- Welcome to the Architecture for Health Lecture Series for the fall semester of 2022.

It's great to have you all here in the studio, and those of you watching long distance, it's great to have you with us as well.

I think you know about the theme for the semester, those of you who are here, but for those of you who'll be watching the series unfold, our theme for this semester is International Design for Health.

So we've asked our speakers to focus on what they're doing internationally in Design for Health, and our hope is that in this year of Design for Health 2022, the International Union of Architects Year of Design for Health, we're hoping that in this year, we will hear about Design for Health from an international perspective and maybe open our eyes to some new possibilities.

It is my pleasure to introduce our lead speaker for the fall series.

It's not often one gets to introduce a legend, an icon in the industry, but such is my privilege today.

I asked for the short version of the bio, and it came in volumes.

I've excerpted pieces from them to give you a short overview of our guest speaker.

Today we're hearing from Professor George Mann.

George is Professor Emeritus, and I'm gonna read parts of this.

I know George well, but some of these things I don't want to miss.

Professor Emeritus at the School of Architecture, Texas A&M University.

And he was the first holder of the Ronald L. Scaggs FAIA Endowed Professorship in Health Facilities Design.

And he was the first holder of the Scaggs Sprague Chair in Health Facilities Design.

And way back in 1966, he launched the graduate program in Health Facilities Design at Texas A&M University.

And I'll let him review for you just how many years he was in the saddle leading that program.

Professor Mann was born in Vienna, Austria, moved shortly thereafter to live in Shanghai, China and actually grew up in New York City, earned his Bachelor of Architecture and master's degree at Columbia University in health services, planning and design.

Lots of international travel along the way.

Some work experiences with notable firms, I.M.

Pei, SOM, for example.

Now here is just some numbers for George's years here at A&M.

He and his students have undertaken over 800 architecture for health projects.

Can you imagine that?

Since he founded the Architecture for Health program at Texas A&M in 1966, he has taught over 4,000 students in that specialty, many now leaders in the industry, pioneered along the way the concept of design and research practice-oriented studios, a wonderful combination.

Back in 1999, George, along with Professor Nagasawa of the University of Tokyo, co-founded the Global University Programs in Healthcare Architecture, a global program, a global connection of universities around the world interested in this specialty.

Lots of awards, too many to name, but you would expect that from someone who has had the impact on our industry that George has had.

Most recently and certainly of significance to me, some of George's former students, colleagues, friends, got together and funded the George Mann Chair in Health Facilities Design of which I am the first holder as of September 1.

A tremendous honor for me, and I thank you for that, George.

Come talk to us and tell us about your career.

- Ray, thank you so much.

- You're welcome, my friend.

- Good to see you.

I'm gonna try something today that I didn't quite try before, and I'll tell you about it in just a minute.

First, I'd like to say thank you and congratulations to Ray.

I knew it was coming, but I didn't know it.

So much has been going on.

Congratulations.

And I'm delighted to be here today, and I think you're all in good hands.

If anything, Ray carries the doctorate degree in public health in addition to architecture.

And that's where a cleavage has occurred among the architects who think a building is the answer to everything.

Sometimes it creates a problem.

Sometimes it might be better not to have a building, but to have a place that moves around in the inner land taking care of people.

I also would like to thank a few people.

I'd like to thank the Texas A&M students.

I'd get them into the projects, and I hadn't had a student fail to get me out.

Doug Walker, the director of the center here, Leonard Welch, Jill Bordevich; Lance Cook, who we saw a moment ago; Dean Vanegas who helped us get started over here at KAMU.

This started in 2009, and it was only in 2018 that we started coming here rather than in the studio.

Patrick Seman, Greg Lujan, and of course, Ray Pentecost.

So I work with Ray and help him because the challenges are formidable, the challenges of living are formidable.

So, what's different about today?

I'm gonna take you on a little path, and I'm gonna move around not chronologically because life doesn't really work chronologically.

You think of something 20 years later.

We walked out of Ed Romieniec's studios and class and we'd say, "What the hell was he talking about?"

And about 30 years later, it would dawn on us what he was talking about 'cause he mumbled, and he would talk every other chapter, if we were lucky, but often every other volume.

