Merry Menden:  

Hi Everyone! After graduating from Dover High School, I followed the Menden family tradition by entering the medical field as an RN,graduating from Columbia University in 1973. If you remember, my father was a physician and my mother was an RN. For you history buffs, my parents met in Europe while serving in the US Army on a hospital train, caring for and saving the wounded from the front during the Battle of the Bulge and the Rhineland Campaign until the end of World War II. Given that profound familial history of serving mankind from both parents, it was inevitable that the five sisters are either physicians or RNs. I worked for the Department of Defense, NATO forces, in Augsburg, W. Germany for six fantastic years in the Intensive Care Unit, then in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit. I loved my job with the military, as there was an esprit de corps in the US Army Hospital, among the medical staff, that I have never experienced since. I managed to learn German fluently, and used my French and Spanish extensively as I traveled all over western Europe. I also went to eastern Europe to both former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, shortly before the Iron Curtain was ripping at the seams. One could feel and see the palpable tension in the people in the communist countries that you never read about. When doing the "duck and cover" cold war drills, while a child at East Dover Elementary, I never imagined the Soviet satellites would be freed from oppression in our lifetimes. You might say I blossomed in Europe, leaving that shy shell forever behind. I lived in New York City after my return from Europe, for awhile, working at New York Hospital and Mt Sinai Hospital. My son Joshua was born in NYC in 1989. I moved with Joshua to San Diego in 1992. I returned to graduate school at UCSD to realize my lifelong dream ...Expand for more