During a 2018 performance at the Kingston Free Library, Nancy mentioned her quest to find a fourth RI citizen who had changed the course of civilization. Already, Roger Williams, Joseph Rogers Brown and Lucian Sharpe were noted. When the performance ended, a kind and elderly man of presence stopped to say," Nancy, you might like to look into Dr. Charles V. Chapin. He may be what you're looking for."

I did, and was astonished by the doctor's accomplishments and accolades, the use of Brown University's laboratory (and microscope,) the graduate students who tested the crises of a century, his global travels toward indigenous illness, his discoveries and their cures, his rules and his writings. That in 1917 his "How to Avoid Infection" was selected by global scholars as "being culturally important as part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it." Every time we see or hear Dr. Jha and his staff at Brown University, we connect with Dr. Charles Value Chapin.

The enclosed song is the result of that encounter. When COVID-19 came to Rhode Island, Charles Chapin's efforts and the data he gathered assured me that once again, a century later, we would beat the new virus.

A surprise completes this story. The elderly man of presence mentioned above was Dr. Walter R. Thayer, once the Head of the Gastroenterology Department at Brown University Medical School, where he began a Residency Program. He was also the Chief of that department at Rhode Island Hospital. A beloved trainer of hundreds of young doctors, Dr. Thayer loved his patients and they loved him. Who would send a plane to Rhode Island for an unscheduled appointment with him? The Shah of Iran. Ever active, athletic and adventurous, he challenged everything, including swimming in all of our planets' five oceans and seven seas. Walter Thayer died on January 8th of this year. I would like to dedicate to him this donation to the COVID-19 RIHS Archive Project.
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