And so, we're always learning.

And today, I wanna stimulate that because I feel as though I've reached my age, and I haven't worked a day in my life.

There are days where I have to stop, say "I haven't eaten," or "I haven't slept" because I find all this stuff so interesting.

So, how did it start?

And, oh, they used to have a review here, so I need to turn around and see it occasionally.

I don't know if Lance has that.

And he was gonna give me a a button to forward.

- [Man] It's set for you, George Oh, thank you.

Okay.

And I also would like to think Summer Wang, Wenjin Wang.

We did this PowerPoint 'cause I don't know how, I learned how to do PowerPoint, not as good as her, in the last two days.

I was spoiled over the years by Cynthia, and I wanna thank Cynthia.

And so, there's something exciting about a new period.

But I'd like to give credit.

I also wanna give credit to all the former students, but Ron Skaggs was in my first class.

He took me to my first Aggie game, and he showed me the ways around this place, and he graduated but he never left.

And he has nourished our program, but also continued to learn.

Some people leave, and they're gone for good.

I'll show you a project to somebody who just disappeared.

So anyhow, this is what Ray wanted me to talk about.

and I'm gonna zigzag through.

You're gonna see this slide a few times.

Don't bother to take notes 'cause you're gonna have this presentation, and maybe Ray wants you to take notes, but they we're gonna give you the presentation.

The population of the world is changing.

In my final study project at Columbia for undergraduate was a hospital for India, and it was 420 million people living in India in 1960.

And I believe there are about a billion and a half living in India now.

So the world is changing while you're in school, but we need to have leaders having a vision of what's possible and what's coming up.

And usually, I think all of us when we we're students, "Well, tell me what I have to study for the exam," and we're looking at the world through the rear view mirror of our car instead of concentrating on problems in the future.

And one of the beefs I have with some of the leaders, many of the leaders of the planet in countries is they're so busy fighting each other that the real problems are disappearing.

There was an Eastern Airlines plane approaching Florida, a Lockheed 1011.

And they had problems they thought with the landing gear.

The light came on that the landing gear didn't deploy properly.

So they put it on automatic pilot, and it was circling around.

They concentrated on the problem of the landing gear, which they misdiagnosed.

And you know what happened?

They all were working on the wrong problem.

The thing plowed into the Everglades, everybody was killed on board.

And I say that to you is it's so easy in your studies to get stuck on one thing.

That's why it's good to study in groups where you get a perspective on what's going on or flash through different news channels or don't watch the news at all 'cause it can be rather disturbing.

So vision is something that people, some people have more of it than others.

Some people have it, and they don't know they have it.

In 1959, I wrote to 20 countries looking for a real project, got one answer from the chief architect in India on the letterhead.

And I went into my Professor Romieniec with this letter saying, "600 bed hospital in Imphal," which is a remote eastern part of India, 400 inches of rainfall per year.

And I thought Ed Romieniec would be excited.

He said, "You can't do that.

We're gonna do housing in Rochester, New York.

Well, we went like this.

And that's why I'm telling you the story, very often an opening is like this.

My friends went in and wore him down, and he was really, I think, testing to see how bad I wanted to do it.

I had the letter.

He changed his mind.

And then right before graduation, the night before I graduated with my bachelor of architecture degree, they were starting a program in health, he called me up, "Do you wanna full scholarship?"

I was so sick of school being a student.

And then I said to myself, "If I don't do it now, I'm never gonna do it."

Because we used to sing, "Why are we here?

To get the degree.

Why do we want the degree?

To get the license.

Why do we want the license?

To practice."

I went.

He was a great supporter.

And then I got a scholarship, a fellowship to travel to Europe to look at medical facilities.

And then I went to Kansas State, my first teaching job, I did a article with a graduate student on mental health facilities.

Who's interested in mental health?

I just heard that a moment ago.

Yeah.

And then he called me up to offer me a job here.

So, you never know.

And that's why as I see you, every time I'm gonna run into you, I'm gonna ask you for your business card to see if you got brains.

Because unless you make things happen, they're not gonna happen, okay?

