May 27, 2008

A fallen classmate’s lasting legacy

Mila Rainof’s warm smile and the way she embraced students, friends and patients has inspired an enduring memorial.

Mila Rainof’s friends remember her compassion and passion for medicine and for people.

As the 96 members of the Class of 2008 processed to Old Campus for Commencement on May 26, they paused at the corner of York Street and South Frontage Road. One by one, each graduate placed a carnation in memory of Mila Rainof, a classmate who would not graduate.

On April 19 Rainof was struck by a car as she crossed the intersection. She died the next day of her injuries.

In the wake of her death, Rainof’s friends and classmates have found many ways to honor her. Her close friends stood by Rainof’s parents and sister when they came to New Haven and organized a memorial service in the medical school’s Rose Garden. Another group began collecting photos and remembrances for a book to be given to her family. Students have organized efforts to improve safety at intersections near the medical school. A memorial scholarship and award fund is being established at Yale School of Medicine to honor and perpetuate Rainof’s memory and her compassionate spirit and humanistic approach to medicine. Students planted a cherry tree in her honor on Harkness Lawn.

What friends remember best about Rainof is her warm and welcoming smile. “Like everyone else,” her boyfriend and classmate James Troy said at the Rose Garden memorial, “I was instantly won over by her amazing smile.” A friend recalled sharing clinical rotations with Rainof and all the patients asking for “the smiley one.”

Kristina Zdanys, one of the class co-presidents, noted that students in the Class of 2008 are close-knit and would have felt the loss of any of their members, but Rainof was special. “Whenever she walked into a class or Marigold’s, she was always smiling or had something nice to say,” Zdanys said.

“If you asked people to think of a person in the class who always made people feel good … she would be the first person,” said Rachel Wattier, who has been leading a committee that has met with city and university officials to improve traffic safety.

A few days before Commencement, students, faculty and others gathered at the intersection where the accident occurred and, bearing signs that read “Yield 4 Walkers,” and “No Turn On Red,” tried to encourage drivers to slow down and to respect traffic lights.

“There was really no one to blame,” Gregory L. Larkin, M.D., professor of surgery (emergency medicine), said at a meeting in The Anlyan Center the day after Rainof died. Larkin was the attending in the emergency department when an ambulance delivered Rainof. The day before he had been not her doctor, but her teacher, instructing her in the use of ultrasound. After graduation Rainof was scheduled to begin a residency in emergency medicine in Oakland, Calif.

On the morning of April 19 Rainof was on her way back to her York Street apartment after working out in the gym in Harkness dormitory. A truck was leaving the loading dock of Yale-New Haven Hospital against a red light. As Rainof crossed South Frontage Road, also against the red light, the truck cleared the intersection, and cars in the three oncoming lanes moved forward. Two swerved to avoid her, but a third struck her when she was just a yard away from the curb and safety. She died the next day of severe head injuries.

—John Curtis

Photo gallery:

Photos by John Curtis and Terry Dagradi

Subscribe