On Sept. 11, 2001, I was traveling in remote villages in West Bengal, India. I had been living and working in India for five years, on loan from the CDC to help control tuberculosis. That day, a small television in my spartan hotel lobby showed the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse. I was born in New York City, trained in medicine and public health there, and served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and director of its tuberculosis control program. Three months later, with the rubble of the World Trade Center still smoldering, Mayor-elect Mike Bloomberg called. He asked if I would come home to serve as New York City Health Commissioner.

When I returned from India in 2002, I visited my father in his nursing home. During a hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains decades ear

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