Other Medical Economics Editors

Remembering  People At Medical Economics….

Al Vogl was charming. Ready smile, gentle laugh, kind-hearted, generous, and…very, very smart.

 Comments that the editors wrote about article proposals or the articles themselves were all over the place…until Al made his comment, and everyone (of course) followed his advice.

Someone submitted a proposal: How to treat black patients. Almost everyone derided the idea. Al wrote, Doctors will be seeing many more black patients because of Medicare—and some of them have diseases that non-blacks don’t have.

It made for a terrific article.

Everyone liked him. And respected him.

He wound up as the editor of a Conference Board magazine, Across the Board, where, as usual, he did splendidly.

He was the natural successor to the great R. Craigin Lewis.

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Al was so good-natured, he was reluctant to hurt anyone in any way. The most severe dressing-down he ever gave me was: “You sure took a long time on that story.”

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Al became the editor of MD magazine, a cultural magazine for physicians, and it was perfect him, with his unbridled curiosity, his wide knowledge of the Two Cultures, his good taste. I made him happy when I wrote an article about Typhoid Mary, and was able to publish a letter she had written that had never been published before. What tickled him especially was a letter he received from a physician-reader, furious that we had run the letter he was planning to be the first to publish!
***
Being gracious and charming has its rewards. He bought a Meerschaum pipe, and right outside the store, dropped it and broke it. He went back into the store and asked for a new one. “You broke it, you own it,” he was told. He laughed pleasantly. That did it. The clerk smiled and gave him a new pipe.
***
Waiting for a bus near the New York Academy of Medcine, Al was accosted by a young kid who demanded Al’s money. Al gave him a fistful of change—and a piece of his mind. Something like: What is this city coming to where you can’t even wait for a bus without getting mugged! The kid’s response: He threw the money back at Al and said, Keep your damn money!
Al told that story and laughed and laughed.
***

 It was a privilege to work with him and to know him.

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Jim Reynolds was not quite as likable a fellow as Al Vogl.  Far from it.  Jim was, in general, two things: (1) angry and (2) capable. Many people felt that (2) excused (1).

     As Al’s second in command, Jim did the tough things that tender-hearted Al might not have done—like bawling people out or letting them go.

   And whereas Al was great at dealing with people, Jim wasn’t. He even had trouble looking directly at you.

    He’s remembered for telling the editorial staff, again and again: DUMB IT DOWN.

Make things easy for our readers to understand. Usually (but not always) good advice.

   He was also a whiz at identifying what was wrong with any story—what needed to be done to make it sing.

   Besides which, he scrupulously paid compliments when they were deserved.

    I had worked at Medical Economics for a few weeks when he sent me a note:

 “Great set of captions you wrote for that story.” For a new hire to get a note like that was very welcome.

   I kept that note for years. I still may have it somewhere.

   My favorite recollection of Jim:

   I had written a really good story. Funny and surprising and informative. OK, it had been a fat pitch….

    He came over to my office, stood in the doorway, and said—in his usual angry voice—

 “No one ever said you couldn’t write.”

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