ALUMNI Spotlight Michael LAPPI ’85 Entering life’s “third phase,” EC alum returns to campus by Dan Minnich ’80
Mike Lappi ’85 says he’s learned over the years that life can be divided into three phases: “The first phase is developing your own foundation, trying to decide what you want to do with your life. The middle phase is delivering on what it is you said you were going to do. The final phase is more about the giving back…what it is you want to give to the next generation and how can you do that in a meaningful way.” Regarding that third phase, Mike has been thinking about Elyria Catholic a lot in recent months, as he helped plan the 40th year reunion for the senior class of the EC football team. Those thoughts have taken him back to his time at the school—in honors programs, taking pre- college track coursework, and especially to being part of a football team that went 44-0-1 and earned two state championships. He jokes, “The days that I spent, let’s say training on the practice field at EC, ended up being very similar to the days that I spent preparing for my job in the military.” Mike says his education and hard work at Elyria Catholic helped him through his undergraduate
career at the University of Miami, later earning a medical scholarship from the Navy. His postgraduate work includes a master’s degree and PhD at The Ohio State University while simultaneously earning a medical degree at Ohio University. Oh, and then he did his medical residency at Harvard. While on active duty in the Navy, Mike served as a surgery intern at Bethesda Naval Hospital then practiced undersea medicine, focusing on submarines and special forces. He remains a Navy reservist and will mark 32 years as a Navy doctor in November. Mike has enjoyed an extraordinarily successful career in the private sector. He’s currently the Chief Medical Officer for Corning Incorporated. The company that created countless pieces of cookware decades ago has now become a multinational corporation focused on revolutionary glass components for mobile phones, display screens, pharmaceutical vials, and automobiles, in addition to gasoline particulate filters and fiber optic cables
providing the foundation for the AI revolution. Mike describes his role as being like the U.S. surgeon general, but for the company. The job includes overseeing a global team of doctors, nurses and other support personnel providing medical services for Corning’s 60,000+ employees at more than 140 sites around the world. The 40th year anniversary of the championship EC football team brings Mike back to thinking about what he wants to do in his “third phase” of life—the time of giving back. He recalls something he learned from a great photographer years ago, who told him that when taking a picture, it’s easy to focus only on what’s in front of you and forget about the background, which is really what makes the photo. Mike feels that can apply to life as well. “It’s the background that created what you’re seeing and that frames what you’re doing, where you’re going. I think EC created that really solid background for me and my guess is that’s the same for my classmates.”
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