BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

In August of 1968, after seven years as medical director of the Negev, I was appointed medical director of Clalit directorate. We were still living in Beer Sheva and didn’t want to leave. For five years, until 1973, a few scant months before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, I would commute daily from Beer Sheva to Clalit headquarters in Tel Aviv. My sense of mission in fulfilling the principles of public health I so believed in was in a sense all consuming, occupying even my leisure time. Thus, when Neomi and I would take road trips as a family around the country, I usually couldn’t help myself from seeking out the clinic in this or that community to evaluate its quality and check out its working conditions. During the period of time that I was commuting daily to Tel Aviv, my workday was significantly longer than the proverbial eight-hour day. I would return late at night and every morning at 7:20 my car was already parked at Clalit headquarters in Tel Aviv in a time when the highway between the two was a far cry from what it is today. While I had a regular driver, when he had trouble getting up in the morning, I would take the wheel and drive myself alone. He would be forced to catch up with me, taking several buses from Beer Sheva to Tel Aviv. Finally, I said to my wife Neomi that we had to choose one of the two: Either I quit my job, or we leave Beer Sheva, because we couldn’t go on like this. Our period in Beer Sheva spanned some 19 years, and counting our time in Gvar’am, we lived 20 years in the Negev. This was the most momentous and exciting period in the course of our lives in Israel.

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