MeNore Lake says she was probably five years old when she knew she wanted to be a doctor.

“As far back as I can remember, I wanted to study medicine, to get into the medical field, because I wanted to help people. Then I was actually in medical school when I realized that education, teaching, is really my passion.

“And toward the end of medical school, I realized radiology encompasses really what I’m looking for in a career. You get to teach people you work with — other doctors who are caring for patients in different realms, and you can teach patients as well.”

MeNore Lake, center, with her parents, Leyuwork Makonnen and Gashaw Lake. (Photo submitted)

It’s been challenging, she says, “and I’m very grateful for the support I’ve had in my family. It’s been consistent the whole way, my whole life, and I’m thankful my family has been able to grow as I’ve grown.”

A 2009 honors graduate from Franklin County High School, MeNore earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky, majoring in international studies with an emphasis on development in Africa and the Middle East. Then she went to medical school at the University of Louisville, graduating in 2017.

Next was a one-year internship in internal medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital, one of the Harvard hospitals in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Then I got to stay and do my radiology residency, a four-year program, at Mount Auburn,” she said. “That was very helpful, not having to move and already knowing the people there.”

After completing her residency, she moved to California to do a one-year fellowship in musculoskeletal radiology at the University of California San Diego, which ended in June 2023.

To celebrate her long academic journey, MeNore returned home to Frankfort for a month to rest before going back to the West Coast to work as a musculoskeletal radiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is also an assistant professor of radiology and faculty advisor for the Medical School Radiology Student Interest Group at USC.

In all of those years of studying medicine, she “lost a lot of sleep, absolutely. It’s not healthy, and I think I’m still paying part of that off. I’m not done with that sleeping,” she said, laughing.

Scholars with compassion

MeNore has two older sisters. AeuMuro Lake, the oldest, is a uro-gynecologist and pelvic surgeon now living in Seattle. WeyeNeshet Lake has a master’s in art administration and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Although they live in big cities in different states, “I talk to my sisters all of the time,” MeNore says.

MeNore Lake, center, with her parents, Leyuwork Makonnen and Gashaw Lake, and godmother, Asamenech Afework. (Photo submitted)

All three were “very good students and earned full scholarships,” said their father, Dr. Gashaw Lake, a retired Kentucky State University professor. “They knew there was no help otherwise.” He and his wife, Leyuwork Makonnen, were born in Ethiopia. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from KSU and has worked 25 years as a clerk and administrative assistant for the state Transportation Cabinet.

All three daughters were born in the U.S. — AeuMuro in Oklahoma and WeyeNeshet and MeNore in Kentucky. While excelling in their schools in Frankfort, every Sunday their dad taught them their Ethiopian heritage and Amharic language.

“Our dad never let go of his Ethiopian passion, his identity as an Ethiopian,” MeNore said. “And our mom is absolutely his partner in making sure we’ve grown up understanding our heritage. But they’ve also shown us that while that’s an important part of us, where we are now is an important part. So this is a culture of community and global awareness.”

Gashaw Lake started working at KSU in 1986 as an assistant professor in the school of public administration. He later served as dean of the college of professional studies from 1998 to 2015. When an administrative restructuring in 2015 eliminated his dean position, he took a pay cut and returned to the classroom until his retirement in 2018.

“I understood,” he said. “It was just business. I didn’t mind returning to the classroom. I’ve always loved the academic profession — teaching, reading and writing.”

Gashaw Lake came to the United States in 1971 at age 19. His mission was to become a scholar and earn a Ph.D like his scholarly priest ancestors in Ethiopia. It wasn’t easy. After paying the first-semester $648 tuition at Saginaw Valley State College in Michigan, Lake didn’t have money to pay for room and board.

He started his college undergraduate work in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, his hometown.

“I was a good student and once you’re admitted, room and food and everything else are taken care of,” he said. “Coming to college in the United States was a rude awakening. You have to pay, pay and pay.

“Luckily, the international studies advisor, Paul Ghill from India, said, ‘I will put you to work. Then you can pay.’ He told me he dug graves to pay for his education. So washing dishes and cleaning bathrooms and everything else on campus wasn’t bad.”

Other students invited him to stay in their dormitory rooms so he floated from one room to another. A kind English professor loaned him money for his second-semester tuition, “and I paid it back later.”

One day he met a younger boy, Daniel Bourdow, who had come on campus to play basketball. He asked Gashaw if he had access to a phone so he could call home to get picked up.

“I took him to a dorm to use a phone and a friendship started. That simple meeting was a godsend for me. We bonded and later on his family invited me to come live in their basement. A Catholic family, they had seven children and I was number eight. God was absolutely taking care of me when I had no other place to go.”

Daniel Bourdow Sr., the father, owned a trucking company in Saginaw and Gashaw was offered a job repairing truck tires.

“I was a lucky person to meet the Bourdow family,” Gashaw said. “They took care of me for many years. Fixing truck tires was fun. I was young then and could do that. It financially prepared my way for where I am now.”

