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Dare I Lie Down: Nick Tedesco, MSII

Not this week nor this month dare I lie down/In languor under lime trees or smooth smile.../Strong meats be all my hunger; my renown/Be the clean beauty of speed and pride of style./Cold winds encountered on the racing Down/Shall thrill my heated bareness; but awhile/None else may meet me till I wear my crown. - Wilfred Owen

Memories of Maine float like rich butter-bubbles to the surface of Nick Tedesco’s childhood: A bird caught somehow in the basement of the house in Waterville; fresh cement drying to make high steps passable to a two-year-old; his older brother popping Nick’s favorite ball; a private backyard with flowers all around and his mother’s quiet presence; the beauty of Boothbay Harbor.  

The family moved often, from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Ohio, to Connecticut, to Waterville, Maine, then back to Erie for a spell. Dr. Tedesco completed his residency and fellowships to become a D.O. ophthalmologist, and Nick nestled in the cocoon of a large extended family. Italian, of course, so that Nick felt close to every relative his whole life. Cousins like brothers and all that.

They bought Nintendo when it first came out, $89.99, all in dimes, and for a few months Nick stayed inside with Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong. That was about the only time in his life that he was not active outside. Ever since, he has pushed himself to the limit physically, his quiet memories of Maine a distant garden somewhere beyond the gridirons and golf greens he has torn. Now is no time to rest. He dare not lie down.

Siding and Shingles in the Trees

Nick doesn’t do anything halfway. If he participates, chances are good that it will at least border on the professional. As the middle brother in a close Italian family, Nick cut his teeth on good-natured competition, which he always took to its highest level. “We built three tree-houses,” he recalls, “and each one was bigger and better than the last. Our final house had real windows, shingles, and siding, which my Dad helped us put up.”

He loved soccer, baseball, golf, football, and basketball, and accrued enough scrapes and scars in skateboarding, BMX bike jumping, and tree climbing to earn a fistful of purple hearts. “I can’t believe I’m still alive!” he says, laughing explosively and shaking his head, “Kids can survive things that would kill a grown man.”

Young Grizzle

There is intensity behind Nick’s words like the charisma of a grizzled football coach, as if every sentence is the start of a pep talk before the big game. He pounces on particular phrases and sends them spinning across the table, chews his words and spits them like sunflower seeds, turns normal expressions on end so that a pedestrian conversation becomes genuinely funny.

“I was all set to go to Cathedral Prep for high school in Erie,” Nick says, hammering his words, “but my Dad went to a Conference in Florida and asked if I wanted to golf at Saddlebrook Resort for a week. When I was there, we found out that the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy was affiliated with the resort. My Dad asked if I wanted to go to high school there. ‘Do you want to do this?’ he asked. ‘Hell yes!’ I said. I was 14-years old. What 14-year old wouldn’t want to play golf 24-7?”

But the Academy wasn’t everything Nick thought it would be. “It was expensive and elitist,” he snarls, “and my classmates were cruising to school in their Porsches and Ferraris while I had my Chrysler Sebring. Whee.” But the biggest problem was Nick’s smallness. “I didn’t hit puberty till I was 17,” he says, “and they had me rooming with five seniors as a freshman. Bad idea.”

Students went to class in the morning, then golfed all afternoon. The constant barrage of golf was sickly sweet, like dessert all the time. Nick’s golf game suffered. “I was burned out,” he says, “There was too much grinding, too much stress. I was supposed to be the next Arnold Palmer, and I didn’t measure up to expectations.”

Blessing in Disguise

One day during his sophomore year, Nick suffered a freak injury. “I sneezed and tore my rhomboid,” he says, “only about three people in the history of the earth have done that, Sammy Sosa being one of them. I couldn’t walk without stooping, I couldn’t even sit in class.” For eight months he couldn’t walk right, let alone play golf. “I was like, ‘I suck, and I’m sick of playing it,’” he recalls. It was probably the low point of his young life.

But his torn rhomboid had a silver lining. “It actually whetted my appetite to play golf again,” he admits, “and when I was finally cleared to play, I was out of my mind.” He played at the Florida State Invitational at World Woods in Brooksville, Florida. “I shot a 73 on day one and a 74 on day two, and won by two strokes,” he says.

