At age 62, Dominick Tammaro ’81 MD’84, the longtime director of Brown’s internal medicine residency program, made a major change, inspired by a lifelong dream.
“No one stays in the position of residency director for over 30 years,” says Tammaro, a professor of medicine. Ever since his own residency, he’d wanted to hike the entire 2,198-mile Appalachian Trail. “But life happens—marriage, job, kids,” he says.
As his daughters got older, he did other long walks: the 112-mile Dingle Way in Ireland, the 485-mile Camino de Santiago from France to Spain. Then finally, in March 2022, five days after resigning as residency director, he set out from the AT’s southern terminus in Georgia.
“I was giddy,” he recalls. But months of meticulous planning soon went out the window. He hiked far slower than he’d expected, and fell behind schedule. Even as he gained fitness and speed, he got hurt. In Pennsylvania, 1,100 miles into his trek, injuries forced him to quit.
He was disappointed, sure, but also filled with joy and gratitude—for the friends he made, the beauty of the trail, the challenges he overcame. He learned lessons that he brought back to Rhode Island Hospital.
“There’s a lot I just don’t have control over,” he says. “You’ve got to let some things go.”
When he saw how “extraordinary” the new residency director was, he was ready to let more go. This spring, he retired from practice. He’s planning some hikes, several trips with his wife, and to follow the greatest lesson he learned on the AT: “Do what you can while you can.”
IS THERE A DOCTOR ON THE TRAIL?
Before his hike, Tammaro took a Wilderness First Aid course. “Being a doctor doesn’t mean automatically that you know first aid,” he says.
GIVING BACK
“Hiking the AT solo, leaving my family behind, leaving my job behind, it’s kind of selfish,” Tammaro says. He used his hike to raise $9,000 for pediatric mental health care at Bradley Hospital.
GUILTY PLEASURE
Tammaro managed to eat pretty healthy on the trail—until the Half-Gallon Challenge, when he and fellow hikers celebrated reaching the AT’s halfway point with way too much ice cream.
A DIFFERENT PATH
Tammaro loved hiking and backpacking as a kid. But even though “Brown had a very, very active outing club,” he says, “I sort of let my inner nerd flourish during those days.”
‘CAN-DO!’
Most AT thru-hikers have a trail name. Tammaro’s is the motto of the Navy Seabees, bestowed upon him by two veterans he met on the trail. “At first I thought it a bit presumptuous,” he says, “but I came to recognize it as a reflection of my attitude and aspirations.”