Shortly after their marriage in 1946, the couple decided to emulate the work of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in an underdeveloped country and enrolled at Tulane University, he to receive his medical degree and she to study tropical medicine.
She was a graduate of the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and in 1934 received her bachelor's degree in sociology from Smith College.
Inspired by a 1947 article about the work of Albert Schweitzer, who had set aside an illustrious career to found a hospital in West Africa,[2] he told her, "I think I'll become a doctor and practice in the underdeveloped world", to which she replied, "You're right, we don't want to sit around looking at the damn cows all our lives".
[3][4] The couple enrolled at Tulane University, where he earned his medical degree in 1953 and she studied tropical medicine and hospital administration.
The couple chose to build a hospital in an impoverished location in Deschapelles, Haiti, where 185,000 people were serviced by two government health clinics.