jews d

in
the

multi-generational families

Helping
Others

A three-generation

medical mission

teaches compassion.

BARBARA LEWIS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ABOVE: Dalia, Noah, Ron and
Jeff Michaelson on a medical
mission in the Philippines.

R

on Michaelson may
have passed his interest
in health care to his son,
but the son is the one who
organized a medical mission
trip in February that involved
three generations of the clan.
Huntington Woods ortho-
pedic surgeon Jeff Michaelson
brought his father, Ron, and
his two older children, Dalia
and Noah, along when he
went on a medical mission
trip to the Philippines in early
February. For Jeff and Dalia, it
was their second such trip.
Jeff, 48, works with Oscar
Ong, a nurse anesthetist at
Providence Hospital, who was
born in Davao, a city on one of
the Philippines’ outer islands.
For many years, Ong spent a
winter week helping the hos-
pital in his hometown. In 2004,
he brought other volunteers
from the hospital — doctors,
nurses and nurse-anesthetists
— with him, and Operation
Care Abroad was born.
Jeff had heard about Ong’s
trips and, in 2016, when his

daughter, Dalia, was in eighth
grade, he thought joining the
medical mission would be a
good way for them to spend
meaningful time together.
This year Jeff returned to
Davao with Dalia, 16, now a
sophomore at Berkley High,
his 14-year-old son, Noah,
an eighth-grader at Detroit
Country Day School, and his
dad, Ron, an endodontist from
West Bloomfield.
It wasn’t a vacation trip.
The travel alone, via Japan
and Manila, took more than
24 hours each way. The vol-
unteers paid for their own
airfare and personal expenses
and brought most of their own
equipment and supplies, as
well as donated clothing, toys
and books.
Every morning at 7 a.m.
a van picked them up from
their hotel and brought them
to the South Philippines
Medical Center, where Jeff
and Ron performed surgeries
and taught medical residents.
Dalia and Noah visited with

pediatric patients, bringing
them stuffed dolls made by
members of Greater Detroit
Hadassah, where their mother,
Jackie, is a regional vice presi-
dent. The teens also observed
several surgeries. “They were
troupers,” Ron said.
Dalia and Noah usually
worked until 4 or 4:30 p.m., but
Jeff and Ron kept going until 6
p.m. or later. Patients looking
for treatment line up in a wait-
ing room with no air condition-
ing, and team members see as
many as they can.
Ron was the first endodontist
to visit the hospital and dental
residents were eager to learn
from him. “We were busy from
morning till night,” he said. “I
didn’t even have time to go out
for a walk.”
Before the trip, Dalia and
Noah mounted a GoFundMe
campaign to raise money for
medical equipment for the
hospital, which lacks even the
basics. Ron recalled a woman
waiting for a dental procedure
who was told to go the phar-

From the DJN

Davidson Digital Archive

F

or the past year, my look back 75 years into the pages of the
JN often meant writing about some heavy subject such as
war, Nazis and Jewish refugees from Europe. As I return to
combing the pages of the William Davidson Digital Archives, I have
been looking for stories of Detroit’s Jewish community that are
important, but maybe, well, let’s say warmer and
friendlier.
So, I started to do some serious cruising in the
archives, and one of the first pages I found was
about someone I admire who is well known in
the community; someone I have worked with
in the past and found to be truly delightful. My
quest to find a friendly story was fulfilled when
I found a full-page advertisement from the
Sept. 25, 1989, issue of the JN announcing that
Mike Smith
Yad Ezra would honor Susie Citrin on its eighth
Detroit Jewish News
Foundation Archivist
anniversary. Susie is one of the nicest, friendliest

70

April 12 • 2018

jn

people I have ever met.
I dug a bit deeper. She is mentioned 478 times in the JN. The
first citation noted that she was a young student playing in a piano
recital. Going forward, Susie became deeply involved with Detroit’s
Jewish community, working and supporting a wide range of good
causes from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, Yad
Ezra and Jewish Family Service , to Israel and Jewish history, to
name just a few.
I first met Susie when I was director of the Walter Reuther
Library at Wayne State University when she and Sharon Alterman,
Charlotte Dubin, Stan Meretsky, Harriet Saperstein and other folks
helped to curate a most successful exhibit at the Reuther about
the 16 buildings on the Wayne State campus named after Jewish
donors. Finding Susie in the digital archives brought back memo-
ries of working with her and my other great friends. •

Want to learn more? Go to the DJN Foundation archives,
available for free at www.djnfoundation.org.

macy first to buy the sutures
she would need. Luckily, the
volunteers had brought sutures
with them.
Dahlia and Noah also collect-
ed books and toys for younger
patients.
“The children’s ward was very
sad,” said Ron. “It was more
like a gym, with beds lined up
in rows. Sometimes there were
two patients on one gurney.”
The hospital’s resident physi-
cians and nurse anesthetists-
in-training were smart and
hard-working, he said, but
they lacked some of the basic
equipment Americans take for
granted.
Spending a week at the
hospital was “truly a mission,”
he said. “The patients and
resident physicians were so
appreciative. It made the trip
so worthwhile.”
Jeff ’s youngest child Daniel,
10, was upset that he wasn’t
included. Jeff promised to do it
again in a few years so Daniel
can continue the family tradi-
tion. •