THIRTY THREE OF THE CHARTER CLASS OF FORTY SEVEN STUDENTS (SIX DECEASED, SOME UNABLE TO TRAVEL OR WITH PRIOR COMMITTMENTS) GATHERED AT UCSD ON JUNE 4, 2022 FOR A 50TH REUNION CELEBRATION WHICH INCLUDED A MORNING PRESENTATION IN THE GARREN AUDITORIUM AND AN EVENING DINNER AT THE UCSD FACULTY CLUB. PARTICULARLY APPRECIATED WAS THE PRESENCE OF DR WILLIAM NYHAN ON THE EVENING OF JUNE 3 AT THE ESTANCIA HOTEL AND DRS JOHN WEST AND ARNOLD MANDELL AT THE JUNE 4TH CELEBRATION. DR EUGENE BRAUNWALD GREATLY ADDED TO THE EVENT BY SENDING A VIDEO MESSAGE AND PERSONALLY DEDICATING A COPY OF HIS BIOGRAPHY TO EACH MEMBER OF THE CLASS WHO HAD NOT RECEIVED A COPY AT THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OPENING OF THE SCHOOL.

THE INTEREST AND ATTENDANCE AT THIS EVENT IS A TESTIMONY TO THE APPRECIATION OF THE CHARTER CLASS TO THE FOUNDING FACULTY WHOSE DEDICATION TO A NEW MODEL OF MEDICAL EDUCATION AND THE EXCELLENCE OF THE CLINICAL PROGRAM AT UCSD SET THE STAGE FOR OUR SUBSEQUENT CAREERS. AS THE FIRST CLASS WE HAD THE CONCENTRATED ATTENTION OF THE NEW FACULTY, A UNIQUE BENEFIT OFTEN REFLECTED IN THE STORIES BELOW.

THANKS TO THE FACULTY FROM THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND THE ALUMNI OFFICE FOR ARRANGING AND PARTICIPATING IN SUCH A MEMORABLE EVENT FOR ALL OF US.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO VIEW YOUTUBE VIDEO OR PHOTO COLLECTION

FOR ANY COMMENT PLEASE E-MAIL ME AT SSTAAL47@GMAIL.COM

Cheryl's pictures-click to view

                              IMAGES 1968-72


SATIRICAL SKIT UCSD SOM 1972

UCSD SOM 1972 SKIT.pdf

To see the full article click on the link: Medical World News Article 

PHOTO COLLECTIONS


UCSD 40th reunion.pptx
UCSD 50th opening.pptx

CLASS MEMBERS-THEN AND NOW

ordered alphabetically

BRUCE ADORNATO

How I Spent My Last 50 Years. 

 

Looking back, I see how role models shape your life.  Although I got a taste for neuroscience research when I was in college at UCSB and was included in publishing a paper on rat brain

neurochemistry, it was watching clinical neurologists like Jerry Dalessio with his bow tie or Bob Nichols (brother of Hollywood producer Mike Nichols) with his smirky  humor and wit

and quiet competence of Marjorie Seybold or Don Easton that made we want to be a neuron.


Of course, there were other models, some quirkier than others.  I worked with Peter Lampert, a world famous neuropathologist, who despite an outward appearance and a German accent that forever reminded me of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, was a very kind and thoughful man who had escaped the Nazis Wehrmacht at age 10 by crossing alone over into Allied lines and made a name for himself in the arcane world of electron microscopy.  Or Jim Chandler, a hard nosed  former Marine surgeon who berated us for touching everything from door knobs to noses.  And Jim Brophy, the "hospitalist" psychiatrist, with his rolled up sleeved white shirt and jaunty bow tie, who constantly taught that all in-hospital psychiatric , "problems were iatrogenic neuropharmicalogical until proven otherwise, "Brophy's Law".   There were a lot of models now that I think of it...Nina Braunwald, my precise old school counselor (who could forget dinner at the Braunwald's:  Eugene, Nina, me and my wife Susie. Tension at my end of the table so thick you could cut it with a knife).  John West, who taught me the discipline to present a case in an orderly manner.  Nic Halaz who let me rub elbows in surgery.  So many rich and useful experiences that I have never forgotten.


After my int med internship at UCSD, and three years at UCSF in int med then neurology, and then 2 years at the NIH in neurology, I went into private practice at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic

for 5 years, then left and went to practice with a buddy from UCSF in Boise, Idaho, then back to

Palo Alto in solo practice for the next 35 years, staying on the clinical faculty at Stanford all that time.   I ran the neuromuscular pathology lab at Stanford for 5 years, doing all the muscle and nerve biopsies and interpreting them.  I studied sleep medicine with Bill Dement and Chris Guilliminault, an erstwhile neurologist, at Stanford and set up and ran the first Sleep Disorders Clinic in San Francisco.  Co temporaneously I was involved with a number of Silicon Valley startups and a lot of clinical research with Syntex and the clinical trials of ticlopidine and clopidogrel in stroke and the first Phase I human trials of Genentech's recombinant human nerve growth factor in AIDS neuropathy and diabetic neuropathy.  I worked with a number of venture capital companies serving as a consultant evaluating neurologic therapy devices and pharmacologic trials.  One of the most intellectually stimulating and at times challenging

endeavors has been medicolegal consulting, both on the defense as well as the plaintiff side.

Seeing in microscopic detail how doctors get sued and what is actually standard of care, how causation works and assessing life care plans and damages provides useful insight.  Testifying in trial and subjecting oneself to withering cross examination keeps some edge on your intellectual blade.


Now I have closed my private practice but still attend rounds at Stanford and attend a month a year with the residents on the wards.  Still doing some consulting with a mobility device company and device for migraine and doing some medicolegal work.  I like to say "I've cut back to full time". My wife Helen has a house in Maine which we work on a couple months a year.  For fun I work on my 1959 Triumph TR3 and I have a Mainship 30 fishing boat/cruiser in Sausalito and share a J105 sailboat with my son Brant, doing a little racing on the Bay. It is a lot of sparkplugs, as they say, to keep running. I have two daughters, one a lawyer in SF and the other a high school teacher in Portland OR. and 7 grandkids ranging from 9 months to 19 years with two of them undergrads at UCSD.  I look forward to seeing my classmates next year and a little more travel in California as time marches on.



GAIL AHUMADA

LARRY BAKER (DECEASED)

JAN BAYS (formerly SOULE)

Jan Chozen Bays was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 9, 1945. She grew up in East Greenbush, New York and spent two years in Korea. She received her undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College and earned her medical degree at the University of California at San Diego, specializing in pediatrics.[1]

It was after Bays began practicing Zen in a group that included Charlotte Joko Beck, Anne Seisen Saunders, and Jerry Shishin Wick in San Diego. She eventually moved to the Zen Center of Los Angeles to study with the Japanese Zen teacher Taizan Maezumi Roshi. She served as the physician at the Zen Center’s community medical clinic. She was a student of Maezumi from 1977 until his death in 1995. She received dharma transmission from him in 1983 becoming his 4th dharma heir and, after Joko Beck, the second woman.[1]

With her husband Laren Hogen Bays, since 1985 she has been a teacher at the Zen Community of Oregon, a Zen center or sangha in Portland, Oregon.[2] Chozen and Hogen Bays are also co-founders and co-abbots of Great Vow Zen Monastery of Clatskanie, Oregon, which opened in 2002. From 1990 until the present she has trained with Shodo Harada, a Rinzai Zen teacher.[3][4] In 2011, Bays founded Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple in Portland, Oregon.[5]

Jan added that she enjoys baking gluten-free sourdough bread, growing flowers, square dancing and playing marimba. She and her husband have a combined 5 children and 8 grandchildren. 


Child abuse expert

Bays is a pediatrician and nationally recognized expert on child abuse.[1] In the 1980s and 1990s, she conducted the medical examinations of thousands of infants and children who had been abused or killed and regularly appeared in court as an expert witness.[6] In 1987, she helped to found Child Abuse Response and Evaluation Services (CARES) Northwest, now one of the oldest and largest child abuse assessment centers in the United States.[7]

Bibliography

·   Bays, Jan Chozen (2003). Jizo Bodhisattva: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1590300800

·   Bays, Jan Chozen (2009). Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1590305317.

·   Bays, Jan Chozen (2011). How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1590308172.

·   Bays, Jan Chozen (2014). Mindfulness on the Go: Simple Meditation Practices You Can Do Anywhere. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1611801705.

·   Bays, Jan Chozen (2016). The Vow-Powered Life: A Simple Method for Living with Purpose. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1611801002.

        .     Bays, Jan Chozen (Release date July, 2022) Mindful Medicine: 40 Simple Practices to Help Healthcare Professionals Heal Burnout                     and Reconnect to Purpose. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1645470526.


                .     Journal articles and book chapters relevant to child abuse.


(some content copied from Wikipedia)

Jan also has a presence on YouTube. Her videos can be viewed by putting her name into the search box. A sample is below 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLO_rOvU2c


JUDITH BRAUN


BRUCE BUCKINGHAM

Medical School Memories

Going to the bookstore and seeing the price of medical books.

My time with Arnold Mandel and his lab group trying to isolate indolamine N-methyl transferase from brain tissue.  Arnie thought this was the enzyme that could be responsible for endogenous hallucinogens.  Arnold had amazing energy that spread throughout the lab, and was a genius in many areas.  He is an amazing Jazz pianist.  I have attached a link (see faculty page) from when he played at our last reunion (as an undergraduate at Stanford he had gone to San Francisco and played with Thelonious Monk).  When I called to ask him to come to our reunion, he was playing the piano when his significant other picked up the phone.  He is delighted and excited to join our reunion.  He wrote a number of non-fiction books (“The Nighmare Season” about his time with the San Diego Chargers, “Coming of Middle Age: A Journey”; “ The Nearness Of Grace: A personal science of spiritual transformation”; and a number of science fiction books under a pseudonym which he has never revealed to me.

 

 Going to Arnie’s lab and seeing vials of Sandoz lysergic acid diethylamide (all of which were still there when I left the lab).   

 

Being assigned to Jim Chandler as my advisor.  Dr. Chandler had volunteered as a Marine surgeon to go to Vietnam, where he  removed a live grenade from the chest of a soldier, making the cover of Life magazine.  He had an office in downtown San Diego as a private surgeon where I was to have my first meeting with him.  I got dressed up (wore shoes), but still had a beard and long hair.  As I walked in I could see him in his private office beyond his secretaries’ desk.  He did not appear to look up or notice me, however he asked his secretary to “Get that thing out of my office now!”  I soon went to Hal Simon to request a new advisor.  Dr. Chandler had already been to Hal asking for a new advisee.  Hal said we had to work it out.  So we just avoided each other until I was on a surgical rotation and by chance he was the attending.  There was a case of 14 year old coming in for her second surgery for “corn bezoars.”  I thought this was unusual and although she had no pulmonary symptoms I suggested they test for CF,  which she ended up having.   He requested I present at the surgical conference.  A few days later I ran into him in the parking lot.  It turned out he had a Porsche with dual Weber carburetors, and taught me how to tune them using a stethoscope.  With thus we became “grease” buddies.   By the time we graduated he had hair extended beyond his shirt collar, and I was clean shaven with much shorter hair.  Harold had been right to make us work it out.  I got a nice note from Dr. Chandler on graduation which I still have.

Other quick memories:

Cig breaks with Steve Hill and Bruce Adornato.  Study breaks and running the mesa with Gail Ahumada

Attending the evening class with Linus Pauling and his wife.  Linus calmly speaking at the campus meeting to decide on whether the campus would go on strike and calmly saying that striking has a long tradition of being a legitimate means of expression and was the least we should do.   It was a short speech but the most impactful for the students at UCSD.

Hanging out with Jeff Wilkins on guitar and Phil Miller on drums when they had jam sessions.

Riding on Roy Rosenthal’s motorcycle after taking Part I of our Medical boards.  I thought I was going to die going up Torrey Pines Road.

Football games, with Ron Cooper as an elusive quarterback connecting to Jeff Wilkens and Paul Liebow.  So much testosterone.

Going to an anti-war protest rally and having a black van follow our car taking pictures of everyone as we were dropped off.  Always good to get close to the FBI while in medical school.   

Going to see a blues concert (I think it was Muddy Waters) with Steve Hill and Michael Weinraub after learning how to do an ophthalmoscope eye exam on Michael’s dog (I was a little spacey that night and my memories are a little fuzzy, it must have been a night on call the night before). 

Arguing with Hal Simon that there was not scientific evidence that going barefoot increased the incidence of respiratory infections.

All the things from “House of God” that I found to be true:  the nurse manager getting caught in an exam room having sex with a resident, no one dying without decadron, the sadistic Ob-Gyn resident who would volunteer to change burn dressings and then under dose or withhold morphine as pre-treatment. 

Watching Bill Nyhan get out of his red convertible mustang, pull pants on over his tennis shorts and come up for pediatric rounds. 

Having John Glazer’s dad (Tom) play for us on graduation day. (I have pictures of this, still trying to find them).

Hiding a kilo of kef for someone, and wondering why I was risking my medical career to do that for a “friend,” whom I later realized he was a psychopath.

Going to the Laguna Canyon Free Concert in the rain with Laurie Peters and Phil Engelman, and ending up leaving as soon as we got there to get some hot chocolate and the warmth of a fireplace.

Paul Liebow bringing new meaning to my name (one I had never considered) when he had a dream visualizing bucking hams in coitus.  Many strange dreams in medical school. 

Learning that Jerry Cade liked spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. 

 

Brief bio:  Went to CHLA for internship, residency and fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology was on faculty there for a few years, then went to Children’s Hospital in Orange County where I became head of Pediatric Endocrinology.   In 1998 moved to Stanford and am now a Professor Emeritus on active recall.  My academic career focused on continuous glucose monitoring and the development of automated insulin delivery systems for management of diabetes.  As of this year, all insulin pumps sold in the United States will have automated insulin delivery.  I have been very lucky to be involved in the early developmental of these systems as well as the pivotal trials bringing each of them to market.  I plan to finish one more NIH grant and then retire completely.  My wife of 40 years is a Professor of Pediatric Rheumatology at Stanford where she started and was department head, before moving the “C” suite.  She is now working hard on health inequities and restorative justice.  We have two daughters and two grandchildren, who lived with us during the pandemic.  We are building a small ADU which we will move into so they can have the main house.  They both work at Stanford, but cannot afford housing.  I gave my car away at the start of the pandemic and just used a bicycle, and now have over 3,800 miles on it since March, 2020.  Looking forward to seeing everyone.


JERRY CADE

Like so many of you,  I wonder how so much time has passed since UCSDSOM. 

I left California permanently after med school except for twice a year visits until my mother died 2 years ago. After residency at Mass General I became the first doctor in the miniscule town of Bakersville. I moonlit in the ED  during the 30 years I did primary care and finally shifted to small hospital ED fulltime for 10 years, before semi-retiring 3 years ago. Now I do short locum shifts in  the practice I started which has grown to 4 sites and in a practice that Steve Hill is also semi-retired from. My daughter, Emily, is PA in that practice. What a joy to get to work with her! I like the variety from retirement in working a little at a low stress job.

