Jay, my husband, is one of those early birds at the gym. One morning he and the others arrived to discover a music stand in the middle of the floor.. They were puzzled, but when Cathy DiSomma came in she just laughed and said, "Oh, that's Bert Pepper's ... he thinks this is a good, quiet place to practice his violin. He often comes around midnight." So there he is, a night owl, with wacky sleeping habits, and while the rest of us are asleep-or trying to sleep. But let me tell you, the violin started him on an upward spiral to a successful career as a psychiatrist.
Bert's parents were immigrants. His father came from Poland by way of Germany, and England, before arriving in the United States. His mother came here directly from Romania. They met in New York City at a young socialist club meeting, married and had two sons, Pep and Bert.
As a child Bert lived on City Island. This was in the thirties and the winter population was around 3,000. There were eight Jewish families. They owned the two pharmacies, the two grocery stores and the two dry cleaners. Bert's father owned one of the dry cleaners. As we all know children can be quite cruel. And Bert experienced, because he was Jewish, constant unprintable verbal abuse .. So at 13 he was elated to be accepted at the New York School of Music and Art -- thanks to a violin he had found in an uncle's attic. And thanks, too, to his parents who managed to pay a dollar a week for his lessons. There he thrived and graduated with majors in science and music. Next it was pre-med at City College. He says he knew when he was five that he wanted to be a doctor. He got his medical degree from NYU School of Medicine. (He and Kendal resident, Ed Hanin, were classmates at City College and NYU. )
Although he liked science and math, Bert settled on psychiatry as his medical specialty. It was his quest to understand himself through his blue collar background, his immigrant parents with only primary school educations and the different world he experienced in high school, college and med school. He wonders how his parents knew it was important for him to study the violin and remembers how they took him to Carnegie Hall when they could get discount or free tickets.
Because he was studying to become a doctor, his service in the military was deferred. Bert did not want to carry a gun and go to Korea. So he was assigned three years of Public Health service. At that time the Merchant Marines were given free health care at various U.S. ports. Bert was sent to Staten Island to care for the Merchant Marines and later to Texas where he treated federal prisoners who were drug abusers. By 1960 he was able to begin his formal Residency -- at Rockland State Hospital. Conditions there were frightful: 5,000 patients to 1,000 staff, the patients often doing their own cooking and cleaning and sleeping on bare mattresses. After two years there he decided to finish his residency at Columbia University where he was also studying to earn a Master's Degree in Community Psychiatry and Administrative Medicine.
He began his private practice in Rockland County in 1963.
Around the same time Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act which provided money to local communities for mental health centers with matching funds from state and local governments. Bert applied and became director of the first such mental health center in New York state under this act. The Center was highly successful. His design for the hospital was innovative: The actual hospital was designed to provide only 40 beds, yet called for a large day clinic where patients could come for treatment and return home. It was a time when there was a national movement to reduce the number of patients confined to mental hospitals. Most mental hospitals were then simply releasing their patients without any follow-up treatment. Many then ended up on the street and in prisons. Bert calls this "trans-institutionalizing".
Bert next moved on to become Regional Commissioner for the NY State Mental Health Department, being responsible for all of New York City, Long Island and the Hudson valley. He met Peggy McLaughlin in 1967. She was a block worker, part of a Quaker program to study individuals in certain Harlem apartment blocks. Once there they would meet their neighbors, help them with their needs and organize them. Bert had gone up there with his boss from Albany to check on the project. The boss proceeded to "take a fancy" to Peggy and offered her a job in Albany. Peggy didn't want any part of Albany and said she had escaped Philadelphia to get to New York, so the boss offered her a job in Bert's office which she accepted. When she and Bert began to get "cozy" they decided it would be wiser for her to work somewhere else. She took on a job as a social worker at St. Vincent's Hospital. Bert joined Peggy in attending the Morningside Friends Meeting. They married in 1969 in a Quaker ceremony at Lord Hall, Columbia University.
In 1972 Bert was named Commissioner of Mental Hygiene for the state of Maryland. The couple moved there with their one-year old son, Christopher, and Peggy entered Antioch Law school. After Peggy's graduation the couple moved back to New York. Peggy did legal aid work and Bert returned to the Rockland County Mental Health Center and developed it further, retiring in 1986. Their son, Christopher, who is now 37, recently left Rockefeller University for a position at Goldman Sachs. Christopher and his wife live in Brooklyn and have a five-year-old daughter, Julia -- a much loved grandchild of Bert and Peggy's.