Without receiving many acts of kindness along the way, Gashaw says he would have never achieved his education and university teaching goals. And to pay that kindness forward, he enjoyed serving on the ACCESS Soup Kitchen and Men’s Shelter Board of Directors in Frankfort for more than 30 years.

Sylvia Coffee, Leyuwork Makonnen, James Barnett (former ACCESS Soup Kitchen and Men’s Shelter director) MeNore Lake, Gashaw Lake, and Charles Pearl pose for a photo. (Photo submitted)

The annual Thanksgiving Day Walk of Awareness — the major fundraiser for the shelter on Second Street — was started under Gashaw Lake’s leadership. He and his wife participated in the 29th Walk of Awareness on Thanksgiving morning 2024.

In a 2016, FRANK. magazine story on Gashaw Lake, daughter MeNore said, “I’ve never known a Thanksgiving when we haven’t done the Walk of Awareness. I thought everybody walked for awareness of homelessness in their neighborhoods on Thanksgiving morning.

“But I’ve found in college and medical school (she was a senior medical school student then) that people really do have Thanksgiving, and it feels wholesome when you just meet with your family and eat.

“I’ve only known it to be, ‘Let’s talk about who we can help. Let’s give food to people who don’t have it.’ I’ve learned this through my dad’s example, by doing this as a family. My dad and my mom have made it a family value of volunteerism, of knowing what’s around you, and that has been a huge inspiration for my own life’s value.”

MeNore said visiting the shelter and soup kitchen as a family happened more than once a year. “We used to go regularly on Saturdays throughout the year. My dad, my mom and my sisters and I would serve breakfast and lunch.

“Both of my parents are very kind people. My mom is very family-centered, very loving, giving and welcoming. She’s very selfless, and I hope I have her work ethic. My dad loves education, school and being a scholar. It seems like everybody has been my dad’s former student. I’ve heard many times people say ‘I love your dad. He helped me so much.’”

Her parents helped her excel in academics, too.

“In medical school when things got busy to where I couldn’t even take a short trip on the road to Frankfort and then come back quickly, my parents would come to Louisville and drop off food for me for the whole week, and then they would leave and go back home. They did that for my older sisters, too. It was a way to survive.”

Medical school graduation

Dressed in her commencement cap and gown, MeNore wore the cords for her induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Society, the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS), and the Distinction in Global Health Track (a competitive longitudinal four-year program). She was voted by her classmates to be one of two GHHS co-presidents.

In her fourth year of medical school, she received the Leonard Tow Humanism Award, which was voted on by her peers. As an intern in internal medicine, she received the Intern of the Year Compassion with Excellence Award, also voted on by her peers.
AOA represents the pinnacle of academic and professional excellence in the medical field. It recognizes medical students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement, leadership, professionalism and a commitment to service.

GHHS is dedicated to honoring medical students, residents and faculty who exemplify compassion, empathy and humanistic patient care.

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation presents the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award to recognize clinicians and medical students who demonstrate compassion, sensitivity, respect for patients, their families and healthcare colleagues; and clinical excellence.

MeNore said in her second year of medical school, she created a program to help newly-arriving refugees in Louisville transition to the healthcare system in Louisville and the United States. Helping others in the classroom, in the hospital, in her community, in her social life, makes her happy.

“She’s very intelligent, but MeNore is so down-to-earth, kind and has a gold heart,” says her godmother, Asamenech Afework, a native of Ethiopia who lives in Seattle. “I consider myself lucky because we are so connected. We have heart-to-heart talks about daily life and social life.

“If I have any kind of advice, she listens. I’m very reserved in my opinions because she’s really intelligent. But she’s a good listener, which is one reason she is where she is now. She’s worked so hard for so many years, and has matured. She knows what she wants and she goes after it.”

MeNore says she loves being near the ocean and seeing incredible sunsets in California. She says she’s probably going to stay there. Her godmother admits she would love to see MeNore married and have children in 10 years. “I don’t know if that’s one of her desires, but that’s my wish. And I would love to be there to help her.”

Ms. Afework says she’s been to Frankfort and Kentucky numerous times to visit the Lake family on special occasions, like baptisms, graduations and a wedding reception. In May 2024, she joined MeNore and her parents on a vacation to Barcelona, Spain, after MeNore had been at USC for almost a year.

One of the highlights was visiting the historic La Sagrada Familia Basilica, the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world. The groundbreaking was in 1882 and construction is still happening.

“The architecture of that place is amazing,” said MeNore, who has a deep appreciation for her own spiritual heritage.

“My mom’s dad was a priest in Ethiopia, who lived to be 107,” she said. “My sisters and I grew up going to Good Shepherd School in Frankfort (kindergarten through eighth grade). And, I still say Good Shepherd is the best school I’ve been to, just the whole environment. My faith always helps me. My goal is to grow in my faith to be like my parents, especially in their ways of kindness, grace and humility.”



MeNore Lake, a 2009 graduate of Franklin County High School, is a musculoskeletal radiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. (Photo submitted)