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Dr. Smith made the following comments:
"I appreciate the opportunity of saying a few words. I don't think my mission would be complete unless I make this move. I promise you I'll make it short.
I was somewhat at loss for words when informed that I was to address the Board of Trustees on this occasion. However, I do recognize the occasion as an opportunity to provide a background to promote President Todd's mandate to grow the University of Kentucky into a Top 20 university.
First, I would like to offer my thanks to Mr. Mike Richey, Mrs. Susannah Denomme, and Mr. Dion Guest for their warm welcome to the campus of the University of Kentucky and to Dean Jay Perman, Dr. William Marksberry, Dr. Andy Pearson, and Dr. Jay Ambati for their introduction to the facilities that support their research efforts in the etiology and cure of macular degeneration and Alzheimer's disease.
One might ask what triggered my interest in the two fields of diseases under discussion.
First, I lost my dear wife, Eloise, to events related to Alzheimer's disease in 1997; secondly, I was found to have developed macular degeneration in 1996. As a result, I now have vision in one eye.
So, fast forward, as in the case of all mortal beings, one must make plans where the most meaningful in the allocation of his estate. Following a seemingly daily uphill battle for a professional education after graduating from a small high school in eastern Kentucky, which did not have as much as a chemistry laboratory, I found myself at the University of Kentucky where with and provided by a Lexington Leader paper route and four years of academia, I found myself on the threshold of admission to Medical School.
All this, despite the national bank holiday of 1929 which bankrupted my father's business, and despite the ruin of the 1937 Ohio River flood which ruined my father's business a second time, and from which he never recovered financially.
All this history followed by four years of military service in the Army Medical Corps, followed by three years retraining in hospitals, obviated any thought of marriage, until meeting my wonderful wife-to-be Eloise. There followed several years of international travel, leading up to her death in 1997.
This event triggered estate planning. I had been extremely fortunate with the stock market after an early introduction, while in high school, by a paternal uncle in Ashland, Kentucky.