Posted on Sun, Apr. 13, 2008
Helen C. Davies, 83, a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, often catches a lift to work.
Helen, who insists students call her by her first name, lives in the Quad, in a dormitory with hundreds of freshmen. "People expect something out of
Animal House," she says, "but it really is quite pleasant."
She sets off every morning by 7:15 for her office, just 200 yards away in the medical school, where she is believed to be the oldest full-time faculty member.
She walks slowly now, with a cane, bent by osteoporosis of the spine.
One or two mornings a week, Stanley Konopka, a custodian who hauls away dormitory trash in his golf cart, spots Helen and offers a ride.
He pulled up beside her the other day.
"Good morning, Stanley," she said.
"Hello, sweetie," he replied. "Can I give you a lift?"
"I'd do better with a limo," she quipped.
"This is your limo for now," he said.
The first time Konopka offered a ride, three years ago in a downpour, Helen resisted. "I don't want to get you in trouble," she told him. "I'm always in trouble," he replied. And she climbed in.
The other day, as usual, he dropped her at the medical school's Johnson Pavilion.
"You're a honey," she said.
"Till we meet again," he replied, and motored off to dump his trash.
Konopka knows that Helen has "something to do with medical," but he has no idea of her esteem - that her portrait, for instance, hangs in Stemmler Hall, a portrait done by Nelson Shanks, who also painted Pope John Paul II, two presidents, Princess Di and Pavarotti.
Nor is he aware that she has won the school's Excellence in Teaching Award 16 times - including in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 - or that, at 81, Helen received the Distinguished Teacher Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges, making her one of only four medical school faculty in America that year to get it.
But the custodian, like so many in the Penn community, has come to admire and adore Helen. "There's something special inside her, a spirit," he said. "She loves life. I tell her she's blessed."
Helen not only teaches her undergraduate and medical students all about infectious diseases, her specialty, but also infects them with her still-burning passion for learning and for their welfare.
"She's like my favorite person in the world," said Kiona Allen, who met Helen eight years ago when she moved into the Quad as a freshman, and is graduating from Penn's medical school.
"She has been an incredible mentor to me," Allen added. "I asked, 'What research should I do? Where should I apply?' When I freaked out, she calmed me down. . . . She makes a difference every day. And if she can still do that at 83, there's no reason I can't be doing that now and when I'm her age."
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