 Robert Lawner's story begins in the early 1900s when his father, Yehuda, immigrated from Russia to Vermont where he married his wife Rebecca and settled in the busy Jewish neighborhood of Burlington. Together they raised seven children in their small brick house. Robert, their seventh child, is born in 1918. He grows up in the tight-knit neighborhood of the Old North End, attending the H. O. Wheeler Grammar School on Archibald Street where he excels at science and math. Money is very tight, especially once the Great Depression hits. For young Bob, finding the money for a haircut at a barber or a nickel to see a movie is often an impossibility, but he is determined to go to college, somehow. Through hard work, he earns enough scholarship money to enter the University of Vermont in the fall of 1936. The only member of his immediate family to go to college. He goes on to the College of Medicine, finishes his studies, and becomes Dr. Lawner in the spring of 1942. He joins the U.S. Army Medical Corps and serves in the Pacific Theater at Guadalcanal and Okinawa. After the war, like his parents before him, Dr. Lawner sees opportunity at the end of a long journey. He settles 3,000 miles away from home in Los Angeles. This was a young, growing area where I could fit in and grow, he says. Dr. Lawner fits in and thrives. He builds an internal medicine practice that spans 40 years, lives modestly, and invests wisely. By the 1980s, Dr. Lawner is considering ways that he can give back and help foster the next generation of physicians. He begins a fund that will provide low interest loans to UVM medical students. Today, the Lawner Loan Fund has helped nearly 1,300 medical students afford their education. Dr. Lawner and his wife Helen have made the fostering of medical education the focus of their extended giving. Dr. Lawner's interest in technology is reflected in his funding of the Clinical Simulation Center and helping build leading-edge, team-based, active learning classrooms. In 2015, the Lawners made what was then the largest one-time gift in UVM history, which in part funded the nation's first endowed professorship in medical education. Dr. Lawner's work to advance medical education and foster what he calls a culture of giving back was recognized with the UVM Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award for 2013 and in 2014, his family proudly accepted his Honorary Doctor of Science degree from UVM. Today, in recognition of a new commitment that brings the Lawner lifetime giving to the College of Medicine to $100 million, UVM is proud to announce the naming of the Robert Lawner MD College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, where thanks to the generosity of Dr. Lawner, students today and in the future will find, in the words of this member of the Class of 1942, a medical education that is second to none.