Dr. Abe Rudolph Redefines Retirement!

As you might guess, retirement planning is a huge focus in any wealth management firm, and ours is no exception.  But what is retirement?  If I asked each of you to define that word, each of you would give me a totally different and very personal vision.

For Dr. Abraham (Abe) Rudolph, conventional retirement holds no allure. From his humble roots in South Africa to his field creating and groundbreaking work as a pediatric cardiologist, he now spends his time mentoring doctors, “Imagineering” and traveling around the world --- often on his own --- to explore remote villages and meet the people who live there preferring to visit areas he’s never traveled to before. The motivation is to explore the custom and culture of various peoples that inhabit our earth.  Oh, and did I mention he’s 90 years old?

Abe with Vietnamese farmers enjoying lunch together, March, 2014.

Every once in a while I am fortunate to catch up with him, and he regales me with his most incredible journeys and photos.   I asked him last year if he’d be willing to share his story and photos in a Blog, and he agreed to, but he’s simply been too busy to get to it!  So this Blog post will be a bit different.  Not only will it have some fascinating background information about Abe, but it will be filled with some incredible photos from recent journeys. 

I’ll start with his story, which has been shared with me over the years, but which is brilliantly told in an article published by the Pediatric History Center “Oral History Project.”  This article is actually a transcript from a recording of Dr. Rudolph as interviewed by M. L. Podolsky, MD, August 30, 1996, in San Francisco, California, and from which I am shamelessly stealing excerpts verbatim (with credit given, of course!).  Since the interviewer is a doctor himself, he knew just the right kind of questions to ask.  If you’d like to read more, a hyper-link to the entire interview is posted at the end of this column. I will share with you portions that pertain to Abe’s early years, his evolution into the field of medicine, and a bit about his passion for pediatric cardiology. Abe’s beloved wife, Dr. Rhona Rudolph, an incredible doctor in her own right, has since passed away, however, you’ll find a bit about her here as well. Enjoy!

Abe's childhood home, Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa.

From Dr. Rudolph's Interview - Early years.

“I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. My father came to South Africa in about 1898, and he arrived there from a shtetl near Vilna, Lithuania. He left because of the induction of young Jewish boys into the Russian army. He traveled across Europe and worked on farms, and, this was when he was about 13 years old. He arrived in Germany and then traveled across to England, where he took the first boat, which took him to South Africa. He worked in a store in Johannesburg, and then eventually became the owner of the store. My father was the owner of this store until he died. My mother was born in Capetown, South Africa, and then traveled up to Johannesburg where she married my father.  There are five children in the family; I am the fourth child.”

Abe (on the right) with his older and younger brothers on the steps of their home.

The interview with Dr. Podolsky continues as Abe addresses what led him to the field of medicine.  He also discusses what it took in South Africa at that time to begin a career as a doctor.

“When people ask me how was it that I went into medicine, I really cannot answer that with assurance. My older brother went to medical school, and when he was in medical school I was quite determined that that was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. When I began to look at other options, I was terribly interested in chemical engineering, but decided that there was really not much future in it for me. Eventually I gradually became influenced by my brother’s enthusiasm about medicine, and that’s what I decided to do.

Our family was not at all well off financially, so in order for me to be able to go to university it was necessary for me to obtain scholarships, which fortunately I was able to do. When I first started with medical school, I was really not comfortable, particularly in the second year. In the first year of medical school in South Africa, we did not do any of the subjects which are now considered to be part of medical school. We did zoology, botany, physics and chemistry. Anatomy was what was done in the second year together with physiology. 

So when I began to really get involved in medical school with anatomy and dissection of cadaver, I was really very uncomfortable and I wasn’t really quite sure that I could continue. But I gradually overcame that and became very enthusiastic about my interest in medicine.   Well, I found that there was quite a lot of pressure on me to do well in medical school because I realized that to be able to continue I had to obtain scholarships, and therefore I applied myself very hard to the studies. When I finished medical school, I did what was then usual in South Africa after medical school, and that is to do an internship, which was a six-month internship. Unfortunately, I was too young to get a medical degree because it was necessary to be 22 and I had not reached that age, so I could not become a physician. So what I did was I spent six months as an instructor in anatomy. And that was a very useful and interesting experience because that was what first really got me interested in teaching.” 

