In the 1960s, the nearly 10-year-old NIH Clinical Center welcomed three new employees – Vanessa Martinez, Paula Merryman and Cameron Spriggs. The years went by, technology changed, research advanced, but the dedication persisted for these three – and here in 2020, more than 40 years later, you can still find their smiling faces (behind a mask) hard at work in the Department of Laboratory Medicine.
In celebration of their, and many others' extraordinary devotion to the research hospital, Dr. James Gilman, CEO of the Clinical Center, presented the quarterly Length of Service awards in October (NIH ONLY: VPN or Citrix required).
"When I first started my job at the Clinical Center, I was so excited and felt very important to be an employee in such a great institute," Martinez said. She works in the Department of Laboratory Medicine Clinical Chemistry Service. "Forty years later I feel that my staff are like my family. We work together as a team to get our jobs done would not be possible without them."
- Maria Maslennikov