The school district honored 1981 Minnechaug graduate Kevin P. Moriarty, a pediatric surgeon at Baystate Medical Center, with its Alumni Hall of Fame award. Moriarty said he remembers a high school guidance counselor telling him when he told him he wanted to become a doctor, “Don’t even try. You’ll just disappoint yourself.” Moriarty said he was one of many doctors who did volunteer work in Haiti following the earthquake.
Minnechaug Regional High School Class of 2010 gets their diplomas
Published: Friday, June 04, 2010 Suzanne McLaughlin, The Republican

WILBRAHAM – After eight days in Haiti, where he performed surgeries and slept on a military cot on a porch, Dr. Kevin P. Moriarty is back home in Wilbraham. He described his trip, as “sad, but uplifting.” Moriarty, a pediatric surgeon who practices in Springfield, volunteered at Sacred Heart Hospital in Milot, Haiti, where he volunteered with a team of other medical personnel to aid earthquake victims. He said most of the surgeries he performed were on earthquake victims. He said he was mostly refining amputations and cleaning wounds and infections. Moriarty said. The hospital is a 73-bed hospital which now has about 400 patients including 50 children, most of whom are earthquake victims. The patients are in the hospital which is in a two-room school, a nutrition center and six large tents. Typically the hospital would perform 20 operations a week. It is now doing 20 operations a day. Moriarty said there were about 100 volunteer staff, including a surgical team, an anesthesia team, other medical specialists, a physical therapist, nurses, a priest and four nuns. There are many medical personnel volunteering from Western Massachusetts, Moriarty said. Moriarty said many local residents volunteered to feed, bathe, empty bed pans and wash clothes of the earthquake victims who were total strangers to them. “On Ash Wednesday there were about 400 people singing and saying prayers. It was very beautiful,”
Dr. Kevin Moriarty of Wilbraham spends 8 days in Haiti helping earthquake victims
By Suzanne McLaughlin, The Republican
March 03, 2010