Marilyn ----whom  I met in the UCSD neonatal unit where she was an RN --- built up our farm into an ecotourism enterprise with dairy goats, lavender products, and you-pick blueberries. There is still farm work to do, although I like splitting wood for my early-morning fires the most.

 

Now we farm 4 grandchildren who live in 2 houses 400 yards from ours. Emily and her hospitalist husband and ED doctor Gabriel with his artist wife moved back home so we have the good luck to  participate in our grandchildren’s lives everyday.

 

Our son Jason is a tenured law professor at the University of Georgia 4 hours away. He, and his 2 sons, are amazing fiddle players. After a career in music traveling with a successful Irish band, a bluegrass group, and finally a bluegrass/rap mash group he returned to his Appalachian roots and plays Old Timey music. He has won competitions all over the country in these genres and his “Hog-eyed Man”  recordings have been popular. Sadly, he won’t be living on our farm until retirement, but we  visit him and those grandsons as often as possible. They love coming to our mountain farm.

 

I swim, run, play the piano, and bike occasionally. I gave up competitive triathlons after 5 vessel CABG  5 years ago (I picked my parents badly when it came to vascular disease). Because of college swimming  and marathon running I was always successful competing in my age group, so it was hard to give up racing.

I look forward to seeing you all at the reunion. Jerry

 





RON COOPER

DAVID DOTY

After graduation in 1972, I stayed at UCSD for the next seven years.  Straight surgery internship, two years of surgery residency. I rotated through all the subspecialties. Fond remembrances of Drs Orloff, Halaz and Dilley. My rotation in Orthopedics convinced me to change course and pursue Orthopedics. Spent one year in Chairman Akeson’s laboratory and conducted the numerous research projects then underway. Co-authored 10 articles in peer reviewed orthopedic journals and worked on NIH grant proposals.

Our residency had four individuals at each year, one of my co-residents was Steven Garfin, the current Dean of UCSD Medical School. I was honored to serve on the medical school’s admissions  committee. I also met my lovely wife of 45 years, Ann-Grete at University Hospital and began my family of two girls and a boy, more on that later.

My residency completed, I wanted to remain in California and was recruited by a multi specialty group in San Bernardino. The sole total joint replacement surgeon in the city sustained a severe retinal detachment and they needed someone to manage the backlog of cases.Thus I “hit the ground running” performing 15-20 total joint replacements per month ultimately, over my career approximately 3,500 cases.

I began a close working relationship with Loma Linda Medical School. I was a clinical instructor with LLMS and ran the foot and ankle clinic at San Bernardino County Hospital. My interest in foot surgery began with a cross cultural UCSDMS program at a clinic in Tijuana, Baja California. This was a weekly open clinic where we saw polio and clubfoot deformities acute and healed malunion fractures. This program thus allowed the patients and one family member to be transported up to San Diego Children’s Hospital for their surgery and then transported back to Tijuana after discharge. It was supported by Ray Kroc, yes that McDonald’s Ray Kroc.I presented several papers at our yearly AAOS meeting on the results of these interventions with pre and post operative gait analysis measurements.

I also became a Qualified Medical Examiner, work place injured individuals are referred to me for review of their treatment and ultimately to determine their permanent disability rating. This is at the intersection of medicine and the legal profession and I have actually learned a great deal from my legal colleagues. I ceased office and surgical practice on January 1, 2015, but continue to do qualified medical exams once a month, which keeps me up to date on the latest cutting edge advances in orthopedics.

Currently Ann and I are enjoying traveling, golf, wine collecting and mentoring our grandkids. My daughters are full time business owners oldest runs her own plumbing company and my youngest daughter manages her dolphin excursion Hawaiian tourist company. My son is a fire captain for Orange countyCalifornia.

The life of a surgeon has been a wonder filled experience for me and I look forward to seeing my fellow charter school classmates in June

WOODY EMLEN



UCSD 1968-1972: Four exciting, challenging, wonderful years – starting with our first med school lecture given by Linus Pauling – an auspicious - and intimidating - beginning!  Intimidation reached it’s peak, however, 2 hours before your unannounced presentation to Braunwald – immodium anyone?

And then there was the thesis – a good idea I think these many years later - I did my thesis with “Crazy Arnie” Mandel – and the only time I could use the equipment in his lab for testing my rats was between 2 and 5 AM –   good preparation for night-call! 

Fortunately, shortly after leaving the familiar confines of UCSD in June 1972 for internship, I soon found that Braunwald and the UCSD faculty had prepared us pretty well for what lay ahead.  After a residency in Internal Medicine, I found that Rheumatology and Immunology – areas that were really in their infancy back then - caught my attention.  After a fellowship in Seattle, I joined the Public Health Service and worked at the Seattle USPHS hospital as the Rheumatologist, thereby fulfilling my Vietnam obligation.  I joined the U Washington faculty, focusing on teaching residents with a gig as a visiting internal medicine consultant for the Indian Health Service, travelling all over the Northwest.

After 8 years in Seattle on the faculty, I dealt with my first mid-life crisis by doing a sabbatical in Cambridge, England – not a great year scientifically but a wonderful year for the family!  On return to the US, I took a faculty job at the University of Colorado, moving to Denver.  After 10 years in Denver, I got restless (again) and started answering some of the biotech recruiting calls, eventually joining a small Palo Alto based company.  While there I worked on designing and overseeing Phase 3 clinical trials for 5 years, until our CEO embellished the data for investors a bit too much, leading me to leave the company and return to Denver, starting a small biotech company with a former colleague from the CU faculty in 2004.  The company was successful from an investor perspective, but our technology was stopped mid-development by a hostile buy-out, forcing me into real retirement in 2011.

Our time at UCSD exposed us to some of the great minds and most wonderful people in Medicine, and prepared us well for careers not only in clinical medicine but in research and administration, as the careers of our fellow classmates demonstrate.  Looking back, my career “wanderlust” (some might call it instability) has exposed me to almost all aspects of medicine – clinical practice, research and biotechnology – a fascinating journey made possible by our professors and mentors at UCSD SOM.  Fortunately, my wanderlust has not applied to my marriage – Mary and I, married the month before starting at UCSD, have now been married an amazing 53 years!!! We have a son, Owen (46 years old), daughter, Robyn (41 years old) and one awesome (of course) grandson, Joshua (age 13).  Looking forward to seeing everyone!!

PHILIP ENGELMAN

After internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco I returned to UCSD for Pathology Residency with a special

interest in pulmonary pathophysiology under Dr. Averill Liebow.  I was able to work with such luminaries as John West, David Denison, and David Warrell.  I also spent a year at Hopital Bichat in Paris, studying with Dr. Francoise Basset. a colleague of

Dr. Liebow's with expertise in occupational lung disease.  After residency I remained at UCSD as an Assistant Professor of Pathology with primary responsibility for the Autopsy Service.

     I eventually chose a career in community pathology and was fortunate enough to be offered the position of Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Services at Santa Teresa Hospital in San Jose, initially a combined fee-for-service/Kaiser facility, but now known as San Jose Kaiser Hospital.  I spent almost 40 years at Santa Teresa and learned to appreciate the integrated Kaiser system, which allowed me to strive for diagnostic precision without compromise.

     Along the way came marriage (Danielle, with me in the photograph from December 2021 in Lihue, Kauai), 3 children, 2 grandchildren and counting.  

     I would like to add that my father, a rheumatologist at UCSF since World War II who advised me never to retire, passed

away in his office at age 105.

We have homes in Los Gatos and Pismo Beach, California; I spend free time at poker (pre-pandemic), swimming, and  the piano.   My brother Ed is an immunologist at Stanford and winner of the 2022 Columbia University Gold Medal for Medical Research. 

DAVA GERARD

JOHN GLAZER

I chose a medical career primarily due to my experience with the primary care physician who cared for our family from the time  I was 5 until high school graduation. Dr. Landes never tried to  recruit me into medicine; rather, his manner during house calls when my brother and I got sick,  and in his office for well visits, was compelling: His gentle authority, communicating caring and exceptional clinical skill elicited in me, as a young school-aged kid, exceptional trust and admiration. Fast forward to junior year  in college and Hal Simon's visit to the New England campus---what a salesman, not to mention La Jolla's appeal to this lover of body surfing and fantasies of endless summer! And the campus interview with Simon---his devilish grin noting the office of student affairs and another SOM office ending in relations. More important was his clear knowledge of my academic and personal background and assurance the interview process was supportive; I felt, and believe I was, valued. 


Medical school itself combined for me excitement and worry in equal meaure from the start. I felt well  prepared academically but constituionally deficient in the lab. Course director Dr. Young called me in at one point in the first year, aware I was struggling; he was supportive and I made it through. Wonderfully counterbalancing the worries of first and especially second year, with Step I looming, were my extraordinary classmates and certain abidingly supportive faculty, particularly my advisor John Ross. Dr. Ross not only evaluated my psychosomatic chest pain but provided personal and academic support around my efforts to understand cardiovascular physiology. Ironically, in being assigned the cardiovascular division chief as an advisor, Dr. Ross also provided needed counterpoint to the intimidation I felt in the 3rd year medicine clerkship. 


Third year took a decidedly positive turn in my pediatrics clerkship---awakening  my profound affinity for the clinical care of children and families---and an atmosphere that could not have been more different for me than in medicine.  I met, was supported by, and became friends with numerous pediatric faculty, James Connor in particular, and recall with vivid clarity and pride participating in an exchange transfusion of a critically ill child with Reyes, seated at the bedside drawing the child's blood while others infused banked blood. 


I never looked back, pediatrics then child psychiatry forming a career  that I can't imagine being more fulfilling and life-affirming than the one I have had the good fortune to have had. This continues to the present, fittingly for this 76 year old, at a reduced  pace since stepping down from my hospital work three months ago., while continuing to evaluate chidren with psychiatric and medical co-morbidity in the outpatient setting, and supervising a child psychiatry fellow's outpatient experience. 


How did I transition from pediatrics to child psychiatry after completing pediatric residency and a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship, then 4 years as an attending in the division of infectious diseases at what is now Nationwide Children's Hospital at Ohio State? Two things forged the transition: While currently Nationwide has a distinguished child & adolescent psychiatry program, in my day there wasn't a single attending psychiatrist serving the 300 bed Columbus Children's Hospital  as it was known when I came on board in 1979. My infectious diseases role brought me to many children and youth with life-threatening infections due to cancer chemotherapy. I found myself both uneasy with the rapid fire decision making required in that clinical setting, and I was appauled by the minimal attention being devoted tothe psychosocial needs of these profoundly stressed children and their families. An experience from residency was rekindled: As a pediatric intern in my program, each patient with a new cancer diagnosis was assigned to that intern for all three years of training, such that the intern saw each child at every oncology clinic visit, under the joint supervision of the attending oncologist and a psychiatric social worker who supported each patient/parent pair. This proved crucial: Without being aware of it, I was being trained in psychosocial oncology. All of this came together in my decision, after four years as a pediatric ID attending, to do residency training all over again in psychiatry and chid psychiatry, emerging intp a lifelong career as a psychiatric consultant to pediatric hospital physicians, so-called "consultation-liaison psychiatry", now better termed pediatric psychosomatic medicine. The broad scope of practice in this specialty encompasses youth suicide attempters, delirium, catatonia, and other severe disorders at the interface of pediatrics and psychiatry, and the diagnostic and treatment support of youth and families in the settting of serious and/or chronic medical illness. Ironically, having left inaptient infectious diseases practice in part due to the pace of high stakes medical decision making, as a psychiatrist, I have found professional satisfaction in managing behavioral emergencies that frequently arise among psychiatric patients on pediatric inpatient services. Some sort of interplay of nature and nurture must explain my discomfort in one setting, and comfort in the other. 


To close, a word about public policy. Sadly, the rate of completed youth suicide has been rising over the last decade, well before COVID. Since COVID, though, the rate of youth suicide attempts ​has grown exponentially. For children's hospitals across the country, this epidemiological event has led to what has become known  as the "boarder crisis." With many more youth meeting criteria for inpatient psychiatric care, and until recently no increase in the number of such beds in any given community, suicidal youth clinically assessed to be unsafe in an outpatient setting have been occupying children's hospital emergency room and inpatient medical beds to an unprecedented degree, while they wait for psychiatric placement. Thus, the need both for more inaptient psychiaric beds for suicidal children and youth, and for innovative models of care for these children, has never been greater. This "boarder crisis" creates pressing issues which public policy, typically at the local level, must address. Fortunately, this is happening: In my locale, and in many others, state and local government and private providers of psychiatric services, are collaboratng to garner resources to grow inpatient capacity and to develop innovative care models. Having been raised by politically active parents, and with my clinical responsibilities somewhat lightened, I am able fulfill another passion, to become involved in efforts to craft these  needed public policy changes in order to address this crisis in child and adolescent psychiatrc care. 


My dear wife Diana and I are approaching our 43rd anniversary. Professionally Diana Wasserman MD, she trained in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where we met during my infectious disease fellowship, then did her own fellowship in behavioral/developmental pediatrics at Yale, and has had a career combining primary care with assessment and treatment of children on the autism spectrum. We share an abiding devotion to the care of children, families, each other, and our own family of two daughters and two granddaughters. Older daughter Lisa teaches middle school math in suburban Saratoga Springs, NY, is married to son-in-law Christopher, a PhD neuroscientist at Skidmore, and they have our two granddaughters Ellaria, 11, and Nadia, 7. Our younger daughter Rebecca, recently transplanted herself to Boulder, CO, to work in the solar power industry, and if I may boast a bit, was just named Woman of the Year by the American Clean Power Association, an award recognizing promising alternative energy professionals who are less than 10 years into their careers. I, and we, are indeed blessed. Diana, our kids and I had a joyous time some years ago visiting Paul Liebow, and his wife and daughter, at their simple, rustic, and beautiful home in rural Bucksport, ME, at a time in Paul’s life that was deeply gratifying, with a family he loved, a deeply valued career in Emergency Medicine at Eastern Maine  Medical Center, summer stints at the family’s retreat on Cranberry Island, ME, poetry writing, and he was active in local politics on behalf of the great many underserved families in a poor state. Rest well, Paul.


I look forward to June, 2022 with great anticipation! I will look for photographs to post along with these comments.


With every good wish to my classmates, in fond memory to those we have lost, and with special thanks to those of you spearheading this reunion and by engaging UCSD, shalom!

STEVEN HILL


Between my first and second year of medical school I received a grant from the California medical Association to set up a rural preceptorship program in the state. I had a wonderful summer driving to small towns of my choosing with the letter of introduction and enlisting rural physicians to precept medical students in subsequent summers. Jerry Cade was involved in a similar program with the Student American Medical Association aimed at exposing health care students to the Appalachian area. As a result the following summer I found myself deep in the North Carolina mountains rather than a place like Pismo Beach or Lone Pine. It was here where I met my future wife Beverly, a student nurse assigned to the same team (coincidentally Bev was also a Californian in school at San Jose State).