Stop acting like students.

How many of you have children?

Okay, your parents, you got bills, doctors, insurance.

Have a business card.

Okay, so I did a horizontal hospital, and we had this guy, Joseph Neufeld, who designed the original Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.

He also was born in Vienna.

But he was a pain in a neck because he wanted to see a high-rise hospital.

And I did this thing on one level.

I lifted it up.

And the people in this part of India look Chinese but with dark skin.

And so I thought this had a little bit of a oriental flavor.

I lifted it up, so there were no elevators.

So at the review, he said, "A hospital only works when it's 10 stories high."

I mean, and I said, "What if there's a power failure?

How are you gonna get everybody up and down?

Here, you can manage a ramp for one story."

And these had natural air conditioning.

I didn't know what I was doing on this project, but I sure loved it.

And I invited the Indian console who came up.

And you don't wanna just work with your prof in the studio.

Your prof should be a door opener to other profs and get other people involved.

And I was thrilled about this project.

The circulation doesn't work.

The expansion was pretty good.

I don't know if I can get this... Each one could add on a nursing unit at the end.

And so, often expansion isn't overlooked.

So we took a trip to 1960.

Now, we're back in the present, okay?

There are a lot of people who are involved with this program.

The phone that just rang was Mr. Scaggs.

He forgot that, he knows I'm supposed to speak, but he probably didn't connect it in time.

And his colleague Joe Sprague.

And here you see Ray at the top with Greg Luhan and zip hon Kirk just retired, but he'll be around.

And Patrick Seman is the interim dean.

And it takes a lot of levels to make things happen.

You know, somebody could wink and it happens.

And we live in a very big hierarchy.

But this was the fire that was in my belly.

Plus my mom got sick when I was taking courses at the School of Public Health.

So I'd go to the class, and then I'd get in the elevator and I visited her.

She had a rare skin disease.

It wasn't cancer.

which eventually got her, it was pemphigus, which I never heard of.

She had three roommates, and they were getting a new drug called Meticorten.

She's the only one who lived.

And I delayed a trip to Europe so I could be... She's the greatest mother in the world, particularly putting up with me and my nonsense.

So we zig back to today, what in the hell are we doing?

Global warming, pollution, wars, ice melting.

We need leaders to change things if you're gonna survive.

Imagine that... Do you share an apartment with somebody?

How many people live in there?

Three.

Okay, suppose three more moved in tonight.

Would it work?

And that's essentially what's happened.

and we need young people to turn the cart upside down.

And each one of these is population, smog.

I don't know where that is, but it's somebody on a bike riding in air pollution.

This poor bear, he doesn't know what he is gonna do when the ice melts.

And air pollution and water pollution.

These are big problems, and they all relate to what you design and where you locate it.

Now, we have a Health Industry Advisory Council.

A lot of students, they're worried about cross-hatching their section, and they don't come when it's announced by Ray and Cynthia that HIAC is gonna be here.

And these are leading heavy-hitter firms.

I hope you heard of 'em.

If you haven't, look 'em up when you get the presentation because they're all looking for smart people.

And when you go interview, also you interview them.

If you got a bunch of partners who are all over 70, you're gonna have a steady stream of funerals to go to.

But if you have some at 70, some at 60, some at 50 and 40, you're gonna have some future in the firm.

And a lot of firms are like the planet, they don't think ahead.

HDR is the biggest one every year.

Okay, I almost took this slide out, but it's a comparison.

We have to talk about disease strategies.

It's a comparison of Bulgaria and the US.

I didn't know that Bulgaria had some of the worst health indices until I looked it up.

I think it was yesterday.

And so, you wanna think, what are the diseases?

And what's the disease strategy?

Does it require a shot?

Are you gonna build 1000-bed hospital when they don't have enough money to operate in November?

Like when I was in Tunisia, President Bourguiba wanted to build a hospital in his hometown as a monument, 1000-bed hospital, and they were running outta budget in November because people would get upper respiratory illness.

So budgets are very important, and talking to the people.

Now, this is a projection to 2050, and this explains what is going on a lot politically with the population growth and where it is.

