Time and Effort

After 32 years providing medical care for patients with devastating brain and spinal cord injuries, James Turner, M.D. began recording the stories he heard as a child, the stories he told his own children, and the remarkable path traveled from his early struggles in public education to acceptance at a world-famous university medical school. The result is a collection of vignettes that illustrate the choices and unavoidable circumstances which determined the route he took, and why he was ultimately successful in achieving an education. The author also has a keen eye for history, and the setting for the stories herein spans a period of remarkable social and economic upheaval in U.S. history; from family tales of the Great Depression and WWII, to the author's personal experience observing the inner workings of the Department of Defense during the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and the turmoil of political assassination and racial violence visited upon Washington, D.C. in 1968. This book should be of interest to a wide variety of readers. Although told in chronological order, each piece can be read as a stand-alone short story, allowing the reader to pick and choose portions of particular interest and the order in which read. Superficially, Time and Effort is a group of adventures, misadventures, hair-raising tales, and coming-of-age stories from the middle of the last Century. More importantly, the stories represent a first-person account of a child with atypical learning patterns, attempting to navigate an inflexible public education system and discover what abilities he has, while being told he has next to none. Both the subtle and overt ways in which schools label and stigmatize these children are demonstrated by example. Many of the stories relate to the author's military experience. For veterans, especially of the Vietnam Era, some will evoke familiar memories, while others describe a path less taken at the height of that war. Ultimately, this book is about hope, about the power of perseverance, about the remarkable kindness of strangers, and about the enormous influence each individual can have on the success and well-being of others.