Until I read an article about her last week, I had not seen, heard about or thought of Emily Gressman for the past umpteen years when she was a student at Ava High School.
But when I saw the article, my response was, “I’m not surprised.”
Emily, Ava High School valedictorian class of 1995, and her brother, Phillip, children of the Methodist Pastor Rick Gressman, were just the kind of kids you expect to read (good things) about some day.
I suppose I knew, but had forgotten, that Emily married Jared Coberly, son of Doran and Beverly Coberly, of Ava. “Doctor” Coberly has now completed medical school and opened her own medical practice.
When she hung out her shingle, her first patient was a former professor, Karen Bennett.
Bennett is quoted in a recent edition of the University publication Mizzou Wire: “In the fields of science and medicine, test scores and awards are good indicators students are well-trained. But the defining moment comes when we have enough confidence in them to select them for our personal doctors.”
No kidding!
The article goes on to say that Bennett had no hesitation when she asked to be Dr. Coberly’s first patient as the new physician opened her practice at University Hospital’s Fairview Clinic.
Coberly, a specialist in internal medicine, had been mentored by Bennett for her three years of undergraduate laboratory work in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the MU School of Medicine.
Remembering Emily from her high school days here, I was not surprised to read that, in college, she worked to chemically mutate millions of microscopic worms in a project that led her to co-author a research paper that earned international attention.
Perhaps most amazing is that she excelled in medical school and has established a medical practice while also raising three boys – ages 8 years, 5 years and 18 months – and her husband, Jared, is also in his third year of medical school.
So as to not slight the rest of the family, Phillip got a full ride to Princeton and would be categorized by most as a mathematical genius.
Rick and Susan live in Columbia and in semi-retirement pastor a small church in that area.
