Our house on Norton Parkway was broken into eight times, four times after my father had a burglar alarm installed. He confronted one robber in the middle of the night, at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor bedrooms, running him off when he yelled, "What are you doing in my house?"

A scant amount of comic relief was provided, after the burglar alarm was installed, when the police arrived one day and found a would-be burglar squirming, stuck half way in and half way outside a window whose opening had been restricted.

As a result of his membership in the Medical Commission for Human Rights, from July to October of 1971, he served as the prison doctor for the Whalley Avenue Correctional Center in New Haven. He was frustrated by the overcrowded conditions in the old jail, by lack of adequate staffing, and by an absence of what he considered minimal treatment facilities.

In early December 1971, he testified in Hartford before the state legislature's Sub-Committee on Corrections, making a dozen recommendations for improved prison medical treatment.

In mid-April 1974, my father was seeing the patients of another doctor who was on vacation. It came to his attention that some of his colleague's welfare patients, who were on weight-reducing programs, were illegally selling the medically prescribed amphetamines on the street.

My father called then-Chief of Police Di Lieto, whom he knew, and told him what was happening. Chief Di Lieto sent a detective to his office, who informed my father that they were aware of the practice and were taking steps to catch the people involved.

My father called a local druggist to find out if the dosage of the drug he had been dispensing was strong enough to induce a high. The druggist told him that the state had planned to stop covering payment of the weight-reducing prescriptions for welfare recipients by the end of the month.

His final call was to the State Welfare Department in Hartford. He asked them why they would pay for a drug that was being resold illegally on the street. They provided him with no answers.