Mark graduated from Michigan State University's Justin Morrel College with high honors in 1969, then the University of Michigan School of Medicine. He completed a residency at there and an Infectious Diseases Fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Mass General Brigham).Mark joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epidemic Intelligence Serve and then spent six years as the bubonic plague epidemiologist for CDC. When his first wife left and took their children, Ales and Daniel, to the east coast, he followed and found a job as Hospital Epidemiologist at Booth Memorial Medical Center (now New York Presbyterian Queens). While investigating a head lice outbreak in the Respiratory Intensive Unit, he met and eventually married Felilia (Budsy) Mendoza, the beautiful head nurse. In 1986, when the People Power revolution overthrew the corrupt Marcos government in Manila, Budsy and Mark joined the Philippine Department of Health to help set up a CDC-type epidemiology unit. Over seven years, they investigated Ebola virus, typhoid, cholera, malaria, and AIDS outbreaks, as well as mass poisonings with shellfish toxins and embalming fluid (formaldehyde). They were on the slopes of Mount Pinatubo when it erupted, lowering the global temperature by two degrees C for two years, and helped supervise the care of 140,000 evacuees. . They endured six military coup attempts. Budsy got breast cancer and had chemotherapy. They moved to Uganda, which was recovering from the effects of the dictatorships of Idi Amin and his successors. They investigate tropical diseases and narrowly escaped a plot to murder them.They moved to Atlanta, where CDC appointed Mark Director of the Division of International Health. He helped create new training programs in China, India, Kenya, Central Asia, and Central America. Budsy died, and Mark later married Shelly Ahmann, a breast surgeon. They are still wed 23 years later. They adopted two beautiful sisters from Ethiopia, Leila and Zebedia. Mark retired in 2012 and has been writing this memoir since.