I recently picked up my daughter's copy of UNLV Magazine and read the article about the class that Stephens Bates was teaching this spring titled "Morality, Mortality and Formality: Gazing at the Dead" (Spring 2007 issue). He discussed the Bodies exhibit (which features human cadavers) and topics that I have lived with every day of my life.
I grew up with a family that owned funeral parlors and a casket factory. I became a paramedic and later switched to respiratory therapy, which led me into teaching at Rancho High School Medical Magnet High School.
When the Bodies exhibit came to Las Vegas, I could not wait to see it. (I have) encountered patients who abuse their bodies throughout life and those who do little to build healthy bodies at a young age. The second time through the exhibit I took my 7-year-old granddaughter with me. I prepared her for the exhibit and talked her through every model. She was intrigued by the lungs and what happens with smoking. She now wants to know if the people she sees smoking (know) their lungs are black too. She wonders why they are still smoking. I always respond that they are making unhealthy decisions.
This is what the exhibit is to me: a teaching moment to help people make better healthy decisions based on what they see and understand about how the body really works.
I also read the article "Image Conscious" about Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist. I, too, have an adopted Korean daughter, Alexandria Jong Rim, who is 23 and is currently a student in education at UNLV. The article brought to heart the same feelings that we have had as parents and my daughter has wondered about. She fits the mold that was discussed in the article of being well-adjusted but having the missing puzzle pieces. We are taking the journey with her and being supportive when she is ready to search for her Korean birth parents.
— Vicki Smith, Las Vegas