As this in-depth interview continues, Abe gives quite a bit of credit to the many mentors he met during his early career and their deep influences on him.  He discusses time spent in England and Sweden as well, where he received postgraduate degrees and also had his first introduction to pediatric cardiology. When he returned to South Africa, he as well as his wife, Rhona, became increasingly concerned about the increasing institution of Apartheid by the Nationalist Party. Eventually, he and Rhona immigrated to the United States where Abe secured a non-salaried position at the Children’s Hospital of Boston in 1951.  For quite some time they lived on meager savings and hope. Fortunately, scholarships became available within a few months. 

Before relocating permanently to San Francisco in 1966 (UCSF specifically), Abe also worked at Harvard on fellowship, and then moved to New York to build his own pediatric cardiology department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  This is where he was able to begin truly focusing on what would ultimately become his life’s passion in the field in which he is highly honored and considered to be a pioneer.   

His professional curiosity has led him down many fascinating paths.  While working in his earliest years in Sweden, he became aware that while much research and work was being done on children with heart disease, it was really the babies with these conditions who died the most frequently.  His evolving passion on this topic led him to extensive research in order to understand the physiology of congenital heart disease.  The recognition that these heart lesions were already present before birth, led him to extensive research on the differences in the circulation before birth and how these congenital heart lesions could influence the prenatal circulation. He embarked on extensive study of the fetal circulation in lambs, Fast forward to today (which seems ridiculous considering how much went on in his professional and personal life in between) and he’s now still working at UCSF mentoring and teaching in this same field he pioneered. 

Rhona and their daughter, Linda, 1951.

I was not as fortunate in getting to know his wife Rhona, as she passed away in 2006 not long after we met. However, what I remember is a vivacious woman, a quick thinker with a huge heart for her family, and with a passion of her own:  the care of those who are developmentally disabled.  An article about her and her remarkable life was published in the SF Chronicle when she passed away.  Click here to access the article if you would like to learn more about her as well.   

Dr. Rhona Rudolph, M.D.

So, being the humble man he is, Abe always wants to share more about others than himself!  He has traveled seemingly to almost all the reaches of the globe.  In fact in a recent conversation he lamented that there are hardly any new places for him to visit.  But what inspires him now is visiting the remote farming based villages in hard to reach places we all hear about, but rarely travel to.  He employs drivers and locals to take him to interesting locations, and introduce him to those who live there with their families --- and have for generations.  He is frequently invited into their homes to talk and he is warmly welcomed. Some of the interesting people he has encountered and photographed during these travels are:   

A Tuiareg tribe in the desert in Mali, where Abe spent an overnight in their tents and was entertained by their musicians.

A Dogon tribe in Mali (of which his guide was a member), that did a Dogon Dama-Mask dance for Abe alone.

A woman of the Apatani tribe in Arunachal Pradesh in India.

A member of the Konyak tribe in Nagaland province in India.

The following pictures are from a recent trip to villages in rural Vietnam. Women of the various tribes are recognized by their tribal costumes:

Flowery Hmong wear bright, multi-colored attire.

Black Hmong wear dark blue or black attire dyed with indigo.

Blue Hmong wear pale blue or green costumes.

Fast forward to today, and I ask him what he does when he’s not traveling. He says in addition to mentoring he spends a lot of time just thinking about pediatric cardiology and how to continue that process toward change and improvement.  In a live “YouTube” interview, he advises new doctors to think not that their education has ended and now their career has begun, but to instead be a lifelong student and continue the search for new and constantly improving ways to deliver even better care.  Click here to watch the interview. Great advice for all of us in any profession.

Would you like to catch up with Abe?  He’d love to hear from you!  He’s a wonderful collaborator and his capacity for spanning generations and topics is beyond compare.  You can reach him by email: rudolpha@sbcglobal.net.  

Click here to read the entire interview with Dr. Abraham Rudolph.

I hope you have enjoyed a glimpse into the fantastic life and continuing journey of Dr. Abe Rudolph. Perhaps if we are very fortunate, Abe will start his own Blog and post regularly so we can follow him around the globe. 

I hope Abe inspires you as he does so many to keep “Imagineering!” Meanwhile, enjoy a bit of Abe’s love of wildlife photography as well.  

Lilac-breasted roller with snake dinner in South Luangwa Valley, Zambia.

Snowy egret on her nest in the gardens of Alcatraz.

Leopard in South Luangwa Valley, Zambia, 2013.