ABSTRACT
I was born to Turkish parents in Cyprus, a Mediterranean island located south of Turkey. I left the island for the first time in 1950 when I was eighteen years old and went to Turkey to study medicine at Ankara University. I graduated in June 1956 and in early February 1957 I came to the United States with only fifteen dollars in my pocket and my violin under my arm. In Ankara, besides attending medical school, I was a member of an amateur orchestra that performed concerts now and then. Before leaving Turkey I had secured an internship position at the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Chicago, where I began working as soon as I arrived. I was part of what was nicknamed the “brain drain” in the 1950s, when many young physicians from foreign countries were lured to the United States to compensate for the shortage of medical professionals there.
