Introduction: Welcome back to this academic year of the Family Medicine Moments (FMM). And a big welcome to newcomers like students, interns, fellows and new faculty/staff. The FMM is a weekly listserv in our department that was created to honour all the things we do as family physicians and members of the family medicine/community health team. Beyond the grants, presentations, and papers – the stories of our highs and lows and little successes clinically, educationally, spiritually need to be celebrated. The FMM works because you all write down your reflections.

This is our 16th year of these stories, haikus, poems, 55-word stories, songs, images!! Please – keep sharing. In this our 50th year as a department – we want to encourage alumni of all types - students, residents, faculty, staff - to write and share their experiences from UMass Family Medicine & Community Health and beyond.

For this first week of 2024-25, I share with you an important reflection from Phil Fournier about his retirement. Phil has been with the department for over three decades as a clinician in the Benedict Family Medicine practice, an educator, a mentor, the med school student health director, and the list goes on. I am in awe of Phil – sure I respect his care and his teaching and his writing for the FMM. But more so, I am in awe of who he is. I once was walking behind him in the hospital and he stopped to talk to every person who worked there – the secretary, the janitor, the cafeteria staff – and then he bought them all coffees!

His musings below capture this about him. Atul Gawande once challenged medical graduates to “Ask unscripted questions” to get to know others. Phil has asked unscripted questions of unscripted people for decades – and he is a better person for it. We can be better too by following in his footsteps.

Thanks, Phil, for your service, your collegiality, your friendship, your mentorship, and your example. And for these words below.