Photograph by Mark Gilliland
His mother was from Paducah, Ky., his father from Russia. Ira Kodner and his brothers grew up eating borscht and fried chicken, kishke and collard greens. In the eighth grade, Ira was told that if he wanted to go to college, he’d have to pay for it. So he gave up football and found a job. “I haven’t worked that hard since,” he admits. “But my mother always had a pizza and beer waiting on Friday nights.” An acclaimed surgeon, he holds an endowed chair at the Washington University School of Medicine and directs the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values.
I was the youngest of three brothers. My mother kept a baseball bat in every room to keep us apart.
I was the black sheep of the family, the serious do-gooder.
My brothers and I spent our youth trying to kill each other, and then we got very close.
My mother was a very principled country girl. I could never eat a Popsicle unless I had one for the other kids.
To make a decision, go in a room and turn off the lights and consider your own personality.
My philosophy of teaching came from a chemist who told me to “talk in terms of wheelbarrows, not molecules.”
Every time you make an incision into the skin and in a week’s time it heals together, it amazes me.
At the scrub sink one morning, I asked an older surgeon, “Does it ever happen that you stop losing sleep the night before a major operation?” He said, “The night before you quit.”
People heal miraculously, and people die of devastating diseases for reasons no one can explain.
Misery is watching suffering I can’t change.
I talk to people every day and realize how fragile they are—and how much they can depend on another person.
My hobby is growing orchids. Anyone who walks in the door, I have to take care of. If the orchids aren’t so pretty, I can throw them away.
Teaching ethics is like being a party planner: Once you get people to the table to talk, you can take on the most complex issues in society.
You can’t get anything done when you are dealing with people who are insecure and self-serving.
This country’s problem? What gets the most respect is money.
Quit thinking about what you think people expect you to do and do what you want to do.
When I was young, I was hot-tempered. Now I only make a stand for serious issues. I don’t get pulled into a gutter fight over trivia.
I’m a flaming liberal. I see a lot of people being too miserable in the most affluent country that ever existed.
What makes me angriest is seeing someone who has the appearance and prestige of honor and knowing they are not honorable.
The big question? Why anyone would ever do anything to harm another human being.
I like people with long vision. People who have been through hard knocks, yet they sit back and look at what is good for society.
I worry about the stability of the world. We’re on a track where we could really destroy each other.
Tolerance consists in not believing you are absolutely right and everybody else is absolutely wrong.
In my profession, the biggest disappointment is that there is no tangible reward for teaching—or for being compassionate.
