I was born in Chicago in the midst of the great depression. I spent my elementary school years in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and my high school years in Richmond, Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. I attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate student and as a medical student. Why I ever went into medicine is a story that need not be related here. Why I went into pathology, however, is a great story worth telling. The first lecture in my second year of medical school was given by the chairman of pathology, Adam James French, M.D., one of the best known pathologists of his time. I do not recall the topic of Dr. French's lecture, but he did mention during that lecture that the Pathology Department was offering several research fellowships for second year medical students that paid the handsome sum of $600 per year, enough in those days to cover my room and board for most of the school year. I jumped at the chance to work in the pathology department, not because I was enamored with pathology, or even knew anything about it, but for the money. As is turned out, this was the defining moment of my career. I began working as a research assistant to a really smart pathology resident, Gerald Abrams, who was studying germ-free animals and their responses to various insults. I was free to wander around the department, and I found that the Department of Pathology at the University of Michigan was filled with creative diagnosticians and superb clinical scientists, all of whom enjoyed working together, and all of whom contributed to a departmental sense of humor and cooperation in which each individual sublimated his/her individual ego for the good of the department. I discovered that this group was having a wonderful time working together, not just the faculty, but the residents as well. I also noted that this chemistry did not exist in any other department in the medical center. So, I decided that if these people were having a great time being pathologists or training to be pathologists, I would do the same. What a fabulous decision! I was fortunate to have some of the best diagnosticians in the country as my role models and teachers, among them Murray Abell, John Batsakis and Harold Oberman. After superb residency training, I became a member of the United States Army, courtesy of the Berry Plan, and I was assigned to defend my country at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology from August 1966 though July 1968. Before my military career, I was most interested in bone and joint pathology, clinical chemistry and blood banking, and I planned to be a general private practice pathologist. It turned out that the slots in the Bone Branch were filled, and there was no clinical pathology at the AFIP, so I was assigned to the Skin and Gastrointestinal Branch (yes, believe it or not, they were combined into one branch). Although most of the cases handled by the Skin and GI Branch were skin cases, I was drawn to the gastrointestinal cases. I spent 2 years at the AFIP, under the tutelage of Dr. Elson B. Helwig, one of the greatest surgical pathologists ever, and possibly the most renowned skin and gastrointestinal pathologist of his day. Dr. Helwig taught me to look at tissues critically and always try to explain every change, and if changes could not be explained by available information then to study them with more cases. Gastrointestinal pathology in the mid 1960s was limited to resection specimens and a few biopsies that were obtained by rigid gastroscopes and rigid sigmoidoscopes. Only years later were flexible endoscopes with fiberoptic technology introduced for routine use. Dr. Helwig suggested that I evaluate ("work up", in the jargon of the time) all the gastric glomus tumors in the archives, and so I did, but there were only a dozen of them, so the project did not last long. However, this study led to a study of another round cell gastric tumor, the epithelioid cell stromal tumor (called "leiomyoblastomas" in those days), which then led to a comprehensive evaluation of all stromal tumors from all GI sites, a total of about 500 cases. Since previous studies of these tumors always came with mitotic counts, I counted mitoses in at least 50 high power fields in every tumor, a total of over 25,000 fields. The result of this horrible chore was a large collection of non-reproducible numbers. I also vowed never to count another field for mitoses, a vow that I have honored for 39 years. Working at the AFIP was a constant intellectual stimulation. The cases were challenges, and the staff pathologists were among the most accomplished and well known pathologists in the world. This experience ruined any chance for my doing private practice. I wanted more AFIP-like experiences, and I figured that I could only get them in a major medical school. My first civilian job was a year in the department of Pathology at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, and then, in 1969, I was recalled to Michigan by the offer of an assistant professor position from