printable versionFor 'newlymeds,' matrimony came with several diplomas
Four years after meeting in anatomy class, two medical school students get hitched on graduation day
BY JONATHAN RABINOVITZ
Angela King and Ross Fleischman posed for photos in the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden shortly before their wedding and graduation.
Angela King was wearing a lace wedding gown, a double strand of pearls and her mother's bridal veil when she walked down the aisle to wed Ross Fleischman Saturday morning at the Stanford Faculty Club.
A few hours later the new Mrs. Fleischman had tossed a black graduation robe over her dress and pearls and glided across the stage twice—once to receive her PhD diploma in cancer biology, the next to get her MD. Right beside her on stage during the commencement was her new husband, who also was receiving his medical degree.
Meet the newlymeds: The couple, whose relationship blossomed as their medical education progressed, had in a matter of hours become Drs. Angela and Ross Fleischman.
The connection between the two physicians can be traced to the first week of medical school, when they noticed each other "two bodies apart" in anatomy class. (Students in anatomy class work with the same cadavers on the same tables for the length of the course.) Not long after the first class, they organized a group study session but they were the only two who came. "I told him that I was hoping that the others wouldn't show up, and he then told me he was hoping the same thing," Angela recalled.
When the couple began their first clinical rotation, surgery, they were concerned about working with each other and arranged it so they had separate shifts. But by the time they were doing their stints in family medicine, they had realized that they preferred not to be separated.
"We found out that we liked working together and did well with it," Ross said.
The couple became engaged in April 2004, but when it was time to pick a wedding date they decided to celebrate both milestones on the same day. "The experience of being a medical student and also being with Angela are so inextricably tied together," explained Ross. "I couldn't imagine what medical school would have been like without Angela."
Besides, Angela added, it was convenient.
"My relatives from New Jersey wouldn't have to make two trips." And it had the bonus of meaning that she could sit next to her husband during graduation, as they would both have the same last name. (The graduates are arranged alphabetically on the stage.)
"It makes it so simple—she gets an MD, PhD and 'M-R-S' degree all in the same day," mused Angela's father, Don King, MD, a dermatologist in Southern California.
To be sure, "simple" isn't the word that many people would use to describe holding a wedding on the same day as a graduation. "Everyone I've told about this thinks it's insane," said June McKernan, a family friend. "But they don't know Angela."
Or, for that matter, Ross.
The couple enjoys climbing together, and Angela said that she was impressed with how calm he is when navigating his way up a rock face. He actually proposed to her on the ledge of a cliff in Yosemite that they had spent hours climbing. "I feel very safe with him," she said. "He's very easygoing." He plans to pursue a career in emergency medicine.
In turn, Angela has a reputation for being a whirlwind, taking on several daunting challenges simultaneously and pulling them all off with panache. "I'm constantly being amazed by her," Ross said. Over the last few months, as she was planning the wedding and preparing to move with Ross to Portland, she also was writing and then defending her dissertation, "Molecular mechanisms involved in commitment to the lymphoid lineage." While she will spend next year doing a residency in internal medicine, she plans to be an academic hematologist, looking for cures for rare forms of leukemia.
The couple opted for a simple, brief wedding ceremony with about 30 guests. Angela and Ross drafted the vows themselves and printed them out on the back of leftover drafts of her dissertation. "I don't like to waste paper," she said. Her father and brother, who acquired ministry credentials over the Internet for the occasion, performed the ceremony.
At graduation, Dean Philip Pizzo asked the couple to stand up. "We've had our commencements before on Father's Day, but to my knowledge we've never done one on a wedding day," he said. "It's quite remarkable."
And then he offered one more reason why combining the two occasions makes good sense. "If you think about how much it is to fund a wedding, this has got to be a terrific choice for both of them," he said, "because we're throwing the party."