Johannes van der Zee

Encounters with Indigenous people force a Dutch sailor to reconsider his values.

Ray E. Phillips enjoyed a long career in which he combined both writing and medicine. As a physician he specialized in cardiovascular disease, family medicine, and community health care. He founded a small foundation that enabled him to travel overseas to undertake medical projects, including in Bangladesh and Nepal. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he spent his adult life close to the Hudson River with whose history and natural beauty he fell in love. He explored it extensively as a hiker, paddler, sailor, and reader. He was an enthusiastic crew member and "ship's doctor" on the replica of Henry Hudson's Half Moon as it traversed the Hudson River and sailed into the Atlantic. In his own writings he was determined to evoke and pay tribute to the unending dramas played out in the lives of its human and natural denizens across the centuries.