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The Honored Doctor
Exceptional Child
Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is receiving the Lasker public service award.
(Photos By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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He learned to question early.
It didn't make sense to him when the nuns at his school said that you had to go to church to get into heaven. His beloved paternal grandfather, an immigrant from Sicily, spent his Sunday mornings cooking. What about him?
"I remember going up to him one day. 'Grandpa, why don't you go to Mass?' And he said: 'Don't worry about it. For me, doing good is my Mass,' " Fauci said.
The experience made him determined to do good through his work. He was 7.
The Faucis lived in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, above the family drugstore operated by his father, Stephen, a pharmacist.
Fauci's only sibling, Denise Scorce, recalls that he was a well-rounded kid who liked to play ball but only after he did his homework.
"He was very normal in every way, but you kind of knew he was special," said Scorce, 69, a retired teacher who lives in Northern Virginia. "Everything he did was perfect."
Fauci won a full scholarship to Regis High School, a Jesuit institution in Manhattan. Later, he enrolled in another Jesuit school, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
"The Jesuit training is wonderful. I don't think you can do any better than that," he said. "I always quote, 'Precision of thought, economy of expression.' "
Although he had an aptitude for science, he received his 1962 bachelor's degree in Greek/pre-med. He took the minimum number of science courses required for acceptance at Cornell University Medical College.
"I was very, very heavily influenced by the classics and philosophy, which I think had an important part in my ultimate interest in global issues and public service," he said. "I was interested in broader issues." I always tried to look at things at 40,000 feet as well as down in the trenches."
Encounter With ACT UP
One of the most dramatic episodes during Fauci's tenure at NIH occurred in 1989, when angry ACT UP demonstrators swarmed his building, demanding to be heard.
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