Moonlight and Mayo

Sunday, July 21, 2019: 

​I visited the final resting place of Archibald “Moonlight” Graham and his beloved wife Alecia. We all know the story of Graham from “Field of Dreams,” which accurately accounted how Moonlight played one game but never batted in the majors. It also accurately portrayed his later career as a doctor in Chisholm, Minnesota.

I had no idea that Doc Graham made the trip many times to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to advance his research into the care of children. The photo (above right) is from Mayo's historical archives. He spent all four decades of his working life as the school doctor caring for school children through outbreaks of the flu, tuberculosis and more.

​Baseball and “Field of Dreams” were central to my thoughts about Dad in my comments at his funeral in December 2017. All of these spiritual threads were woven together as I entered the door at Mayo for the first time. I made an immediate right turn into the museum and heard narrator Tom Brokaw’s voice in the middle of a video speaking of Doc “Moonlight” Graham and his connection to Mayo...More...

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