Thank you so much Ed. You have successfully appropriated my Good Citizenship Award. In all fairness, you and this tolerant assemblage should know that I lost the election for that award by a vote of twentytwo to two. My best friend voted for me and I voted for myself. The class was outraged when the teacher decided to “give it to the boy who came in second.” This was their first exposure to a fixed election (Florida in 2000 was their second). I can only hope that the proceedings that led to the Kober Medal were more wholesome. But thank you Ed. It is true that I forced you to pay for my lunch as well as your own when I first met you. You were so innocent then. It was impossible to avoid taking advantage of you. But despite my desperate desire to save a nickel, you emerged from an impecunious cocoon to be a fine clinical investigator and a true master of academic medicine. And now the tables are turned. The quality and I am afraid the quantity of my lunch now depend entirely on you. This is not a time in my life to irritate you. But I wouldn’t anyway because I am desperately proud of your accomplishments in the lab, in the clinic, and now in the office. To be introduced by you as a peer of this distinguished audience is an honor that I will never forget. President Olefsky, members of the council who have chosen me for this great honor, and fellow members of the Association of American Physicians: I find it difficult to summon the words that I need to thank you for the Kober medal, and I dedicate this wonderful occasion to the memory of Stanley Korsmeyer who would have eagerly shared this thrilling moment with me. I have been coming to this meeting for 50 years. Decades ago I sat in the tobacco smoke–filled Steel Pier Theatre (which later burst into spontaneous combustion) listening to the plenary papers delivered at the annual meeting of the ASCI and AAP and noticing from the far back rows of that miserably uncomfortable gathering place the roped-off area in the front center where the lions of academic medicine were loosely caged. I remember as though it were yesterday when I was elected to membership in the ASCI. I saw my name on the blackboard and ran out to Haddon Hall to find a phone and tell my dear wife, Jean, that my career in academic medicine had actually amounted to something. Her response was memorable:“Don’t forget the Steiff animals for the children.” Jean has always been my practical lodestone.