“Then I played at the Nike Winternational at Pinehurst on a day with wind gusts over 80mph. Balls were going everywhere. I shot a 75 and had a 6-stroke lead after the first round. It was ridiculous – all luck. Then I shot a million in the second round. It was so hard to club. I couldn’t hit a green to save my life.” Still, the conditions were brutal enough that Nick finished third overall. His game improved throughout his junior and senior years, and when his growth spurt finally kicked in, Nick shot up to a lanky six feet.  

Academics were a mild distraction. “I did well,” Nick says, “good enough to be valedictorian of my class.” He pauses and confesses, “Of course, there were only 14 kids in my class.” Then he guffaws and says, “I was valedictorian of my high school class, and I barely made the top 10%!” It was a unique scenario, no doubt.

All the Pretty Courses

Nick was recruited by several big-name Division I golf programs, but after visiting a certain large college in Indiana, Nick was turned off. “I hated it,” he says vehemently, “the campus was sweet, but the people were ridiculously pretentious. The admissions staff were elitist. It was a big disappointment. They treated me like a number rather than a real person.” He knocked the other schools off of his list, and felt like he needed to wash his hands of golf. He wasn’t sure if he would fit in anywhere.

Then another school came knocking. “I decided to go to Clemson in South Carolina,” Nick says. “It was still a jock-school in the South with a great sports program you could root for, and the people were amazing – they acted like they wanted me there. Plus, Clemson has a gorgeous campus. It has one of the greenest campuses in the country.” For a lifetime golfer, it was like living on a fairway. 

With an eye for beauty, years of golfing experience, and detail-oriented to the point of obsession, Nick decided to major in Landscape Architecture. Designing golf courses seemed like the perfect combination of interests. He was good at it, too, but the program seemed super-specialized and too artsy for Nick. “I was more of an engineer in my designs,” he says, “I was the only one who handed in legal designs that were up to specs.”

His professor gave him bad marks – “Not creative enough” – which burned Nick to no end. “Well, I was as creative as I could be within the Americans with Disabilities Act!” he’d retort. The teacher said that the engineers could worry about that. Nick shakes his head, mystified: “Why would you design something that the engineers are going to tear apart anyway?”

His five-year program began to look a little tedious. “It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, anyway,” Nick says, “and I should have realized that all of my spur-of-the-moment decisions were bad ones – remember the Golf Academy? - so I decided to pick up some pre-med courses, which I absolutely loved. After the first class I was like, ‘This is awesome! What was I thinking before?’ ” He took 19 credits a semester, 14 over the summer, essentially double-majored, and then decided that it was time to start playing golf again. Why rest?

A Barbaric “Yoink!”

“I had friends at Clemson who played golf,” Nick says, “and I began to play rounds with them, just for fun. I played almost every day, and got really good really fast. One day, I tied the course record for the front nine with a 32. I was shooting 34 or 35 consistently. I was like, ‘You know what, I think I’ll try for the U.S. Open.’ I wasn’t even on the team.”

Nick had a personality conflict with the Clemson golf coach, and had decided not to join the squad. But his competitive nature went ballistic when he started shooting sweet rounds, and with a chip on his shoulder he blazed through private practices motivated to out-perform the official players. He was at his peak just a month or so before the trials, and was lifting a barbell in the weight room when something happened.

“I felt this ‘Yoink!’ in my wrist,” he recalls, “and I dropped the bar. I’m still not sure what happened – may have torn a flexor. All I know is I couldn’t swing a club for over a week.” Losing so much green time in a game that demands perfect muscle-memory was devastating. “I taped my wrist every day and finally just went out and played,” he says, “but I had lost that edge. I had slipped, and I couldn’t get it back. There was no time left.”

During the qualifying round for the U.S. Open, Nick bogeyed his first hole and double bogeyed the third. Game over he thought. Nevertheless, Nick eventually fought back to 1-under by the 16th hole. He stepped up to the 16th tee knowing that three pars to close his round would be enough to qualify. He then promptly hit two balls just barely out of bounds. “They were lying there, sitting pretty in the grass,” he moans, “just six inches out, but I had to take the strokes. That was game over. I couldn’t come back from that.”

