An Indiana University-trained physician, Otis R. Bowen practised medicine for 25 years at Bremen in Marshall County. His election as Marshall county coroner in 1952 started a career in public service that included 14 years in the Indiana House of Representatives, two of them as Minority Leader (1964-66) and six as Speaker (1966-1972), and eight years as Governor of Indiana (1973-1981). After leaving office in early 1981, he was a professor of family medicine at the IU School of Medicine (1981-1985) until President Ronald W. Reagan in late 1985 asked him to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Bowen served in President Reagan's Cabinet for more than three years before returning to Bremen, where he now lives in retirement. Otis Bowen grew up poor in Fulton County, but was rich in the things that count. With the support of his parents, siblings, teachers and friends, he pursued a dream of becoming a family physician. This book is Otis Bowen's recollection of his hard work and continuous sacrifice to finance his way though medical school.
It is also the story of a newly minted doctor who first practised on the field of combat in the last major battle of World War II on a faraway island in the Pacific and the story of a doctor who came home from the war to serve the medical needs of a small northern Indiana community. It is a personal story, about his own family, about his first two wives, Beth Bowen and Rose Bowen, the loneliness and emptiness he endured after they died painfully of cancer, and about how his third wife, Carol, has filled that void. Finally, it is the story of an almost accidental entry into politics and public life that was to lead him to the capitals of Indiana and the nation. Drafted as a candidate for Marshall County coroner in 1952, Dr. Bowen relates how his election took him from coroner to member of the Indiana House of Representatives, to House leadership as minority leader and Speaker, to the Governor's Office in 1973 and to President Ronald W. Reagan's Cabinet in 1985. The first person ever to serve eight consecutive years as Indiana's Governor, Dr. Bowen candidly explores the challenges, crises and triumphs of that period.
In an equally candid way, he writes about his efforts and frustrations as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
