When plastic surgeon Geoff Williams saves a face, he also saves a life. Training with Taiwanese mentors on a medical mission in Vietnam, he was astounded by the crowd that greeted them in one village: 200 mothers waiting with their children, all with cleft lips or palates. The women mobbed him, pleading for help, as he entered the local hospital. It was as if they were in a sinking ship, Williams recalls, and we were a lifeboat passing by. Courtesy of Geoff Williams, MD
Dr. Geoff Williams, with My Anh, a Vietnamese patient.The surgeons could operate on only 25 to 30 children during their three-day stay. The rest had to be turned away. It was devastating, Williams says quietly. When his plane left Vietnam, he vowed to go back.
Williams never planned to become a globe-trotting volunteer surgeon. I thought Id help these children for a couple of years and get it out of my system. But that was five years ago. Williams, 53, now works full-time correcting facial deformities in 12 countries, including Mexico, Tanzania, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and Taiwan. He has performed almost 1,000 operations, most of them since he started his International Childrens Surgical Foundationand he has no plans to stop.
His work is literally life-changing. Peruvian-born Danit Olivera, for instance, was diagnosed as an infant with facial fibrolipomatosis, a rare deformity. Danit underwent painful treatment that was ultimately ineffective. Depressed by the stares and insults, she stopped attending school and holed up at home, convinced, she now says, that shed never awake from a nightmare that had lasted my entire life. Williams told the 19-year-old he could help. Now 20, Danit is thrilled to face the world.
I am a different person, she says. I am happy.
Williams could be earning more than $1 million a year doing tummy tucks, face-lifts, and breast enlargements in the United States. A friend told him he was throwing away my career, that I cant change the world.
But hes never been motivated by money. When he earned $200,000 a year as a professor at a teaching hospital in Galveston, Texas, Williams lived in an apartment that cost $250 a month. He squirreled away most of his paycheck and now lives off his savings. Because he travels most of the time and is single, he stays with his parents in Boise, Idaho, between missions (and insists on paying them $10 a day). Im just not a guy who needs a new wardrobe every year, he explains.
Williams is multiplying his impact by teaching other doctors the nuances of his skill. The Vietnamese mothers drilled something into me: that their children really suffer. Their suffering can be alleviatedbut not just by me. My real legacy is that I help to empower doctors and they empower other doctors, so this work has mushroomed into something larger than what any one person can do alone.
Grin City
Unlike starving artists everywhere, Bren Bataclan, 40, is giving it away. He paints cartoon characters (neither human nor animal), with one big eye and one small one (he has no idea why), in brilliant colors, and he leaves his small canvases around Boston and other cities. And theyre free.
It all started when Bataclan moved to Boston from the Midwest to teach computer graphics. After he lost his job, he started painting what are now his signature characters. He sold 49 in two days and wanted to show his gratitude somehow.
But how Bostonians reserved demeanor had bothered him for years. Now he realized the citys residents were as friendly as Midwesterners-in their own way. It finally came to him: He would give away his artwork and ask just one thing in return. He attached this note and his website address, bataclan.com to each canvas: This painting is yours if you promise to smile at random people more often. It was the beginning of his Smile Project.
Bataclan has left his giveaways in 20 states and 20 countries. People who have found his paintings send him notes and photos. The characters make them smile, his fans tell him, and they give them hope. Its nice to know that my art really is making a difference, he says.
Since the economic downturn, Bataclan, who supports himself as a full-time artist, has been attaching a different note to his canvases: Everything will be alright.