Two weeks before graduation we were married and then we drove cross country to the University of Virginia for my Family Practice residency (I was the only member of the charter class to take a residency in family practice.)


Charlottesville was a major miscalculation. In 1972 it was still largely segregated. I felt like I felt like I was the only McGovern voter in the entire city! It was the first year of the family practice residency at UVA and there was an obvious disrespect for the program among the established departments.


So after a difficult year we decided to take some time off and travel. We spent several months on the bus in Mexico and Central America. Later in spring and summer we spent time tent camping in northern BC,Alaska and.the Yukon. After that the next several months we were backpacking In out-of-the-way places in the Hawaiian Islands. The travel was supported by short term locum tenets gigs.


In 1976 I returned to training and finished my two years of family practice residency at the University of Iowa. Unlike Charlottesville Iowa city was great and we loved our time there.


When finished we returned to the little North Carolina town where we met. We have three terrific, successful daughters and now have four grandsons. My entire practice career has been spent In The same location where it began decades before


KALMAN HOLDY

JOHN HOLZER (DECEASED)

JACK JACOB

After completing 4 years at UCSD I did a pediatric residency at UC Irvine.  Spending a summer at the Hoopa Indian Reservation in Northern California during med school spurred my hidden outdoor and adventurous spirit.  One of the pediatric faculty at UC Irvine had trained with one of the first pediatricians in Alaska and this spurred my interest.  After 3 years in residency, I moved to Alaska and worked at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage in what was then the Indian Health Service.  It was a humbling and learning experience caring for the isolated Alaska Native population across the state.   During my 2 years there I realized that the neonatal care in Alaska was non-existent.  I came back to UC San Diego in 1977 and did a neonatal fellowship behind Alan Jobe.  After 3 years of fellowship doing research on surfactant, I returned to Alaska to become the first neonatologist in the state.   I developed the first regional NICU in Anchorage, neonatal education programs for physicians and nurses, and an air transport program in the state.  The program grew to 8 physician, 6 NNP group.  After several iterations, the regional NICU in Anchorage has grown to a 60-bed NICU caring for all the critically ill neonates in Alaska.  I also spent time during my career volunteering and helping develop a NICU in Katmandu, Nepal.

My leisure activities are taken up by the outdoors:  fishing, hiking, camping, flying, river rafting in the Alaskan wilderness, Nepal, and the Amazon.

During my neonatal career I developed a close professional relationship with our pediatric ophthalmologist and started a medical software business focused on streamlining and improving the care of babies with retinopathy of prematurity. 

 I retired in 2019 after 39 years in practice and leading my neonatal group.   My spouse, Janet, and I have 4 kids, 3 daughters and one son.  They are all productive grown adults.   We have 2 grandkids.

Amazing to read everyone’s journey after med school.  Looking forward to catching up with everyone. 

WILLIAM JESSEE

Bill's Resume:

William F. Jessee, MD, FACMPE retired from his position as a consultant with A.J. Gallagher and Co. on December 31, 2020. He had been with Gallagher since 2011, after serving for more than 12 years as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).  While at MGMA, he also held an academic appointment as Clinical Professor of Health Systems, Policy and Management at the University of Colorado School of Public Health.

 

Dr. Jessee is one of the nation’s leading experts on physician services management and hospital-physician integration. In particular, he is skilled in the development and implementation of strategies for creating aligned economic interests among physicians, hospitals and payers. He is also widely recognized as an expert on health policy issues, and the role of governance in quality improvement and patient safety.

 

Before joining MGMA, Dr. Jessee was Vice-President for Quality and Managed Care Standards at the American Medical Association. His experience also includes service as CEO of a regional integrated delivery system in Louisville, Kentucky; as a Vice President of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; and as corporate Vice President for Quality Management at Humana Inc. From 1980 -1986, Dr. Jessee was a full time academician as Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, Chapel Hill.

 

Professional Highlights

§  More than twelve years leading MGMA, a national association for managers of medical group practices. Extensive experience in all facets of the management of cost-effective, profitable, high quality medical groups, achieving high levels of patient and physician satisfaction.

§  Nine years as a board member of Exempla Healthcare, a three hospital system in Denver. Extensive experience in physician practice acquisition, strategic integration of physician services, and development and use of metrics for improving individual and organizational performance.

§  In-depth knowledge of hospital board, management, and clinical staff responsibilities for patient care quality and safety.

§  Extensive experience in developing strategic plans and initiatives for achieving the clinical and financial integration necessary to meet payer and purchaser demands for cost-effectiveness, quality, safety and patient satisfaction.

§  A nationally well-known educator on physician leadership, hospital and health system governance, and ACO development and implementation.

 

An honors graduate of Stanford University, Dr. Jessee received his medical degree at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.  He took residency training in pediatrics at Indiana University Hospitals, Indianapolis, and completed his training in preventive medicine at the University of Maryland Hospital, Baltimore. 


ALAN JOBE


I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a degree in Biology in 1967.  I then completed MD and Ph.D. degrees in 1973 at the University of California, San Diego.  My Ph.D. research was on the regulation of the lac operon with Drs. Melvin and Suzanne Cohn at the Salk Institute.  During medical school, I directed a free clinic for the Flying Samaritans one weekend each month in Baja, California, Mexico.  I completed my pediatric residency in 1975 and fellowship in Neonatology in 1977 at the University of California, San Diego. I joined the Department of Pediatrics at Harbor-UCLA in 1977 where I became a Professor of Pediatrics at UCLA in 1983.  I was named the 1st Joseph W. St. Geme, Jr., Professor of Pediatrics at UCLA in 1995.  I moved to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the University of Cincinnati in 1997 where I am presently Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the divisions of Neonatology and Pulmonary Biology.

 

I performed many of the metabolic and physiologic studies that resulted in FDA approval of surfactants for the treatment of respiratory distress syndrome.  My research interests are in surfactant homeostasis, lung injury and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia, fetal inflammation, and lung development.  I have had continuous R01 funding since my fellowship.  I was the Director of a P-50 Program Project Grant from NHLBI to study surfactant homeostasis in transgenic animal models at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. I have worked for 24 years with NIH and Australian NHMRC funding in Perth, Western Australia, and Cincinnati on translational research to understand fetal lung maturation, fetal inflammation, and the risks of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia.

 

I also directed two clinical studies funded by NHLBI to evaluate chorioamnionitis and lung outcomes in late-preterm infants (RO1) and to identify biomarkers for Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (U10).  I was Chair of the Steering Committee for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network from 1996 to 2006.  I served on the NIH-Human Embryology and Development Study Section from 1983-1987.

 

I was a member of the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council for NIH from 2003 to 2007. I was the Chair of the Steering Committee for the NICHD Global Research Network, and a consultant to Fundassmin, a research foundation in Argentina, and a consultant for a Bill and Melinda Gates that supported the evaluation of maternal and infant mortality.  My CV lists over 437 peer-reviewed publications and over 262 editorials, chapters, and other publications.

 

My service to academic pediatrics includes being an SPR Council member from 1984 to 1988 and SPR President in 1989. I was an editor for Pediatric Research from 1984 to 1988 and have been an editor for Journal of Pediatrics from 1997 to present.  I organized training seminars for young pediatric faculty in Estonia, Poland, and Hungary for the SPR, APS, and ESPR in 1991 and 1993. I was the Secretary/Treasurer of the American Pediatric Society from 2003-2009.  I was the Chair of the Pediatric Assembly of the American Thoracic Society in 1986 and was Chair of the ATS Research Fellowship Review Committee from 1992-1995. Other activities include reviewing grants for the Basil O’Conner Awards for March of Dimes.  I became a member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1986.

 

I received the Ross Award in Research from the Western Society for Pediatric Research in 1984 and the E Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research in 1986. I received the Arvo Ylppö Medal for Pediatric Research from the Finnish Pediatric Societies in Helsinki in October 2002.  I was voted the George Simbruner Lecturing Award at New Frontiers in Neonatology in Innsbruck, Austria in 2005.  I was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2007. I gave the William Silverman Lectureship at the PAS meeting in 2009.  I received the Thomas Hazinski Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Pediatric Research in 2010.  In 2011 I was recognized by LA BioMed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center as a Legend for service to Harbor-UCLA.  I received the Virginia Apgar Award from the AAP for 2011.  I was also recognized by the Founders Award from the Midwestern Society for Pediatric Research in 2012, the Daniel Drake Medal Award from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2021, and the Founders Award from the Pediatric Assembly of the ATS in 2021.

 

I have had a very rewarding career in Academic Pediatrics. I have been very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time to participate in the major advances in neonatology. 

 

I have been married to Helgi Jobe for 49 years and she has been very supportive of my research-related travel. We have one daughter (adopted) who is a NICU nurse in Long Beach, CA. I was diagnosed with glioblastoma in November 2019, and am in good remission so far, hope I can make it to the reunion of SOM – 50 years in June 2022. 

 

 

Alan H. Jobe, MD, PhD

Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Division of neonatology and Pulmonary Biology

University of Cincinnati

3333 Burnet Avenue. MLC 7029

Cincinnati, OH  45229-3039

Email: alan.jobe@cchmc.org

Mobile: (513) 702-3730

Telephone: (513) 636-8563

Fax: (513) 803-4891


CONNIE JOY (NEE SEKULOVICH)

GREGORY JOY

I first planned to be an astronomer. My friend Ed Duckworth and I founded the first astronomy club in San Diego, as sophomores in High School. I gave up on this when I realized I did not want to be freezing my butt off on a mountaintop, and also that there were very few positions available in the US, and it would be easier to practice Medicine and remain in California. I then went to Cal State San Diego. 

I was very happy to be accepted to this new school with a new and energetic faculty with new ideas for a school more closely integrated with the general campus. They were always open to feedback and suggestions from us. I complained that the psych rotation spent too much time in the locked ward at Mercy and the patients were not as relevant to a budding internist as going on rounds in the main hospital with Dr. Jim Brophy, who consulted on the inpatients.  So they granted my request to spend 1/3 of my time in the inpatient psych ward and 2/3 with Dr. Brophy. I believe that this led to a lasting change in the rotation which I believe was more beneficial to the students who were not heading to a career in psychiatry. Also not unimportantly, it gave him a chance to shrink me, which I dearly needed at the time. 

My thesis project was with Dr. John West, a brilliant gentleman who was already on his way to being a massive contributor to our knowledge of pulmonary physiology, and the project I was involved with was one showing the significant difference in alveolar size between the apical and basilar  alveoli due to the lung  being expanded by the negative intrapleural pressure and contracted by the intrapulmonary elasticity, leading to the apices being stretched out and the basilar areas relatively collapsed as the lungs were draped from the apices. This unavoidable difference in alveolar sizes leads to a mismatch of ventilation and perfusion in which the apices are better ventilated than the bases of the lungs.  And the bases are better perfused, because the pulmonary artery pressures are slightly lower in the apices. This leads to TB thriving in the higher oxygen levels in the apices. 

I ended up applying for residencies only to the available California schools, and virtually all of them made a comment, that with my letter of recommendation from Dr. West, just come on over. I chose UCI because I was particularly interested in ID at the time, and I wanted to ultimately do a fellowship there, with Dr. Tilles and associates. I had a good time and education there, doing an internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship, but as I was finishing my fellowship and was doing some outside consults as a favor to the ID professors, I realized that while I liked ID as a discipline and academic study, the day-to-day clinical practice was not satisfying to me. And I also realized that research was not for me, preferring the enjoyment and challenges of taking care of people. 

Emergency Medicine, though, was bright and new and beautiful and exciting, so I did the obvious and logical step and jumped right in! And at that time, my last Ob or surgical experiences were back in medical school. So I took every course available, and learned on the job. My first crash thoracotomy was a month into my new ER career. (yikes!). He was a 10-year-old kid, who had fallen off his bike onto an open jack-knife, straight into his left ventricle. He actually survived, though severely damaged, and every year for the next 3 years I worked there, his Mom came by with him and thanked us for saving her boy for her. This was all prior to the paramedics and trauma system. 

I got my ED boards and worked for the next 25 years in various ER’s in LA and the San Gabriel Valley, had a couple of contracts and Directorships and was Medical Director of a Base Station, until I realized I really didn’t like the politics, just wanted to pull my shifts and go home. 

In 1990 I bought into a very busy and successful Mission Viejo Practice, doing general Internal Medicine. we sold the practice to Optum Medical Group in 2014 and we continued practicing as PCP’s for them. 

In 2017 I left Optum and changed to work as a PCP for the California Dept of Corrections (and no, it was not part of a plea bargain!) because I thought it would be interesting. I was working in the  Bakersfield and Delano area. It was indeed interesting, and medically challenging because you are expected to manage often very ill and complicated and noncompliant patients, with only occasional specialty consultations. Patients with insulin-dependent Diabetes that in my private practice I would have simply sent to my endocrinology colleagues and they would have happily taken over all care were now my responsibility. And we not only wrote all the orders for meds and medical treatments or diagnostic orders, we also had to order housing, diet and isolation orders. So it was indeed both interesting and challenging. 

However, 3 months ago I retired from full-time practice and now am working part-time as a House Physician for an LTAC (Long-Term Acute Care) hospital, in which I stay overnight and handle any resuscitations or Rapid-Response codes or intubations that might be required. It is a very low-volume endeavor. 

So, that covers the professional aspect of my 50 years in practice, where I re-invented myself every 10 or 15 years or so, has kept me active  and interested and forever grateful for the great head-start provided me by UCSD School of Medicine. 

Now for the personal side. I have been happily married to Valerie since 1985, since we met in the Emergency Room, where she was an RN and head of medical education for Tenet. We immediately moved from Long Beach to Old Town Seal Beach a block off the beach and have been there ever since. She also became an attorney at Southwestern Law School. She was head of Quality Management for Kaiser Hospital South Bay before retiring 2 years ago to take care of her 93-year-old mother who has been with us since we got married. Her son Jason is now a Plastic and oncoplastic surgeon in Berkeley, married to a Cardiothoracic Surgeon. Their 18-year-old daughter Gia is staying with us going to school locally, and he has 3 other children aged 6, 8 and 8. Our daughter Kathryn is in Houston now, finishing her trauma surgery fellowship at the Ben Taub Hospital at Baylor, and will be starting a junior attending position at Johns Hopkins in August. She is also a former water polo player on a team that was always in contention for winning Junior Olympics, has had many former and current Olympians. She is also an artist and sculptor, and fluent in Italian. Her major at UCSD undergrad was Italian Literature. 

I’ve always been athletic and physical, first obsession was body-surfing in high school (I couldn’t afford a surfboard). Memo accused me at our last get-together of trying to kill him at our beach party the summer before we started Medical School! Apparently it was my fault that he was trying to emulate me body-surfing that day, and states he nearly drowned. I had no idea. 

My next sport was racquetball, which fit my ER lifestyle. Working 9-10 24-hour shifts a month allowed me to play 20-30 hours/week of open-level racquetball. My profession has always been shaped by the need to allow plenty of time for my sports, and of course the requisite funds for same.

