People can say what they want

Think what they will

What counts is not in our words

Or in our good or bad thoughts

But in the doing

And you truly were a doer

Of doers like one is a king of kings.

Relieving the suffering of others

And helping to improve their living

Conditions were constants on your mind

And what a mind, body and spirit

What devotion to a people

Whose skin was unlike yours

Whose faraway, foreign culture

Must have enchanted you

Jungle doctor some called you

CIA plant you were called by others

You married your profession

Your goals and the principles

Of the organization you founded,

MEDICO.

Brawny muscles don’t make real men

Or a famed prowess in bed

Or a face that wows all and sundry

A mission can make a real man

A mission built of compassion for others

In whatever condition you might

Find those others to be in

You, Dr. Tom Dooley,

Catholic medical doctor

Born in 1927; died in 1961,

Were a real man.