I entered the world in August 1944, the son of Italian-American parents, Fred and Josephine, who raised my siblings and me in a quiet suburb of Camden, New Jersey. My father, a World War II veteran, labored long days with his hands, and my mother, a seamstress, stitched long hours with hers. My mother dreamed I might be the first in her family to attend college, and I did, graduating from Rutgers University a wily liberal arts student, more devoted to fraternity shenanigans than to law or medicine.

By sheer luck, my orders sent me to South Korea instead of South Vietnam. That stroke of fortune may have spared my life, and the awareness of it never left me. I carried it into operating rooms and across continents, an unseen companion, reminding me how narrow the line can be between survival and loss.

Born in New Jersey, I came of age through foreign military service and the grit of New York City life. A chance opportunity in the heart valve industry elevated my professional status, first in Manhattan, then in Southern California, and eventually across the Pacific. Australia opened the door to Asia for me, and Asia to a vivid transformation. Amid crowded city streets and hospital corridors, I found more than work; I found purpose in the Far East. The bonds with pioneering clinicians and business colleagues shaped not just my career but who I became.

In Hawaii, alongside an extraordinary marital partner, I launched the Asia Pacific EXchange, or APEX. This newsletter featured unreported stories of cardiac care and related newsworthy events, facilitating an exchange of ideas with readers. After my ten-year marriage dissolved, I went on to publish a scientific journal that continues to connect me to the cardiac community. Ambition, loss, and renewal marked my years in Asia, a prismatic journey whose echoes remain.

I ultimately returned to my South Jersey roots and remarried, but when my second wife died, something deep within me shifted: a sense of positivity first stirred by the good life we shared and the example she set. As a doctor who brought newborns into the world, she cared for her patients with devotion, guided not by money but by a sense of meaning. I had spent decades chasing opportunities across continents, but her absence compelled me to live differently: less for the attainment of goods, more for truth-telling and charity.

Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, I felt the urgency not to “rust unburnished,” but to keep shining in use.

Writing Power became part of that response. For nearly five years, I peeled back layers of memory—pursuits and setbacks, triumphs and grief—in ways no other venture ever demanded. It remains my most personal and profound undertaking, and the one I feel most compelled to share.

Today, I remain committed to causes close to my heart, including the Shore Medical Center Maternity Department, the Victor Chang Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, and the local chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters. I find joy in photographing nature, in following Philly sports, and in remembering my dear wife through the stories and images that keep her near.

If Power leaves you with anything, let it be this: strength isn’t measured by clinging to the familiar, but by letting it go, daring exposure, speaking with purpose, and returning wiser, humbled, and open to the uncharted.