Charlie Garfield was born in Brooklyn in 1944. He began his professional career wanting to be a mathematician and worked on the NASA team that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. But math was not satisfying, and he instead pursued a PhD in psychology. As he approached graduation, he felt compelled to work with people who were dying or living with terminal illnesses. Charlie’s postgraduate work at UCSF’s Cancer Research Institute saw to the beginning idea of Shanti. He quickly learned that he was the first psychiatrist assigned to work with patients at CRI and had been charged with care for all the patient’s emotional needs. He had a dozen patients for more and he felt overwhelmed, as did the doctors and nurses. Charlie also became concerned when it came to discharge planning, how were patient’s care needs going to be met then? Their family members. The counseling skills he gained from his PhD program at UC Berkeley, he felt, could be easily taught to lay people, volunteers, that could bridge the gaps between patient, family, and medical providers whether they were physicians or nurses. The services that the organization we now know as Shanti would be a form of “neighborliness with skills.” The hypothesis of whether or not you can connect vulnerable patients to lay volunteers with a level of skill has been proven by the continued existence of Shanti. Since the first trainings conducted in the 1970s, Charlie has attended the first day of Shanti’s six yearly trainings.
