As the College moves toward its Quasquicentennial in 2024, Digest Magazine invites you to celebrate the spirit, character and myriad accomplishments of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine's first 125 years.
Through an ongoing series, presented in different mediums, we'll consider the College in the context of its past and future, chronicling the illustrious and untold stories of its people. We'll capture the richness and reality of place and the magnified moments that collectively reflect PCOM and its enduring commitment to meaningful education and experience.
”During my internship at Metropolitan Hospital Central Division, I fell in love with
critical care and procedural-based medicine. I reached out to Dr. Becher and asked to speak with him about a potential emergency medicine elective because
I hoped to pursue a position in the residency program at PCOM. He said, ‘Well, sure,
you can come talk to me. How about next Thursday at 3 a.m.? I’m working on night shift.’
John did grant me the elective. But he told me, ‘I’ve worked with people one day and
said, “You’re done.” On the other hand, you may do a good job, and it might lead to
an opportunity.’ I didn’t get thrown out the first day; I made it through the month.
… Dr. Becher is a very tough guy on the outside. However, he has a reason for everything
he does and truly has a big heart. And, as one of the founders of osteopathic emergency
medicine, he had to set a really high bar. If he didn’t produce residents who performed
at the highest possible level, the discipline might not take off and become respected.
… I loved my career in emergency medicine, and I attribute that to those early days with Dr. Becher setting up, if you will,
a bunch of obstacles in front of me. My job was to recognize them, embrace them, and
show that I could push through them. And that’s also how the residency was. … He wanted
more than just demonstrated interest; he wanted demonstrated commitment. And no one
was as committed as he was. He never had you do anything that he didn’t or wouldn’t
do himself. If anyone was having a tough time with illness or grief, immediately the
whole enterprise wrapped around that person and supported them. We were 18 residents
at the time, and we were like blood brothers and blood sisters. … When we left the
protection of the residency, we all knew we were going to see stuff we’d never seen
before. A new young attending who’s alone can hurt someone if they don’t know what
they’re doing, but none of us had that fear. After all, we could always call the Einstein
ER day or night and ask for advice from Dr. Becher. … That’s why even today, when
we hit a wall in administrative meetings, I still sometimes say, ‘We’re going to get
the airway,’ and my colleagues know exactly what I mean. Being forced to come up with
solutions when it’s impossible—that’s permanently imprinted on me. … Under Dr. Becher,
the answer is ‘yes’ to everything because you’re committed and somehow you’re going
to figure it out. We truly hold him as an icon in emergency medicine.”
”I met Dr. Bullock in 1988 when I started medical school at PCOM, at a time when there
were not many physicians or faculty members of color, at a time when diversity and inclusion were not topics of open discussion. Since there were only a few students of color
at PCOM, we naturally gravitated to Dr. Bullock. He served as our role model and mentor.
Dr. Bullock took us under his wing, nurturing us and making sure we had the resources
and encouragement needed to succeed. … I often reached out to him for guidance. I
requested to work with him at Cambria Healthcare Center in North Philadelphia for my family medicine residency. He made it happen. After
completing my family medicine residency, I knew I wanted to work with him as an attending,
and again, he made it happen. I worked alongside him from 1995 until his retirement
in 2015. … Dr. Bullock’s expertise in medicine extended beyond the office. As he
walked the neighborhood during his lunch break, he was often approached by patients.
He would politely engage in conservation and answer their questions. He was known
to provide lunch for patients during their appointment if he suspected they were hungry
or give them money for public transportation so they did not have to walk home. Dr.
Bullock treated his patients with kindness and respect. He treated them like they
were his family. … Community outreach was one of his passions. His creative mind and love especially for children led him to construct a lively
puppet show that he performed at daycares and elementary schools. It disclosed the
story of Bear, who was apprehensive about his visit to the doctor. Dr. Bullock put
Bear at ease by explaining what the visit entailed and allowed Bear to hold various
pieces of medical equipment while he explained the purpose of each. By the end of
the show, Bear looked forward to visiting the doctor. Following the shows, he gifted
each child with a keepsake coloring book that he designed featuring Bear. … Eight
years since his retirement, Dr. Bullock’s patients still ask about him. We are doing
our best to continue to deliver the same type of holistic care that Dr. Bullock provided
for so many years.”
”Dr. Cathie knew anatomy about as well as any person could, and he taught anatomy
about as well as anyone possibly could. He had a distinct love of the profession of
osteopathic medicine. … He also had the unbelievable ability to draw anatomic pictures
on the blackboard, using multiple colors, with both hands at the same time—while he
was also lecturing. … You did hope you would not be called on to participate in a
discussion for which you probably would not have the full knowledge he expected. So
people were somewhat reticent and would slink back in their chairs during his lectures.
… In those days, a group of four or five students worked together on one body. Dr.
Cathie would move diligently from table to table, reviewing the anatomy, correcting
our impressions, helping in our dissections. He was absolutely superb in that respect.
… On the other hand, I recall one situation very early in our program when we were
doing the dissection, and he was at the front of the class having lunch. That hit
some people in a strange way, and a few had to leave the room. … In the second semester
of our junior year, Dr. Cathie taught a class in osteopathic manipulative therapy. Of 100 people in the class, 75 people failed his final exam. Fortunately, I passed,
but unfortunately I was the class chairman, and it was incumbent upon me to go down
to the dean of the school and say, ‘I remember, from my master’s degree in education,
that if an overwhelming majority of your class fails a test, either there was some
problem with the test or you didn’t teach it well.’ They then called Dr. Cathie down
to discuss the matter with me. And I had to take the onslaught after repeating what
I had said to them, but he did agree to give another exam for those 75. I had to withdraw
from being the chairman of the class for the rest of the semester, which was about
a month or so. But, in retrospect, it didn’t harm me whatsoever, and it did help the
class. I think it was the makeup of the test, to be perfectly honest. He was a wonderful
teacher.”
”Dr. Cathie [at the time, Dr. Waddel] was an excellent teacher and a very hard taskmaster
who wanted her students to understand the pathology of the diseases they were going
to be seeing in clinical practice. When you first met her in the classroom, you were
scared to death of her. I can remember pulling all-nighters just to pass her exams.
