Making something happen in medicine
Lincoln-Sudbury alums, relatives team up to combat coronavirus crisis
Down by seven points at halftime to Concord-Carlisle in 2002, the visiting Lincoln-Sudbury football team received a halftime speech from the venerable Tom Lopez.
The longtime L-S coach, who retired after the 2018 season, told Kipp Weiskopf and his teammates they needed to “make something happen” against C-C in the second half.
“We went out and won the game (32-7) and we made something happen,” said Weiskopf, a 2003 Lincoln-Sudbury graduate. “It’s something that fuels me today. I go back and think about that moment in the locker room of Coach Lopez looking me in the eyes and telling me to make something happen.”
During this current coronavirus crisis, Weiskopf is trying to make something happen, too.
He’s doing so alongside a laundry list of L-S alums, including his wife, Elizabeth Weiskopf, and his brothers-in-law Dan and PJ Schnorr. They’ve all teamed up in the medical field to combat COVID-19 in one way or another.
“It doesn’t surprise me that they are basically on the frontlines fighting this virus that we’re all fighting,” Lopez said.
All in it together
Dan Schnorr has traveled around the world.
The 2001 L-S graduate studied philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Schnorr spent a year in Haiti and went to medical school at Columbia University. He spent a year in Brazil for research and went to Oakland for his residency. The oldest of three siblings from Sudbury, Schnorr then joined Doctors Without Borders in Africa.
He moved to Los Angeles a little while after that and put in another stint with Doctors Without Borders, this time on a search-and-rescue boat in the Mediterranean, before coming back to Massachusetts. He was supposed to go back to Africa on another Doctors Without Borders trip in March, but that was canceled due to COVID-19.
“We have a humanitarian crisis in the U.S. right now,” Schnorr said. “If I have the opportunity to help my own country and my own city, then I’ll do that. Help is needed here now.”
For Schnorr, the here and now is Boston as he’s an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For a few days in early May, he worked in the same hospital as his younger brother, PJ.
“It’s his first year out of medical school,” said Dan of PJ. “It’s like baptism by fire.”
PJ, a 2007 L-S grad, recently graduated from UMass Medical School and primarily works as a resident physician in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center, which is just over two miles away from his brother at Brigham’s.
During this pandemic, PJ, like his brother-in-law Weiskopf, recalled what his former L-S football coach used to say.
“One of his big lines was ‘Don’t let it happen, make it happen,’” PJ said.
PJ’s older sister, Elizabeth Weiskopf, who goes by "Biz" and is married to Kipp, is a nurse practitioner. Their mother, Terry Schnorr, is also a nurse practitioner at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“So we’re all kind of in it together,” PJ said. “It adds a little anxiety that I have family in the field and they are exposed to all of this. But it also makes me proud.”
“I would be lying to say I wasn’t scared,” Biz said. “I worry about my brothers because they’re the ones that are really on the frontlines and putting themselves at risk to help other people.”
Biz, a 2003 graduate of Lincoln-Sudbury, works as a pediatric bone marrow transplant nurse practitioner at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Kipp is a physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and leads a research laboratory at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. In May, he was awarded funding to discover drugs that alter immune responses to coronavirus for use in severe COVID-19 cases.
“We’re hoping to find new therapies to combat COVID-19,” Kipp said. “You never know what direction our research can go in.”
The two Schnorr brothers and their sister and brother-in-law made a pact that they wouldn’t see the Schnorr parents, Peter and Terry, during the COVID-19 pandemic. So on March 27, the Schnorrs and Weiskopfs celebrated Peter's birthday via FaceTime.
It was a virtual celebration that featured Peter blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.
“My three-year-old was pretty upset she couldn’t have a piece of cake,” Biz said.
But at the end of May, the Schnorr siblings, who say they haven't contracted COVID-19, were finally able to see their parents in Sudbury. They did so by practicing social distancing and not going inside their parents’ home.
It's baby steps, but at least it’s something.
“I do think it’s going to be a long time before everything is back to normal,” Dan said.
“This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon,” Biz said. “It’s going to take a while and everyone’s patience.”
PHOTOS: Take a look at the Schnorr and Weiskopf families through the years
Season of Life
In high school, PJ Schnorr switched from being a goalie to a faceoff specialist in lacrosse.
“It was what we needed as a team,” L-S assistant coach Tim Jason said recently.
“That spoke to PJ and his willingness to do what the team needed,” said current L-S assistant coach Jason “Juice” Orlando, who was a teammate of PJ’s in high school. “He looked around and said, 'What do I have to do to help the team?’”
A few years prior, PJ’s older brother, Dan, was the L-S lax goaltender.
“You have to have a certain mindset to be a goalie and he’s kind of bold and courageous, and I think he’s parlayed that,” Jason said. “It takes a certain kind of courage and charisma. I think that carries over really nicely into a medical crisis.”
Biz was more of a “socialite,” according to Lopez, and had a ton of friends whom she would “bounce from quicker than you can bounce a ball” during L-S sporting events. But Biz did dabble in field hockey and lacrosse at 390 Lincoln Road in Sudbury.
“I am definitely not the athlete in the family,” she said. “I will blame it on the fact that I tore my ACL in high school.”
As for Kipp, he was a hard-hitting defenseman for the Warriors’ lacrosse and football teams. A bit of a bruiser despite his lack of size.
“It’s funny because he was such a tough athlete, but he was a real intellectual,” said Jason of Kipp. “All these kids (the two Schnorrs and Weiskopf) are exceptional kids and it’s not a surprise they’ve gone into a career of service.”
Before every spring season, longtime L-S boys lacrosse coach Brian Vona speaks about a book to his incoming players.
The book is called “Season of Life: A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood” by Jeffrey Marx. It’s an inspirational novel that tries to convey the true meaning of manhood.
After a spring marred by both life and death, Vona couldn’t be prouder of his former players who are now in the medical field.
“It truly just means everything,” Vona said.
As for the L-S alums in the medical field, the feeling is mutual.
“The lessons I learned in teamwork; of working together or working toward the same goal, whether you’re on a football field or lacrosse field or in the laboratory trying to cure a disease, those connections translate into everything you do in life,” Kipp said. “I think those connections are more essential now than ever.”
“I feel like I’m a part of something bigger than myself,” PJ said. “So I’m willing to do whatever I have to do.”
Tommy Cassell is a senior multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tcassell@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @tommycassell44.
Lincoln-Sudbury graduates & former athletes now in the medical field:
- Andy Willis (1998)
- Matt Niemi (1999)
- Dan Schnorr (2001)
- Elizabeth Schnorr Weiskopf (2003)
- Kipp Weiskopf (2003)
- Craig Audin (2004)
- Nick Avgerinos (2006)
- Alex Miller (2006)
- PJ Schnorr (2007)
(To name a few L-S grads ...)
