Mark White is a proud member of the First E, and it only took him ten years to learn to spell “existentialist,” two years less than it took to learn “epidemiologist.”
He has two sons, two daughters, and two dogs. Most important, he has a wonderful wife, Shelly Joan Ahmann. They have been married for 23 years.
A week ago, Mark completed a memoir called “Memoirs of a Disease Detective.” It took 13 years, and he would never have done it if Libby hadn’t turned him on to Carol Lee Lorenzo, a superb writer, teacher, and friend. The book is about his life where he and his Filipina wife traveled the world teaching and fighting epidemics in the Philippines and Uganda. Most were tropical diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria, measles, etc. They also investigated an Ebola virus epidemic, two earthquakes, and the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. It threw so much ash into the atmosphere that the global temperature fell by two degrees C for two years. Don’t get any ideas for global warming. His line editor commented that the book made her laugh many times and cry once. What a great review.
God knows if he’ll get a publisher, but if all fails, he’ll publish it myself. JK Rowling got 12 rejections before somebody took Harry Potter, and even then, Scholastic Press published the first edition. Writing about the past may not seem something an existentialist should do. But it is. You have to make up all that dialog you couldn’t remember. In seeking the truth, Mark emailed most of the people who appear and asked them to fact-check, a profoundly humbling experience.
As Faulkner says, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” He looks forward to seeing all his old friends at the First E, and meeting some new ones.
- Facilitator – Kathy McGuire
- Musician – Mick Kinney