Similarly, an ED practice made it easy to get a week off a month for 4-5 months a year to ski at Alta Utah, which I did for about 20-30 years. 

I also enjoyed offshore racing sailing, owned a series of boats, culminating in my 36-foot cold-molded wooden boat  Tinderbox winning the Newport Harbor YC Ahmanson Cup in 1985, coming in first overall in the IOR class, over 74 other boats. 

My most recent obsession is tennis, will never be as good as I was in racquetball, but I dearly love it. My pinnacle accomplishment in that is probably a few years ago when Scott Davis (who rose to #9 in the world and is now head pro at a local club in Newport) was doing a demo with David Pate at a private home in San Juan Capistrano, pointed to a friend and said lets play, then pointed to me and said “you—serve it up.” (No warmup, first shot of the day, no pressure...) I tossed it up, put a fierce topspin on it and it just barely cleared the net and kicked 10 feet to his right for an ace!! He laughed his head off and said that David was always on that side to receive. That’s gonna go on my tombstone, “I aced Scott Davis”, a latter-day version of “I shot Liberty Valance.” (the rest of the game did not go nearly as well, suffice to say—oof, it was ugly..lol)

So now that I am retired from full-time practice (and the evening shifts of my On-call position don’t interfere with my sports), I am looking forward to increasing my sporting endeavors again. 

I also have always been interested in art (I think that my Art Minor at San Diego State played some role in my acceptance to UCSD). I was always very competitive and entering competitions and in my sophomore year at State College a piece that I had entered into a competition sponsored by a local art association was awarded a purchase prize of $1,000.00. That paid for my entire 4 years of tuition at San Diego State. Then I had  to drop art to concentrate on grades, didn’t do any more till 15 years ago I got the bug again. In the next 3 years I was juried into 8 national and international competitions, won the “People’s Choice Award” at the Colored Pencil Society International Exhibition in 2007. I now have a half-dozen projects I am working on. I am also able to work on my art at work when nothing is going on. 

And last, but hopefully not least, my other obsession has been writing, science fiction. In college I wrote a number of short stories and submitted them to the pulp magazines of the day. They were not accepted, and I would receive these short MIMEOGRAPHED notes (boy, is this an old story lol), to the effect: “Sorry this does not meet our needs at this time.” The closest I ever got was a hand-typed letter of rejection from John W. Campbell, the dean of the sci-fi editors at the time, who said that he liked my ideas, found them to be original and interesting, but I needed to flesh out the characters more and then re-submit. I realized that I did not have time to do that and get into medical school,  so that was also shelved. I am now re-starting the writing of a novel I started a couple of years ago. It’s virtually all written and all the events are decided, but I still have to write the dialogue and flesh out the characters. It is halfway through, hopefully coming to a streaming service to you shortly. :)

So there you have it. I have had a wonderful half-century since graduation. I have very much enjoyed my medical profession, but my life always has had to be more than that. I remain astounded and impressed by the medical careers and accomplishments of my classmates, but realistically my life has always had to have other elements. And as I have acknowledged, I have always chosen to arrange my medical endeavors to permit that. I enjoyed clinical practice very much as well. In my practice in Mission Viejo a third of my patients had been with me for over 20 years and were personal friends.

I started out my medical life convinced that I would go into research, but I never found an issue or question that lit a fire under me such that I could turn over my entire life to answer that question. I deeply respect and applaud the people who have found that quest, and are working to advance medical science and capabilities.  My colleagues and classmates at UCSD should be very proud of their accomplishments. I certainly am proud of them, we were and are a very fast crowd. 

Best wishes for the future, 

Greg


THOMAS KEENS

WILLIAM KELL

Planning to attend

MILTON KLEIN

  I must acknowledge that memories laid down more than fifty years ago may have morphed, glorified, or been embroidered. What I do recall with certainty, however, was a rich experience heightened by the newness of a class that was willing to go along with a brave educational experiment. The partnership between students and faculty that risked seismic changes in the typical medical school curriculum strove to do more than teach science, it sought to grow scientists. The research projects we initiated, computer programming classes, and even the frustrating biochemistry lab in which we were asked to crystallize an enzyme from a vial of brown “shmutz” (David Smith and I pursued phosphoglucomutase from B. subtilis spores), all played a role in that maturation. Interrogating colleagues from other schools, I have found few who had passed NG tubes down themselves during class (and none whose professor did the same). Even fewer were introduced to the wards in their first year, and none whose clinical faculty also taught physiology courses.

  The freshman year, I housed in the new graduate student apartments with Peter Kell, Jack Jacob, and Tom Keens. We moved to a house in Clairmont in subsequent years along with our three pet reptiles – an eleven-foot anaconda, horned toad, and iguana each given the random names Averill, Marshall, and Eugene. Conservative neighbors were wary of the “radical goings on” at the house. I will never forget the spirited trip to Tijuana celebrating the biochemistry final, Student Grand Rounds, and the eighteen times Burt Sobel demanded I revise my 67-page thesis on the discovery of mitochondrial CPK. I was the first of us to go off to London for pediatrics at Guy’s and neurology at Queens Square thanks to arrangements made by Dr. William Friedman.

  After graduation, I interned in internal medicine at the U. of Colorado, then joined Sobel, the new chief of cardiology in his first group of cardiology fellows at Wash. U (along with Gail Ahumada). I studied short-lived radioisotopes at the Hammersmith in London after my fellowship, then returned to join the faculty at Wash. U. as Instructor and subsequent Assistant Professor (and assistant director of the CCU). I was involved in studying fatty acid metabolism is cardiac ischemia and infarct sizing using positron emission tomography in humans, and the biochemistry of ischemia in laboratory animals.

  I left to join Baylor College of Medicine and U. Texas as Associate and later Clinical Professor in 1979. I was chief of one of the cardiology residency teaching programs at Baylor-Methodist Hospital for 18 years, but primarily functioned in clinical practice, co-founding what today is a 17-person cardiology group. I retired in 2012, and since then have published a book on philosophy – “Learned by Heart: Dialogues with My Father”- an effort requiring five years of full-time writing and a lot of introspection. I’ve just finished editing my second book about the evolution of medical education and how it presages the current doctor-patient experience. Many of you are highlighted in these vignettes.

  I have been working to help financially support and develop an adult cardiology program in the Weill-Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania, and consulting with the Fame Clinic in Karatu near the Ngorongoro Crater.

  Next year will also be the 50th year that I have been married to my wonderful wife, Gail. We live in Houston and spend summers in our home in the mountains of Breckenridge, CO. We have two sons and two young granddaughters, aged two and four. I am excited to see you all next June.


CHERYL LEW

I did all of my pediatric and subspecialty training at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).  I then stayed on as faculty at CHLA, rising to Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California.  I am board certified in Pediatrics, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and Pediatric Pulmonology; and I have certification as a healthcare ethics consultant.  Along the way, I also acquired Masters Degrees in medical education and in biomedical ethics. 

 

My patient care and clinical research activities are currently focused on rare pediatric lung diseases (often genetically driven).  In addition to the teaching associated with complex patient care, I also provide formal education and training in the responsible conduct of research, biomedical ethics for pre-health students, medical students, residents and other allied health professionals.

 

Although I will be discontinuing clinical care in early 2022, I will continue my teaching activities.

 

Along the way, I’ve accumulated a few hobbies:  music and opera going; interests in ancient and classical history; previously traditional Japanese swordsmanship; and also collecting of luxurious fountain pens!

 

I look forward to spending “hangout” time with all of you at our REAL reunion.

PAUL LIEBOW (DECEASED)

Obituary Bangor Daily News

Redondo Beach, Calif. - Dr. Paul Averill Liebow of Bucksport and Great Cranberry Island, Maine, as well as Redondo Beach, California, passed away peacefully at home in California on February 1, 2021, at the age of 74. He was preceded into the beyond by his father, Averill Abraham Liebow and his mother, Carolyn Booth Gott, as well as the anonymous donor who selflessly gave up his heart on November 4, 2008. This gift of life gave Paul the priceless time to watch his daughter get married and to enjoy being "Grandpa NeNe."

He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Evelyn; their daughter, Sarah, and her husband, Brandon, the son he always wanted. He has two beloved granddaughters, Stella and Sadie, who adore him. He leaves behind his brother, Chuck Liebow and wife, Leigh; and his brother, Rob Liebow and wife, Cal. He always had great pride in the accomplishments of his brothers. He also leaves behind his brother-in-law, Ron and wife, Minnie; and brother-in-law, Randy, as well as many nieces and nephews, and great-nieces and nephews, of whom he was so unbelievably proud.

Paul grew up in Woodbridge, Connecticut and graduated from Amity Regional High School. He went on to attend Yale University and was part of the first graduating class of the University of California San Diego Medical School. He enjoyed playing tennis and rugby, and sharing jokes with his friends.

Paul was a career Emergency Department physician and EMS/Maine Lifeflight Director. He helped to ease the way of patients and families in the Bangor, Maine area from 1974-2008, as well as many other New England towns along his journey to become a physician.

Paul loved Maine, driving around and enjoying the natural beauty of the world with Ev, learning about medical social work and palliative care/hospice from Sarah, and pressing flowers and reading with Stella and Sadie. He cared for many special German Shepherds over the years with Ev. He enjoyed environmental activism, writing poetry, and medical advocacy on behalf of friends and family. He had recently written a screenplay memorializing his ancestors lost in the Holocaust. He loved sitting on the pink granite boulders on the Backshore of Great Cranberry Island, Maine.

Paul leaves behind a supportive community of family and life-long friends who cherish his unique and passionately loving spirit and will carry his legacy into the future to bring more beauty and caring into this world. He will be remembered for his deep laugh, his eccentric ways, and his humble soul.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Paul's honor. Here are the causes that he held closest to his heart: Cranberry Isles Rescue Service (www.cranberryisles-me.gov/public-services/public-safety/cirs/), Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust (Greatpondtrust.org), Providence TrinityCare's Palliative Care Program (providence.org/ptcf). The Dr. Paul A. Liebow Memorial Scholarship will help a student from Cranberry Isles to attend college. Donations may be made payable to Mount Desert Island High School and mailed to MDIHS, c/o Mary Wallace, P.O. Box 180, Mount Desert, ME 04660.

Published on February 3, 2021


CARY MARIASH


After 3 years as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley I was fortunate to be accepted into the Medical School Charter Class at UCSD. My career at UCSD was highlighted by my research experience in Dr Len Garren’s laboratory (and subsequently with Dr Gordon Gill after Dr Garren’s untimely death). My clinical experiences were eye opening, but probably insufficient for preparing me to begin my internal medicine internship/residency. After my first 2 years of medical school, I married my college sweatheart and we moved from the married student housing on campus to an apartment a few blocks from hospital. One event that occurred near the end of medical school was our discussion with the military recruiter. While we knew the draft was ending, he convinced me that the draft would not end for physicians and, consequently, I eagerly enrolled, and was accepted, in the Berry Plan as an internal medicine specialist.


Interview season was another eye-opening experience. I traveled around the country and rapidly eliminated several sites from my match list. Specifically, while at St Louis I saw a mugging in the park outside of my hotel room and knew I didn’t want to live there. I then travelled on to Rochester, NY and never felt so cold in my life, convincing this native Californian that I couldn’t live there either. I skipped my planned interview in Michigan and went straight to Minneapolis because I thought that nothing could be as cold as Rochester, NY. Interviewing in Minneapolis over the Xmas vacation was an interesting experience. As a native Californian I was unaware of what weather could be like elsewhere in the country, so all I had was my short sleeve shirt and a lightweight sport coat!! As the outside temperature was well below freezing the resident who guided me through the interview in Minneapolis was kind enough to give me his gloves to wear for the remainder of my interviews. The kindness he showed me and the concern and consideration of the others I met there convinced me that this is a site that I should rank high on my match list.


My first month as an intern was brutal. I was paired with another intern on the oncology service where I was in charge of patients on Floor 1 and he was in charge of patients on floor 3. We were on call every 3rd night, and when we were on call we had to cover each other’s floor and we were also the only physician covering the emergency room. The workload was so overwhelming that I really didn’t know if I was coming or going. My fellow intern put in his resignation to the program that month and went into PM&R, but I stayed with the program and life was much better after that. I learned about cold weather along with learning about the St Paul Winter festival. That first year during the winter festival Dairy Queen created a mile long banana split (outdoors) and we stood in line to pay for and receive a small banana split boat we could eat in the below freezing weather!


After my residency I had the “privilege” of entering active duty with the US Army. Because of multiple extenuating circumstances I was assigned to the hospital at Ford Ord (Monterey, CA). I must admit that my 2 years as a military physician was an extremely rewarding professional experience. It was so different from the academic life at the University of Minnesota. It showed me that internists and surgeons (as well as other specialists) could actually get along professionally and personally. My attitude toward my colleagues changed completely and this change has stayed with me throughout my subsequent career.


Although I had the opportunity to return to UCSD to begin my Endocrinology Fellowship after my military career, I was recruited by the new head of Endocrinology at the University of Minnesota to return there. Therefore, we left our house in beautiful Salinas, CA, and purchased a house in St Paul, MN. Even after having spent 3 years in Minnesota, we again learned about the weather in MN. For the first month in our new house there, we were unable to keep the house cool until we discovered there was something called “storm windows” which were closed and prevented air from circulating in the house (we were still naïve Californians). Our daughter was born in Minnesota just before we entered the Army, and she was greeted with our son who was born just after we returned to Minnesota.


My career in Minnesota was successful and rewarding. I remained on the faculty at the Univ of MN following my fellowship. I received my first NIH grant while a fellow and remained NIH funded to do my basic science research in thyroid hormone action and lipid metabolism. I was promoted to Professor of Medicine and eventually became the Director of the Endocrine Division at the University of Minnesota. I continued to participate in both clinical and basic science research while there.


In 2008 I was recruited to become the Medical Director of Methodist Research Institute in Indianapolis. At that time the position involved overseeing the basic science and clinical research that was part of the Research Institute. Methodist Hospital is a major teaching hospital of the Indiana University School of Medicine. While my position there has evolved over time, I have remained at IU and continue full time in both my clinical research activities as well as a clinician in the Endocrine Division.


Ami and I are about to celebrate our 52nd wedding anniversary. We were going to travel to Hawaii to celebrate our 50th, but as everyone is aware Covid-19 hit and we (along with everyone else) had to cancel our plans. My daughter graduated from Oberlin College in art history and is now in advertising and living back in California (Los Angeles). My son completed medical school in Chicago and completed his Oncology fellowship at the University of Minnesota and is currently a practicing oncologist in Minneapolis.




