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Italy — Florence
Remembering Michele Bottos - a giant in the field of pediatrics
I first met Michele back in the early 1980s when he came to Children's Hospital in Boston to learn the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale. Even then I realised that Michele was a unique human being. As an Irishman, I had a natural affinity for Italy and Michele embodied all the warmth and passion of Italy, so that my family and I loved his company from the beginning. His idealism and his passion for ideas were infectious. With Michele, the conversation flowed from Liam Brady's football skills to the writings of Thomas of Acquin, to the differences between neurological and behavioral approaches to working with infants, to debates about politics, the Catholic Church and warm discussions about the meaning of family. He was always searching for clarity and new meanings, anything to make the world a better place for children. His motto might well have been that of Horace, Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. Michele invited myself and Berry Brazelton to speak at the International Conference which he organized in Riva del Garda and in Padua in 1987. He also invited me to stay with him and his mother in their house in Venice. It was an unforgettable visit for me. It was not just the beauty of Venice that I remember but what I remember most of all was Michele's pride in sharing the city he loved so well. I remember sailing across the lagoon to Murano and Burano in his small boat, dodging big ships and singing all the way, Michele at the helm. All of us who knew him at the Children's Hospital in Boston are still deeply saddened at Michele's premature death. Berry Brazelton, Ed Tronick, my family and I still speak about him with a sense of delight and gratitude. To Emma and to his four children and his to mother, we offer our deepest condolences. The world is a poorer place today without Michele. Ar dheis De go raibh an anam (translated from the Irish, it means, may he sit at God's right hand).
The keynote lecture - lettura magistrale
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In his professional life, as researcher and clinician and advocate for young children, Michele Bottos, the Italian neuropediatrician, was the most dedicated professional I have ever met. It was a distinct privilege to have known him, to have worked with him and to be called his friend. He was unforgettable and larger than life in many ways. Michele was committed as few others to making the world a better place for children with special needs. He spent his all too short life searching for new way to identify infants at risk and to develop intervention and rehabilitative programs to support children who were at risk for negative developmental outcomes.