But when you got to really know her, she was a cupcake. … She wasn’t only a good teacher;
she was a good student as well. She’s probably among the first women to be certified
in cytopathology, studying under Papanicolaou himself. I asked her to teach me how
to do Pap smears, and spent many afternoons after class with her learning how to read
them. … I also had the opportunity to see her on a more personal basis. A few of us
women students wanted to form a chapter of Delta Omega, one of the female medical
sororities on the campuses of the other medical schools in town. We needed a mentor,
and she very graciously and very enthusiastically agreed to take on that role. We
had our meetings at her home, where she provided both professional and personal guidance.
Some of it dealt with how we were looked upon as women in the profession—good advice
in terms of just being who you are and doing what you have to do. She was the first
woman to chair a basic science department at PCOM [and at that time, the only woman—other
than those at Women’s Medical College—who held such a position in the entire City
of Philadelphia]. … Dr. Cathie suggested that I take a career in pathology. But I
really didn’t like the idea of doing a lot of autopsies, and at that time they did
a heck of a lot more than we do today. But after about eight years in general practice,
I decided to go into something with a lifestyle that was more in line with raising
a family at the same time. And I chose pathology and laboratory medicine, which led
me to teaching positions and three directorships of hospital laboratories. … Years
after Dr. Cathie had retired, I met her at one of the American Osteopathic Association
conventions. She congratulated me on my achievements, and I told her that I had some
truly big footsteps to follow in.”
”John joined PCOM full time shortly after I did in 1999. He became the Physician Assistant Studies program director in 2003, and held that role until 2016, when I took over. The day he told
me he was going to retire, I felt a bit panicked. Faculty and staff were so confident
in his leadership, and I wasn’t sure I could live up to the expectation. But John
was always encouraging and supportive. And after I took the position he was here quite
a bit, because he continued to teach for about three years. So he would check in and
might offer some advice—but he would say, ‘I’m offering this advice just as a guy,
not as a former program director.’… I remember him sitting in my old office when he
told me, ‘Let the problems flow through you.’ What he meant was that not everything
that appears to be a crisis or a difficulty needs a sudden reaction. Many things will
take care of themselves. So don’t charge into problems. Let them come, flow through
you, and then decide how you want to react. And that’s how he conducted himself. He
was very measured, very calm. I rarely saw him angry or flustered. He was a private
person, but we did know that he grew up in a big Irish Catholic family in Chicago,
and he was the oldest, and he had to do a lot of things, to take care of his younger
brothers and sisters, and so maybe that was where his leadership skills started. …
In Harrisburg, John advocated for the physician assistant profession, and he would
talk to students about professional practice issues, things on the horizon. He was
at the forefront of policy, but he was doing it in his quiet way. … John was at the
helm when PCOM decided to open a cohort in Suwanee, Georgia. And he did all the work
with our accreditors. Having a dual campus for a PA program was largely uncharted
territory. It was daunting to consider how to have an equivalent program with all
of those miles in between. It seemed insurmountable, and John made it happen.”
”I come from a family of immigrants, and I’m the first in my family to attend medical
school. So for me to know the story of Dr. Christy, another Black, minority woman, who did something so unorthodox, really is a motivator.
… She was a pioneer: the College’s first African American student and the first African
American doctor of osteopathic medicine. When she died, she was a widely known and
respected osteopathic physician. She healed so many, especially the poor. … You see
pictures hanging on the walls of PCOM of a lot of people who have had an impact. But
when you walk into the College and see the face of someone who looks like you, when
you see her name on a new [student housing] building, that’s very meaningful. … Dr. Christy had to be a very tough woman to be able to
go to medical school when she did [1917–1921]. One brother and her father had died
by the time she was ten. And her mother, one of the biggest supports she had, passed
away just a few years after she graduated from PCOM. Just understanding how courageous
she was, how resilient, how she didn’t let anything keep her back—I really adore that.
… I’m transitioning out of my role as the co-president of the Student National Medical
Association on campus, which works to increase the presence of minorities in medicine
as well as to help support them throughout their journey. I work for the diversity
office on campus as well, making presentations for their mentorship program. I’m also
involved in a nonprofit organization, Girls on a Mission with Ambition. I’ve talked
to students about being in medical school, and to students already in college or taking
a non-traditional route who want to get back into the swing of things. I mentor them
mainly because I didn’t have that. … When I was in college, Google was my best friend,
because I didn’t have many people in my life who were physicians, let alone physicians
who looked like me. So I had to do a lot of the work figuring out what I should study
and how to get into medical school. It’s not just about representation, but it’s about
the resources you provide. … Now that I’m here, I have a lot of people I can reach
out to, ask questions. They tell me, ‘I do this because someone did it for me, and
I want you to be able to do it for somebody else.’”
”When I first applied for admission to PCOM, Dr. Cipolla was a member of the interview
committee. He asked me only one question: ‘Do you know who invented spaghetti?’ And
I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he told me, ‘the Chinese actually invented spaghetti, not the
Italians.’ And that was the extent of our interaction. … The next time I saw him was
in the fall of 1977, in my first anatomy lecture held in Evans Hall. His opening line
was, ‘You gotta know your anatomy, boy, or the guy down the street will.’… The anatomy
lab was at 48th and Spruce Streets, where the old hospital used to be. The anatomy
lab was almost like an attic, with the smell of formaldehyde everywhere. It had a
great feel to it. … You had to wear a tie, which on the surface seems absurd. But
I think in part the reason was Dr. Cipolla’s profound respect for the people who had
donated their bodies to medical science. In my kind of rebellious way, I would wear
a flannel shirt with a tie. One day, early on, Dr. Cipolla just kind of looked at
me and grinned, and then that was it. … In anatomy lab, you have partners, you’d be
helping each other out. And every once in a while, I’d turn around and, over my shoulder,
he’d be there, listening. … I loved anatomy. I would often go down to the lab on Saturdays.
Dr. Cipolla asked me one day, ‘Why are you here all the time?’ I said, ‘It’s a chance
to have the cadaver all to myself. I don’t have to share it with my lab partners.’
He got a kick out of that. … Over the course of time, he’d walk around during lab,
and he’d ask one table an anatomy question, and if they didn’t get it, he’d say, ‘Hey,
Feldstein. You know the answer.’ So we had this mutual respect, an intellectual understanding.