ROGER MAY (DECEASED)

He was born in Franklin, LA, on October 5, 1946, the son of the late James S. and Sophia B. (Clark) May. He was predeceased by his brother Gregory and is survived by his brother David S. May of Houston, Texas. Roger received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Grinnell College in Iowa. He attended medical school at the University of California, San Diego where he was a member of its charter class. His medical training included an Internship at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, TX; Junior Residency at University Hospital in San Diego, CA; and both a Senior Residency and Fellowship in Gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. In addition, Roger served two years in the Public Health Service as a Clinical Associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Following his medical training, Roger accepted an academic appointment with Harvard Medical School and worked on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital and later at the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA. In 1990, following a decision to leave academic medicine, Roger joined the Department of Gastroenterology at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, WI. He worked there until 2000 when he and Louise decided to fulfill their dream of a return to New England. Roger accepted a position in private practice with Associates in Gastroenterology of Burlington, VT. Eight months after their arrival in Vermont, Roger was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Roger was a gifted physician whose thoroughness and compassion earned him the trust, respect and affection of both his patients and colleagues. Although ever attentive to his professional practice, what Roger esteemed most was God and family. He served the Lord with works not words and he was present to his family until he slipped into a coma just before his death. Louise says she has lost her closest friend, her "true love", and "the best thing that ever happened to me". She has a "hole in her heart so big that only God can mend it". Channing and Kevin say they will "miss everything" about their daddy. Channing lost her biggest fan, her favorite person to tease, and her "daddy walking me down the aisle at my wedding". Kevin was with his dad when he died. He said his "heart was breaking" but he knew "dad is in heaven and doing just fine". He lost his Saturday morning cartoon-watching pal, his best fishing buddy, and the most gentle, kind man any boy could have as a role model. 

GUILLERMO MENDOZA

The orange UCSD Medical School booklet had arrived in the mail, and it did not feel like UCSD was going to be a traditional program. The tuition was reasonable for an out of state resident, the curriculum seemed outside the box and the campus was in La Jolla. All I knew about La Jolla was that my father, a biologist and pre-med advisor at Grinnell College, regularly communicated with an ichthyologist colleague at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, La Jolla sounds cool in Spanish, and the San Diego Zoo and Pacific Ocean were nearby.

The next thing I recall was getting an inside tip from my father who needed to rustle up a group of pre-meds to meet a representative from the new medical school in La Jolla—a Dr Livingston was going to be in the neighborhood and wanted to quickly visit. Mel Thompson, Bob Wells, Roger May, Paul Tice and I were waiting patiently when in comes a smiling Robert Livingston. I remembered him as the neurologist who appeared on a CBS show “The Brain” in 1958 with the famous host Eric Severeid. Livingston had talked about the basic structure of the brain and advances in neurology on that show. However, the part I really remembered was a view of Livingston and Severeid watching a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins introduce an electrode into the brain of a conscious patient with Parkinson’s, showing the ability of an electrical stimulus to turn on and off the patient’s hand tremor. OMG! Sign me up! Oh yes, and the school had decided to go pass/fail and start the clinical training on day one! The only bummer was that UCSD was looking for only 24-30 total students in the first class. The odds did not look good.

Fast forward, I flew to San Diego for an interview and my first stop was with Hal Simon MD who briefed me on my day. I then drove to Scripps Institute where Dr Livingston was waiting. He welcomed me to La Jolla and showed me around Scripps Institute. Next stop was Salk Institute, but John O’Brien was not in his office. His secretary suggested I walk down to the beach where Dr O’Brien was finishing his post lunch surfing. Later that day I met with Russell Doolittle PhD who went over the academic bona fides of the school as well as opportunities for research after the first two years. I returned to his office after finishing the day of interviews to chat about my day and he asked if I would like to come over to his house for a casual family dinner. I replayed that day over and over and it was an easy decision to say yes when accepted!

My only regret is that our 4 years at UCSD went by too fast. I really enjoyed the whole experience--all the moments I spent with our Charter Class, both inside and outside the classroom.

After we graduated, most flew the coop to distant places to start their residencies, but not me. I stayed in San Diego along with Jan Soule and Judith Braun for a very fulfilling pediatric residency in Dr. Nyhan’s program.

After my residency I spent two years at NIH as a research fellow at the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease studying IgE crosslinking and histamine release from rat mast cells. My boss was Henry Metzger MD who was studying the properties of the IgE receptor. The rats were nasty, but my padded gloves did their job. A couple of floors below my lab was the lab of a youngish Anthony Fauci who was already showing signs of greatness. On weekends I pretended

to be a two-year tourist in Washington DC, sometimes riding my bike along a path by Rockville Creek from my apartment’s backyard all the way to the Potomac River. It was 1972-1974 and there was nothing like starting the workday catching up on the latest byline of Woodward & Bernstein in the Washington Post. Good times for me, not so much if your last name was Nixon.

After NIH I returned to California to do my pediatric allergy/immunology fellowship at UCLA under Richard Stiehm MD. I stayed after the fellowship as an assistant professor. My work consisted of running a lab, teaching medical students & residents, sprinkling in community service projects and talks with the local Allergy and Asthma Foundation. Given the realities of a once/week allergy clinic, I started dabbling with teaching asthma patients how to use home peak flow meters to facilitate phone visits and save them having to get on the always busy freeways. During those years at UCLA I married my wife Carol, and we started our family in West LA. We celebrated our 40th anniversary last year.

After UCLA I entered the real world as a lone allergist with Hawthorne Community Medical Group, a smallish Kaiser-like staff-based HMO with offices in West Los Angeles, Glendale and Hawthorne. The transition from academic medicine to clinical allergy care went off smoothly. Teaching shifted to mentoring our primary care providers on matters of allergy immunology and asthma management.

It was an enjoyable time to come on board as things in asthma care were changing fast. Up to the time our Charter Class graduated in 1972 asthma was a simple disorder of airway bronchospasm and therapy was 100% aimed at controlling wheezing with theophylline and beta agonists. Oral corticosteroids were prescribed only if the patient was at risk for status asthmaticus. The FDA approved the first inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) in 1972 but inhaled steroids did not immediately reduce the use of bronchodilators. Failures were common and not always recognized until the patient required emergency care.

The new clinical studies pointed to using inhaled steroids every day, ditching theophylline and shifting beta agonists to prn status. However, changing primary care management moved at glacial speed. Providers had low expectations for what inhaled steroids could do and were afraid to limit beta agonist refills. Patients were extremely happy to refill their bronchodilator inhalers as often as possible, in some cases as many as 12-24 inhalers a year. More than half of our patients were clinically unstable on any given day. My mission was to make albuterol a de facto controlled substance. Finally in 1991 NIH came to our rescue, publishing the first U.S. asthma guidelines hoping to make daily inhaled steroids the new gold standard.

Coincidentally, 1991 was also the year of the Mendoza family migration from West LA to Fairfield in Northern California. We were in the market for a bigger house that did not require a long drive to work and back each day. Fortunately, Carol and I both found openings, me in Kaiser Fairfield (Chief Allergy/Immunology) and Carol in Solano County Mental Health (Child Psychiatry) and so we dropped anchor and raised our family there ever since.

Kaiser providers were also changing their asthma management, but patients continued to underuse preventative asthma medicines and overuse bronchodilators. Fortunately, we managed to develop desktop access to real time pharmacy data with red flags indicating albuterol overuse and this simple computer tweak did the trick. More importantly once compliance with inhaled steroids improved, we began to see a big drop in urgent care visits and hospitalizations.

Soon after launching the asthma medication ratio (AMR) as a quality goal in our medical center all the California regions adopted the metric. In 2006 a Kaiser study appeared in Chest which described our in-house asthma metric. Shortly thereafter the national Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) adopted the metric for its health plan programs. Along the way I know we helped many patients beyond our immediate community.

I retired full time from Kaiser in 2016 after 25 years and soon thereafter my wife also retired. We have stayed busy trying to avoid COVID-19 like everyone else and visiting our dentist daughter Christina in Santa Barbara, our KIPP East LA elementary school teacher daughter Sara in Altadena and our programmer son Alex working for Square in San Francisco. Molly and Milo, our resident Australian Shepherds enjoy distracting their two otherwise empty nesters.

Thanks Dr Livingston and thanks UCSD. It has been a great ride.


PHILIP MILLER


I am looking forward to this 50th reunion.  This is a time of reflection and a collection of memories.

I feel so very fortunate throughout my education.  Graduating from UC Berkeley in the Centennial class with a degree in Biochemistry.  Graduating in the charter class from UCSD SOM.

We were the new experiment.  A select group of students with such a diverse set of backgrounds.  Our faculty were the Who’s Who of medicine in 1968.  We were so very fortunate.

Quotes that I remember to this day.  How many do you remember?

Orloff:  … time is of the essence.

Liebow: … obstruction equals infection.

Grobstein: to our graduating class.  Look beyond the narrow specialties.  See the big picture.

Joseph Stokes III: during our edgy convocation of students and faculty.  The purpose of medical education is to instill a love knowledge and life long learning.  It’s not about facts.

Who can forget the astounding neuroanatomy series from Wally Nauta.  One of the most riveting lecture series of our entire medical education

You remember the nitrous oxide caper?

The Wheeler NG tube demo

The nervousness of our first mini Grand Rounds presentation to Eugene Braunwald

Off Campus “elective time” in Literature.  

And a collaborative senior thesis with Michael Weinraub in the form of an enduring film entitled “Waiting.”

So many more memories.

I was one of the last graduates of a true rotating internship at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.  

I spent 20 years in emergency medicine and urgent care medicine always 10 years ahead of the pack.  In so many lead roles.

And for the last 25 years a pioneer in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine.

It’s the friendships that endure.  The memories that I treasure.  We came of age during a Golden Time in Medicine. 

I would love to see historical quotes and a formal listing of our original faculty with their compelling backgrounds.

And I miss our dear fallen classmates with whom I shared the last few years. Paul Liebow, Bill Piggot and Richard Rosenblatt. 

LAURIE PETERS

I finished a Psychiatry internship and residency at UCSD and practiced in La Jolla until 1980. I also did 3 years of psychoanalytic training for 3 years. I learned a great deal but the practice per se was not for me. The new Psychology of Women drew me in. I remarried and has my second son Ted during this time.

In 1980 we moved to Loomis, a lovely rural community, kept a horse and rode frequently. I had my third son Sam in 1980 and finally my daughter Amy. She will be attending the reunion with me. Sadly Nick cannot as his son Joe graduated from Creighton and they had long planned a scenic trip back east.

I took up oil painting seriously and got pretty good studying under the late Gregory Kondos.

I continued to practice Psychiatry,doing both psychotherapy and medical management until retiring In February 2021. This was very hard for me as I loved my practice but health considerations made this too hard. With retirement and COVIDs19 my lifestyle changed dramatically and I am working on knowing who I am under new circumstances!

My kids are healthy and successful. I have 7 grandchildren. Nick is the only one in a medical field as a nurse anesthetist. Ted is a VP of a company started with a fellow Stanford student. Sam is a computer Whiz at Lexus Nexus. Amy is into franchise advertising. The boys and families are local and we have Sunday night meals at my place. Love it! Amy is in San Diego which she loves.

I am blessed with family and friends. I have 2 wonderful horses but am very careful riding now. And I have been single again for over 25 years. I have traveled broadly with good friends who do adventure travel. That’s on hold until we can feel safe with the pandemic. 


So that,s a quick recap. Looking forward to seeing all of you.  Love,Laurie


WILLIAM PIGGOT (DECEASED)

Obituary San Diego Union Tribune

Piggott MD, William James 1945 ~ 2013 SAN DIEGO -- Bill Piggott, son of the late Virginia and John H. Piggott, was born April 15, 1945, in Los Angeles, California and died on April 18, 2013, at home in Roseville, CA, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife Dee, his children Lisa, Ashley (Matias), and Ben (Jennifer), and his grandchildren. He is also survived by his brother Edward (Karen). Bill was a member of the charter class of UCSD School of Medicine. He earned his MD in 1972, and remained actively involved with the School of Medicine, serving on the Board of Directors and as the President of the Alumni Association. Bill stayed in San Diego for nearly three decades to practice medicine, spending the majority of his career at Mercy Hospital. In 1991, Bill joined the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of Emergency Preparedness, serving first as a Medical Consultant, then Chief Medical Officer. Notably, Bill directed emergency medical relief in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, Bill died three days after his 68th birthday. Gone much too soon, he will be missed and eternally remembered by his loving family and friends. 


JOHN PRATHER

ROB RENNEBOHM

Here is a summary of my professional activities since we all had the tremendous privilege of going to medical school at UCSD:

 

After graduation, I completed two years of pediatric residency training at West Virginia University, then two additional years at Izaak Walton Killam Hospital for Children in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Then I completed a pediatric rheumatology fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. 

 

While on the faculty at Cincinnati Children’s, I was invited by Dr. Zhu Fu Tang, Chairman of Pediatrics at Beijing Children’s Hospital (BCH), to develop the subspecialty of pediatric rheumatology at BCH.  This was in 1981.  Dr. Zhu recognized that, because of the high incidence of lupus and other childhood rheumatic diseases in China, children’s hospitals in China needed to develop pediatric rheumatology programs.  I was privileged to play the major role in training China’s first pediatric rheumatologist, Dr. He Xiao Hu.  Subsequently, Dr. He and I held a series of national pediatric rheumatology symposia in China to initiate pediatric rheumatology programs throughout the network of Children’s hospitals in the People’s Republic of China. I have never met more altruistic, dedicated, and competent pediatricians than those I worked with at BCH and other children’s hospitals in China. I had wonderful experiences in China during the 80s and 90s but have seen China change dramatically over the past 25 years.

 

After 5 years at Cincinnati Children’s I became the Chief of Pediatric Rheumatology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital/Ohio State University in Columbus, where I stayed for 21 years.  Then I was Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Pediatric Rheumatology at Alberta Children’s Hospital/University of Calgary in Canada for 4 years.  Then I moved to the Children’s Hospital at Cleveland Clinic in 2012. In 2018 I officially retired from Cleveland Clinic. 

 

For the past 17 years I have focused on the international study and treatment of Susac Syndrome, a potentially devastating autoimmune disease that attacks the microvasculature in the brain, retina, and inner ear of young adults, causing ischemic brain injury, visual loss, and deafness. It is a rare immune-mediated, ischemia-producing, occlusive microvascular endotheliopathy.  To me, it is the most fascinating and challenging autoimmune disease I have ever encountered.  While at Cleveland Clinic I developed and led an International Susac Syndrome Consultation Service, designed to simultaneously study and treat patients with Susac syndrome.  I still provide informal consultations for physicians and patients with Susac syndrome.

 

Throughout the past 14 years I have been working with pediatric rheumatologists at Saint Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University in Russia, which is a very unusual medical school in that it trains only pediatricians.  I have thoroughly enjoyed several one-week duration visiting professorships in Saint Petersburg.  I have also worked with physicians in Moscow to develop Susac Syndrome Consultation Programs for Russian patients with Susac syndrome.  I am still collaborating with pediatricians in Russia and have an on-going Visiting Professor relationship at the State Pediatric Medical University in Saint Petersburg. 