I've got another video that plays too long, but it starts in the beginning of time, maybe 5,000 years ago, and it builds up in population.

So, there's gonna be a different way of thinking.

And I'm throwing this out because it may affect your final study topic or your PhD dissertation.

And this isn't up to date or accurate.

I really lost track of how many students, but I can tell you in 56 years, you do the division, it's not that many per year or projects.

And I haven't been so busy, I haven't had a chance to update this drawing.

And these are our friends back again.

And you can see as I'm hopping around what some of the problems are.

We need leaders.

You don't wanna be a follower.

You have abilities.

You can have your own YouTube station, you can have your own PowerPoint, you can write articles, you can change that world.

That young lady who was talking about global warming, I don't think she's 13 years old.

I can't remember her name, I think she's from Scandinavia.

And this was a very good chart, that it shows you by 2050, we're over 9 billion people.

And that's what happens if three people decide to pull up at your place with suitcases tonight.

It's gonna ask, "Who gets the bathroom?"

Or you stand in the doorway with a weapon.

I'm not promoting that, but.

And here again, I was asked to give the university lecture, and my parents were here for that.

And I believe it was 1989, and it was titled, it was People Resources and Architecture: 21st Century Challenges.

Some of you come from countries that you experience this every day.

My first reaction when I came to Kansas State, my first teaching job, I got off the train at eight o'clock on a Sunday.

The sun had just gone down.

Where the hell is everybody?

And, you know they complain about Texas, it's the second most popular state, but nobody's here.

Take a ride in the country, look for 'em, report to me if you find them.

So, we gotta think globally at the same time.

You gotta pick up your trash, pick your socks up off the floor every day, but you've got to have something.

The planet needs a vision.

We're lacking a vision now, and everybody's buttin' heads with each other.

It needs a vision.

And architects have the ability through their drawing ability, computer ability of expressing visions.

One of the biggest sources of illness is waterborne diseases.

And maybe they're peeing into the river here and then drawing from it to drink, and they get sick.

And we take so much for granted.

Look at Jackson, Mississippi now.

So, water is a big resource problem.

I apologize for this slide, but the main point of the slide, look how much of the planet is desert.

And a desert doesn't necessarily mean sand and heat, it could be ice.

And the ice is melting.

So again, disease... a couple of times I show a slide twice because I think on every set of working drawings they ought to put causes of illness and death in the catchment area around this hospital.

Sometimes the architects or the students, they present a cancer hospital, and I said, "Have you talked to an oncologist?"

"Oh no, I didn't know we were supposed to."

They're all over the place.

We've got a health science center.

You pick up the phone, you can read.

And that's where architects have a certain arrogance, I think.

And I know I do, on the one hand 'cause you want to get the thing done, and by God, it's gotta be my way.

You saw me scooting around here and doing stuff.

No building necessary at all.

Vaccine, maybe under a tree.

Polio's coming back, by the way.

I was writing this article many years ago, by the way, my first article, and I'm not gonna mention the journal because this is gonna be on public tv, was rejected 24 times before being published.

"Infection in the Design of the Surgical Suite."

A very narrow topic.

Nobody was really interested in it.

Plus, who is this guy?

Man, what right does he have to write an article?

Well, it got published, I was elated.

You see this thick Eastern European neck, I just hung in there, and then it was easy.

It was easygoing.

So now you also don't only wanna publish, but you have videos.

there aren't enough seconds in the day to get your job done.

So I said my original title was "Push Health, Not Hospitals."

And my colleague sticks his head in the door and says, "What are you doing?"

I told him about this article.

He said, "That's a bad word to use, 'Push Health'."

He said, "Stress Health."

It took off.

It must have been published in 50 different journals.

Every time I've looked it up, it's another journal.

So this is one way of getting recognition.

That young lady in climate, she's got lifelong recognition for what she pulled off.

There's 70,000 students at A&M.

How do you stand out?

Then we did a project for on the way back from Salon, which I haven't even told you about yet.

We did a project for the World Health Organization.

This happens to be a photograph.

We looked high and low.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I could've stayed home, and maybe Ray or Zhipeng could have just flashed through.