After Maryland, they moved to the five-bedroom Victorian house that Bert owned in Rockland County. As they both believed in the concept and values of "extended families," their large house was ideal and soon became home for several families. Remember the Chinese boat people who escaped Saigon? Bert and Peggy and friends adopted a group of 23, making them parts of their own "families," finding them places to live close by each other and helping to get them jobs. One, Sin Thi, came to live with the Peppers. He then went back to China for a bride and photos of their children are proudly displayed on a table in the Peppers' apartment at Kendal. There was also an Indian couple that arrived from England, returning to New Delhi after eight years abroad. They felt it was important for them to bring home what they had learned while abroad. Later they even sent their son to Bert and Peggy so he could go to college here. They claimed he wasn't much of a student but after a summer job at Burke Institute, he made a big turn around, becoming a doctor, and is now getting a Master's degree at Harvard in public health.
In the late seventies a new breed of patients was coming to mental hospitals. They were young and often violent. After a few days they would quiet down, call a lawyer and say "I am fine now so get me out of here." At Rockland, Bert discovered that all of them were substance abusers. Hospitals had not thought of blood testing. They hadn't connected drug or alcohol abuse with mental illness. In 1982 Bert organized a meeting with the Federal agencies for drug abuse, alcohol abuse and mental health to confront this emerging national crisis. Although the meetings were well documented, and a consensus was reached, in the end the report was tabled. The individual agencies did not want to give up their autonomy. As a result the connection between substance abuse and mental illness was still questioned. So in 1984 Bert and his associates founded a non-profit agency, The Information Exchange, with a goal of educating doctors of the connection. A Newsletter was created and Bert himself traveled around this country and Europe to convince health care providers of the concept. After 12 years, the idea of overlap and interaction was fully accepted so the agency shut down.
Today Bert limits his practice to three days a week. On Monday nights he meets with a group of men who were sexually abused as youths. He calls it a "course." But he only lectures a bit at the beginning, then opens it up for the participants to talk. The men become a kind of family. They talk freely with each other about things they have never discussed with their biological families. Recently, a member in Florida took part via the Internet. Another used a conference call so he could participate. Bert has been conducting this course for 12 years, as new members join and others move on.
He also has a monthly brown bag lunch in his office where social workers, psychologists, and therapists can bring in their individual cases to get advice and opinions from the other disciplines. He believes this "cross referencing" is valuable. These lunches are still going strong after 20 years.
Bert has authored four books and written numerous articles. Up until this past year he has lectured annually at Harvard, New York University, and the John Hopkins Schools of Medicine. He is a member of two national Boards: National Mental Health Association; Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health; and a New York City Board, Pathways to Housing.
Although Bert and Peggy are Kendal residents, due to their work schedules, they don't spend much time here. Peggy teaches two law courses at Ramapo College. Often they go their independent ways. Both are film fans but if Bert is busy Peggy will go off to the movies by herself and if her review is favorable Bert may go another night. They are close confidants about their work but their marriage could be described as "modern". Recently Peggy went to Florida with friends while Bert visited friends on the Maryland shore. Many of us may have children whose marriages resemble theirs. They are pleased with the interesting people they have met here. Bert has told me that our Kendal community makes an ideal extended family because of our common decision to come here.. Bert is especially pleased that musicians abound here and has no shortage of friends to play his violin with. He is a regular with Larry Albert and Dot Bone, but there are many others. His career has kept him too busy for much violin time; but he has bought two violins since the one he found in his uncle's attic. One was Czech and the latest is Chinese. Now he is intent on making progress. He takes lessons from Annamae Goldstein, the vibrant violinist with the Iris Quartet. In the small world department, Annamae was a baby sitter for their son, Christopher. Bert takes an active interest in the visual arts. His tiny Kendal office was tailor-made by a woodworker friend. A work of art ... deserving a special tour of its own. He frequents the Wellfleet, Mass. thrift store and has bought two landscapes there, one of which turned out to have some real value. He is left-handed and prides himself on his calligraphy which is displayed on a copy of his marriage certificate. He is enthusiastic and very friendly, likes ice cream (Edy's low fat), but I had to look the other way when I saw him have a scoop of chocolate on top of a piece of peach pie.
-- Sis Melvin