Rodrigue Mortel*
Class of 1985
- University Professor and Chairman, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine
Obstacles should stimulate rather than hinder progress. Learn from the past, live the present to the fullest, and repeatedly set higher goals for the future.
Rodrigue Mortel was born and raised in abject poverty in Haiti. "We had no running water, and there was no electricity in the entire town," he says. "Infectious diseases were rampant." When his family could not pay the $4 monthly rent, they were evicted from their small house and put out on the street.
Mortel's mother was illiterate, and his father had only a fourth-grade education. They stressed to their son the importance of getting an education, knowing it was the only way for him to escape poverty. By selling rice and tomatoes in an open-air market, Mortel's mother saved enough money to send him to high school in Port-au-Prince, where he boarded with a family and slept on a cot in the hall. He went on to college and graduated with honors.
Mortel was one of only 40 out of 500 applicants selected to study at the Medical School of Port-au-Prince in 1954. After graduating, he was required to spend two years working in the hinterlands of Haiti. Wanting to expand his medical knowledge, Mortel continued his medical studies in Montreal.
After a year, he got an internship at Philadelphia's Mercy Douglas Hospital. He served his residency at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital and then at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he specialized in gynecological oncology. In 1972, he joined the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Mortel later retired as associate dean and director of the Penn State Cancer Center.
Throughout his career, Mortel visited Haiti regularly to offer medical assistance to the poor. "Success, to me, is not in the accomplishment," he says. "Success is when the accomplishment really helps someone else. If you accomplish something that is not useful to anyone, that has not helped another human being, then I'm not sure that is a success."
Mortel donated land to establish the Mortel Family Charitable Foundation, which built and operates a school to educate the poor in Haiti. He has also written about his life in his book, I Am from Haiti.
Mortel makes four points when he advises youth. He says, "There is nothing that you want to do that you cannot do, providing: One, you really want it; two, you are hardworking; three, you have the determination to do it; and four, you are honest with yourself and others."