This is my father, Noe Gatlan and this picture was taken in a park in Barlad in 1929. As you can see, he was an elegant man. This picture has the following dedication: ‘With love, for my darling Bice [Rebeca, my mother]; Barlad, 24th August 1929.’
My father was born in 1904. He studied in Italy. His family sent him to medical school there - he studied surgery in Turin between 1924 and 1929. So he was a medical school graduate. He didn't become a surgeon; he was specialized in skin and venereal diseases. Even the post on the practice our family used to have said that. I don't know if my father did his military service, but I know he worked as an army physician in Braila. I don't know for how long he did that, because I don't have any papers. Had I had such papers, I might have got some aids, because I know they sent some from Germany. So he worked as a physician in the Romanian army for a while.
Here's the story of how my parents met. They didn't meet in Iasi, but in Barlad. My mother had breast eczema. My father was studying medicine - after the 2nd or 3rd year, they were already calling him 'Doctor' - and had the right specialization. Their parents already knew one another, because Barlad was even smaller than it is today, so his parents said, 'Look, our boy, Nae - this is how they called him - is going to come to your place and examine the girl.' In the end, my grandmother took my mother to my father's for the examination, and this is how my parents met. My father treated her and cured her.
Of course, during the repeated house calls and the treatment, the two youngsters came to like each other; and, because their parents already knew one another, they decided to get married. It was a love marriage and they loved each other very much. She married young, when my father was in the senior year at the medical school. She was almost 18 when they got married, on 6th January 1929, on Epiphany.