You get 95% of what, just by looking at the pictures.

And I'm a big believer in that.

Think of the sewage coming down the hill after a rainstorm.

We are the bathrooms?

Most of the world lives this way.

I hope I'm not bringing you news from the front.

I gotta aim at this.

And we went to Geneva on the way back from Salon, Sri Lanka.

And I haven't told you about that yet, 'cause I told you, I'm moving back and forth like crazy.

And sometimes, chronology is boring.

I may be boring without, you know, without the... Then we did a plan for Ghana in 1974 with Dr. Alfred Charway.

And then we did a study in Hong Kong.

I took my daughter with me to Hong Kong.

That's a whole story in itself, I don't want to get off on that, but she's a lot of fun to travel with.

And anybody been to Hong Kong in the audience?

Man, makes Manhattan look like a little college station next to it.

And that's true of a lot of the...

So we're not only zigzagging... No, I'm going the wrong way.

Sorry.

Hong Kong could be, what's earth gonna be like in 2040?

What's earth gonna be like in November?

Look back at the last two or three years, it's been a rollercoaster.

How do you plan under these circumstances?

And, of course, there are a lot of political issues that come to play in Hong Kong because it was a British colony until about... What year did Hong Kong come out from under England?

Anybody recall?

Probably 20 years ago.

And things have changed there.

Then shifting, Cambodia.

Akira, the guy holding the mine was one of the people planting mines.

Then he got religion, and he decided to pull 'em out of the our earth.

And we got involved in a landmine facility with Julie Rogers.

And give credit to everyone.

You don't know who's gonna emerge, if it's just gonna be Frank Lloyd Wright.

It could be somebody in his... Well, what does it cost Frank Lloyd Wright to throw a crumb or to recognize someone?

That might be the spark that moves that person ahead.

And when you do it, it's a lot of work, but there's a lot of satisfaction.

And here you can see that picture.

We looked around for the picture for the Landmine Museum.

And this young lady did a very simple project, a variation of this got built, and I learned about, anybody see the movie of "The Killing Fields" about Pol Pot?

There's a lot happening on this earth.

But what's different, I learned at my late age, which you probably knew in the second grade, how to work with Wenjin Summer on a PowerPoint, simultaneously.

And that communication, she could have been in China or in Europe, and that's what you have available to you, those worldwide communications, which are changing everything.

So, Madison Lesmeister, who's coming in, she's in Zhipeng's class.

I had her in the third and fourth year, and she was a one of a group of students that won first prize in the university for a launch research project on surge facilities.

And she's currently working on telemedicine.

She did a telemedicine project in the studio, and she got some support from Joe Sprague and is just finishing that study.

Then we did a studio parallel to that on virtual care 'cause I felt as a result of Covid, and it was a result of thinking about the sphere of communications.

Like a group of a doctors in India look at imaging or x-rays or CAT scans at night while we sleep.

So the whole...

When we first got a tv...

I used to save my money, So on Saturdays for a quarter, we could go to see a movie.

I grew up during war, so what did we wanna see?

A war movie.

If we couldn't see a war movie, we would go to a cowboy movie.

If we couldn't a love story, yeah.

You know, it was a different mentality and different time.

And so, virtual healthcare, I had a case of gout while I was home with Covid, and I showed my doctor my toe on my iPhone, all kinds of new possibilities.

So we did a couple of projects on virtual care, and sometimes, there's something about architecture teaching where the students want to get bashed, "Oh, just throw me in the fire.

Tell me what's wrong with me."

Rather than say first, "This is maybe what's right."

And this is to encourage them to move on to the next step.

We all make mistakes.

And a prof has to be careful that...

The prof may be sent by God to make your lives miserable, but he's not God, or she's not God.

Sometimes, this thing doesn't...

This is one of my favorite projects.

What does it say?

"Children's Hospital for North Korea."

Professor Mann, you're working in North Korea.

He didn't have nuclear weapons at that time.

We do now, so I'm not picking on him.

I read about starvation in North Korea, and I had a student from South Korea, and I said, "Why don't you propose a children's hospital for North Korea?"

He did.

