Wellington and I could hardly have come from more different backgrounds. Born 26 days apart, he into a peasant (his word) Shanghai immigrant family in the Bronx, and I into a physician family from Melbourne, Australia, newly arrived in the US.
We met at our undergraduate college Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where we were to spend 4 years. Many months after talking frequently to my future brother in law about my new close friend, he was startled to finally meet Wellington and to find that he was Chinese. Wellington and I had such immediate rapport and a comfortable relationship, that it had never even been relevant to mention it. An uncountable number of weekends in those undergraduate years, Wellington spent as part of our family in Round Lake, close to RPI. My Mum quickly became his Mum. He had found a second home outside of the Bronx.
As our lives got closer, I was also invited to Wellington’s father’s funeral, as Kenneth Montclair related in his tribute. I will always remember the most amazing Chinese meal I have ever had at the wake that followed. The funeral and the wake spent most of the money that Wellington’s father had saved in his entire lifetime - a situation I always felt very sad about. Several times in those years I stayed at his immaculately clean apartment in the Bronx and met his two smart charming sisters, both of whom also became physicians.
Our senior year was spent together as roommates in a big attic in Troy, after I finally gave in to living on campus. Wellington was smarter than I and (I think) was accepted to every medical school to which he applied. I completed a master’s degree in molecular biology before being accepted at Albany Medical College, where I subsequently became an attending physician, and was involved in starting the residency program in the relatively new field of Emergency Medicine.
We lost touch when Wellington went off to Tufts - both of us becoming very busy with our studies. Life seemed to flow on happily year by year after that. Always, not far below the surface, it was my intention to reestablish our friendship and catch up our lives when the right moment arrived. To me, Wellington was still in his 20’s (as his young pictures depict on this website): tall, competent, with that smile, and always in control of his life. There would always be more time.
Now, in the era of Corona, the right moment had well and truly arrived. With so much time to reflect on the most important people in my life it was now imperative to get back in touch with Wellington. Unfortunately and tragically, the right moment had come and gone, more than five years ago never to be recaptured.
Lovingly Submitted By,
Peter Hamilton Kelly M.D.
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