… He was a general surgeon in the Medical Corp and he would throw in tidbits, with
clinical correlation, during anatomy lectures—practical examples of what you were
learning. … He could be difficult; he was as eccentric as they come—definitely the
type of individual you either loved or hated. Had I struggled in anatomy, it might
not have been as much fun. But he was brilliant.”
”Managing Emotional Systems in the Workplace was my first class, Bill Clinton’s last
before his retirement in 2017. As a busy working woman going back to school in her
forties, I was excited to start my master’s degree program in Organizational Development and Leadership [ODL]. Little did I know how deeply my first grad school course with Bill would impact
my life. … First class, an all-day Saturday session, Bill handed each of us a lengthy
paper he’d written on the 10 most impactful incidents in his life, including some
traumatic episodes. As I read his deeply personal passages, I thought, ‘Wow, this
guy is really putting himself out here.’ … Our first assignment was to lay bare our
souls, to do the same sort of self-reflection as Bill had done in his raw and revealing
autobiography by chronicling what we could have done differently to better our career
and our relationships with our family and friends. … Bill felt emotional transparency
was the key to building trust with your colleagues and to being a strong workplace
leader. His mantra: ‘I want you to know who I am and to trust who I am so that you
can be transparent with me.’ He taught that you can only achieve that level of openness
by understanding others’ points of view, which often meant having difficult conversations
and finding closure with those with whom you’d had thorny relationships. … It was
risky, but the reward of growing into a more empathetic and understanding person made
it all worthwhile. Bill taught me to appreciate the person and the personality, not
just the work product, because who you are affects everything about you in the workplace.
… Fast forward three years to my capstone project, which focused on my transformative
story of personal growth that I rough-drafted in that first grad-school paper. I presented
my capstone virtually due to the pandemic. Whose warm and welcoming face did I see
smiling back at me on the Zoom meeting? Bill Clinton’s. I was so moved and honored
that he was present and that I was one of the last students he taught in his 15 years
as director of the College’s ODL program.”
”Bob is one of the most well-rounded people I’ve ever met, and probably the smartest.
He has great intellect; he’s a fabulous writer; he has great analytical skills and
a knack for separating the wheat from the chaff. He is truly quite remarkable—one
in a million, to my mind. … In all the years I worked with Bob—and believe me, we
dealt with all kinds of issues—I never saw a bead of sweat on his brow. Absolutely
nothing made him nervous—pure grit! He knew what he needed to know. He did what he
needed to do, and he did it extremely well. He was a great source of mentorship and
consultation to me and my staff. We could go to Bob with just about any concerns.
… Bob expertly guided us and PCOM through getting our programs accredited by the Middle States Commission and specialty accreditors. You could trust that what
he told you would work. He’s an innovator, too. He was essential to the development
of the program in clinical psychology, in school psychology, in organizational development
and leadership and in our counseling program, not to mention other programs across
PCOM’s campuses. I truly don’t know how he did it. … Bob would hold court every day
at lunch, and a small group of us would share all kinds of stories—topical news, what’s
new in higher education and accreditation, and everything you could conceivably imagine.
Bob could speak on just about anything, including music trivia. … With his background
in counseling and higher education administration, he was very focused on helping
students. We worked together a lot on assessing student outcomes, using that information
to drive our programs in a continuous quality improvement cycle. Bob said, sure, we
could look at all these academic predictors, which account for a little bit of the
variability in outcomes, but the reality is that probably a lot of nonacademic factors
come into play. And that, I think, he learned through his involvement with students.
Those who got into academic problems often had other life issues going on, and he
was sensitive to that. … Bob had a stellar reputation as a great leader and mentor,
and stand-up person with a good heart. … He’s the kind of guy you meet along the road
of life only once in a lifetime. When Bob retired, he referred to me as his brother.
That reference still touches me. I am most honored and proud to know him and consider
myself lucky for the opportunity to walk beside him.”
”Al was an extraordinary man. He was certified in cardiology, but in the 1960s, when
he was just starting out, he would lecture when other professors didn’t show up. On
any topic, no notes, no preparation—off the top of his head. That’s how smart he was.
… He was drafted by the Chicago White Sox and played professional baseball up to the
double-A level. He had also played four years of varsity baseball at Duke, where he
was an honorary All American. He was a tremendous golfer. … He decided to be a doctor
like his brother and his father, and went on to be president of the American College
of Osteopathic Internists, president of the Pennsylvania Osteopathic Medical Association,
vice chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at PCOM for twenty-plus years, acting chairman of the Department of Medicine twice, chief
of Cardiology twice. … He was a dedicated teacher who spent hours teaching students
how to read EKGs. And no one could convert a patient’s sinus rhythm like he did. …
I was his resident, and he gave me my first job, which ended up being my only job.
He was in practice for 25 years before I joined him, and we were partners for 15 years.
Actually, we were more like a father and son than partners … A nicer, kinder individual
you will never meet. He was extremely slow to anger, a devout Catholic. … I never
heard anyone tell a joke like him. He could take a five-minute joke, extend it out
to 15 minutes, and even if I knew the punchline, I was still crying. … He never answered
the pagers. But you could find him. His cigarette butt would be upside down in the
windowsill of the nurses station. So if it was still warm, and his doctor’s bag was
there, I knew he was around. … If you needed something right away, you called me.
If you needed to talk to him, you had to find him. He marched to his own drummer.
… He was dedicated to the patients and to the profession. He was Al being Al, and
that was the long and the short of it.”
”I’ve known Joe since we were in college together at LaSalle, where we matriculated
in 1961 and were both members of the swim team for four years. In 1966, Joe and I
were both accepted to Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and were roommates
for the first year. We both interned at what was then the Flint Osteopathic Hospital.
After his residency, Joe joined the PCOM faculty in the department of pediatrics. I came back to the College and became the chairman of the department of emergency medicine in 1977. … More than 50 years after we met, Joe and I attended each other’s retirement
ceremonies. We’re still friends today, and it’s been a great relationship. … Joe was
the first osteopathic physician to be accepted as a resident for pediatric training
at St. Christopher’s Hospital, and he became chief resident there in his last year.
