Wednesdays at his office were special – the anesthesia ether could be smelled in the air and free tonsillectomies were done. Children were laid out on mats and pillows on the floor and parents would pick them up later in the day after they recovered in the makeshift post-operation room.

This practice and need pushed him to build a hospital appropriately named Sunnyside. It consisted of twenty beds and no charges for the poor, just a smile and free follow-ups at the doctor's office. Doctor Atlas retired at eighty years of age – still doing house calls free of charge in his old beaten up Ford. The good doctor never wanted his patients to think that being a physician was a business. It was something one commits a life to and in doing so cares about it in a way that should not be tarnished with thoughts of enterprise - for to truly heal someone you must have their full belief and to have that belief you must be a human and not a business.

When Dr. Atlas died at the age of eighty-eight a foundation and not a business was founded by his son Teddy Atlas, Jr., a boxing trainer who helped lead Michael Moorer to the World Heavyweight Championship with a win over Evander Holyfield, and a color analyst for ESPN's boxing program and NBC's coverage of the Olympics. The Foundation was born to pick up where Dr. Atlas had left off – to perform house calls to the city's and even to the country's sick and poor, and to ensure while doing it that the recipients would never lose their dignity – something Dr. Atlas worked a lifetime to ensure. That is why there is no bureaucracy – no mounds of papers to be filled out – no red tape – no administrative costs – just a discrete verification and a cancer child's health insurance is paid or a patient and her parents are flown to a state where the right treatment can be found.

The Foundation operates a food pantry that feeds people who would otherwise go to bed hungry. There are camps and other programs and with them there is hope but also more need – the need to continue to finance a Foundation that receives upwards of fifty requests a week and functions on individual and private donations with its most prominent and successful fundraiser being a yearly dinner that takes place every November and brings in over one thousand guests and seventy celebrities from the sports and entertainment world.

We are looking to move to new and greater horizons, and to help more people who would otherwise fall between the cracks. While growing to these new and necessary dimensions we will continue to hold true to our vow and belief that there is dual importance and strength in remembering people in these ways. One is to never give up on life – no matter whose it is – and the other is to simply teach our young a simple truth: that when one lives a good life he or she is never forgotten and in that way never really gone.

Teddy Atlas
Chairman
Dr. Theodore A. Atlas Foundation