And he did this project.

And I think the project was brilliant, but the problem was he didn't go on and publish it, and I got off on other things that maybe an article that this guy in Panmunjom is reading, maybe that could stir or change things.

I don't wanna over estimate what we're capable of.

Yong-Shu Rei was his name.

And then I had a class made up of a lot of Indian and Chinese students, and we were out there at the...

I think this is my largest M Arch class.

And Reykon, I think you had a class of about 18.

I think I only had 15 or however many there are.

And I feel that it's very difficult to teach and to learn in that setting.

I'm a believer in one project that everybody works on with a firm so that you can orchestrate it and come out with a result.

Otherwise, everybody's scattered in different... That was a large reason why I wanted to teach unergraduate.

I just wanna do two projects a semester, one short, one individual, and one team of two.

But everybody in the class is working on the same project.

Then when Dr. Nagasawa, who I was his guest in Japan, I had such a great time with him, and then I invited him to come over here.

He wanted to see the Texas Medical Center.

So we're swimming in the Texas Medical Center pool about sunset before we were gonna get a a drink.

He used to go buy a fish tank.

He'd passed fish.

We went on a tour the next year and about four o'clock, he'd go like this because he looked at the fish, and he'd say, "These are pre-sushi."

He already... (George chuckles) And this guy is so much fun.

I was his guest and after three months, I came home, I said, "When would we start working?"

'Cause he was the kind of guy, he had 500 balls in the air, so I said, "Yeah, Sushi, we're getting more calls for people than we can produce."

And he says the same is true at the University of Tokyo.

So I said, "Why don't we start an association that jumpstarts other schools into this area?"

And the truth of the matter is oftentimes other schools, they frown on the health area.

They shouldn't frown when they go in the OR and the architect has forgotten to put in oxygen when they need it.

So they gotta run down to the drug store and get a couple of tanks worth of oxygen.

So anyhow, we were meeting here, and the three on the left are from Japan.

I won't identify.

Well, that's a story for another time, maybe I shouldn't.

You'll see me later under other circumstances.

And this student, he understood everything, and he always showed up when I was at the University of Tokyo.

He was always there.

He was among the 5% of the students who knew what was going on all the time.

How would you like to have a prof who goes, "What time is it?"

You wanna show some energy and body language and enthusiasm.

It's contagious.

And don't keep your nose in the book with those equations all the time.

Occasionally look up.

And body language counts, okay?

So this is, we created Gupha.

Now we had one fundamental difference.

I pronounced it Gupha, and Dr. Nagasawa pronounced it Gupha.

I always thought it was like Walt Disney's Goofy, but other than that we agreed on everything, and I didn't tell him that.

But he liked to call it Gupha.

And to me, goofing off is maybe a negative thing.

Anyhow, a little aside, we got together, these are classes of students, some from EYP, some from HKS, some from where I don't know.

And you want to go to the meetings, and there's a big meeting in San Antonio early in October.

October 10th, is it, Zhipeng?

(Zhipeng faintly speaking) Yeah, are you guys going down?

Commandeer a bar and show up and have a good time.

And this is Dr. Mack from Kenya.

We're working on the project.

Boy, this slide is really pixelated.

It wasn't when I put it in.

Then we got involved with Kaiser.

Kaiser Permanente is an HMO in California of about eight or 9 million people.

They have a huge building program, and Madison is looking into telemedicine with them.

And I'm gonna have... And this is a hub facility, and that young lady is from Nigeria.

And we all are wearing name tags.

And the new dean is promoting name tags.

That's the best thing you can do instead of standing around talking to somebody you've known for six years, "Oh, what's your name?"

And you walk up and say... You have this on your left side, and you hand out your right hand and shake their hands firmly.

Harold Adams passed away, and I had met him on the first floor, I was talking to him.

And this student came by and going to the Azimuth.

And I said, I'd like you to meet someone.

And she says, "I can't, I'm going to get coffee."

You never know, you never know.

If you, you know, stay home and hide in your bedroom, if you want to take courses that way.

And this is Harold Adams.

He passed away.

He and Staggs were the most accomplished in terms of breadth and depths of projects.

