I had the privilege of having Carl Shy as my dissertation advisor at UNC Chapel Hill. I loved talking with him because he was always exploring ideas how to make the world better. That was Carl's vision of what epidemiology and public health was all about. He was bursting with creative possibilities.

Carl was an expert on lung disorders and respiratory health. One day he told me he had been thinking about the plans to expand the number of lanes on Highway 40 going to Raleigh. Carl told me – "they are just going to get more and more cars on the road with more pollution and traffic headaches.' He told me a better idea would be to restrict it to one lane in each direction. That took me back. But then he explained that that would make the case for a light rail transit service so apparent that the political barriers blocking it would melt away.

Carl worried that no one was doing enough to protect the respiratory health of manual workers. Welding is a dangerous job. Carl wrote a visionary grant application to NIH for a portable ventilation system that would better protect welders as they worked. The reviewers rejected the proposal because they didn't see this as an academic priority. Nevertheless I admired Carl's drive to identify an important need and try to fill it.

Carl raised concerns about the possible harmful effects of nitrogen dioxide exposure from gas stoves on respiratory health forty years before the current concerns were being raised. I marveled that an epidemiologist was so absorbed with thinking about how he could improve public health in such concrete ways.

When writing my dissertation, I became stuck in the data analysis. Carl guided me through that log jam. His practical suggestions about how to proceed saved me; it allowed me to graduate on time and we won a prize from the Society of Epidemiologic Research for the paper we wrote. If left to my own devices, I am afraid I would have agonized over that analysis for months or years. I am so grateful for his wise council on that.

The last time I saw Carl was when I had lunch with him before the Covid 19 pandemic. During that lunch I told Carl how touched I was when he had me and Steve Wing for dinner to celebrate the completion of my dissertation. Steve was an epidemiologist and public health activist in the Department of Epidemiology. He conducted a study of nuclear workers in South Carolina. Even asking whether workers in the nuclear weapons industry might have elevated rates of cancer was a taboo topic; Steve received a lot of push back and public attacks about his work. Nevertheless, Carl backed him at every step. Carl was a great collaborator who was so dedicated to his colleagues and his students. He saw how important it was to ask public heath questions about stories that had not been fully told.

I think Carl's wonderful spirit and curiosity about the world as well as his deep humanity was what made him such an important role model for me and such an inspiration to many. Many epidemiologists focus on the analysis of large data sets and sometimes, are less focused on finding practical solutions. I am so grateful for all the encouragement Carl gave me to see public health and disease prevention as crucial parts of our jobs. Because of Carl, I still carry that vision with me.