Greg Sanders:
CLASS OF 1973
Issaquah High SchoolClass of 1973
Issaquah, WA
Greg's Story
Well, it’s been a hell of a journey so far. I hope my story is a fun read for Issy ‘73 folks (and not food for the internet mongers). Please write your story, it’ll make all of this much more interesting. As our friend in Maple Valley sings: All of these lines across my face tell you the story of whom I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I’ve got to where I am….the only connection I’ve had to anyone was at the ‘93 reunion. By then, I was in practice for a year. I’d wasted a couple of years at the UW, run an open air fruit/veggie stand on University Ave., worked graveyard at Gais bakery, ran 3 big rooming houses back when Seattle was innocent like Issaquah (before “the money” spoiled almost everything). I hitched 3 rides on Boeing delivery jets (thanks dad!) to India, Nepal/Tibet. After a summer collecting unemployment while backpacking the Hawaiian islands (I thought about staying, but nightmares of being Rip Van Winkle brought me home), I moved to Berkeley, living the California dream, then Santa Cruz, where I got serious (I.e., grew up) in an incredible place, just the perfect environment to get my undergraduate ed. Up coast was SF, and south Big Sur, just lovely. Then I lived in DC (so much energy there), and did malaria and oncogene research at the NIH (NCI) for 2 years. I came back to SF in ‘83 and worked for Harold Varmus (Nobel Laureate in Medicine, ‘89) at UCSF. Then, I got my MD degree at USC in ‘89. As part of that experience, I spent a summer doing malaria research in Papua New Guinea. My wildest experience there was taking a dugout canoe down the Sepik river, and staying in the local villages. Each village had a unique language. That was actually my second wildest experience. Number one was going to Tibet in the early ’80s, when the Chinese had just opened the country up to outsiders. I saw monks in Lhasa protest the Chinese occupation, witnessed by a few Westerners, then the country was closed, and we were all booted out. I did my family medicine residency training i...Expand for more
n Tacoma then joined Sea Mar Community Health Center in Marysville. I practiced clinical and hospital medicine and OB at Providence Everett. When I started at Sea Mar, there were 4 clinics, when I left there were 30. I was the senior medical director for the northern clinics. My wife Justine and I lived on Arrowhead Beach on Camano island, where we raised our 3 children. We spent a lot of time on the salt, as I’d roll the Whaler off the boat dolly out of our front yard. Two minutes to the crab pots…lots of Dungeness. Good salmon fishing, for a few years. When the kids were in junior high, we went to Ireland for a year, living on the rural west coast. You can read about our adventures, just google “sandersinireland blog”. Great photography lovely people, music, dance and ancient castles.Good craic! We hopped over to the European continent regularly. The kids had a wonderful cultural immersion as did I working in a clinic there. Our kids are well, Paris is in San Diego, recruiting for a large company in a health related field. Summer has been a paralegal in Manhattan, and is applying to law school in NYC. Steve is doing research at UC San Diego, and applying to medical school. Justine continues to practice clinical and hospital social work, and loves to knit and quilt. The pinnacle of my professional career was starting a Family Medicine residency at Sea Mar Marysville. There are 30 doctors in training to become family physicians, working with the underserved. I retired from Sea Mar in 2021. Since then, I’ve done a bit of telahealth, but for more fun I’ve been an advisor to starting new family medicine residency programs. Currently I’m helping a developing program in St. Louis and in Vermont. Justine and I found a 1850 farmhouse on 20 acres in rural central VT., which is quite a change from life in WA! Folks here are independent yet friendly. We’re not related to Bernie, but we love him. My fun passion is international travel photography, and our national parks.
I’d love to hear your story 😊
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