After the tournament, he had to take time off to let his wrist heal. It took four months to mend, and during that time he reflected on his life. Look how hard I worked for one year, he thought, and I threw it all away on just one hole. He has only played golf infrequently since then, and every once in a while the brilliance returns for a round. But Nick can’t stomach mediocrity. “I was good then,” he says, “I was good.”

No Regrets

Nick focused on academics his junior and senior years, and realized that he had no regrets about giving up golf. “Even if I had become a pro golfer, I would have realized that I had thrown my mind away,” he says, “today I still have ‘what-ifs’ about golf, but no regrets.”
To fill the void, another of his loves resurfaced in a way that shows how determined Nick can be when he thinks he has underutilized a talent.

He had played football as a youth, and had always been the fastest kid on the field. One time his team from Erie played a powerhouse team in Pittsburgh. By the end of the game, Nick had six touchdowns. “We had an end-around play that we kept using,” he recalls, “and the first time I took the ball 77 yards to the house. Then I took it 86 yards. By the time the game was over, I had three rushing and three receiving touchdowns, the shortest was 56 yards. All the rushing TD’s were end-arounds. The defense never found a solution. That game made me realize, ‘Hey, I’m pretty fast,’” Nick smiles, “so then I played golf. What? I was born to be a football player, but I’m out playing golf. Intensity and everything.”

At Clemson, Nick was fired up to play intramurals. He teamed with a stellar quarterback, and as a passing combination they were unstoppable. “It was like the Adam and Nick show,” he laughs, “there were 120 intramural football teams, and we went undefeated in the regular season. That’s saying something at Clemson.” He would have left it at that, but one night when he was out at a bar, a random guy came up to him. The man looked at Nick and said, “Hey, I remember you! You’re the fastest guy I’ve ever seen!” That’s when Nick realized that he had something special.

He decided to go full throttle and try out for the Clemson football team. After talking to the coaches about how to prepare, Nick went to the gym and put on 40 lbs. in four months. He used keg tubs as cones for agility workouts. When the time for tryouts came, he ran the fastest 40-yard dash of the day – a time that was good enough for third fastest on the entire team. Impressed, the Clemson coaches offered him a position on the team that afternoon. The catch? He would have to change his major. Nick thought about it and turned them down.

“I’ve got some ‘what-ifs’ about that decision, too,” Nick says, “but I think it was the right call. I probably could have started eventually on special teams. I got to know a lot of football players, and I decided that it was fun, but I didn’t really want to be like that.” He took a few steps back from athletics while he figured out where to focus his energies. The decision was a no-brainer.

The Pursuit of Excellence

Nick turned his intensity to medical studies and blistered through classes and the MCAT. “I’d thought about becoming a doctor when I was younger,” he says, “and not just because my dad is a doc. Everything about medicine and the human body intrigues me. As an athlete, I know how bad it is to feel bad, and how great it is to feel good. I want to help other people to get them back to feeling good and functioning as a whole person.”

Since he was already in top condition from football, Nick decided to get his trainer’s license at a local Gold’s gym. The experience really whetted his appetite to help other people, and it reinforced osteopathic principles. “As a trainer, you have to motivate people who are not necessarily motivated themselves,” Nick reflects, “You’ve got to talk to them about eating habits, lifestyle choices, and preventative health, and then design a program that suits their life. You are essentially their counselor: you have to empathize with them, motivate them, and encourage them with positive reinforcement and a fresh perspective.”
 
Nick interviewed at several osteopathic schools, but chose UNECOM because he was treated as an individual, not as a pedigree. “At another school, the interviewers asked me, ‘How’s your dad? How’s your brother? How’s your uncle?’” Nick grimaces. “So I asked them, ‘Is there anything you want to know about me?’ And they really didn’t care.”