When he returned to the College, there hadn’t been a pediatric resident in at least
10 years. With professional ties that he had developed, especially at St. Christopher’s,
Joe was able to greatly enhance pediatric training for the residents, not just at
the College but in other clinical training areas. … Nationally and internationally
recognized experts came at Joe’s invitation to the College to make presentations not
only to the residents, but to the students. Joe organized and funded an annual pediatric
lecture series. He was the president of the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians
and a member of the Osteopathic Pediatric Certification Board for a number of years,
making important contributions to the development of the specialty of pediatrics within
the osteopathic profession. He was doing all of this in conjunction with his other
duties at the College, and even when he became the dean. … Joe is a guy of significant integrity, a person of his word. These always were the qualities of leadership that others
recognized, in whatever the venue. And he did his homework, and he still does his
homework as a member of the PCOM Board of Trustees. … Put it this way: When Joe talks, people listen.”
”I got to know Dr. DiLullo first when I was in the biomedical sciences program. She was like a mother to me at PCOM. And there were some striking similarities to
my own mom in that they’ve both experienced hardships in their lives, gone through
a lot of things, but that’s never been an excuse for them to stop or to stall. You
just keep moving forward. She was an amazing woman, and when she passed away, it was
like losing a confidant and a best friend. … Dr. DiLullo was maybe five feet tall,
quite petite. She was grace and mercy and strength and beauty. Being a woman in medicine,
a woman in a mostly male academic department for a very long time, she had to speak
up. If something needed to be addressed, she was going to address it. She thought
things through and wasn’t going to change her mind. … At times, I questioned her decisions,
and she just looked at me, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll go ahead and do the work instead
of questioning what you’re telling me to do.’ She was trying to convey to me, ‘I know
it’s getting rough, but you’ve got to push through.’ And that’s what I needed. … The
number one thing Dr. DiLullo cared about was the person. She conveyed that to us,
when we became medical students, always stressing how your patients come first. …
As an educator and researcher, she was demanding, yet, she was very patient. So she
touched a lot of us as mentees because you knew that even though she was pushing you,
it’s because she cared about you. … When I was an osteopathic medical student, she
helped me start the nonprofit Medicine for Education to teach high-school girls from
underserved communities how to get into medical school and succeed once they get there.
She was unyielding in her commitment to training and mentoring women and inspired
my work. … We also shared a love of fashion, and looking your best and presenting
your best to the world. She always did. Dr. DiLullo commanded the whole room—and she
was the smallest thing in there.”
”Dr. Evans is a military man, and can be very stern. He expects things to be done
in a certain way. If I said, ‘I have an idea, and this is what I want to do,’ he would
tell me, ‘Well, Patience, if it works, you get the glory. But if it doesn’t, you get
the blame.’ I was comfortable with that; it makes you think twice and consider all
the angles. … At PCOM Georgia, I found him to be an amazing teacher, and he used every opportunity to teach. You
could see him transform when he talked with students and asked them questions. I was
privy to a softer side of Dr. Evans, too, in his interactions with my son, whose name
is Mason. As a little boy, Mason loved fish and animals in general. Dr. Evans is a
bird expert. So they would get in these conversations. … Mason at one point drew him
a little cutout of a fish, colored like a rainbow. Dr. Evans had it taped to his desk
for years and even moved it to his desk in Indianapolis when he went to Marian University.
… His philosophy was that in the beginning you had to run a tight ship, and then you
could loosen up. Dr. Evans came to trust me and treat me as a confidant. It was a
privilege to work for him…The culture here in North Georgia is different than in Philadelphia,
and part of his job when he served as founding dean and chief academic officer at PCOM Georgia [2004 to 2010] was to be the bridge between the two cultures. Dr. Evans grew up in
the northeast, but he went to school in Miami, and then he joined the military and
traveled all over. So he was able to read a room, and I think that’s also why he was
so skilled as a teacher. Perhaps his background as a family physician also helped
him do this, as I saw with my kid. He was able to meet someone where they were and
explain things to them in a way that suited them. He knew his audience. … I love Dr.
Evans. I saw the colonel, but I got to know the family doctor and the family man,
a person who knows how to laugh at himself and with others.”
”For years, Uncle Manny addressed the new DO class with his lecture on physician compassion
during the White Coat Ceremony. With his piercing blue eyes, bushy goatee and booming
voice, he resembled a majestic king from ancient times when he pointed to the lecture
hall door and proclaimed, ‘All of you who cross this threshold who do not have empathy
and compassion in your hearts, there is the door.’ … Uncle Manny, as Dr. Fliegelman
was affectionately known to hundreds of PCOM students, then shared with his fresh-faced
congregation his famous Ten C’s for being a physician who puts the patient before
all else: compassion, contact, creativity, completion, communication, competence,
caring, consideration, concern and confidence. Each C was followed by a sentence of
explanation. Compassion: Put yourself in their shoes, you have no idea what they’re
dealing with out there in the world outside of your office. Contact: A gentle pat
on the back, a warm embrace is undeniably healthy. A framed copy of the piece of notebook
paper on which I feverishly jotted down the Ten C’s some 30 years ago still hangs
in my office. … I tell friends that Uncle Manny taught me all I needed to know on
my very first day of medical school, most notably that love is the strongest medicine
(which not coincidentally is the title of my own book). He became my mentor and my
friend. He guided me through the tough times and the long hours during our many heart-to-hearts
in his Rowland Hall office. I’m forever proud to be the first recipient of the Dr.
Emanuel Fliegelman Humanitarian Award for the doctor exhibiting highly compassionate
care during residency. … Uncle Manny was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology. He instituted the ‘Doris Program,’ which provided every second-year student with
the opportunity to administer a gynecological examination to a patient volunteer under
his direction and supervision. Before that, students practiced only on anatomical
models. There was but one rule: Treat every volunteer with utmost respect—like they’re
your own mother or grandmother. … Uncle Manny passed away in 1998 at age 83 from myelodysplastic
syndrome, a bone marrow cancer. He’s one of the reasons I became an oncologist. Who
could benefit more from Uncle Manny’s teachings than cancer patients?”
”When Carol started working at PCOM, it was a much smaller place. But even three years
ago, when I left, the feeling of family remained, and through her years at PCOM, Carol
always embraced that. She really thought of everybody working there as family and
friends. … Some have wondered how those like Carol and me could have such a long tenure
in a single institution, but PCOM was constantly changing, and that made it all exciting.