 

Currently, I am largely retired.  I am no longer affiliated with any medical school or other health care institution, except for my ongoing relationship with dear pediatricians in Russia.  I am no longer in clinical practice, except for fielding emails about Susac syndrome and being on first pediatric call for my 9 grandchildren.

 

In 2019 I moved to the Seattle, where my parents and two siblings were living.  Both of my parents passed away during the past 18 months.  Both were 100 years old when they died. They had been married to each other for 77 years.  (Woody, I am sure you remember my parents from our high school days in Madison, Wisconsin.)

 

In addition to Medicine, I have continued a long-standing interest in social philosophy and geo-political/economic analysis. Some of you may remember that during medical school I became quite distracted by my interest in the social philosophy of Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara, Norman Bethune, and Tommy Douglas.  That interest has become even stronger since then. (Incidentally, in recent years I have also collaborated with pediatric rheumatologists and social philosophers in Cuba.)  To sum up my social philosophy: I imagine a potential world that functions and behaves like one large collaborative network of local public children’s hospitals—a creative symphony of unique, independent-but-collaborative altruistic public endeavors, all with common purpose—to serve children, Humanity, and the Earth itself and to create ever-growing Social Beauty.

 

Throughout the past 30 years I have been writing about social philosophy, Public Economy, and creation of Social Beauty.  In 2020 I developed a website on which to post those writings.  The name of the website is: “Notes from the Social Clinic” (notesfromthesocialclinic.org).  The website is dedicated to my three daughters and 9 grandchildren, in hopes that the writings might contribute to the creation of a better world—more Social Beauty, for all of Humanity to enjoy.

 

Finally, since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I have been spending several hours per day on most days of most weeks intensively studying and writing about COVID---because, early on, I realized how important and complex the COVID situation was/is, and I have been concerned about the paucity of respectful, healthy, scientific dialogue (among physicians and scientists) about the complex scientific issues involved.  Healthy scientific dialogue about COVID issues requires a deep appreciation and understanding of the immunology, virology, vaccinology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and molecular epidemiology involved. I do not think most practicing physicians have had a fair chance to thoroughly study COVID issues---i.e., they have been too busy to do the extensive homework they have needed to do.  Since I am retired and have an extensive background in immunology, I thought it might be helpful if I were to do some of the extensive homework for physicians and share the results of that homework with them.  Hence, the 23 writings I have posted on my website.  The most recent writing is an Open Letter to Parents and Pediatricians Regarding COVID Vaccination. Here is the link to that writing: https://notesfromthesocialclinic.org/an-open-letter-to-parents-and-pediatricians-2/  It contains 1078 references from the medical literature, the vast majority of which are peer-reviewed publications. For those interested, there is a video-interview that goes along with the Open Letter. Here is the link to the video-interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDRVq9NKrJQ&t=981s

 

So, that is a summary of my professional activities since 1972.  I am looking forward to seeing everyone in June.  How fortunate we all were to have spent those 4 years together at UCSD!!


RICHARD ROSENBLATT (DECEASED)

Obituary Los Angeles Times

Rosenblatt, Richard Marc, M.D. Born March 16, 1947 in Los Angeles, California. Devoted husband of Jean Rosenblatt, and father of Jonathan David Rosenblatt and Marc Simon Rosenblatt. Son of Theodore David Rosenblatt, and brother of Karen Brickett. He earned his M.D. in the Charter Class at University of California, San Diego Medical School in 1972, and served his Residency at Harvard University Massachusetts General Hospital in Anesthesia and Intensive Care. Dr. Rosenblatt was the Founder and Physician Director of the Acute Pain Service at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from 1987 to 1995. Richard earned his rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, and actively participated in leading multiple Boy Scout Troops in the Beverly Hills District, most recently Troop 110. Author of many published articles on Medicine and Naval History, Richard contributed much to Academia. He was also an avid outdoorsman. Richard is survived by his father, sister, wife and two sons. He will be missed most dearly by his family and all who knew him. He passed away on August 4th, 2003. The memorial service will be held at Hillside Memorial Park Sunday, August 10th at 11 AM: 6001 W Centinela Ave, Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in his name to the Boy Scouts of America, the L.A. Times Family Fund, or UCSD School of Medicine. 

ROY ROSENTHAL


Unfortunately I will be out of the country during the reunion.

 

I had taken a year off in the middle of med school. During that year I lived in Colorado. Thus I graduated from UCSD a year after the rest of the Charter class.

 

After residency (SUNY, Syracuse NY) my (second) wife and I got married and, fulfilling my dream to end up back in Colorado,I took a job at a mental health center in Colorado Springs. I then transitioned into private practice and also became the psychiatrist for the counseling center at Colorado College. I closed all that out 8 years ago and took a job with the public health system in Christchurch, New Zealand for a year, an amazing experience. I've been fully retired for 7 years. We have 2 kids and 3 grandkids, all having stayed healthy through the pandemic with lives intact. We feel very fortunate.

 

Another meaningful part of my life: Once my parents became elderly (and then died), I became guardian for my older brother who is rather severely mentally ill with schizoaffective disorder. Being aware of mental illness from a family perspective, I have become a big supporter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI)

 

We live in beautiful Manitou Springs, CO, just west of Colorado Springs, at the foot of Pikes Peak and adjacent to the Garden of the Gods Park (The background in my Zoom picture below). The family pic was taken at the Cave of the Winds in Manitou during a Thanksgiving get together in 2019.

 


JOHN RYAN

Planning to attend

JOHN SCHEY

I am still happily practicing general pediatrics. My wife, Ruth Hazen, MD and I have a pediatric practice in Lynnfield, MA. One of our sons, Jonah Schey, MD, joined our practice in September 2019. One of our other sons, Noah Schey, is our office manager.

I hope all is well with you, Bruce. It will be great to get together with our medical school classmates in June 2022. I'll look forward to receiving any email updates about the reunion.


FRANK SHARP

After finishing medical school at UCSD, I married Mary and did an internship at Duke and fellowship at the NIH where my first daughter Renee was born. I moved west to do a neurology residency at UCSF. After that I was an Assistant Professor of Neurology/Neurosciences at UCSD where I received several teaching awards. I then moved to UCSF where I was an Associate Professor and then Professor and received 4 teaching awards during my time there. I then married my current wife Leslie Drummond-Hay and had Ben and Alison. We moved to the University of Cincinnati and then returned to California in 2004 where I am now Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California at Davis. I have supported myself entirely from NIH grants over 25 years and looking forward to retiring in 3 years with 20 years service at UCD. My wife who I have been married to for 31 years is a retired OBGYN, my daughter Renee works as an environmentalist, Ben is a CPA, and Alison is in medical administration. UCSD School of Medicine really was great for me and helped prepare me for a very rewarding and satisfying career. 

DAVID SMITH

David L Smith   May 27, 2022   updates

It’s way too early in the morning, but the excitement of the upcoming gathering makes sleep impossible.  If I re- read all the submissions, I’ll never get this done and checked off the to-do list.  So this first

Initially I thought I could skate by stipulating that Jean’s summary (thank you) was really very good, and that if I submitted my “Dear Families” letter from 2016 I would be doing my part, or at least the bare minimum.  However the sheer range of folks’ experience inspires more.  After all we were all bred and selected for competition.  I’ve stated way too many times that if a sick test came along I’d do great.

We’ve all been so fortunate to have our own best job in the world.

Hope to keep this succinct. Here goes.

Med school.

  Rotating internship at Kaiser in San Francisco. I think one of the last.  Got the feeling that UCSD faculty less than pleased.

USPHS:  2 years at San Carlos Arizona as General Medical Officer with Indian Health Service. Aside from the fact that there was a war going on we were still idealistic. Professionally and personally fulfilling, but looking back—delivering babies ok but Orthopedics from DePalma volume one and two, and who reads about a pleural biopsy and then goes ahead?  Chest x-ray fine (after)

Was applying for Family Medicine Residency but then heard about Peds spot at UC Davis.  Accepted without hesitation.  First rotation NICU.  Apologies to Jack, but there is life after 30 days.  After 2 years in the hinterlands first heard about this great new device:  CT scan. Though the babies invariably crumped while keeping still enough.

Finished residency with one more year at Kaiser Oakland, and spent the spring arranging the start up for private practice in Santa Rosa, CA.  While this was manageable at that time, I think totally impossible/crazy these days.

1977 to present Santa Rosa.  Soon found group is better so recruited and grew practice. Across street from Hospital and could “do it all”.  Various permutations with IPA’s, multi specialty group, hospital affiliation, Medical Foundation (California device), unraveled, back to group, Foundation again and then multispecialty group contracted with St.Joseph health (now Providence).  Pediatric hospitalist program saved and prolonged our professional lives.

Oh, yes, family, schools, sports etc.  See Jean Smith note

Stopped office practice 2016.  Some hospital covering and now scattered fill-in office shifts.  Still fun and the feeling of seeing a few folks 6-10 years later is great.  Vs seeing at Costco or when they bring their aging parents to the Covid vax clinic.

Full as that might be, my concerns now are a world at war, a country which is not serious, and theocracy invading medical practice through the government (states, legislatures, courts) and the 1/6 hospital beds controlled by a religious organization which is violating basic human rights.  And yet I have collaborated with them.  Humans are strange.

Will be memorable seeing you folks.  Spell-check and close this before sun comes up.

Dave had previously submitted this letter sent out on his retirement (SS)

To Patients, Families, and Colleagues,

It is time

After 39 years in Santa Rosa, I will soon retire from the Doyle Park Pediatrics office.

As they say, at this point in my life I have more yesterdays than tomorrows, and they are not to be wasted.

I am a Pediatrician; that will never stop.  How could it—so many visits with all of you, sharing growth and changes, as well as the occasional crises, big and small.  But Pediatrics is a happy field, and I continue to say that I have the best job in the world.

There are grandchildren in California and Texas.  What an excuse for trips, as if excuses are needed! 

The lives of all of us will be affected by changes in politics, health care, social justice, and the environment and ecology.  Energy in these areas is sorely needed beyond mere donations, though they certainly help.

Every day has provided variety and rewarding discoveries, both with meeting you and working with the superb staff who make up the office.  This too is family.  Mornings will never be the same.

If you see me at the grocery store, say hello.  Although I can usually get it right, mention a name or a memory.  It’s fun and makes me smile.

In closing, I must acknowledge a profound force of Nature:  Parental Love.  It truly powers the Human Race. It continually awes me.  Without detracting from the role of men, we should all salute the Mothers of the World.  And do it often.

With excitement and some tears,

David Smith    “It’ll be fine” 


JEAN SMITH

I don't really know what to say here.  Reading over all the other statements, I am reminded how different from each other all of us were and still are, how we have contributed in various ways to health care.

I do know what I enjoyed while attending UCSD.  First, the beach, La Jolla Cove scuba diving, dinners with Dava and Hank, Bruce and Susie, Steve and Flossie.  There was a lot of laughter with so many of you.  I treasure my time in Anatomy and the surgical teachers who were serious, practical and funny in their approaches to our learning.  Dave and I didn't have a dime extra, ergo the hoarding of condiment packages!!, living in a wonderful funky house in Del Mar for $80 a month, and driving our tin car Corolla.  I too won't forget the 1st (and last) "bad trip".... thanks for the reminder, Steve!

Coming from a middle class family and a first generation college graduate, medical school was a completely mysterious destination.  I never felt that I fit in, and still don't as I review many of the other comments.  My goal since the age of 11 was to use my mind and hands and heart to help people stay well and relieve some of the suffering of those who fell ill.  I knew that my mind was sharp, hands skillful and heart full of empathy, and these traits would be more than sufficient to become an excellent doctor.  My experiences at UCSD did not support these feelings.  It wasn't until I met in-the-trenches general pediatricians during my 3 years residency at Oakland Children's Hospital that I felt valued and indeed admired.

Those 3 years were interrupted by 2 years working as a Pediatrician (Dave as a general medical officer) at the San Carlos Apache reservation and having our first son.  We settled in Santa Rosa, CA in 1977 and established a brand new 2 exam room private practice pediatric office.  We hired one secretary and cleaned the place ourselves for many years.  Eventually the practice flourished, partners were added, 2 more sons were born (one adopted), and Dave and I had an amicable divorce after 18 years of marriage.

I continued to practice privately and with Kaiser Permanente and now work for Providence Health.  I continue to live on 7 acres, one of which my youngest son Joey farms organically.  I have sheep, a pony, dogs, a cat and chickens to keep me company and keep me humble.  Over the years my place has seen many species of animals including humans, chinchilla, llama, and water snake.  The 3 sons grew to become an RN, a Navy jet pilot, and a farmer/teacher.  After 3 sons, I now have 5 grandsons, 2 living in Santa Rosa whom I see regularly and are the joy of my old age.

I still feel it a great honor to be trusted by parents to care for their children; doing so has given me a sense of real contribution to this crazy world and real personal happiness.  I haven't published any papers or received any awards, but then that was never one of my goals as a physician.  I have been a den mother, team mother and class mother for all 3 of my sons and managed to hostel-travel all over the world.  I relish learning new languages, cooking, art, reading and being a hands on grandma.

I wish you all well and thank you for your stories.  I hope the reunion is a very happy experience.


STEPHEN STAAL            

C. 1971

c. 2019

The first two years Tom Tanaka and I shared a married student housing apartment, the last two years we were joined by Bruce Buckingham in an apartment on Dove St, near University Hospital. Memorable were Adornato-led late night excursions to various bars, Steve Hill's primer on mind-altering substances,  Jeff Wilkins various hustles, Buckinghams record collection and-ahem-stream of late night visitors. I vividly remember Jean Smith's bad trip, as well as her sweeping condiments into her purse in the hospital cafeteria. Also the instant diarrhea when it was announced you had been chosen to present a case to Braunwald in 2 hours, followed by frantic efforts in the library to be forearmed for the inevitable roasting. I could go on...

Following graduation and a one year medical internship at UCSD University Hospital I accepted a position in the Lab of Viral Diseases at the NIH, NIAID. I had mixed feeling since this was the first year of the draft lottery and I pulled a high number, but I decided to brave it and go to Bethesda along with fellow intern Ken Foon and resident Jeff Sandler. I was accepted based on the recommendation of my lab mentor at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, Jim Hoch-it was the most delightful and instructive time I spent during the first two years of medical school. At the NIH I learned retrovirology and isolated a new transforming retrovirus, AKT8, at a time when such viruses were the key to understanding the molecular basis of cancer. With the abolishment of the draft there were no openings to return to UCSD to finish medical training and after an extra year at NIH I began a residency and then an oncology fellowship at Johns Hopkins. After my fellowship I stayed on as an instructor then an assistant professor after winning an RO-1 grant to continue to study AKT8. I remember Adornato came to the NIH during this time and we got together on several occasions-he lived in a house in north Silver Springs MD but I can't be sure of the years-only that his stay was brief. 

