Still LIfe of Solvents Painting

Wilfrid Désir was born on September 3, 1932, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Wilfrid attended the esteemed primary and secondary school, St. Louis de Gonzague, where he consistently excelled as one of the top students in his class. Entry into Haiti's medical school was very competitive but, having scored high on the entrance exam, Wilfrid was among the few to be accepted. Upon graduation, Wilfrid undertook the required rural residency in Dame Marie, Haiti. During this time, he faced some of his most difficult medical cases, as access to modern medical treatment was hard to come by. However, this time doing his rural residency brought him back to the reason he embarked on medicine initially: it was watching his grandmother combine various roots and herbs to treat family members that originally ignited his interest in caring for and treating others. While in Dame Marie, Haiti, Wilfrid met and married his first wife, Olguita Joseph, with whom he fathered three girls: Dowoti Désir-Davis, Nadine and Marjorie Désir. In 1959, amidst political troubles in Haiti and with the promise of a better future for himself and his family, Dr. Désir immigrated to New York to begin training in Pulmonary Diseases and Nephrology at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital/Albert Einstein School of Medicine and Harlem Hospital/Columbia University Medical School respectively. Dr. Désir became a member of the Boards of Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine and, throughout his career, practiced Emergency Medicine at Harlem Hospital, Metropolitan Hospital and finally New York University Downtown Hospital, from where he retired in 2004. Upon dissolution of his first marriage, Dr. Désir married Lucia Forbes-Désir, with whom he has two children: Christopher Henri and Alison Mariella Désir. In addition to his passion for medicine, Dr. Désir cultivated a variety of other interests, which included music (he played the Bass while at school), art, literature and photography. Dr. Désir was interested in anthropology and agronomy and was an avid reader: he could hold his own in almost any subject, excluding finances (he worried about having enough money for his family, though being wealthy was never his preoccupation) and was well read in the classics of French literature. In addition to English, Dr. Désir spoke his native Haitian Kreyòl and French, was fluent in Spanish, and was schooled in Latin. Perhaps most surprising to outsiders, but a treat to close friends and family, Dr.