Medical school has been more of a challenge than Nick anticipated. “Academics were a breeze for me in undergrad,” he says, “but on the first day of Gross Anatomy here, I read for three hours and thought I’d get ahead. The next day, I came in and realized I was behind. That night I called my brother and said, ‘This can’t be done!’ I had to really buckle down.” He likes the challenge, though, and realizes that he has stepped into a pretty deep pool. “There is more knowledge out there than I can ever learn,” he says, “It is not the attainment, but the pursuit of excellence. That is what medicine has given me a chance to do.”

Till I Wear My Crown

Nick expects people to misjudge him initially. “Most people think, ‘You’re the most arrogant prick I’ve ever seen!’ when they first meet me,” he says. “Heck, I would think I’m a jerk, too. But give me ten minutes and I’ll change your mind.” He prides himself on spanning cliques and basing friendships on common ground. “Everyone has something in common,” Nick observes, “we can base our entire relationship on that. I don’t judge anyone.”   

He keeps busy. Nick has played keyboard and rhythm guitar in the second-year band, continues to work out religiously at the gym – “It keeps my rhomboid in line” – and used his artistic talents to design the logo for last year’s Orientation. He loves competition of any sort, and was happy to participate in the annual Chili Bowl intramural football game between the first and second-year classes.

Nick would like to become an orthopedic surgeon, since he loves osteopathy and believes that he can make a huge difference in people’s lives in that specialty. “I have a friend who is into non-surgical orthopedics,” Nick says. “More often than not he can heal the person prior to surgery, just using osteopathic techniques.”

With his brash persona and a full plate of activity, Nick conveys a fearless excitement in everything he does. According to Nick, all of it is for the greater good. “I fight through pain,” he says, “I don’t want anyone to cater to me, but I want to cater to everyone.” 

Which is why he won’t lie down.

-Steve Smith, RSAS

Nick Tedesco plays at the UNECOM Spring Fling in 2006 (wearing his crown.) Photo courtesy Nick Tedesco

UNE/COM News and Events

Jake Budny, MSII, UNECOM Student Government Association President, shakes hands with Dr. John Strosnider after presenting him with a UNE hoody. Photo by Steve Smith, RSAS

AOA President Strosnider Receives Warm Welcome During Cold Snap

Maine shivered the length of its coast as an Arctic air mass skated past during the first few weeks of February. The cold snap caused even the most stolid Mainers to button up their coats and bundle beneath quilts.  

It was no surprise, then, that John Strosnider, D.O., president of the American Osteopathic Association, appreciated the University of New England hoody presented to him by Student Government President Jacob Budny, MSII. “I think I’ll put this to good use here,” Strosnider joked during a breakfast meeting with UNECOM student leaders.

It was cold, no doubt about it. With temperatures barely above zero and a wind that worried like a pack of wolves, anyone might be forgiven for wanting to leave Maine as quickly as possible.

Not John Strosnider. He stayed for several days, meeting with students, faculty, and administrators at UNECOM before joining physicians from across the state at the Maine Osteopathic Association’s Mid-Winter Conference in South Portland.

A solid cohort of student leaders battled frigid temperatures and pre-dawn drowsiness to join Dr. Strosnider for breakfast on Thursday morning. Dean Boyd Buser introduced Strosnider, then left the room to allow a free give-and-take between students and the President.

Strosnider spoke at length about the strengths of osteopathy in the United States and the challenges the profession faces in the future. A number of students asked pertinent questions, and several students stayed after to catch the President’s ear with additional questions or concerns.

At noon, President Strosnider spoke to the student body about ways to promote awareness of osteopathy in the community. He was pleased to learn about “D.O. Day at Home,” a student-organized educational event aimed at college and high school students. The plan is for current UNECOM students to return to their undergraduate or high school alma maters to give presentations on osteopathy and distribute relevant literature.

Strosnider earned a good chuckle from the audience when he related the story about how he became involved in the AOA as a young man. He had seen a flier for the annual AOA Board of Directors meeting, the story goes, which was going to be held in the Bahamas. As a young physician fresh from residency, Strosnider struggled to make ends meet and was incensed that the AOA leadership appeared to be living off the fat of the land. He scraped together his AOA membership dues and sent them in with a scathing letter that denounced the AOA Board of Directors for their prodigal lifestyle.

