In 1948, only two years after returning from military service, I took Dr. Walter Palmer's advice and leased a small office in a nice building at 944 Park Avenue at a rent I could afford. In those days, to avoid garage fees, it was still possible to turn the car keys over to the doorman who would see that the car was not ticketed by the cop on patrol. I asked my sister, Lucille Lepore Russo, R.N. to manage the office and perform R.N. duties as well. Lucille, a Bellevue Nursing School graduate, was the head nurse and ward instructor on Ward B6 of the A&B Building of Bellevue on the Third Medical Division (the NYU Division). She also was the night supervisor of the entire A&B building, for three months, an enormous responsibility for a young nurse. She was highly regarded by her superiors and a valued member of their nursing staff. When Dr. William Tillet, the NYU professor and chairman of the department of medicine, learned that she was planning to leave Bellevue to work with me, he called me and tried to persuade me to let her remain at Bellevue. We had a friendly chat and he pleasantly agreed that the move to my office was in my sister's best interest and wished her well. As I look back, this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Her loyalty, intelligence, skill, and common sense were major assets to my practice of medicine. With her help, my private practice flourished. I continued to use a few hours each week in Harkness Pavilion, but I soon realized that the downtown office had many advantages. The patients who came to me did so because they sought my personal care and not primarily because I was a staff member of a vast medical center. Their telephone calls were handled by me or my nurse, not by strangers who knew them only as numbers on a list. This personal approach to the practice of medicine quickly paid off in major dividends. With the rapid growth of my practice, it soon became evident that we needed more space and we began looking around for it. One day, while I was driving down Park Avenue, my sister saw an empty doctors’ office.