Waleed J. Iskandar
(By Herbert Chen M. D.)
~ A Friend ~
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I first met Waleed in the fall of 1986 at the beginning of our junior year at Stanford. Waleed and I were in the same dormitory, Robinson. We quickly became good friends and developed a close circle of friends within the dorm including Jeff Winaker, Markus Wallgren, Kara Cadwallader, Tom McCall, and Kurt Triplett. Waleed was very involved in the dorm IM sports, particularly soccer. Playing goalie, he and the team won the coed league at Stanford. I remember the many social events such as dorm parties, dances, trips to San Francisco, roadtrips to LA, skiing at Lake Tahoe, and concerts. In the summer after junior year, Waleed came and spent a week with me at my parents home in Wisconsin. We also stayed with Kara at her house in Fish Creek, Wisconsin along Lake Michigan. We would spent countless hours waterskiing and sailing.  Waleed and I had become such close friends that we roomed together our senior year in an off-campus apartment in Sharon Green. Living off campus was a new challenge for us, as we had to cook and shop for ourselves. It was my first introduction to Lebanese food and we would eat a lot of it. Our apartment was often the place for parties and dinners. I graduated from Stanford in 1988 and started medical school at Duke. Waleed and I kept in touch. During my second year, my then girlfriend and future wife Harriet and I flew to California and spent a week with Waleed, who had relocated to LA. We spent hours on the beach and he took us to all the restaurants. We convinced Waleed to fly out to North Carolina the following year to visit us. He attended my medical school formal dance, and was kind enough to escort one of our close friends. In February 1992, Harriet and I stayed with Waleed in Boston. I was interviewing for surgical residencies and Waleed was now a business student at Harvard. Waleed, being the great host he always was, showed us around Boston, introduced us to his new friends, and took us to all the nice restaurants and sites. In May of 1992, Harriet and I were married in Salisbury, North Carolina. Since Waleed was one of my closest friends, I asked him to be a groomsman in the wedding. Although it was his final examination week at Harvard, he flew down for the weekend. Needless to say, all the single women at the wedding wanted to get to know Waleed. Harriet and I moved to Baltimore, Maryland after the wedding so I could begin my 8-year surgical residency in July 1992. Waleed visited us in Baltimore in 1993. Because of my work hours, we did not have the opportunity to visit Waleed during the subsequent years. We would talk on the phone and try to arrange time for a visit, but both of our schedules had gotten too busy. In November 11, 1994 our son Alex was born in Baltimore. Waleed really wanted to come and see him in person but couldn’t so he wanted us to send pictures. A week later, a box arrived at our house and in it was a new Sony Camcorder from Waleed. I tried to send it back but he would not take it. All he wanted was for us to make video tapes of Alex once in awhile, and send them to him so he could see Alex grow up. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to see Waleed in person again. We would talk about trips but with both of our jobs there was never any time. We moved to Madison, Wisconsin in June 2000. There I met Waleed’s cousin Benny who was also on the surgical faculty at the University of Wisconsin. Whenever Benny and I would see each other in the operating room, we would say “We have to get Waleed to come visit us in Madison!”. (Herbert Chen M.D.) |
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