{"id":3030,"date":"2010-04-21T17:53:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T17:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=3030"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:44:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:44:22","slug":"dervilla-as-boopsie","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2003\/spring03\/features\/a-change-of-heart\/dervilla-as-boopsie\/","title":{"rendered":"Dervilla as &#8230; Boopsie?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 25%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-3030 gallery-columns-4 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/files\/2010\/04\/doonesbury-large.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/files\/2010\/04\/doonesbury-large-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl>\n\t\t\t<br style='clear: both' \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>By Doug Hubley<\/p>\n<p>In 1990, Dervilla McCann began her cardiology fellowship in a Navy facility in San Diego the day before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Two days later, the Navy called up McCann&#8217;s husband, Dr. Stephen Meister, for active duty, and within weeks he was sitting in a tent with a bunch of Marines in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was a cardiology fellow with two little toddlers, and I didn&#8217;t know if my husband was going to come back,&#8221; McCann says. &#8220;And I began one of the worst seven months of my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The only time she had to herself was around 4 or 5 a.m., when she&#8217;d come downstairs and watch CNN to see what her husband was doing. A Sicilian family across the street, the Crivellos, saved the day, essentially adopting McCann and her boys, Liam and Aiden. &#8220;I could not have completed the training without them,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p>In the desert, meanwhile, Navy doc Meister was getting his back up over the comic strip <em>Doonesbury<\/em> and its suggestion that Navy personnel in the Gulf were living large on air-conditioned ships while the ground troops breathed sand. He wrote in protest to cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and the two struck up a correspondence \u2014 which led to the rare honor of the comic-strip equivalent of guest-star roles in <em>Doonesbury<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When Steve came home we had these really very, very funny moments,&#8221; says McCann. She recalls when, for instance, he first returned home from the war and she went to fetch him at Camp Pendleton&#8217;s naval hospital and en route, in the pouring rain, got lost. She finally found him around 3 a.m., standing alone under a floodlight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After seven months of separation, where I thought he was going to be dead, the first words I said to him were, &#8216;Couldn&#8217;t you have given me better directions?'&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p>There were other episodes \u2014 Meister&#8217;s fascination with the kitchen faucets after seven months without running water, his disorientation in a newly renovated house. &#8220;These moments were fresh in my mind when he told me about writing Garry Trudeau,&#8221; McCann says. &#8220;So I sat down and I wrote this long letter to Trudeau about the things that had occurred since he came home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Recognizing good material when he saw it, Trudeau used the couple&#8217;s experiences to wind up an extended story arc for his characters B.D. and Boopsie, likewise separated by military service in the Gulf.<\/p>\n<p>Trudeau later sent the pair a mounted set of the strips signed with the message, &#8220;Thanks for the inspiration.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Doug Hubley In 1990, Dervilla McCann began her cardiology fellowship in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":3029,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-3030","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13347,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3030\/revisions\/13347"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}