A few months later, Strosnider was surprised when a huge man entered his waiting room and demanded to see him: “Did you write this letter?” the man asked as he waved a paper in the air. Dr. Strosnider - recognizing his incendiary letter - gulped as the man towered over him, “Yes I did,” he stammered, “and I meant every word of it!”

The man, it turned out, was on the AOA Board of Directors, and he wanted to correct Strosnider’s misconceptions about the conference. The Bahamas, Strosnider learned, was cheaper than any other location that the AOA could get in the United States, and every Board member had flown coach, except for the giant standing in front of him, who had personally paid extra to squeeze into first class.

Strosnider chatted further with the man, and eventually the two became good friends. The other physician, for his part, encouraged Strosnider to become involved in the AOA leadership, since he clearly had an interest in the profession and in the well-being of its practitioners. The rest, as they say, is history.

The globe-trotting President left Maine after the MOA Conference, but will no doubt remember the cold weather and warm reception he experienced at Maine’s only medical school.

He’s got the hoody to prove it.

-Steve Smith, RSAS  

Below are photos from Dr. Strosnider's breakfast with UNECOM student leaders:

 
UNECOM Dean Boyd Buser, D.O., introduces Dr. Strosnider to the students.

MS IIs Matt Pomykala and Steph Ng (center) give Dr. Strosnider their attention.

L-R Chris Blomberg, MSI, Rima Zahr, MSI, Jake Budny, MSII, and Ryan Murphy, MSI.

MSIIs L-R Steph Ng, Peter Kang, Josh Morrison, Nick Tedesco, Kerry Sternheim, Lisa Wuerdeman, and Shawn St. Marie.

Students give their best efforts after a late night, early morning, and biting wind.

A coffee morning.

A warm round of applause on a cold day.

Dental Hygiene Students Offer Cleanings

University of New England Dental Hygiene Students need patients. What do you get out of the equation? A reduced-cost cleaning and sparkling teeth! Cost is $5 for a cleaning and $4 for X-rays. These services are not available in the summer.

View the website at: /chp/dental/clinic.asp or visit the Dental Hygiene Clinic on the Westbrook College Campus, or call 221-4900 for more info.

Current Students

L-R MSIIs Mike Jackson, Liz Williams, Ellen Bursch, and Josh Mularella on the Skating Pond off of Pool Road. Photo by Anne Newbold, MSII

Jack Ketchum: A Champion of UNECOM

You’ve gone to study at Ketchum Library. You wish the undergrads would evaporate -they take up the study cubicles and rooms. You know every inch of this facility because of the countless hours you spend there. Could Sea Star Market deliver to the library? [Editorial note: the library does not allow food - food should be consumed outside of the library.] Could we get a coffee shop in the lobby? Why don’t the printers work faster?

Within the last year, Jack Ketchum - fighting a long battle with Parkinson’s disease - passed on. His library lives on, but I was surprised to learn that we owe ole’ Jack more than just a couple of floors full of hardbound books, study cubicles, and journals. Jack’s ties with the library run deep; in fact, he approved the original loan for the building to the Franciscan Fathers of Maine in the late 1960s while he was a securities analyst and portfolio manager at Union Mutual Life Insurance. This was long before he became president of St. Francis in the mid 1970s as the first lay person to be named president of the college. 

Let’s track back in time. It is the late 1970s and Saint Francis College is a small, struggling undergraduate school with a few hundred students. At its low point in 1976, the enrollment is three hundred and fifty students - smaller than most high schools. We had just emerged from a recession and the Vietnam War is fresh on our minds.

Saint Francis is run by the Franciscan Fathers and they are struggling to pay the bills. Jack Ketchum is an insurance and banking executive. Ketchum originally came to Maine to be a farmer. He bought a family farm in Kennebunk in 1959, and went into the commercial poultry and sheep business. His farming interest was a detour from his business management training at Procter and Gamble, after he had studied business at Dartmouth and UNH. 
 