My studies on AKT8 led to my cloning of the akt oncogene, the first identified member of the PI3K-AKT-MTOR pathway upregulated in many cancers. The signifigance of oncogenes was less well recognized at that time and my funding evaporated, along with my self-confidence after a miserable divorce and I went into community practice with Kaiser Permanente in the Mid-Atlantic where I eventually was appointed as the Chief of Medical Oncology. I retired from KP and accepted a position at the University of Florida in 2007 where I now function primarily as the keeper of historical memory and grandfather figure to the students, residents and fellows. Oncology has been a fascinating discipline, I went into the field following my cancer-based research at the NIH and was able to make a modest contribution, but most gratifying has been the replacement of the toxic chemotherapy of my early days with revolutionary and rational targeted therapy and  immunotherapy. 

I have 2 daughters, 4 grandchildren and a 30 year partner, Sharon. I am a 5 year amputee (L below the knee amputation after being hit by a bus while on my bicycle). I currently live in Gainesville FL as well as in Edgewater MD. 

TOSHIYUKI TANAKA

I retired in 2017 and relocated to Tokyo.  My wife and two of my three kids are nearby.  We have five grandkids and they keep us busy. Both of my parents have passed on. I don’t travel much and keep myself busy by reading books I didn’t have the time to read back then. I kept up correspondence with Paul Tice.

MELISH THOMPSON

50 YEARS PASSED IN A FLASH, BUT SO MANY MEMORIES?


Along with Roger May, Bob Wells, Memo Mendoza, and Paul Tice I left Grinnell College on a leap of faith to participate as a guinea pig in an unproven medical experiment at UCSD. I had already been accepted at several other established medical schools, but after an alluring sales pitch and slide show by Bob Livingston at Grinnell, I applied and got an interview. As compared to being treated like crap in Boston, Atlanta, and elsewhere on the medical school hunt, UCSD actually sent me a round trip airfare ticket and put me up at a La Jolla shore hotel. They didn’t have a facility to show except Revelle campus and a few Quonset huts. But palm trees, black beach, surf boards, tropic breezes, Beach Boys music, and the then mystique of California was too much to resist especially when compared to the cold, bleak, miserable weather in Grinnell, Iowa before my visit. How are you going to keep them down on the farm….?

So my new wife Wietje and I drove in an old Mustang to California to set up in a tiny apartment on Girard Avenue in La Jolla. She started a Master’s program in Biochemistry at San Diego State and also became the wunder lab tech at Steve Mayer’s Pharmacology lab at UCSD. It was through Mayer’s contact that we got to know Robert Furshgott who later was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering Nitric Oxide. I worked the summer before school started at a federally funded program run by Joe Stokes called the Regional Medical Program interviewing local MD’s about their practices. Several other classmates participated – I think Rob Rennebohm was one but I can’t remember who else. I have no clue what happened to that program.

I remember the first social event for the class was a beach party in Del Mar. Somehow I felt like the straightest person in the class and probably was. I didn’t know what to think of guys like RA or gals like Laurie, and everybody seemed to come from more exotic backgrounds, unusual college majors, or more famous schools. And I wondered what the Harvard or Stanford grads thought of five guys from where?? Grinnell College???  And if these yokels were any indication, perhaps they should have accepted UCLA instead.

Then the first day of class came and I was so excited. Actually, that morning I was walking from La Jolla up Scripps hill when a gray Porsche pulled up. Hal Simon in a white lab coat was driving and offered to give me a ride to campus. I hopped in and Hal floored it probably to impress the impressionable young student and also because of his own excitement. Wouldn’t you know not 2 minutes later a cop is on our tail and pulls Hal over. He jumped out but I didn’t hear the conversation. I suspect they let him off and we proceeded to the school. (An interesting sidelight… In his biography Dr. Braunwald apparently also was pulled over at the same time on I-5 presumably similarly revved from excitement.)  And who can forget Linus Pauling’s remarks in our new auditorium? That iced it. It was definitely the right place and time for me!

The next four years are a blur of memories, good and bad and funny or sad. The Avant Gard curriculum trying to rediscover the wheel- E. B Connors lecture on stickleback fish behavior and  I’m wondering what this has to do with medicine, or a discussion of child development and how children of controlling angry families kill people- Jan Soule said she was from a loving relaxed attitude family which seemed to explain her personality development perfectly, Tom Keens’ rocking in the first row, In our small Intro to Clinical Medicine group with Burt Sobel Judy Braun explaining that honeymoon cystitis was a meeting of different bacterial flora of the new couple, Beethoven’s 5th being recorded off the exposed auditory nerve of a hapless cat , and I getting drunk with a 5th of Beefeater Gin down myNG tube looking for a satisfactory gastric acid response, High speed ultra-centrifuges everywhere, Frank Sharp and I making a hapless puppy pant in a cold room by heating his hypothalamus at Scripps, Nicholas Halasz( then my favorite surgeon) repeating  over and over “obstruction leads to infection”, scrubbing into my first laparotomy  holding the large Deever retractor between two surgeon bodies for half an hour and not seeing a thing…just “Thompson, don’t move that dam retractor!”, Pot luck dinners with spouses proving you can thrive living below the poverty line, witnessing my first grand mal seizure (of a classmate) in the study carrel area and feeling utterly helpless and useless not knowing what to do, black light fluorescent chalk makeup in the auditorium, Richard Rosenblatt expounding on philosophy and economics while listening to Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, and Nash: scared stiff almost peeing in my pants when I left an inflated BP cuff on the arm of a hapless patient who identified me as the culprit later on rounds, Richard R caught red handed (so to speak) by Braunwald carrying a cadaver hand reeking of formalin on a tray covered by a towel in a packed elevator,  a psychotic patient jumping from the top floor of university hospital leaving a mess on the ground, planning the student lounge décor on a shoe-string budget- the decorator stating “the students are the décor”, dinner with friends such as Mary and Woody  Emlen at the Charthouse in La Jolla, realizing that graduate students on the main campus were scary smarter than me when I took courses there, demonstrating against the Viet Nam war on the central campus ( when actually I wanted the US to win), and Herbert Marcuse planning the ultimate neo-Marxist revolution on the UCSD campus.

 And then graduation and the graduation dinner at the Hotel Del. I played Braunwald in our skit written and directed by Woody but Dr. B didn’t know who I was so no risk. There are probably thousands of other priceless interactions with my fellow students and faculty that I knew happened but synapse decay has erased the hard drive unfortunately.

One sad fact also came out in Braunwald’s biography. Apparently, he was not asked to be on the dais during our graduation. Of course, he had announced his departure to Boston earlier in the year, and, I guess he was a persona non grata at our special day. After all that he contributed to the launch of the school, that must have been a bitter-sweet moment for him.

Actually, I followed in Gene’s footsteps and became an invasive cardiologist after an internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at the University of Iowa. Wietje finished her PhD in Biochemistry there as well. Then we moved to Milwaukee where I joined a large multi-specialty group.  I set up a total of three cardiac cath labs over the years including a Heart Hospital which really was state of the art. However, it died an ugly death when insurance companies refused to deal with us colluding with our competitors even though we could do procedures for a fraction of usual costs. That’s when I learned the important lesson that “business is war”. I was doing coronary angioplasty very early and had perhaps the first angioplasty death in Milwaukee using equipment which might have been better called harpoons. Other escapades included the very early use of IC streptokinase and urokinase for acute MI, making my own IV nitroglycerine from tablets before you could buy it ready made, pre-release compassionate use of digoxin antibodies for dig toxicity suicide attempts (not mine!). I even paid for a BNP analyzer when the lab director said he didn’t believe in BNP or know what it was. When it arrived I set it up and I ran the standards myself. The first patient I ran it on had a confusing story that might have been pneumonia or CHF. His BNP was over 3000 convincing the director of the “possible” value of BNP. Of course now BNP is a routine part of the CHF workup and maintenance. Ultimately I got boarded in invasive cardiology, nuclear cardiology, and echocardiography, and I was doing IV coronary angiography and calcium scoring with electron beam and spiral CT before it was cool.

My family life suffered somewhat by the fact I was always at the hospital but I did raise two successful children and now have 4 grandkids. I hope at least one of them will consider medicine but no takers so far. Of course, my wife Wietje, the love of my life, has put up with me for 52 years and we are still in love.

I am very impressed by the accomplishments of our classmates, even though, somehow, I feel mine might pale in comparison. In any case we are an amazing group of people and all should be proud of being a part of our collective journey. It’s been great to be a guinea pig!


PAUL TICE

1970       Frustrated by the over-emphasis on technology and science to the exclusion of the more human aspects of medicine, and rebelling against the intentional demoralization of students, I got out my old globe from grade school (I still have it, in fact), put my finger on where I was (San Diego), and another on the exact opposite side to get as far away as I possibly could, then proceeded to go there (Uganda).  I had to ask the Customs Officer in Entebbe where Ngora was, as it was not on the map, but I learned more in three months there than I did in the other three years of med school.  Kwashiorkor (means red hair in Swahili), Tb, C-sections by kerosene lamp, lots of parasites (we called it a grand slam if the patient had four kinds at the same time), ether, and more – if a patient didn’t have malaria when they came in, they got it on the wards.  Three patients per bed (one on, one in between, and one under).

Fetal heart tones – no Doppler there.

I got to do my first C-section after watching one.

I helped rescue a priest on top of Kilimanjaro.

1972-3   rotating internship at Providence Hospital, the oldest hospital in Seattle.  They closed the program down the year after I finished, but it wasn’t my fault – really.  I turned down the directorship of Evergreen in Kirkland when it was offered to me in my last month there. 

1973-5   ER work in lots of podunk hospitals in the Puget Sound area, then settled down to work in the hospitals in Everett (back then the ER doc also served as the county Mental Health Professional and got to send crazies to Western State), but I quit as the politics were so bad that on average one patient a month was dying needlessly.

1976 My Dad talked me into coming out to work in his clinic in Iowa and see what family practice was like.  I’d probably still be there, except I couldn’t live my life so close to my Mom.  I finally told her to stop telling me what to do, but the next day she called the answering service and had them relay her message, so it boiled down to either West Coast or East Coast.  No ER jobs in Seattle, so I hopped on the ferry to Bremerton.  They were down to only two docs to cover 24 hours a day when I showed up.  Staff membership approval took all of a half-hour, so I started the next day.  Never figured on 35 years here.

1979-80   I managed the Emergency Treatment Facility in Port Orchard (near where Harrison Urgent Care is now), including staffing, payroll, and scheduling, for the Public Hospital District under a corporation set up by me and two other ER doctors.

1980-6  Director of the Emergency Department at Harrison

1983 Representative on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Subacute Transitional Care Facility Advisory Board for Kitsap County (fancy name for how to spend Trident impact funds for a mental health unit – this led to what we now know as the Adult Inpatient Unit, originally called the Residential Treatment Facility, basically a place to detain crazies – we should have called the committee The Funny Farm Formers).

1986-9  Medical Program Director for Kitsap County EMS

1987, 1990-8   Clinical Co-investigator for various heart attack trials and registries, including TIMI-I – first use of tPA in Western Washington, ISIS-4, NRMI-1 and -2, Rheothrx for MIs, and ASSENT-1 and -2.

1992-4  Director of the Emergency Department at Harrison again

1993-7  Board of Directors of Washington ACEP, worked on getting UW to do an EM residency

1993-9  Consultant for the Casualty Care Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland (affiliated with the uniformed services medical school, sponsor of the CONTOMS course, and keeper of the Viet Nam War repository, where every bullet and piece of shrapnel from every casualty in the War has been saved, along with the records on every soldier injured there, for researching treatment techniques).  On one of my trips out East, my job was to write a grant proposal to set up a similar repository for research purposes for mine injuries, but I had to rewrite my report, as they didn’t like my idea of sending over a bunch of mad cows from Britain (this was when they had the big outbreak) to tromp around and explode the mines, then use the meat for hamburger to feed the poor peoples over there in Afghanistan or wherever.  Made sense to me.

1995 Tactical EMT certification from the CONTOMS course (COunter-Narcotics Tactical Operations Medical Support – basically training to hang out with SWAT teams and do the medical thing without getting in their way, or becoming a casualty yourself).  Also took the military courses on Chemical and Biological Warfare (supposedly the first civilian to be allowed to do this) sponsored by USAMRIID at Fort Detrick.

1995 Treated a guy with unstable angina and decompensated heart failure during a trans-Atlantic flight (got him through with borrowed Nitro and oxygen, decided not to have the airplane make an emergency landing in Iceland), then sent a letter to several airlines suggesting better emergency equipment on board, which they subsequently have done.  They took him off the plane in Chicago and did an immediate bypass.

1998 Councilor to national ACEP meeting

1998 Participant in a demonstration of telemedicine at the Addis Forum on Trade and Investment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (companies have a hard time convincing their employees to go work there due to the lack of medical facilities, so we demonstrated that we could bring US medical equipment over, and hook up with their very own doctor back home, anywhere in the world, for advice or treatment).

1998 and 2005 Christian Medical Response Team (Dan Diamond’s disaster group) for Bumbershoot in 1998 and the Creation rock concerts in 2005

1999-2001    Principal Investigator for the MAGIC trial (MAGnesium In Coronaries), as the cardiologists got burned out and wouldn’t do studies in our ER any more.

2000-2006    Financial Manager for the EMPSD (Emergency Medicine Professional Services Division) – seems that every ten years the hospital wants us to either become independent (if employees) or employees (if independent), and they wanted us back in the fold again after the exodus in 1997.

2000-2005        Co-investigator for more cardiac trials (ASSENT-III and FINESSE) – the cardiologists were back on board again.

2000-2009        Medical Director for Olympic Ambulance, Kitsap and Thurston Counties.  I put on an advanced airway course for them, to show them five different and easy ways to intubate, and basically guaranteed that after the course they would be always able to intubate a patient, if anybody could.

2006 Founding Partner of West Sound Emergency Physicians, PLLC – the hospital wanted us independent again.   Cool – we get to have a management company from Texas, billing company in California, pension company in Utah, a lawyer in Seattle, and an accountant in Bremerton.

2008-2011    Medical Director for the Kitsap County Jail as an employee of ConMed.

But wait, there’s more ---

¨   Ronald Reagan signed my Medical School Diploma in 1972.  Yes way.

¨   I got a nice mounted plaque for working a week in Curtis, Nebraska, for Project USA in 1973.  If you wanted to know where somebody was, you just dialed “O.”

¨   In 1974, I wrote a Congressman who then started a Congressional investigation into the PHALANX missile system (based on information from a friend who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission), which uses depleted uranium as projectiles to punch holes in tanks.   Problem is, when used it also vaporizes and leaves a bunch of radioactive dust that takes a few billion years to decay.  As a result, the military essentially did not use it in the first Gulf War.  They did in the second one, however, creating the Road of Death in Iraq, but at least thousands of people are alive today who might have died otherwise.

¨   In 1991, I sent letters to the Joint Chiefs and some members of Congress with my idea for Solar Wars – put big satellite mirrors in stationary orbit over the Middle East, then focus the beams to fry any enemy troops.  None of our troops would be at risk, the enemy could not move forward, and would probably just go hide or give up.  Too bad they didn’t go for it.