Dr. French. I had the opportunity to work again with my mentor Murray Abell, a superb student of tissues, and with Jim French, perhaps the most politically astute pathologist ever, whose greatest sense of accomplishment and greatest joy was the accumulated accomplishments of his faculty members and the renown of his department. I learned from Dr. French how to be loyal to my colleagues and to my department, how to be a mentor to young faculty, and how to ensure that they achieved the success they desired. I arrived back at Michigan about the time that fiberoptic endoscopy was being introduced, so endoscopic biopsies were becoming more common. This was an exciting time for GI pathologists. They had to deal with biopsies for which there was little published information and few available mentors with enough experience to be helpful. As a result, all GI pathologists at that time had to teach themselves how to deal with this new field. Fiberoptic endoscopy and gastrointestinal pathology evolved together, so I learned modern GI pathology on the go, as did all of my contemporaries. I was forced to deal with liver pathology, and had to teach myself how to do it. In 1979, I helped organized a group of GI pathologists into a subspecialty society, which shortly thereafter became the Gastrointestinal Pathology Club. Then it became fancy and turned into a society. My contemporaries in those heady days included Rodger Haggitt, Harvey Goldman, Jack Yardley, Si-Chun Ming, Bob Riddell, Don Antonioli, Frank Mitros, Klaus Lewin, Bill Hawk, and Tom Norris, all of whom have become household names in gut pathology. I became a full professor in 1976, and in 1997, I was given the honor of being the first Murray R. Abell Professor of Surgical Pathology, named for my mentor and friend. I have authored or co-authored over 100 papers and numerous chapters, which is an amazing feat, considering how much I hate to write. I even edited or co-authored four books, including the Fascicle on Tumors of the Esophagus and Stomach for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology with Klaus Lewin. My early studies were analyses of gastric mesenchymal tumors, including glomus tumors and stromal tumors. My subsequent published studies included the colitic dysplasia-carcinoma sequence, acute infectious (self-limited) colitis, anorectal prolapse lesions, Barrett's and cardiac carcinomas, the morphology of end stage achalasia, appendiceal chronic inflammations and neoplasms, the chronic diarrheal colitides, superficial Crohn's disease, changes in distribution of inflammation in ulcerative colitis, and more gut stromal tumors, including those in duodenum, jejunum and ileum, abdominal colon, and anorectum. My publications also include diseases of the liver, especially post-transplant disorders. I must admit that I have never had a major grant, which means that my studies have been low tech and cheap. I love to teach gut pathology, and some people seem to think that I am a reasonably good educator, so I have presented over 200 lectures and seminars throughout this country and abroad, and I have been a visiting professor at a bunch of places as well. I am immensely proud of my teaching awards. I received a Distinguished Service Award from the Commission on Continuing Education of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists in 1999, the 2006 H. P. Smith Award for Distinguished Pathology Educator from the same society and two teacher of the year awards from the residents in my department. I also do stuff other than teaching. I have been a member of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Dysplasia Morphology Study Group, the Visiting Pathologist Panel of the Crohn's Colitis Foundation, the Scientific and Executive Committees of the Organization for Statistical Studies of Diseases of the Esophagus (OESO) based in Paris, and the Lung and Esophagus Site Task Force of the American Joint Committee on Cancer. I am currently the president of OESO. I have been a member of both the Education Committee and the Council of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, and I am now the President of the Academy, which is why I have written this biosketch. I suspect that I am the oldest person ever to have held this position. I have been a member of the editorial boards of three major pathology journals, and I remain a member of two of them. I am the husband of Harlene, a remarkable woman and extraordinary educator, the father or stepfather of five fabulous adult children, and, most importantly, the grandfather of two obviously superior pre-adult children, Lillianna and Branson. I work out religiously in an attempt to increase my stamina so I can play with my grandchildren. Harlene and I love to travel to as many destinations as time allows, attend as many plays and concerts as is humanly possible, eat in every extraordinary ethnic restaurant we can find, drink great red wines until total satiety, and, when we are at home, cook gourmet until it hurts, and finally, root for every University of Michigan athletic team, no matter how bad.