Hugs and Kisses

Many people meet their spouse through their employment. In April 1939 Charles Drew was on his way to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to give a speech on his medical research. Drew stopped in Atlanta, Georgia, and met a teacher named Lenore Robbins at Spelman College. They fell in love, and got married by September.

Drew was Robbins' hardworking, handsome honey.

He was also the oldest child of Richard Thomas Drew and Nora Rosella Burrell Drew. Richard Drew was a carpet layer. Nora Drew was a teacher who became a domestic engineer. They had five children.

The Drew family was poor. To help his family Charles Drew got his first job at age 12 delivering newspapers. His entrepreneurial spirit showed up. Soon he had six other boys working for him delivering newspapers.

Later Charles Drew found out that his primary interest lay in medicine. So he went to medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

A Japanese proverb says, "One becomes skilled at the very thing one likes."

At McGill Drew took a class taught by John Beattie, a British doctor who was studying blood transfusion. Before the 1930s people often died from the loss of blood after accidents or surgery. Researchers had been studying how to replace lost blood with blood from other people, but they found that the human body would reject blood that was not similar to its own.

Dr. Karl Landsteiner discovered that all people have one of four blood types, which he called A, B, AB and O. A person who had lost blood would not reject the blood of a donor whose blood matched or was compatible. Landsteiner won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1930.

Yet still often blood deteriorated before a donor with matching or compatible blood could be found. That's the problem Beattie and Drew wanted to fix.

They couldn't solve it. Their professions took them on different paths. In 1938 Drew began a surgery residency at Columbia University's teaching hospital. Drew conducted research and discovered that the plasma part of blood could be dried and stored for long periods of time without deteriorating. In 1939 Drew set up a blood bank at Columbia's teaching hospital using plasma as the basis of emergency blood supplies.  

Drew's blood work not only saved lives by making blood quickly available, it also connected him to the love of his life, Lenore Robbins. It was his blood work that he was scheduled to talk about at Tuskegee Institute and met Robbins on the way to his talk.

Drew was a man in demand at home and professionally. Robbins and Drew married and had three girls and one boy. In 1940 Drew became the first African American in the United States to be awarded a doctor of science degree. His thesis was on "Banked Blood."

Drew's former professor, Dr. Beattie, contacted Drew to help out England. World War II had broken out in Europe. Beattie had become Director of Research Laboratories at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, England. Beattie was in charge of blood transfusions for the Royal Air Force, and he was having trouble keeping up with the need for blood. Dr. Beattie asked Dr. Drew to ship 10,000 pints of plasma to him within one month. Dr. Drew did it, and soon after Dr. Drew became the Medical Supervisor of the Blood for Britain program. Dr. Drew standardized procedures for collecting, processing, storing and shipping plasma.

The Red Cross recognized Dr. Drew's merit and appointed Dr. Drew director of a nationwide project to collect blood for the U.S. military. Eventually the armed forces told the Red Cross that it didn't want any blood from black people to be mixed with blood from white people. So procedures were set up to make sure that blood from different races did not mix. Dr. Drew resigned in response to the military's segregation blood policies.

An African proverb says, "A beautiful person will not be perfect."

Dr. Drew was in constant demand at conferences and other meetings. He was driving on his way to give a speech at Tuskegee Institute when he fell asleep and had an accident. Dr. Drew died.

Perhaps if Dr. Drew had gotten a sabbatical from work he would not have died as a result of a sleeping-at-the-wheel car accident leaving a widow and four orphans.

When Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Mosaic law and the prophets, He didn't come to implement a rigid system that put people in bondage and denied them the best of living. The Gospel is filled with stories of Jesus Christ challenging His Jewish people to practice the Sabbath in a way that provides maximum help for people. Mark 2:27 Contemporary English Version Bible says, "Jesus finished by saying, “People were not made for the good of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for the good of people."

Leviticus 25:3-7 New Living Translation says, "For six years you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but during the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest. It is the Lord’s Sabbath. Do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that year. And don’t store away the crops that grow on their own or gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. The land must have a year of complete rest. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own during its Sabbath. This applies to you, your male and female servants, your hired workers, and the temporary residents who live with you. Your livestock and the wild animals in your land will also be allowed to eat what the land produces."

How can employers pay for one-year or more of paid employee leave?

** All leave balances accrued should be portable from one place of employment to the next.
** Some may prefer increased paid-leave benefits instead of a 401K match.
** Some may prefer increased paid-leave instead of a monetary increase for merit performance.
** Some may desire a customized benefit package.

What are some other ways to pay for one-year or more of paid leave?

Married people usually have sex in private. A good or a bad sex life shows up in the community through the way a couple responds to their sexual relationship and is either energized or drained by it. Energized people give more love. Drained people cannot give what they don't have.

Perhaps Charles and Lenore enjoyed hugging each other with deep vaginal penetration. Did Dr. Drew give his girls and boy daddy boo-boo kisses and hugs to make it all better?

People who have four or more children are not dumb and a drain on society. Dr. Drew was one of five siblings and had four children of his own. In China Dr. Drew, his wife, Lenore, and Dr. Drew's parents would be subjected to forced abortions and forced sterilizations as part of China's one-child policy. 

Chen Guangcheng is married to Yuan Weijing and has two children. Guangcheng, his family, friends and others have been subjected to persecution. He became internationally known for filing a 2005 law suit against a local government for forced abortions and forced sterilizations practiced as part of China’s one-child policy. Guangcheng's lawsuit was rejected, and he was placed under house arrest.

Guangcheng, a blind self-taught lawyer, surprised China by escaping from house arrest in April 2012 and entering the US embassy in Beijing. A deal was worked out between China and the United States; now Guangcheng lives in New York with his wife and children.

On Tuesday he testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee On Foreign Affairs about his family's and other people's persecution in China and other ongoing human rights abuses in China. Guangcheng gave Congress a list of 130,000 Chinese officials involved in forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

The Brazos River which flows through the middle of Texas was named Los Brazos de Dios which means In the Arms of God. May God hug friends and enemies and squeeze out all types of abortion and involuntary sterilization and squeeze in one-year or more of paid leave in America, China and other nations.