Change is the lifeblood of an institution of higher education, and PCOM was very alive
through all those years. … In admissions and student affairs, Carol and I spent a
lot of time screening applicants and talking about what we wanted our classes to look
like. Carol saw every class as the future of osteopathic medicine. … Today, just about
every professional and graduate school is talking about holistic admissions, having come to the realization that beyond MCAT scores and GPAs are those qualities
an applicant brings: communication and compassion, being a team player, being an active
and involved person, being socially capable. At PCOM, Carol built the model of looking
beyond the numbers. I’m very proud of the classes we brought in, and Carol cared for
each student through their program and beyond, demonstrated by her strong relationship
with PCOM alumni. … When PCOM started the psychology and physician assistant programs, forensic medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, biomedical sciences—those were all very different cohorts of students, and an admissions program had
to be built for each one. Carol was able to expertly expand her staff, to find the
right people to be on her team. … At PCOM, people can sense if you’re truly dedicated
because it’s not just a school, it’s a mission. There was absolutely no doubt that
Carol was 100 percent behind the mission of the College. So she was able to build
a lot of trust among the people around her. … You can repeat an admissions program
year after year—talk to students and recruit them, put out the literature, do the
interviews. But Carol had a sense for and a talent for building relationships with
undergraduate premedical advisors. They knew they could trust her. … There was something
I called ‘Carol’s rule.’ Every conference or regional admissions gathering had panels—one
for medicine, and maybe a panel for dentistry, and a panel for other supporting allied
professions. If there was a panel for medical schools that included MDs, but the DO
schools were relegated to the ‘alternatives,’ we wouldn’t participate. When it came
to standing her ground for osteopathic medicine, Carol was there.”
”Art was one of the most charismatic men I’ve ever met. There was such a charm about
him. He was a brilliant psychologist and innovative administrator. He loved to teach.
He taught through stories. You learned so much by listening to him. … He had high
expectations for everybody, and he strived to help others meet those expectations.
He was supportive, and he motivated his faculty to achieve more. For example, he required
us to become board certified at a time when only 10 percent of clinical psychologists would do so. … Art had original ideas about teaching psychology, and he put those
ideas into action. When he founded the College’s Department of Psychology in 1995, PCOM’s classrooms were filled with medical students during the day. He chose
to launch the program at night. ‘We have a barn, let’s have a show,’ he’d say. He
filled those seats. … He traveled the world to extend his knowledge and wisdom. When
I co-hosted the World Congress of the Association of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies
in 2000, Art had the idea that it would be neat if people could watch experts doing
therapy. So he started a grand rounds series during which practitioners could watch
experts conduct a therapy session, live on stage, with an actor as a patient. This
format was adopted by the association and continues today. … Art was a world-renowned
expert in cognitive therapy, which uses empirically based therapeutic interventions
that focus on an individual’s core beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors, with
an emphasis on challenging irrational and maladaptive thoughts or beliefs. He had
a knack for working with complex and difficult patients. He was prolific in extending
his experience and knowledge. I was honored to co-author two books with him (he authored
over 25 books and many more articles). … Art loved to gather people around him. Every
day around noon, he’d announce that the lunch train was leaving, as he gathered his
people to grab a meal with deans, chairs and faculty of other departments. He cared
about psychology, he cared about PCOM, and he cared about his colleagues, friends
and family. He left PCOM in 2008 and passed away in 2020. His presence is still felt
here at the College. His portrait hangs in the department, and we are grateful for his legacy and for having known him, and fortunate to have called him a colleague and dear friend.”
”I’ve been at the Lancaster Healthcare Center now for going on 19 years. When I first came, in 2003, Dr. Gilhool was one of the
doctors here, and working with him was just such a pleasure. He is a great doctor,
with a really good bedside manner. He’s been retired for three or four years, and
the patients still want to know how he’s doing. … He was originally a gastroenterologist,
and you don’t always see a specialist who is able to transition back to primary care.
For him, it was a no-brainer. … Dr. Gilhool is very down to earth, very personable.
He is probably the best storyteller I’ve ever met. Students would gather around and
listen to him talk about his hospital days, his intern days, everything he’d seen
when he was in practice. He can talk to anybody about anything. … He is a great teacher.
He was very much into stopping and making sure students really understood the whole
picture, the whole patient. The students loved it and got so much out of it. … Our
offices were right across from each other. We got to know each other personally, and
we could see each other’s patients without there being any lapse in care. … He relied
on me for some things, like the newer technologies, and I relied on him in terms of
his experience, the political ins and outs, that kind of thing. He would leave it
to me to draw my own conclusions, because he always joked that I had a lot of guts
and wasn’t easily intimidated. He was like that, too. He’d always say, ‘To thine own
self be true.’… His father had been a prominent OB/GYN physician in North Philadelphia
who early on had a stroke, and his mother, a nurse, had to take care of the father.
So he had some adversity in his childhood and didn’t go right into medicine. He went
to medical school at Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri, and when
he first started working here, he probably felt a bit like an outsider. … Remembering
his relationships with the students always reminds me to stop for a minute. We’re
so fast-paced here at the center and trying to do so much at once. Dr. Gilhool always
took the time to get to know the students, to talk to them about their aspirations—not
just in medicine but in the rest of their lives.”
”Soon after I came to PCOM in 1989, I was asked to serve on a committee to revise
the faculty handbook and develop a tenure policy. Charlotte Greene was the chair of
the committee, which also included Michael Venditto, DO [now professor and chair,
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine]. We had a big job to do. … Charlotte
was very knowledgeable about the multiple roles of faculty in an academic environment.
I enjoyed watching her pause for reflection, and if she didn’t have an immediate response,
she’d dig for information and come back to the table with advice for us. She worked
extremely hard in this task and in everything she did. … When Charlotte spoke, everybody
listened. She was never pedantic and always kept an open mind for the opinions of
others. … In her role as educator, Charlotte was responsible for teaching muscle physiology
to our Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and Master's in Biomedical Sciences students. I went to her lectures because this was my area of research. Her goal was
to present this conceptually challenging material in a way that students would readily
understand and would help them appreciate the relevance to the principles and practice
of osteopathic medicine. She encouraged students to ask questions and made them feel that they had identified
gaps in our knowledge. … Where Charlotte really shined was in her research laboratory.
She was a terrific and imaginative scientist. Her favorite role was mentoring students
in the research process, and they flocked to her lab to be a part of her projects. … She was a pioneer in
research involving tissue regeneration. Charlotte’s work was recognized by a company
that contracted with her to test compounds for their effects on wound healing in a
model she developed. She also provided opportunities for surgeons to learn how to
perform laparoscopic cholecystectomy in the early days of minimally invasive procedures.
