Will Foreman
Will was a native of a small town in 1939 rural Iowa, Afton, named for “flowing river.” His parents divorced when Will was four years old, leaving Will and his mother Mary on their own during war time in an ultra – conservative American mid-west.
Mary taught school in their one room school house and later became the town post mistress. She soon married a local man who welcomed Will and his mom to live on the family farm. Will’s maternal grandmother, Ruthie who suffered from mental illness, soon joined them and never left until she was admitted to a state facility many years later. It would be a teenaged Will who lifted her out of her bed in a deplorable locked psychiatric unit and brought her back home for good. Perhaps it was this initial brush with the psychiatric treatment of those considered “insane” is what helped inspire what would be his lifelong career as a psychiatrist.
Will was an outstanding athlete, receiving all-county honors in basketball and baseball as well as finishing fifth in the state in the discus throw in track. He played both baseball and basketball at Parsons college. His parents were avid Democrats in a not- so- blue state and his mother actually became the first woman delegate to participate in the Iowa Caucus.
Following his undergraduate studies, Will spent a year as a research scientist at Hormel Institute in Austin, Minnesota, before attending medical school.
After medical school, Will interned at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Francisco, then served as a decorated Air Force captain and medical flight officer in Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Will married a Vietnamese woman and adopted her children. He returned to San Francisco for a few months as a general practitioner at St. Frances Hospital after which he went back to Viet Nam and worked as a “stringer” for various new agencies. He covered the atrocities committed on behalf of the South Viet Nam puppet government of the United States on the people and supporters of North Viet Nam.
While making arrangements to ensure the safe migration of his family to the United States, he worked for a civilian medical agency based in New York – Children’s Medical Relief International. His work with CMRI was featured in a Canadian documentary shown on NBC and narrated by Garrick Utley. Will received threats to his life and harm to his family during this period. Once he was warned that a bomb intended for him had mistakenly blown seven small children to bits in front of his home in Saigon. He found torn pieces of flesh caught in the screen door of his house.
Will spent the remainder of his adult life in the Bay Area. After Viet Nam his interests turned to psychiatry. He was fascinated by the science of medicine but what inspired him was understanding the mind and how it works. After a residency in psychiatry at Napa State Hospital, he entered into an unusual training program that allowed him freedom to study the mind and new ways of understanding the complex systems of the modern world and how we interact with it. He studied with the greatest brain scientist of his day and explored the wider realms of science, religion, politics and philosophy. He became a noted and accomplished psychiatrist and spent a number of years as a staff psychiatrist at Contra Costa County Hospital. He received honors as Teacher of the Year for his work with the interns and residents at UC Davis Medical School. Will also conducted his own private practice and where he achieved expertise in hypnosis. But his greatest contribution as a physician was to help patients in underserved communities which he did up until two weeks prior to his passing.
Will was a man who was perpetually in love with being in love. He craved romance as much as he loved chocolate and sailing. But his writing and his need to change the world came first, then his patients. Will had a Renaissance view of life. In addition to a distinguished medical career he was an activist, a prolific writer and a strong patron of the arts. He gave up on our two-party system sometime in the mid-nineties after he completed his first manuscript, Democracy in Time. He wrote several books as well as poetry and the lyrics for the musical play, “Fate of Dreams” which he co – wrote with Travis Dow.
Will never met a book he didn’t like (nor usually buy) and had a constant quest for knowledge that ended only with his dying breath. Will not only had a passion for knowledge but a goal of changing the world.
“Purpose,” he’d say,” is what keeps me going. I think everyone needs a purpose, a goal.”
His goal: Syntropy. What Will wanted most in the world was to make it better, so there would never be the suffering he witnessed in Viet Nam, ever again. He wanted people to be equal, to care for the earth, and for the world to de-nuclearize. And he wrote about it. He wanted his work shared with the world. When he collaborated with Travis Dow, he knew it would be.
