Dormant Talents Are Awakened In Retirement

Bella Singer, M.D. ’31 Physician, Poet, Painter, Pianist

Chironian asked Dr. Singer to share some of her medical school memories from seven decades ago. Following are excerpts of her recollections:

When I entered New York Medical College in 1927, it was named the New York Homeopathic Medical College and was located on 67th Street between Second and Third Avenues. In our second year, the name “homeopathic” was dropped and our school was given an improved rating as an authentic medical college.

On our first day of anatomy class, 100 medical students—97 boys and 3 girls—marched into a large room where we witnessed the shocking scene of 25 NUDE, DEAD BODIES, seemingly all male, laid out on slabs. The anatomy professor shouted out gruffly “Get busy! Four students to a body and oil those bodies.” The female students were too frightened to touch the body. Another shout from the professor shattered the silence. “You ladies—get to work on that body right away!” Humbled and embarrassed by this command, we did just that.

A comic, but gruesome twist occurred during the skull dissection. One well-worked over skull was hidden inside the belly of a corpse and later used by some students in their own dissection. None of the examiners suspected this ruse.

After months of emphasis on anatomy, we got to the point where we could eat our sandwich lunches in the company of those dead bodies.

There were no accommodations for students at the medical school. We traveled, by long subway rides, to apartments in either upper Manhattan, the Bronx or Brooklyn. During final examinations, we all rented a brownstone to avoid wasting so much time and effort on subway rides.

Our graduation took place in Carnegie Hall in 1931. Twenty-five boys flunked out, but all the girls graduated. My classmates, Elizabeth and Marion, and I received a great round of applause when we received our degrees. At that time, girls were considered special to graduate as doctors of medicine.

Bella Singer, M.D. ’31, treasures every moment of her precious days, spending them in pursuit of passions and interests that she has nurtured since childhood. After practicing radiology for 40 years, Dr. Singer has devoted her retirement to music, art and writing poetry. A resident of the Byron Park Retirement Residence in Walnut Creek, Calif., she divides her time among playing classical piano, painting in oils and water colors, and writing free verse. She has written over 200 poems; some are included in a bound collection of ones that were bestowed upon friends and colleagues.

“I started to write poetry in the first year of medical school,” Dr. Singer recalled, “inspired by George Stein, who also wrote poetry. We became friends and I helped type his poems which were submitted for publication in the Daily News.” Drs. Singer and Stein married in their fourth year of medical school, and eventually moved to California. Between juggling the initial demands of residency training and later, the responsibilities of chief of radiology at the Walnut Creek branch of Kaiser Permanente Hospitals—and raising her children Anne and David—she had little time to write poetry. “I began to write poetry in earnest after my husband’s death. His death occurred ten years ago. He was nearly 84-years-old.”

Dr. Singer, who recently celebrated her 95th birthday, is a pianist. She prefers to play only classical music, generally choosing Schubert, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, she says. “I am in the process of making dubbings of the master tape I made recently of Beethoven’s entire Moonlight Sonata. I have always loved a challenge!”

Her other passion is art. “Painting in oils, but mostly in water colors, have been of keen interest to me. I enjoy drawing in pen and pencil, too,” she added. Unlike the piano, which she began studying at the age of seven, Dr. Singer never took an art lesson. “My travels everywhere to museums and cathedrals taught me much,” she noted. “I also learned from my art books. All my relatives on the east coast have decorated their homes with my art.”

Although she has glaucoma (she is blind in one eye) and impaired hearing, she does not allow them to limit her pursuits. “I lead an active and busy life, despite my infirmities,” she reports. “I do the things I enjoy. I see my family of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I do not know the meaning of loneliness.”


Bella Singer, M.D. ’31 at graduation	Dr. Singer in Sept. ’00. Alex Bernardin Photo