A Dean’s Surprise Reunion with the Person Who Inspired Her Path
It was a busy Friday in May, and Helen Boucher, dean of Tufts University School of Medicine and chief academic officer for Tufts Medicine, had just started reviewing a briefing for reunion festivities that were taking place that evening. As she flipped through the guest lists, one name in particular caught her eye: Charles Hemenway, Jr., M69.
Could it be, she wondered, the same Dr. Hemenway who was her family’s childhood pediatrician and who inspired her to go into medicine?
“It literally had been a long time,” Boucher recalled, “and he would have no way of knowing me, since I’m married and have a different last name.”
But when she saw that he was listed on another page as Jerry Hemenway, she was certain. How common could it be for someone to go by both names? She asked her team to please send word to him at the event that she would like to meet with him.
Meanwhile, Hemenway—who goes by Jerry, a shortened version of his middle name Gerald, to distinguish him from his father, Charles Sr.—was stepping off a train from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Boston. He checked into his hotel and signed in at the School of Medicine’s 55th reunion for the Class of 1969. As he began to greet old friends, he felt a tap on the shoulder and heard that Boucher wanted to speak with him.
“I asked, am I in trouble or something?” Hemenway chuckled. “But they said, ‘No, you were her pediatrician. I said, ‘Oh, my gosh!’”
“We figured it out, and we saw each other, and I started crying,” Boucher said. “I mean, it's unbelievable. I am so grateful for what he did for me —I even wrote about him in my college essay.”
Growing up in Connecticut, Boucher was the oldest of five children in a rambunctious household where “somebody was always getting hurt.” She said Hemenway saw a lot of her family over the years, especially her mother, who shepherded in one sibling or another.
When it was Boucher’s turn to go to the pediatrician, she would pepper Hemenway with questions and chat with him about her interest in medicine, which was unique in her family. It turned out that was something they had in common.
“My memory is of the incredible, kind, patient way Jerry approached all of us,” said Boucher, who is also an infectious disease expert. “It never seemed like there was a clock, like Jerry always had time. Now that I do what I do, I look back and think, how did he make everybody feel like he had all the time in the world?”
Hemenway attributed that trait to advice he received as a young doctor from more experienced physicians. But it’s also simply how he worked best.
“My temperament is such that, when I am under the gun of the clock, I don't think I perform as well. It's extra pressure,” said Hemenway, who was one of the organizers of the 2024 reunion. “I might have driven my staff and some of the parents crazy, but I just tried to act or live in the moment. Somehow it always worked out.”
Just as Boucher did not know that Hemenway was a School of Medicine alum, Hemenway had no idea what had become of Boucher.
“It now makes sense that he’s a Tufts alum,” said Boucher. “There is always something special and distinct about a Tufts graduate, and he embodies that.”
“After 50 years in pediatrics, I was always very honored when I'd hear one of my patients was in medicine or going into medicine,” said Hemenway. “But when I found out that Helen was not only a doctor, but the dean of my medical school, it just blew me out of the water. I have a fond, almost ethereal memory of that weekend.”