Ketchum then went back into the business world in Maine, becoming vice president of Union Mutual Life Insurance Company as an investment specialist. Saint Francis College was not originally on the list of proposed colleges for the New England School of Osteopathic Medicine until the friendship between Dr. William F. Bergen of Kennebunk and Jack Ketchum. In fact, William F. Bergen, D.O., was Jack’s neighbor.

The timing was right as Saint Francis was preparing to embark on new paths. The New England Foundation for Osteopathic Medicine (NEFOM) was the force behind starting a new osteopathic medical school. Jack set up a landlord-tenant relationship between the NEFOM and Saint Francis College resulting in two corporations. These two corporations eventually merged. Saint Francis was on such unstable footing at that point that NEFOM needed a plan in the event that the college could no longer keep its doors open. Other Maine colleges had to close their doors. This was the case with Nasson College which ceased operation in 1983, and Ricker College which closed in 1978. 

After Jack’s time as president, small colleges in Maine were still specializing to survive- providing a more work-related education with fewer broad scope liberal arts classes. Nearby Unity College chose to focus on environmental education. Westbrook College was absorbed into the University of New England in the early 1990s and thus survived with the original St. Francis College. Integrating the Westbrook College Campus provided room for the College of Health Professions. The University of New England also chose to focus on marine science with a cutting edge marine science center located right on the Saco River.

Back in the late 1970s, Ketchum and others were fighting an uphill battle to simply graduate the first class. In the beginning, a major hurdle was simply raising enough money to build the necessary facilities to educate thirty-six medical students. To make up a third of the cost of the medical school building not covered by the strong support of the New England Osteopathic physicians, Jack Ketchum tapped his resources as a farmer and secured a loan through the Farmers Home Administration for $350,000. 

Ketchum patched together success of the medical school based on attitudes, which he felt to be immensely important. “If you think you can succeed, you will succeed,” Ketchum is quoted as saying. With 122 acres on the Saco River, the new College of Osteopathic Medicine at Saint Francis was poised for growth, but at the beginning, nothing was written in stone.

Classes started after the Oct. 1 start of the Federal fiscal year to allow time for the school to receive important federal funding. Furniture was moved all around the renovated 18th century farmhouse to allow for classes and meetings to take place. Jack took calculated risks to ensure survival of the college, and was known to ask faculty to work without pay for a month or two to ensure the school’s survival. Jack practiced what he preached; he never asked faculty to do things that he wasn’t willing or able to do himself. If the school went without air conditioning, Jack went without air conditioning in his office.

The faculty bonded together, and many of the faculty who chartered the school in 1978 or were hired before the first class graduated are still teaching after twenty-five classes of D.O.s have graduated. While Jack had immense talent, he realized his limitations. He was a “turnaround artist,” a finance specialist and not a man of significant academic experience. Jack hired and groomed Dr. Charles Ford to be the school’s next president. 

Maine provided a regional stability in Osteopathic Medicine with 193 practicing osteopaths at the time of the College's start; the most in the six state region. Dr. Carmen Pettapiece, of the Osteopathic Hospital of Maine, donated the first financial contribution toward the establishment of UNECOM. Most of the osteopathic physicians in Maine were anchored at the nearby Osteopathic Hospital of Maine, now Brighton Medical Center - a part of Maine Medical Center.

At the time of his resignation, the board of trustees credited Ketchum with being responsible “more than anyone else we know,” with the existence and success of the University of New England. After the end of his presidency, Jack continued to lend his expertise in financial and corporate planning. 

“He had a vision that was ahead of his time,” stated Bruce Bates, D.O., UNECOM professor and chair of the department of family practice. From thirty-six students in the first medical school class, UNECOM now enrolls approximately 125 medical students annually.  The College of Health Professions has grown to include Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Nurse Anesthetia, Dental Hygiene, and Social Work. The University has also recently established a new college of Pharmacy. In addition, the University of New England now educates over one thousand five hundred talented undergraduate students.

In our busy world as medical students, it is important to understand our history and to remember important people who took risks and achieved the impossible to establish a place for us to succeed.

-Dan Sheps, MSII

For page two of The COMmunicator, click here.

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Please send comments, suggestions, submissions, or warm chocolate chip cookies to Steve Smith at ssmith12@une.edu