pruitt's PP because she's you know carrot my daughter was precious pie from day one because I I grew up with four boys I have four brothers and we then had two brothers I never thought I'd ever see a little girl in the house or from day one carrot was my precious pie I called him precious pie so I now called her little baby pb2 which I thought is a nice analogy for precious prey what is your daughter's married thing her last name she still maintains the mentor but she's taken the kind of a double name of her husband who came from Argentina called our
Visa yeah says Kenneth Mentor or Visa and we're going to spend Thanksgiving there this this year for the first time because she doesn't want to travel with a little baby so all of us are going out there yeah she's rather special in my life as is my wife Pam is done a remarkable job on keeping me in line and putting up with all my trouble and all my sporting activities well I think you've you've given us a terrific insight into your life into your family history into the wonderful things that you've done and uh in your family as well and I really want to thank
you for the time that you've taken I know that your schedule is very hectic and it's very special to have had you with us this evening thank you so much well it's truly an honor thank you for inviting me I really do appreciate that thank you thank you so much thank you uh of My Three Brothers one has remained in South Africa that's brown uh and uh he is well fortunate he's two years younger than I am and he has two daughters uh one of whom has two children of her own and then my other two brothers Robbie is one here Robbie is the next
one Robbie lives in Dallas he came a few years after we arrived and Robbie has two kids and his daughter has five children had a Joanne had went through an obituary a set of twins went through and Beecher again we had another set of twins and then spontaneously had a fifth child so she has five children and then okay Joanne Mentor is the one who has the five children her let's see the rubiker divorce from his wife about 15 years ago I think that her name was Robin and he's never remarried and the saddest part of the whole thing is my little brother Malcolm Mandy
as we called him was 10 years younger than I am he started busybody the home exercise equipment company here and then after he sold that out and was playing lots of golf he decided to get into the cooking which he loved to do so he bought Cowboy Chicken and he had three kids uh none of whom live here one lives in Austin and her son lives in New York and the other daughter lives close to my daughter in California the job is just loving his wife is one of the loveliest people in the world and she's been a very close friend ever since he died
which was exactly five years ago he had cancer and we went all over the world looking for a very rare form of cancer and sadly he died as I said five years ago had a really tough last couple years he was almost like my our first child because when my father died when I was 19 Malcolm was nine and then he came to live with Pam and I a year after we got married and he lived in a house went to high school for his last couple of years of high school so when our two kids were born malikin was kind of the elder brother
even though he was elder brother to them even though he was 10 years younger than I was so I adored Malcolm he was very close thank you okay so when I arrived here in 1975 working as a research fellow and teacher at UT Southwestern I worked part-time Saturdays for instance with Coleman Jacobson he was kind of the guru of Dermatology here and Coleman was really really good to me he helped me kind of get started introduced me to lots of people and then when I started getting more involved in research that's what I started my own clinic and started The Residency program a fellowship program
at Baylor sadly Colin died just recently at the age of 91. it was a remarkable mad coming once and he had he had family in contracts back in South Africa as well so he used to learn to go to South Africa which is which is owned by L'Oreal and it's probably considered the biggest Dermatology Pure Dermatology pharmaceutical company worldwide their North American headquarters are in South Lake here so they gave random fifty thousand dollars to the event in my honor which spirit because I did a lot of research for them so that was that was pretty special got that event so I can get the whole event on video well one year ago the national psoriasis Foundation
which was the largest patient organization that we're all dedicated to psoriasis treatment and research and educating patients about a disease that affects 120 million people worldwide and about seven million people in the US say decided to give me a Lifetime Achievement Award for whatever work I'd done in the teaching and research of psoriasis we discovered the first Gene for psoriasis in 19 1994 that we published in the Journal of science with my colleagues from UT Southwestern and our psoriasis Center at Baylor so I've been working in the field of research and treatment in the start of this International research group as I said about seven
years ago International psoriasis Council so they decided to put this event together in to try and raise money for fellowships and for teaching and for research in the world of psoriasis and I was the honoree and got this award and so for a year we went to patients we went to foundations we went to the pharmaceutical companies to try and raise money and we had an 18 year old patient in mind from El Paso Texas who came to me when she was 10. drove with their mother among 600 miles to see me because she had total body psoriasis and was devastated and was being kicked out of school and I had no friends and we fortunately were able to get it clear and she stood up at the scholar event a little short five foot tall and gave a 15-minute history of her life with psoriasis and where she is today and there was not a dry eye on the place when she was finished talking and the donations went up because considerably after they'd listen to her did you cure her yeah she's totally clear at the present time yes because
of your research well I hope that played a little role in helping her yep thank you thank you very much indeed thank you I appreciate that so before you started your research tell us what it was like for a psoriasis patient well it was pretty tough because it's such a visible disease and you could never wear black because your hair was always pouring out scale and you've got these big patches on your elbows and knees and different parts of your body and you may or may not get arthritis with it as well which some people get so in the old days when I grew up
with psoriasis which was putting people into hospital and wrapping them up in tar wraps and creams and things like that and then cortisone creams came about and that helped a little bit but it never cleared the condition properly so it's only in the last 10 15 years or probably 20 years that we now have both tablets as well as injectable agents which we call biological agents that can clear the vast majority of patients and give them a free life I can tell you the suicidal ideation in young people with psoriasis is twice as high as any other chronic disease because of the visible nature that
they can't you know they sit at home they're going to go to the gym can't go to the public pool or any swimming pool and they want to put on shorts so it's a very devastating disease and for people who have kids they can't go and do things with their kids the way you and I would like to just because they have to hide it all the time and I've had families where different members of them I've had a husband and wife where the wife who had psoriasis never told her husband she never changed in front of him all their life because she was so
ashamed of her disease she waited for him to get into bed before she went to bed never showered never let him see her because of her psoriasis and once we cleared her their life became dramatically better I worked very closely with some of the major pharmaceutical companies for instance Johnson Johnson engine Corporation galderma her Genentech some of the big companies and I was often the person that they would come and speak to because of starting a new trial for a new drug and I was what's called principal investigator for two of the two of the four drugs set on her heart helped them create it
and help them develop it and and so the rest is history we're still developing new drugs and hopefully cures finally I do get people from from every state in the US although now have colleagues that do do what I do it in in certain centers around the country I get a lot of people coming in from Latin America and I do have people who are even from the Middle East some of the neighboring countries to Israel actually they come in because I've met their dermatologists of different meetings and have you know helped them produce guidelines for different countries I get patients from the Far East
from Malaysia and they come in and I help their dermatologists get them started on what I think is the most appropriate treatment and then they go back to their dermatologists I do a lot of work online for them which people are sending me emails and pictures and asking me to help so we're always happy to do that it doesn't pay very well it doesn't pay at all but I enjoy it so your world leading Authority that's why you got the honor thank you so much okay thank you for adding not at all thank you for asking me those questions when we came to Dallas Pam
had learned to make clay she was always very very gifted with the use of her hands doing different needlework but when we were in London she went to lay school she was probably the youngest person by 40 years at the lay school and then when she came to Dallas after she'd built up her collection of antique lace Province from different parts of Europe mainly Brussels and Belgium she started a lace school here she started the first lace School here in Dallas and has taught a number of people to make antique lace what does she do with the lace at home she gives lace presents to
different people and she has a collection of antique lace bobbins that is rather remarkable some of the less problems getting back a couple hundred years with the original lacemaker's name etched into the to the to the Ivory over to the woods that that of the anti-glace buttons but if she makes tablecloths and she keeps them at the house and stores them and gives gifts to friends and different people