I never met Stan in India while I was working for WHO in West Bengal and Rajasthan. But when I joined EIS ( 1979-81) Stan played a huge part in our epidemiology training. And being a former Smallpox Warrior, I was always included in any smallpox get-togethers. But Stan played a huge part in my being able to write my memoir 40 + years later (Searching for Sitala Mata). I wrote weekly letters home to my family so they would be at ease with my working in remote areas of India during “The Emergency” in India. But after my Mom’s death, I could not find the carton that contained my letters! I was distraught until D.A. Henderson reminded me that Stan had photocopied all the SPX files from Bangladesh before he left the program.
Now true, I didn’t work in Bangladesh, but there was a rumor of cases of smallpox on the border of Jalpaiguri district and Bangladesh. In India, West Bengal province was not reporting cases and a year previously, cases had been imported from Bangladesh. Against directives about not to cross international borders, my team went into Bangladesh to determine if it was smallpox or chickenpox. We found eight cases of smallpox and returned to India to start containment activities on the Indian side. But I had to report to Calcutta about the cases and ask them to notify Bangladesh because it was a remote, isolated area.
Stan was able to look up the village and district in Bangladesh and with the name of the village, all my memories flooded back of the time and circumstances of that outbreak. Stan was key in unlocking all my memories of my smallpox activities in India. I searched for two years in India and never saw another case of smallpox!
Thank you, Stan, I will miss you!