Perceptions
A Heart of Gold Will Always Gleam
The story of Gilman Thomas Hussen.
BY JEEVAK LAL, M.D., ALBION, MICH.

He wove gold. His touch was defter than Midas'. All he did, all his ventures, flourished. The kings and queens of the land flocked to him seeking yet greater wealth. The poor came, too, hoping for counsel to lessen their burdens. He helped them all.

"For years and years," he bellowed from behind his desk, "you have studied and studied and hidden behind fat books. School, college, medical school, internship, residency. And now that you are finally a big-shot doctor, instead of coming home and earning some real money for your family, you go gallivanting off to Haiti! What the heck for?"

I explained.

"So you went there to serve the wretched of the earth!"

I told him he was being melodramatic.

ILLUSTRATION: NICK ROTONDO

His voice quieting, he leaned forward, "There should be more such as you." And he smiled. "But people like you need people like me. Tomorrow we go to Haiti!"

As the Eastern airbus descended over Haiti's barren mountains, he said, "There is a lot of pain down there, isn't there?" He was uncommonly subdued as we drove around Port au Prince. He did not have the heart to enter Mother Teresa's home for the terminally ill and see the woe within. Nor did he step inside her orphanage. At a home for crippled children, he huddled long with its founding nun. He left her a huge check.

She said it was a miracle and would build a new home for teenage boys. I told her it wasn't a miracle at all; that Gilman Thomas Hussen would give everything he had to anyone who asked. "Then," she laughed, "I should've asked for a lot more!"

We took a Land Rover for the long, dusty, rutted road to the plateau town of Mirabelais. There, atop a crest, sat the remnants of a dream. An eye hospital had been planned for the hundreds of thousands who dwelt in the area. But the money, as money often will, had finished. Goats grazed and chickens scurried about the abandoned project.

They told him about the area's plight. The thick cataracts and advanced glaucomas, the kids with crossed eyes, the opaque corneas of the malnourished, the high incidence of retinoblastomas, about their inability to even provide glasses.

His gift was staggering and left them open-jawed. Not only, they said, would it complete the hospital, but it would buy the best equipment and cover expenses for years.

Today, 20 years later, despite the passage of dictators, embargoes and foreign forces, the facility functions.

I did not see Gilman again for many years. When we met, it was over breakfast. I asked him about his empire.

"Do you know of any empire that endures forever? Mine ended some time ago. There is nothing left. Everyone has abandoned me. When my fortunes sank, all my friends scattered like spray."

"Perhaps, they weren't really your friends," I said. "But you do have friends. Thousands upon thousands. In Haiti. They adore you and want you to return."

"But I have nothing to give them."

I told him they did not want anything but wanted to thank him and show him the great good his gifts had wrought. "Your generosity has touched eternity."

"You are being melodramatic."

"Perhaps," I replied, "but the truth is the truth." He was gazing pensively into his umpteenth cup of coffee. I leaned forward and added quietly, "There should be more such as you."

His lowered eyes lifted, flickered in remembrance -- and he smiled.

You can write to Dr. Lal at World Eye Mission, 1306 N. Eaton St., Albion, Mich. 49224 or e-mail him at worldeyemission@cs.com.