[NOTE: This speech isn't about cancer and it wasn't addressed to a professional audience. But I couldn't resist the temptation to publish it here. It was delivered at the Walt Whitman Auditorium of Brooklyn College to the 2001 graduating class of my alma mater, Abraham Lincoln High School. It provides some personal background not found in my other writings. --RWM.]

It is a great honor for me to speak to you today. I congratulate you on this wonderful achievement of successfully completing your studies at Abraham Lincoln High School. Any graduation is praiseworthy. But Lincoln is no ordinary school. It was and is an exceptional place. More of its graduates have won Nobel prizes than any other high school in America (Arthur Kornberg, Medicine 1959; Paul Berg; Chemistry 1980; and Jerome Karle, Chemistry 1980). So, whatever you do from now on, you can always be proud of having graduated from this school.

I hope that the spirit of Lincoln will infuse all that you do. To me, this means thinking critically, aiming high, and trying to achieve the greatest things that you can do. It means being competitive not with others but with yourself, always trying to beat your own personal records and goals.

I attended Lincoln from 1957 to 1960. These were the years that shaped all of my subsequent achievements. Most of the significant contacts of my life were formed during those years. My teachers were enormously influential as well. Few of them are still alive, but I continue to dialogue with them in my head, and so part of them is very much alive. I hope that you will also find that your teachers continue to exert an influence on you for the rest of your lives.

Lincoln nurtured in me an independence of mind and spirit. I am a medical writer who specializes in the topic of cancer treatment. Early in my writing career, I had to confront a very difficult situation: the hospital for which I then worked was doing research on a controversial topic of great public importance. The research was turning out in an unexpected way and to my amazement my employers instructed me to lie to the public about the results. What should I do?

This was my first big job after finishing college. It was a dream job, of the kind that many people aspire to. If I stuck with it, my future was assured. But, after much reflection, I refused to lie to suit my employer's wishes. In fact, summoning my courage, I called a press conference and exposed them. I was summarily fired on the next day for "failing to carry out my most basic job responsibility," as they put it.

I was left without the ability to work in the same field. In fact, for three years I had no income at all, and my wife Martha carried the full load for our family of four. Meanwhile, I worked on my first book, The Cancer Industry. This exposed a whole pattern of irresponsibility and greed. Through eleven books, many articles and speeches I have seen many of the views that I represented triumph. Most amazingly, that same hospital that kicked me out recently invited me back to give the Grand Rounds, a high honor. I found myself being applauded by the same institution that booted me out two decades before.

Lessons Learned in School

To me, none of this would have happened without the lessons I learned in high school. My teachers taught that the most important thing was not just pulling down a salary, but having integrity in whatever you do. My teachers taught us to have faith in ourselves, in our own abilities and judgment. They taught me that I could be a leader, not just a sheepish follower. They taught me to question authority and to persevere in my opinions, even at personal cost and risk.

Nor was I alone. Many Lincoln graduates have profited from this type of education. It is not coincidental that Lincoln was the start of so many writing careers. I'm sure you know that playwright Arthur Miller and novelist Joseph Heller were both Lincoln graduates. Miller was, and is, among the most iconoclastic playwrights in American history. His plays Death of a Salesman and The Crucible are searing works of social criticism. And Heller's Catch-22 is one of the most devastating satires of war ever written. These authors are more than just entertainers. Many people call them secular prophets. To me, their connection with Lincoln is highly significant.

I have been asked what Lincoln was like 40 years ago. First of all, it was really crowded . The men had come back from World War II and immediately started making up for lost time. This meant lots of babies. We "baby boomers" filled the classrooms to the bursting point: Lincoln's enrollment reached over 5,000, twice as many as today. You can only imagine what a strain this put on our teachers and on the school's resources, and what a need for discipline there was. We also had to assert ourselves to make our mark.

The most significant fact about Lincoln for me was that I met my wife, Martha, there. We kept running into each other. First, I literally ran into her as she came charging up the down staircase that lead to the cafeteria. I saw her again in January of 1958, when she acted in a classroom play called "Sorry, Wrong Number." I thought she was more electrifying than Barbara Stanwyck in her Oscar-nominated movie performance.

The next fall, we took a course together. She showed up with a centerfold photo of herself from the Daily News. She and her twin sister Betty Lou had a Sweet Sixteen party aboard a boat in Sheepshead Bay. The News picture showed them posing with their shapely legs thrust forward on the gangplank, holding trays from Lundy;s (which catered the affair). One of the lucky guests was Neil Sedaka, who also attended Lincoln. He wrote Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen; my wife assures me it was inspired by this memorable birthday party.