¨   In 1996, I was chosen the VIP of the month for the ER by the staff.  I felt honored, but the program only lasted a couple of months.

¨   Also in 1996, I helped put on a telemedicine course in Landstuhl, Germany, to train Army medics for work in remote areas.  It was pretty cool, as a doctor over in Bosnia happened to call in desperate need of help while I was there, and I and John Hagmann coached her through treatment of a soldier in status asthmaticus who could not be airlifted for at least 12 hours due to weather, and even more cool, we had to improvise since she had no nebulizer equipment or asthma meds at the time (we used cardiac drugs).

¨   In 1997, I initiated a domestic violence awareness campaign, which led to the first Domestic Violence county-wide Summit (I co-chaired the medical part).  Since then, the County has set up a Domestic Assault unit to prosecute abusers.  The YWCA ALIVE organization gave me an award that year (not many guys get an award from a women’s organization).

¨   In 2001, working through Senator Maria Cantwell’s office (I sent lots of letters and made lots of calls), I got Nurse Practitioners approved to work in emergency departments (Medicare previously would not pay for their services in that location).

¨   Over the years I designed several templates (supplementary procedures, brief and universal ER, body diagrams), one of which Xpress Charts then added to their system in 2003.

    Let’s see, that means that I have been an EP, MHP, GP, EDD, and MPD, plus the old standby of OFEM.  More recently, I have worked in emergency rooms in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, another on the North Slope of Alaska, and a medium-sized ER in Sanford Maine, plus I taught EM residents in the Rashid Hospital Trauma Centre in Dubai, UAE.  My son said that working in the Caribbean, the ice world of the Arctic Circle, and the desert in the Middle East was kind of a Star Wars thing (Endor, Hoth, and Tatooine), to which I replied that I supposed that made my job at the jail like working on the Death Star.

    Outside of work, I have climbed Mount Rainier with my son Whit, married eight couples, hosted several Harry Potter parties, finished five marathons including one in Athens in 2004, play the flute sometimes, helped the County Medical Society with a big Photoshop project for their Fire and Ice fundraiser in 2010, and got an Extreme Makeover in 2005, courtesy of a few nurses who felt it was time for me to get a new “do” and new duds.

    My recent jobs include helping to cover Advanced Allergy and Asthma clinic, part-time Urgent Care in Belfair for Harrison, on-call for the ERs in Silverdale and Bremerton, occasionally working in the ER in Goldendale Washington, ER working somewhat more often in Ilwaco, Washington, expert witness testimony coming up in June, and working in a small ER in Mount Vernon, Texas.  My commute is now a couple thousand miles instead of a couple hundred yards.  I might go back to Alaska (did some telemedicine and inpatient/hospitalist work in October of 2009 and again in May of 2010) or Maine, but I hope to cut back to only full-time and only three jobs by the end of summer.  I don’t expect to keep working in the jail.

    One more thing -- my cousin, a computer expert, is hopeful that she will be able to use my Three Second Exam idea to improve the teaching of medical students, and has been working with top educators at the University of Illinois and Rush University to get a grant to make it happen.  Helping new doctors become experts quickly would be a great legacy.


DANIELE VECCHIO

After two years of residency in Pathology with our admired and respected Dr Liebow at UCSD, I chose Pediatrics responding to a humanitarian inner call.  I remained in San Diego where I did my residency in Pediatrics, and established a small individual office in Del Mar.  I was soon joined by Suzanne Mills, both of us practicing part time.  for the next 25 years of my Pediatric carrier, I advocated a more healthy way of living, better diet, encouraging better communication in families; using sparingly antibiotics, referring to paramedical ways whenever safe, and never shy to ask advice and refer my patients to the specialists that we had known as students.  I truly enjoyed the families i was caring for and my work as a whole.  I retired in 2000, to participate more actively to a new Masonic order, focussing on the spiritual origin and meaning of Masonry.  I am still actively part of that organism.

ROBERT WELLS


After graduation from UCSD in 1972 I returned to the Midwest for a pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.  While I have very good memories of UCSD and the faculty there (for me the two Friedman’s {Bill in pedi cardiology and Paul in radiology) and Burt Sobel were key to my education and development the mentors and role models I had at Children’s were what turned me into the physician that I think and hope that I am (or as I get older was).  During this stay in Cincinnati I also met and married my wife (46+ years).  I have two children and 4 grandchildren (ages 4-7) who so far are all doing well.

I left Cincinnati on a 2 year all expenses paid honey-moon with my wife in Turkey courtesy of the US Air Force.  (spending 3 months at Balboa Naval Hospital got me programed on how to avoid the draft which as it turned out would not have been a problem but who knew in 1971 when I “volunteered”.  There were a lot of positive things about spending time in Turkey.  Turkey is/was a Moslem country/culture as are many of its neighbors.  We were able to travel extensively – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Soviet Union, Greece, Germany, Austria etc.  (my wife added a few more as well).  From the medical standpoint some new diseases (for me) like malaria and paratyphoid fever and the longest neonatal transport of my life (Adana Turkey to Frankfort Germany) bagging several preemies.  Turkey also gave me time enough to think about what to do with the rest of my life (something that by the end of residency I was too exhausted to do well).  I learned that flying was fun on complex airplanes.  And finally, hanging out with non medical folks who were also professional (aircrew) on a regular basis was refreshing. 

 The rest of my life decision was to become a pediatric hematologist oncologist and I did a fellowship at Riley Hospital/ Indiana University in Indianapolis, IN.  From there I got my first real job at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) as an assistant professor. (I got there a year before Michael Jordan).  My kids are native Tarheels as a result.  I made associate professor with tenure there and promptly left in 1988 to go back to Cincinnati Children’s where I stayed until 2003.  In 2003 I went to Texas (I never, ever thought I would want to live and work there) but I got to be the #2 pediatrician at U of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  I also found that except for the weather (6 months of summer is not fun) and hurricanes (Rita, Ike and Harvey while I was there) Houston was a great place to be.  I sort of retired in 2017 but continued to help on the clinical side through 2019 even though I moved back to the Cincinnati area in 2018 (actually across the Ohio river in Bellevue KY).  I did pretty well at MD Anderson and ended up with an emeritus Professorship when I finally retired. 

 However, I didn’t remain completely retired for long as I ran into an old friend at the gym who I helped recruit to Cincinnati in 2001-2 who repaid the favor so I am now working a 0.25 FTE assisting with/doing procedures on the oncology service at Cincinnati Children’s.  Cincinnati is such a small place compared to Houston. 

 On the professional/academic side I have shown lots of pediatric characteristics such as attention deficit disorder and inability to concentrate (or maybe just my liberal arts background) so I have written on AML, late effects, palliative care, biostatistics, medical and research ethics and palliative care.  I also have something of a Peter Pan syndrome (I don’t want to grow up).  This was expressed in a couple of ways.  After leaving Turkey and the Air Force I went back in with the reserves and got to fly a lot.  I am probably the only one in our class with 15 sorties in what were once top of the line fighters plus almost 1000 total flying hours.  The northern lights at 35000 feet over the Atlantic in winter were spectacular as was landing into a fiord in Norway and dodging lightning/thunderstorms rising to above 50,000 feet at dusk over western North Carolina.  My current affliction is that I got into refereeing soccer at a high level for its combination of physical fitness and people management.  It is a lot of fun running around a field watching players chase after a ball at any age level up to adults.   I am fighting a losing battle with age to keep doing it – high school soccer is just starting again and the question is can I still get the job done and at what level. 

 Otherwise I think I am content to travel some more (assuming I can), chase after grandkids and telling “stories” .  One of the benefits of spending time in Texas is that BS ing is an art form in Texas I have passed my preliminary proficiency exams for this art form. 

MIKE WEINRAUB

I did my medical school required senior research project with Philip Miller.  We received a small grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity to create a film depicting problems with providing medical services through the San Diego County medical system.  Utilizing the School of Medicine's media center, we learned how to use a 16 mm camera, professional synchronized sound equipment, and a state-of-the-art editing system.   We entered the front doors of the County Hospital with the camera and sound equipment, interviewing doctors, patients, and administrators to assess their experience with the health services provided.  Our final product was a 30-minute film entitled "Waiting" that the faculty accepted for our graduation research requirements.  Still, the film was so controversial that we could not show the movie in the hospital or the medical school.  A few years after graduation, I was invited back for a showing of the film one evening in the lecture hall.  After the film was screened and Q&A began, the San Diego County Department of Health director, who was sitting in the back row, stood up and spoke.  He thanked me for the film and declared that it instigated the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to improve the system of medical services provided by the County outpatient clinics.


I then moved to Los Angeles for my internship and residency in pediatrics at Martin Luther King Jr Los Angeles County Hospital/UCLA, where I learned about the role of medicine in community improvement.  Starting in my first year, working 80 hours a week, I also provided medical coverage for the "Watts Festival," for 500 Headstart 5-year-olds' graduation in the Compton high school stadium, and Friday night Compton high school football games.  I also helped start the Watts College of Child Development, wherein we created an all-volunteer annual conference for parents and professionals on childhood problems in the inner city.


I then continued my career as a pediatrician with a private practice in South Central Los Angeles for 25 years.  In the last years of my pediatric practice, I focused on providing health care for foster youth raised in very disturbing environments.  My experience as the primary care pediatrician for 100s of foster children prepared me to become a full-time consultant pediatrician for the Edmund Edelman Children's Court.  I testified daily to advise 20 Superior Court judges responsible for the foster child's health, education, and welfare as "parentis in loco" for these detained children.


I consulted in the Children's Court for 11 years.  I became familiar with testifying as a friend of the court, which developed my private practice as a forensic pediatrician/expert witness, a practice which I continue nationally to this day.


JEFF WILKINS


PLAYERS: Jeff, Stacy, McKenzie (age 22)

POSITIONS: Jeff, CSMC Attending, former UCLA Clin. Professor Psychiatry

Stacy: UCLA Dept. Medicine Clin. Professor (Neuropsychologist)

McKenzie: Senior, Wellesley College, Boston

 

I was very happy to be accepted to UCSD’s new medical school. The professors, including Eugene Braunwald and other top leaders of NIH divisions, were more than exceptional, the students were very smart, fun, hard-working and very interested in almost everything. I was soon able to begin laboratory research with Drs. Mayer (Pharmacologist) and Vanderlaan (Endocrinologist) and starting with the second year I was living in a UCSD apartment complex - the grounds of which overlooked the ocean. It should be noted that UCSD was quite advanced in the admission goals of its medical school including the significantly higher percent of admission of females (including in year 1) as well as a significantly higher percentage of Black student admissions going forward.

 

I well remember the day in my 3rd year at UCSD SOM that Arnie Mandell, at the time the youngest physician ever appointed chair of a medical school psychiatry program in the US and subsequent recipient of the McArthur prize (aka “genius award), encouraged me to change my plans for residency and instead go into the field of psychiatry. He again suggested becoming a psychiatrist later at his home when we were discussing brain chemistry and jazz.

I had great fun playing jazz with subsequent UCSD SOM class members Richard Goodlett (piano) and Richard Burgess (saxophone) - sometimes we were able to get Phil Miller to play the drums. UCSD SOM Professor Burton Sobel once invited us to his home where he played his xylophone with us.

I finally agreed to Dr. Mandell’s recommendation and following completion of my medical internship at UCSD I entered the field of Psychiatry at UCLA. I greatly enjoyed this residency and its training and subsequently took a position at the UCLA affiliate W. Los Angeles VAMC including working with Dr. Murray Jarvik who initially demonstrated the dermal transmission of nicotine into the blood stream (i.e., the nicotine patch) and Dr. Phillip May, one of the first physicians to introduce medications to treat schizophrenic patients instead of psychosurgery or other methodologies. With Dr. May’s support I subsequently developed and directed the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit laboratory (CPU) that provided analysis for patient care (including substance use testing for the VA and for UCLA neuroscience and substance abuse research groups). This work led to my receiving a VA Career Development Grant and being asked to serve as Associate Chief of Psychiatry for Substance Abuse Programs.

 

Having developed a keen interest in addiction from my directing the substance abuse services at the WLA VAMC along with my laboratory research I subsequently accepted an invitation to join the faculty of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC) in 2001. In 2002 I founded and directed an addiction psychiatry fellowship at CSMC and received the appointment of Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at CSMC. During the next 13 years I was fortunate to work with the addiction psychiatry fellows across the 900 plus bed CSMC hospital, serve as President of the California Society of Addiction Medicine where our team impacted the California Senate vote passage on the 911 Good Samaritan initiative of no arrest for the reporting of substance overdose, and my receipt of an endowed chair in Addiction Medicine.

 

In 2015, an unanticipated but robust experience for our family occurred when I received an invitation to go to Qatar for 3 years and build a country-wide infrastructure of adult and adolescent addiction services coordinated with primary care physicians and various levels of clinical staff – all culminating in a move into a very large substance use disorder treatment and prevention center. On a personal note, my wife and daughter also choose to go to Qatar where our daughter went through the American High School with 76 nations of children in attendance and my wife became a leader in advancing the treatment of stroke and epilepsy in Qatar’s primary medical hospital.

 

We returned to the US in 2018. I have been enjoying working on research, supervising psychiatry students and continuing as an attending physician at Cedar Sinai Medical Center and supervisor at UCLA. I have a particular interest in substance use prevention in young people, love time and travel with my family and feel very blessed.

JOHN ZILIUS

CONNIE WOFSY (DECEASED)

New York Times Obituary 1996

Dr. Constance B. Wofsy, a medical professor and clinician who created a program to educate health workers about advances in AIDS treatments, died on Monday at her home in San Francisco. She was 53.

The cause was breast cancer, according to the University of California at San Francisco, where she was a faculty member. Dr. Wofsy was also co-director of the AIDS Program and associate chief of infectious diseases at San Francisco General Hospital.

As co-founder of the hospital's AIDS Program in 1983 with Dr. Paul Volberding, she was influential in providing medical services for young gay men early in the AIDS epidemic. She also created and directed a program that has attracted hundreds of health professionals to the hospital from around the world to learn about the latest techniques in AIDS care.

Early in the epidemic she recognized that women were at risk and founded an organization in San Francisco called Aware (Association for Women's AIDS Research and Education), which offered confidential testing for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and counseling. It published some of the earliest data on the prevalence of H.I.V. infection in women at high risk in the San Francisco area.

Dr. Wofsy was the founding chairwoman of the Women's Health Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The group oversees and carries out studies of various therapies for AIDS.

She was one of the first AIDS experts to address the issue of workplace discrimination against H.I.V.-infected people, and provided education and training materials on the issue to corporations in San Francisco.

Constance Wofsy was born in Cheltenham, Pa., on Oct. 6, 1942. She earned a bachelor's degree in bacteriology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 and a medical degree at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles in 1971. She joined the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco in 1975 and became a full professor in 1989.

She is survived by her husband, David, who is also a medical professor at the university, a son, Kevin, and a daughter, Susan, all of San Francisco, and her mother, Ruth Blitman, of Novato, Calif.