… Charlotte was always thoughtful and never boastful. Although she was passionate
about all things academic, she could see both sides of an issue. She loved PCOM and
stood behind the difficult decision to sell our hospital for the good of the College.
… I had so much respect for her as a colleague and an individual. I miss her a lot.
She touched the lives of many of our students.”
”Dr. Heilig was my colleague and my mentor. But when I met him for the first time,
I was in seventh grade in my T-shirt and tighty-whities, waiting to get my physical
for football. Dr. Heilig told me to turn my head to the side and cough. … Basically,
because of my father [Nicholas S. Nicholas, DO, FAAO], I grew up with him. He was
a really important figure in our lives, kind of like a member of the family. But I
could never call him Dave; it was ‘Dr. Dave’ or ‘Doc Dave.’ … I didn’t see him much
while I was in medical school. But when my father was hired full-time to chair what’s
now the OMM department, the first thing he did was hire Dr. Heilig as his vice chair. That was 1974. And
in 1977, I joined the department full-time: it was my father, Dr. Heilig and me. …
My father was a very social, extroverted guy—he was a volcano. And if Dr. Heilig had
been like him, it wouldn’t have worked. They were opposites; they blended perfectly
together. Dr. Heilig was a tectonic plate that moved very quietly. … He was one of
the most intelligent, widely educated men I’ve ever met. He was a writer. He could
paint and sculpt. He played the cello and bass violin. He was a football player and
a diver on the swim team at Swarthmore College. … Dr. Heilig was probably the most
deeply thinking osteopathic physician, as well as osteopathic manipulative medicine physician, teaching osteopathic principles
and practice. … He was a gentleman and a gentle man—a Quaker, a very spiritual man.
I never heard him say anything loud or nasty about anybody. He stood up for his beliefs
very strongly, but he did it in a way that was kind and well-thought-out. … Dr. Heilig
was what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator would call an advocate. He helped everybody—he’d
put his hands on the students’ hands and take them through the maneuvers. … My father
used to say that Dr. Heilig was the greatest manipulative tactician he’d ever seen.
And my father was pretty good. … When Dr. Heilig retired, I think that was the only
time the American Academy of Osteopathy honored someone with an entire day of lectures,
just on him. He was loved by the entire osteopathic profession.”
”If we stand on the shoulders of giants, Carol is among the greatest in the osteopathic medical profession. To start, she’s an exceptional family medicine physician. She’s been in private
practice and with Main Line Health since 2014. She has worked in the Philadelphia
suburbs for more than three decades and has forged such long-lasting relationships
with her patients that she’s cared for five generations of some families. … No one
works harder than a solo practitioner. I’d often reach out to her at all hours of
the day, and she’d be in her office, seeing patients or finishing up her notes. …
. She is a tireless physician and professional. She is able to juggle the demands
of her practice, her personal life, and the advocacy she lends on national and local
levels. Nationally, she served as president of the American College of Osteopathic
Family Physicians, and held leadership positions with the American Osteopathic Association.
She has also been a leader with the Pennsylvania Osteopathic Medical Association and
the Pennsylvania Osteopathic Family Physicians Society. She was the first woman president
of the PCOM Alumni Association and served with distinction, an inspiration for many.
… When you are in a meeting with Carol, you’ll find that she’s always engaged. She’s
well informed, and when she addresses an issue, she speaks with authority, based on
her broad knowledge and experience. She speaks with the heart of a family doctor.
Carol is such a positive person. I’ve never heard her say an unkind word. … She understands
and embodies the distinctiveness of the osteopathic philosophy and its practice. She’s
devoted to keeping that tradition alive for this generation, and for future generations
of DO graduates, many of whom she herself teaches and mentors. Carol is a leader in
encouraging family medicine residents to take the osteopathic family medicine boards. Her backing resulted in
a campaign to raise $2 million for scholarship aid to cover the practical and written
portions of the test as well as travel to testing sites through the American College
of Osteopathic Family Physicians’ foundation . … She’s not just helping PCOM students
and residents. She’s also getting recognition for supporting our profession at all
levels. She is such a stalwart force.”
”We acquired 130 acres of land in Moultrie, Colquitt County, right in the center of
Southwest Georgia. We donated 30 acres, and kept the remaining 100, and the College
built and opened PCOM South Georgia in 2019. There is the potential for growth; you could have housing on the back half, where
you get a nice residential feel, with a spring-fed lake and a creek and pine trees
and native grasses. There’s a whole lot of wildlife back there too: deer, quail, turkey;
they all make their home in this little rolling area in the bottomland. … As real
estate developers, we understand the need for medical buildings in Moultrie. We have
a development on 15 acres less than a mile to the south of PCOM South Georgia, right
by the hospital. The building started out with one OB/GYN practice, and now we have
nine medical buildings there. It was a very positive investment experience, and it
gave us the sense of the possibilities if we were to have a school to educate physicians
and other healthcare professionals on the tract of land. … We believed that having
a medical school here would be good for the health of South Georgia. National statistics
show that when health professionals finish their training, they often settle within
50 or 60 miles of their place of training for the duration of their career. That’s
proved true for the first classes; the majority of those who graduate from PCOM South
Georgia plan to stay in Southwest Georgia. … We’re a rural county with poultry processing,
cotton, peanuts, soybeans, corn. Our economy is split between agribusiness, government,
manufacturing and retail. Our YMCA has been around for 100 years, our arts center
is second to none for a community of our size, and our diving facility has attracted
Olympians who come here to train. … People are coming to Southwest Georgia. About
50 percent of our high school graduating classes return to Colquitt County to live
and work. They recognize the great quality of life. They desire to live and raise
their children here. … We’re so glad that PCOM came into the region with the self-interest
of educating healthcare professionals and the shared interest of improving health
care for Georgians. The College wanted to make Moultrie a better community, and they
certainly have. We are honored to be part of the PCOM story.”
”Dr. Kvist was part of the reason I agreed to transition from pharmaceutical research
back into academia. I had been out of the teaching environment for probably a decade,
so I was nervous. He was a great mentor, able to advise without critiquing my personal
style. … Understanding how to present a dissected specimen to students on an exam
might seem straightforward, but there’s an art to it. And Dr. Kvist was able to guide
me and others to make sure we were assessing students in a fair but appropriate manner.
