ILLUMINATIONS IN AN ELEVATOR - Evolution of a Physician is a memoir by J. Michael Gospe, M.D. It was inspired by a comment made during an orientation meeting at the author's son's college: "One day, your child might ride in an elevator and overhear a fragment of a conversation that could change his life." This book of vignettes from the author's memories celebrates some of the many people whose presence touched him during his medical career: family, friends, colleagues, patients. These stories cover life's spectrum from an infant with crib death to a woman embracing her imminent demise from liver disease, from a man locked in a jail's drunk tank to an elderly woman locked in the prison of her dying body, from a developmentally challenged man with a perpetual smile to a wood technologist with a love of independence. Woven within these tales are insights that molded and shaped the author into a healing physician.