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H.L. Greenberg:
"I always thought
my putpose on
Earth was to save
lives and to
improve the quality
of life."
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LYNNE MEREDITH COHN
Scene Editor
1ff ost nights, you can find
H.L. Greenberg on
Lonestar Coffee Co.'s
comfortable couches or
upstairs at Borders in Birmingham,
studying ferociously about diseases
and treatments and weird conditions.
Or you can find him at the mall.
"I really like to study at Somerset,
outside Nordstrom at the cafe or the
food court," says the 25-year-old med-
ical student from Colorado Springs,
Colo., now living in Royal Oak. "It's
, loud, but I wear headphones, listen to
the radio. I like to see people go by."
Named after two grandfathers, Harry
and Lawrence, H.L. is finally making
his life's dream come true.
In seventh grade, his Army physician
father took Greenberg's biology class to
a cardiac catheterization lab to watch
him perform an angioplasty. "He
showed us pictures of this guy's heart,"
Greenberg said. "We saw where the
obstruction was in the mans coronary
artery. I thought my dad was the biggest
hero in the world. He saved this guy's
5/29
1998
106
life. I said, 'I want to do that, save peo-
ple's lives."
But it hasn't been an easy path to
Wayne State's med school. The 1994
University of Michigan graduate wasn't
accepted to medical school until 1996.
At an interview the second time
around, someone asked, "What if you
don't get in this year?" Greenberg
replied, "I'll try again and again tâ I'll
either come here as a medical student or
a cadaver."
Walking through surgery, pediatric
and obstetrics/gynecology rotations,
Greenberg is the one with the bright
smile, clean-cut good looks and med-
ical-Chemed tie (with pictures of needles
and syringes). He could talk for hours
about patients he has seen.
"One patient came in, a football
player for Wayne. He'd been shot three
times â in the back of the head, cheek
and elbow. [A doctor] called me down
and said, 'Greenberg, we need you to
sew up this patient."'
Having never sutured before,
Greenberg approached the guy, hands
shaking, afraid to admit his novice sta-
tus. "The guy kept saying to me, 'Don't
let me die.' It took three hours â nor-
mal is half an hour to an hour."
Greenberg delivered the baby of a
12-year-old girl and watched an alco-
holic die. "It made me never want to
drink," he says.
He works by the axiom: "How
would I want my folks treated if they
were sick? No one wants to be a
patient."
His parents are still in the Army
town where he spent most of his child-
hood: and his brother now lives in
Dallas. Although he treats his years in
metro Detroit as an adventure, trying
anything once and attending as many
Jewish community events as his sched-
ule will allow, his heart is in the moun-
tains.
"I feel very welcome here. Being so
far from home, I have a real good grou p
of friends in Detroit," Greenberg says.
"It makes it easier being away. The tern
pies have been very nice. Michael
Brooks [at U-M Hillel] has been my
spiritual guidance counselor. I'm always
trying to meet people."
Greenberg especially loves having so
many Jewish options here. Growing
up, his family attended the town's only
synagogue, which had Reform services
.
on Friday nights and Conservative on
Saturday mornings. For his bar mitzvah,
Greenberg "did Friday night for my
mom, Saturday morning for my dad."
Colorado Springs was home to one
BBYO chapter, of which Greenberg was
president. But until he came to Detroit,
he never had a Jewish girlfriend. Of
course, that's ancient history. Although
he used to date a lot more, before focus-
ing solely on med school, he's certainly
single and searching.
If you can fit into his schedule, that
is. That means working around training
for the New York marathon in
November (Greenberg ran track in col-
lege), exercising at the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit, in-line skating, water-skiing,
snow skiing, reading John Irving or Elie
Wiesel and playing basketball on
Mondays with fellow grad students.
And trying to figure out whether to be
a surgeon or an internal medicine
physician.
"I always thought my purpose on
Earth was to save lives and to improve
the (II ial ity of life," he says.
Better take a number, ladies. CI