When I started here at PCOM, he had us sit down as a department and go through every
question on a written exam to make sure the scientific content was accurate. That
was his level of commitment to the reputation of the courses. … He was the first chair
of the Department of Bio-Medical Sciences and was instrumental in helping a diverse group of faculty integrate into one umbrella
group—able to navigate different personalities, and different courses and requirements,
and bringing us together so that we worked cohesively. … Throughout all of this, he
was very humble. He wasn’t looking for recognition. He just did the work he did, including
his work as one of the earliest educators to begin plastinating biological specimens
for teaching purposes, and he was proud of the work he did. He had been at PCOM for
39 years when he retired. … Dr. Kvist had a very dry sense of humor, and it was incorporated
into every one of his lectures, but very rarely did you hear students laughing. Later,
though, students would tell me, ‘I listened to his lecture again, and he’s really
funny!’ His humor was so subtle that, in the moment, you could miss the nuances. …
One thing that endeared him to students was that he spent unscheduled hours helping
them in the anatomy lab. Medical students took gross anatomy as their first course,
and a lot of times they were overwhelmed by volume. He probably helped countless students
get through that first term over his years here. … As a mentor, he gave me a perspective
on caring about students and the job that we’re supposed to be doing: trying our best
to make sure that they’re successful.”
”Bob was my teacher and my colleague. As a teacher, he was brilliant. Yet, I don’t
think he ever recognized his own genius—how he informed his art with fresh perspective,
sage advice and a hint of silliness. … On the first day of class, we were thrown into
a big auditorium. During the course of his radiology presentation, Bob would put up
someone’s picture on that big screen and ask us to answer his clinical question. We
usually had no idea what he was talking about. Perhaps that was our first reality
check: ‘Boy, we’re really in medical school now.’ But very quickly, we realized that
he was not concerned about our answers. He was more focused on creating an encouraging
educational environment, in every class, to take away some of our paranoia about making
a mistake. The wisdom of his teaching was understanding that only when you let go
do you open yourself up to learn. … Years later, I was fortunate to have an office
very close to where he taught the third-year students. There was a mandatory radiology
clerkship; you had to experience Bob regardless of whether you wanted to be a radiologist
or a family doctor or an internist. During the first week, it was kind of quiet in
that classroom. By the beginning of the second week, you’d hear laughter, singing,
all kinds of shenanigans. He had puppets; he was Mister Rogers before Mister Rogers.
He would have the students whistling, humming, playing guitars, doing skits. … What
could be more embarrassing than standing in front of your peers and singing? But once
you got over that embarrassment, you opened yourself up to learning. … Bob hasn’t
been with us for a number of years; he passed away in 2005. But hospital administrators—across
the state and region—still tell me they can identify PCOM grads because they’re not
intimidated by reading images and films. They never have that deer-in-a-headlight
look. They know logically how to look through the film, look at the soft tissue, the
anatomical components. … Bob won teaching awards over and over again. … He told me,
‘This is how I enjoy teaching.’ The excitement, the enthusiasm, the energy that he
created in his classroom came back to him, made him more spirited and more inclined
to give. … Even when he got sick at the end, he never retired. His enjoyment of teaching
actually penetrated the classroom. You can pick that up as a student. If the teacher
is excited about being in front of you, that goes a long way.”
”When I first joined the College as a young professor, I shadowed Roe. As my faculty
mentor, she’d often meet and walk me from classes and around campus. It always amazed
me that we’d never make it more than a few yards (sometimes a few footsteps) without
students, faculty and staff stopping us. Everyone wanted to talk to Roe—professionally.
Personally. I think they simply wanted to experience the warmth of her presence, her
benevolence. Her authenticity. She puts everyone at ease. … In psychology, we teach
that empathy starts with being present. Roe is always fully present as a person, as
a teacher, as a therapist, as a leader. She is a nurturer. At the same time, she is
strong, assertive and effective. … She brought a whole lifetime with her when she
came to PCOM. She had been a fourth-grade teacher, a guidance counselor, a school
psychologist in the New Jersey public schools. She is also a doting mother to her
daughter. She recognized that she had grown and matured throughout her career and
the many different facets of it. She worked at PCOM for nearly a decade (before her
retirement in 2014) and during that time developed, implemented and taught three School Psychology programs [PsyD, MS and EdS]. … Throughout her tenure, Roe was the face of School Psychology.
She was also the heartbeat. She upheld the highest academic standards in the field
and obtained all the regulatory designations. She drew highly credentialed students
at the national level. She committed to them, and they attribute their success to
her. … Her programs thrived—and continue to thrive today—not just because of their
academic rigor but because of their climate. Roe knows how to build relationships.
She understands that students (even graduate-level ones) learn and flourish when they establish cooperative and collaborative connections—authentic
relationships with teachers and with one another. I imagine this stems from her academic
passion for and research on school-based mental health and cognitive and behavioral
interventions. In this area, she was undoubtedly ahead of her time—recognizing that
children (with their families) can only reach their fullest potential when they feel
safe, valued and appreciated.”
”My dad was a larger-than-life figure. He came to Philadelphia in 1946 after his discharge
from the United States Navy. A first-generation Greek immigrant, he discovered Philadelphia
College of Osteopathy on 48th and Spruce streets, where he took continuing medical
education classes and soon started teaching osteopathic manipulation treatment to medical students four afternoons a week. … From 1946 to 1965, he taught medical
students for free. That didn’t sit well with my mother, who couldn’t understand why
he’d close down his practice each afternoon. … He was a super-extroverted guy, who
was heavy-set and smoked cigars. He often had medical students shadowing him. He’d
meet with students for breakfast at the Garrett Restaurant on 69th Street in Upper
Darby. At times there would be lunch or dinner too. … My dad was one of the first
to use osteopathic manual manipulation in sports medicine. He started as the sports
physician at Villanova University, from 1946 to 1960, for the school’s teams in football,
basketball and track. He cared for nine Olympic athletes, including pole-vaulter Don
Bragg, and long-distance runners Marty Liquori and Eamonn Coghlan. … He was devoted
to developing the osteopathic profession. My brother and I would hear him up on his
soapbox; he didn’t want it taken over by allopathic physicians. … He believed in osteopathic
manipulative treatments and that they were integral to health care. Like A.T. Still,
the founder of osteopathic medicine, he felt that the heroics of dangerous chemicals
and medicines could be worse than the actual diseases. In 1974, he wrote a textbook
called Atlas of Osteopathic Techniques, which detailed what he knew. … My dad always believed in manual diagnosis, to see
if the musculoskeletal system would give signs through palpation of the body. He’d
feel those little reflexes that can cause dysfunction. And he’d treat that dysfunction
to get positive results. And teaching OMT at PCOM gave him the opportunity to teach
hands-on principles. He’d tell his students, ‘That’s why our school is here.’”