He ran RTKL.

He got to be president of RTKL.

Rogers, Taliferro, Kostritsky and Lamb.

When he was 28 years old.

And the first thing he did, they were going bankrupt, so he confiscated all the credit cards from the partners.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that scene.

And he pulled them out.

Architects are notorious bad businessmen, business ladies.

Okay, what do you think we're looking at here?

We're looking at the breast center project that Ray worked on, and I, and some really sharp students.

And the pink ladies, they've all had breast cancer.

I don't know, do they have something like this in China?

I'm just curious.

Pou?

- [Pou] I'm not sure.

- Yeah, okay.

But it's a big thing, and it makes them feel better.

They have these events, and they look nice, and they have something in common.

So occasionally, breast cancer occurs in men.

So guys, just cause you got boots on doesn't mean you're immune.

None of us get out of this place alive.

The trick is to stay as long as you can.

They were so excited about these students.

The students did a wonderful job.

This is General Carlton, three-star Air Force general.

His father was a four-star Air Force general.

He's the first graduating class of the Air Force Academy class of '69.

I remember 'cause I'm class of '59.

He's an MD and a surgeon.

And he helped us on the design of a number of projects, surge hospitals.

And this is a hospital for Roatan.

And Lance, are you gonna roll that video?

I guess not.

(chuckles) So, the show must go on.

We had- - [Lance] I can play it on (faintly speaking) if you want.

- Yeah, oh, okay, sure.

We asked for the Bush library.

We had about 30 people come from Honduras.

It was an exciting thing.

This business, I'm gonna present at 2:00, you present at 3:00, I go home.

I get there at 2:00, I present, and I go home.

That's baloney.

That doesn't work.

That's not learning.

You might as well take the thing by correspondence.

All right, Lance fire away.

But some of this is up to the prof to orchestrate, and the prof has to have some incentives.

The incentive for me was I always wanted to do it better than I did it last time.

And I could have retired when I was 55 sitting on the beach in Miami with a margarita every night.

I've been looking at this margarita now for four years.

You know, it just.

- [Reporter] After design was presented for a new hospital on Roaton Island.

- The hospital that we have only have 38 beds.

And we have a population of like 85 to 90,000 people.

- [Reporter] The current hospital is outdated and does not have the resources it needs to- - Sorry, there's so much I wanna share with you.

Okay, I'm showing my fraternity brothers.

It's like something Romieniec would do.

It's 1957, if you want to see me with hair, I was getting ready to laugh.

I was always laughing.

Before.

everything was funny to me.

I mean, I can't tell you, I had a disease.

It was called laughing gas or something.

Well, about six years ago, this guy was a year ahead of me, got in touch with me, Sid Gruber.

And he's a pediatrician, and he's on the board of a hospital for Honduras.

You wanna read about some messes politically in Honduras, it's unbelievable.

Anyhow, he got us to do the project in Honduras, and that's what we were presenting at the Bush Library.

It started getting built, but I haven't been able to keep up with it.

I find I'm getting a little bit slower on the draw than I was.

As I say, you should have seen me when I was 70.

And so, there are things to follow up with Now, this isn't advancing.

All right, we're stuck looking at my fraternity brothers, and maybe I can advance this on this computer.

I can stand here, or maybe, how about if you do that for me, okay?

So this is the group afterwards, and here is Zhipeng.

And Zhipeng is the future of the health center.

He and Xuemei, okay?

And Harold Adams is here.

He was in the class that did Chicago Children's Hospital.

We all flew out.

Jason Shore.

And these are folks from all over.

It was a great satisfaction to do that project.

Okay, if we could just, maybe I'll turn.

They used to have a monitor where I could see.

So why don't we keep going, Cynthia.

And this is a happy group.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mack is in the process of losing his eyesight.

And he was telling me he grew up in Kenya, that they would come around, wake them up early in the morning, and if he didn't want to go pick coffee, they'd beat him.

No money.

And he worked his way through medical school.

And so you wanna be around with people.

This would've been an empty afternoon if I was standing in front of a mirror admiring myself, but I'm talking to you, and I'm watching facial reactions go on.

