I met Bill Foege only once in my life. My ten-minute conversation with the epidemiologist, who died in January at age 89, is one I’ll never forget.
I had just preached at the Chautauqua Institute in New York State and was exiting the service with other worshipers when Bill and his wife, Paula, walked up to introduce themselves. His imposing 6′7″ frame is hard to miss. The worship program noted that I was a Lutheran pastor from Iowa, which prompted Bill to say that his father pastored a Lutheran church in the small Iowa town where he was born. I soon learned that a missionary impulse landed Bill at a Lutheran mission outpost in eastern Nigeria in 1966 to concentrate on infectious disease control. It was just 200 miles from where, some years later, I would spend 16 months working construction at another Lutheran outpost.
What I remember more than anything else about this encounter, however, was the way Bill Foege made me feel. This soft-spoken, self-effacing giant of global health behaved as if I was worth his time, as if I mattered to his day—a warm feeling that most everyone who ever worked with him seems to have experienced.
