We asked Skip to share a bit of his refreshing outlook on creativity, and how it has impacted his work.

This is what he wrote:

“Creativity has always been an important part of my professional life.  In my Pediatric practice I needed to be creative to help parents consider new healthy ways to raise their children.  In teaching residents and medical students, I needed to be creative on a daily basis to make learning exciting and relevant. 

While the results of these creative endeavors, I hope, have some permanence, those impacts are by nature less evident.

Cooking fine food, especially Italian, has also been a wonderful creative outlet.  But that creativity, for obvious reasons, is soon relegated to memory only.

With retirement, I have turned to creative projects that have more tangible permanence. I recognize that I am a novice in woodworking and photography, but I still very much enjoy the process.  It has been wonderful to conceive a woodworking project, to cut, trim, and finish a piece (and use enormous creativity to cover up my very many mistakes) and then have that piece to look at, not just today, but tomorrow.  I’m finding that having hands-on results of what I have done is very different and special.

I give away most of my projects to my children, who have been very kind in accepting them.  I hope that long after I’m gone, the permanence of these creative pieces will be a definitive and fond link to their father.”