And this is one of the good moments.

And I've known Zhipeng since, when did you start at A&M?

- [Zhipeng] 2004.

- 2004.

- [Zhipeng] 18 years.

- And he's got a lot of brains.

I'd keep an eye on him.

He may live for another 40 years or so.

Maybe 50.

- I hope so.

- Yeah, I hope so too.

Next slide.

1974, I'm taking the bus from my parents in New Jersey, and I see the World Trade Center.

I'm gonna go to a World Trade Center.

I've never been there.

I didn't know what was gonna happen.

I get on the elevator, I get off at the 55th floor, it says World Trade Institute.

And I go in and try to find out what it's all about.

Next thing I know...

I was teaching at Columbia, that's right.

We were doing a conference for health facility planning in the developing countries.

Sort of my big basic interests since Imphal, India.

And this was the brochure, it was on December 4th, 1975.

It came down 2001, it came down 26 years later.

Who would've thought it would come down?

And we'd had a conference, I've got the program somewhere.

And you can organize conferences on topics like behavioral health or whatever you happen to be interested in.

Next slide.

I think we're gonna roll through.

But this is, I used to say to my daughter, "Expect the unexpected."

And she said, "How can you expect the unexpected?"

Well, this got to be the title of a presentation, "Expect the Unexpected."

It's another example of, I would be in the swimming pool, and my friend, second family was swimming there, and he was about, Lolo, he's four years old, and I'd say, "Lolo, swim in the dry part of the pool."

So I was giving him his first lesson in duplicity of being impossible.

Let's roll.

Then we did an ambulance because I got broadsided on by IHOP by a student delivering a pizza.

And I had the bumpiest ride of my life.

It may have been in that very ambulance.

Why is it written backwards?

Why is the word ambulance written backwards?

Anybody?

One minute.

Okay, let's show it as a movie.

As we designed ambulances like a U-Haul, Then we did a safe school bus.

This was also one of the most gratifying project.

My mother used to say to me, "This guy walks in.

I taught his mother, I taught his father, and 20 years later he walks into my class.

He's the only one who got it published.

He sent it to the "Dallas Morning News" safe school bus."

And then we went into Surge Hospitals.

Keep rolling.

The Surgeon General came down here because of Dr. Carmona, and we had a big conference.

Then we revisited surge hospitals.

What are you doing in an emergency?

Can you see why I'm seesawing back and forth through time so that you wanna remember this as crazy ideas that can reach fruition.

Keep rolling, keep rolling, keep rolling.

Covid.

Okay, our life expectancy has gone down for the first time in years.

Is that it?

- [woman] I think that's it.

- Oh, okay.

Do we have time for a few questions?

- [Lance] We have a few minutes for questions.

- Yeah, thank you for listening, guys.

And, you know, there's so many things I haven't told you.

And before you go, you ought to look at this magazine, or you give me your business card, and I'll email it to you.

I wanna see the women, not the girls.

And I want see the men, not the little boys.

- Well, let's thank George.

(audience applauding) - I wanna thank you, and I give the students a hand.

I'm sorry, my generation left this place such a mess for you guys.

But you can straighten it out real fast Get a business card and start, You stand on Highway 6 and just hand 'em out.

(laughs) Have fun, laugh.

It's the best medicine, you know.

Before you turn around, you'll be 40 years old, and you say, "What happened?"

'Cause you had to take this course and that course and do this exam.

Any other questions?

- I believe our time has ended.

- If any of you could help me take the stuff out to my car, I would appreciate it.

- George, thank you- - Thank you.

- for kicking things off for us this semester.

- Yeah, hey guys, this is a wealth of knowledge here.

You couldn't have better hands.

There's so much coming at the center from so many conflicting areas.

So get on with your agenda and interact with one another.

You may wanna start a club or the former CHAI presidents.

Is there a CHAI officer here?

The former CHAI presidents, I told them that they ought to get together and have a group.

A lot of 'em are in Dallas, and we've got one here.

Good luck.

Have fun.

Enjoy the weekend and laugh occasionally, you know, it's good for your insides.

(laughs) (all applauding)