At the time, I asked her what her last name was. When she answered "Bunim," I blurted out, "Well, maybe someday it will be Moss!" This may seem strange to some of you, since I was 15 and hardly knew her. But this turned out to be the most momentous decision of my life. It also was another opportunity to test the strength of my convictions, since most of the adults in our lives were not thrilled about our making this choice as such a young age.

We actually dated for the first time on my sixteenth birthday. Our first days together were glorious. I recall a pastiche of sights and sounds that was Brighton Beach in the late 1950s...the pizza parlors, Oceana theater, Zei Mar's famous delicatessen, and Diamond's, a clothing store owned by the parents of another talented Lincoln student, Neil Diamond.

Outstanding Teachers

Primarily, I remember the teachers. The principal was Abraham Lass, whose portrait now hangs in the Lincoln library. He was a memorable presence. He led a Great Books discussion group. It was in this context, at age 14, that I first read Plato's Apology, the story of a great teacher who was persecuted for holding unpopular views.

My first English teacher was Arnold Horowitz. He was an amazing presence in my life, who broadened my understanding of music, art and literature. His enthusiasm was such that one of the kids in our class asked if this was his first time teaching. In fact, he had then been teaching for almost 20 years! Arnold Horowitz was much more much than a teacher to me. He was my intellectual mentor and the first adult, other than my parents, who took my opinions seriously. His premature death in 1961 was a devastating blow to many of his students, colleagues and friends.

Another outstanding English teacher was Miss Ruth Goldstein. She taught at Lincoln for many years. She had a chronic and painful illness that forced to increasingly rely on canes in order to walk. Despite her illness, she put enormous energy into her classes and her students. We had really high-level discussions of Shakespeare and other classics in her classroom.

A third outstanding teacher I want to mention was Dr. Philip Shorr. He was a Columbia Ph.D., who had been given "political refuge" at Lincoln during the repressive McCarthy era. He had some strongly held opinions, but also encouraged debate. He was my first history teacher. On the first day of class, he asked, "Why should we study history?" We had lots of ideas, but he never told us the answer. I am still wondering about the answer to that question.

Dr. Shorr was the faculty advisor and driving spirit behind a student magazine called Vanguard. Martha and I were on the staff from 1958 to 1960. We published a lot of very grown-up essays on such themes as third parties, capital punishment, Russian-Chinese relations, and the history of science. Vanguard sold over 1,000 copies of each issue, not just in the school but at newsstands in Brighton as well.

An early contributor to Vanguard was Elizabeth Holtzman. Her contribution to the June, 1958 issue was a remarkably mature essay on immigration. She called American immigration policy "undemocratic and unrealistic" and declared, "This situation must be remedied immediately."

She wasnít kidding! A dozen years later, this daughter of European immigrants was herself elected to the House of Representatives; she is still the youngest woman ever to serve in the U.S. Congress.

In Congress, Liz Holtzman became a key member of the committee that revised America's immigration policy. These new policies reversed many of the abuses that she wrote about as a teenager in her Vanguard article. Incidentally, this reform made it possible for many of your parents to come to this country in the first place. So you can thank Lincoln in more than one way for your present position.

Two of my other classmates and friends, author Melvyn Glenn and Sydni Abramowitz Zarrin, later went on to have long and distinguished careers as teachers and administrators at Lincoln. They have given a kind of genetic continuity to this institution.

Martha and I were in the graduating class of 1960. We got married in 1964, and have just celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. She is with me today. Presently, Martha and I live 500 miles from Brooklyn, in a small town of 900 people in New England. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a locale more different than Brighton Beach. However, the lessons that I learned in high school stay with me.

There is an old saying: "You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of the boy." This is sometimes said in a derogatory fashion. But I am proud of my Brooklyn heritage. In fact, there is nothing of importance that I do today that is not deeply influenced by the education that I received at Lincoln 40 years ago.

I can only hope you will look back on your time at Lincoln as fondly and positively as I do. Although the world has changed dramatically in 40 years, we still need the same values...of courage, honesty and perseverance, to survive. You have now made a great start! I congratulate you all on the outstanding achievement of having finished this part of your education. Hopefully, for you as for me, this has been an education not just in memorization, but in those core values of honesty and commitment that define a human being.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. June 26, 2001