Dr. Terry Flotte

Brother Farrel Lorio, S.C.

Lloyd Brinker

Brother Maurus Bordelon, S.C.

Terry Flotte, Golden Crusader

• His oldest brother, Arthur, graduated from Cor Jesu in 1962.
• David Flotte finished Brother Martin in 1974, the year Terry entered 8th grade.

Terry has fond memories of his teachers at Brother Martin.

• Brother Farrel, S.C., an ordained brother, taught him 8th and 9th grade religion.
• Lloyd Brinker (SA '65), his 8th grade Physical Science instructor, nurtured Terry's interest in science.

The course led up to the final lab in which we had to work in pairs to analyze and identify a substance. Mr. Brinker gave us tools for future courses, especially chemistry.

• All his science teachers were good: Peggy Vath in Biology, Bill Bordelon in Chemistry, and Brother Maurus, S.C. ('56), in Physics as well as Algebra II.
• Brother Maurus's math mantras like "Take the i's out" when dealing with complex numbers and "Logarithms are exponents" affected Terry's teaching years later.

He drilled it into you. In teaching medical school students, I honed in on distilling things down to a core concept that somebody can hang on to. You can figure out many other applications from that one core concept.

• Terry benefitted from the math curriculum that covered four years of math in three so that juniors could take calculus with Brother More Schaefer, S.C. (SA '50) That allowed Terry to take calculus at UNO during the summer before his senior year.

That opened up a spot in Terry's senior year schedule for Computer Science, and that led to a memorable incident that President John Devlin mentioned in his introduction of Terry at the Alumnus of the Year Celebration last month.

When we asked some of your classmates to tell us about you, Terry, ... I heard about a speeding ticket you got with a car full of seniors and a brother moderator returning from a computer science field trip ...

• The computer science class annually visited the NASA Computer Center in Slidell. Intent on making football practice on time, Terry started strong on I-10. The officer who pulled him over, seeing students wearing khaki uniforms, asked if the group was in the military. Terry explained that they were in the NJROTC and talked his way out of the ticket.

John summarized Terry's high school career this way.

When his final transcript was printed, the only letter needed was the uppercase A. He was one of the three valedictorians of the class of 1979, but as Brian Barkemeyer explained to me in describing just how smart Terry is, "Kevin Esquerre and I knew the answers. Terry knew WHY they were the answers." In addition to being valedictorian, Terry received the graduation awards in Pre-med, English, and American History.

Terry culminated his stay at Brother Martin with a Golden Crusader award.

He excelled academically while playing football for five years.

• He followed in the footsteps of his brother Dave, a situation that presented a challenge.

Dave gave me a really high bar to shoot for athletically. He was highly respected by the coaches as the typical Brother Martin player who overachieved. He wasn't very tall, 5'10", not very heavy, 200 lbs, for a linebacker. He was faster than I was but not extremely fast. He played with a great deal of intensity and enthusiasm and was a team leader. The coaches wanted to know if I would be as tough and hard-working.

• Terry considers his experience as an offensive lineman for Bob Conlin as crucial to meeting the challenges of medical training.

When I was a fellow in the intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins, we had a most challenging on-call schedule. Check in at 5 o’clock on Friday and check out at 5 o’clock on Monday with only one 10-hour break. It reminded me of two-a-day practices with Coach Conlin where you were pushing yourself mentally and physically.

Terry earned a degree in biological sciences at UNO in three years.

• Four years later, he graduated from LSU Medical School.
• At that point, he envisioned himself as a pediatrician in New Orleans.
• Before that, however, he accepted a residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a decision that changed the course of his life.

To be continued ...