An Absolute Duty
When Thom Mayer M.D.’77 enrolled at Hanover College in Indiana on a football scholarship, he had no career aspirations in medicine. In fact, he had no career aspirations at all, beyond riding football as far as it could take him.
“They said, ‘You have to choose a major,’ and I said, ‘What?’ I thought I was majoring in football,” says Mayer. “All I knew about doctors was that they gave me a physical so I could play and sewed me up when I got lacerations. Medical school was the furthest thing from my mind.”
That changed when his biology teacher suggested he consider a career in medicine, just in case the football thing did not work out. Mayer began taking pre-med classes and considering his options. One evening at the pool where he worked as a lifeguard after pouring concrete all day, a physician whose child Mayer taught to swim gave him some further advice. “He said, ‘If you can get into Duke, you should go, because it is the best medical school in the country,’” Mayer recalls. “I didn’t even know where Duke was. I thought it was in Maryland.”
But he applied and made the drive from Indiana. And, like so many others, that first visit to Duke changed his life. Everyone he encountered was warm, welcoming, and encouraging, and he made up his mind to attend Duke if possible.