”Our favorite hangout was the study room. That’s where you’d often find Jason, James
[Lindsay, PharmD ’14] and me, cracking jokes while perusing our pharmacology books.
More than a few times, Jason retreated there on his own to lie on the floor and to
pray the pain of sickle cell anemia away—once in the middle of an exam. … Our study
room now bears Jason’s name, dedicated in loving memory to my best friend and fellow
graduate of PCOM’s inaugural PharmD class, a lasting tribute to Jason Walton O’Neal’s
grit, gumption and sly smile I’d do anything to see again. … Complications from sickle
cell disease took Jason from us on August 12, 2016, too young at age 35 and only two
years after he’d accomplished his goal of becoming a pharmacist, which at times seemed like an impossible dream when you consider the many health
obstacles he had to overcome during those four years. … Jason was the first person
I met at PCOM Georgia. We showed up for our pharmacy school interviews together in
2010, nervous and excited and hoping we’d be accepted into the school. You know how
you meet someone for the first time, but you sense you’ve met before? That’s how it
was with Jason and me. Turns out, we had graduated a year apart from Southwest DeKalb
High School some 10 years before our paths crossed again. … The truth is, I didn’t
know how sick Jason really was—nor did his other classmates or professors. Jason kept
his illness private and didn’t want anyone’s pity. The only outward signs of his disability
were a limp in his right leg from a childhood stroke that many mistook for a strut,
turned-in fingers on his left hand and his tall (6 foot), slender (130-pound) frame.
… Yet it was hard not to notice all the classes Jason missed while hospitalized with
repeated bouts of pneumonia. ‘Sicklers’ are susceptible to lung infections. ‘You were
in the hospital?’ classmates would ask when he’d reappear on campus. ‘Man, this is
normal for me,’ was all he’d say. … That was the thing about Jason. He just kept on
resisting, persisting and never, ever giving up despite his punishingly cruel and
relentlessly unforgiving illness. … It’s tough not having him here—in our daily text
messages, at Atlanta Falcons games and at my sons’ birthday parties—but Jason continues
to inspire and amaze me, just as I hope he does for future PCOM School of Pharmacy
students.”
”In July 2005, I came with Mary and several others to develop the curriculum that
would start in mid-August at the new Georgia campus of PCOM. It was quite a task to
get all those ducks in a row, tweaking the Philadelphia curriculum and figuring out
who was doing what. For several weeks before our offices were ready, we worked in
an old house at the Osteopathic Institute of the South. It drove home the fact that
we were starting from the ground up. … We were from all over the place—except Mary,
our only southerner, who was from Alabama. … Her work and experience in pharmacology
helped her put together the initial curriculum. She had so many accomplishments, but
she was very humble about them. She was also a very private person, and very independent.
… Mary became an influential person on the Research Committee. And she was also a course director, which is a very important role. When you’re
organizing a course in second year, you’ve got to coordinate basic science and then
clinical medicine—and we didn’t have any clinicians then. So she had to make those
contacts and coordinate their work—make sure each knew what the other was doing. She
set up a process that I encouraged other course directors to follow. … Mary had primarily
been a research scientist in the period before she joined PCOM, not heavily involved
in teaching. But some people are just naturally good at knowing how to build complexity,
from basic foundational concepts to more complex concepts in a way that carries your
students with you. She seemed to be able to do that right out of the gate. … Even
with a heavy load of administration and curriculum building, she was interested in
maintaining some research. Once we had the Biomedical Sciences program, students could assist with that. … Students really loved her; it was obvious how
much she cared about them. She was really easy to talk to—jovial and outgoing. When
you were in the hallways, you could hear her laughing. But she had a very serious
side, too. When she felt strongly about something, she would fight for what she believed
in. She retired from PCOM Georgia in 2019, and continues her legal work. We miss her here.”
”Rich was the director of medical education when I was a resident, so I got to know
him at morning reports and at lectures. The big thing with Rich is his personality—he’s
easy to talk to, very engaging, and makes you feel like you’re the most important
person in the room. And he always used humor to break the ice or put people at ease
in a meeting. … He asked me in 2005 to become the associate program director for the
Family Medicine residency, and in that position I reported to him. In 2012, when he was the vice dean for clinical education and had other responsibilities requiring more of his time, Rich offered to bring
me in part-time to teach me how to be the head of graduate medical education one day.
… What a great mentor Rich is. He’s taught me so much about professionalism, and how
to be patient as well. I’m a pretty calm guy, but when things would go wrong, he’d
sit me down and help me work it out. … Rich would say, ‘All right. What’s the issue?
Let’s take a step back and think about it unemotionally, and see what’s going on.’
Or ‘What’s the other side’s motivation? How can we work together and compromise to
get things done?’. … Over time, he slowly and progressively gave me more to do, and
helped me think things through. Early on, I would ask myself, ‘How would Rich handle
this?’ But now it’s ingrained in me because he’s taught me so well. … When [allopathic
and osteopathic] graduate medical education transitioned to a single accreditation
system, beginning in 2015, Rich and I were learning together, and he was handing off
to me in a time of turmoil where sometimes we didn’t know the answer. So we had to
figure it out together, along with Joanne Jones [campus officer, PCOM South Georgia], who was the third person in our triumvirate.
… Rich has always been a teacher to me, even on the golf course! Every time we play
together, I learn something from him. And whenever we went golfing in Atlantic City,
afterwards we’d go to the casinos, where we’d play blackjack together. He taught me
strategy, and he’d say, ‘Sometimes you’ve got to take a risk. Roll the dice.’… I hope
he is happy and proud that he trained me. Honestly, he is like a father figure to
me.”
”Nick Pedano was my guide and counselor—and also my cousin. My grandmother was a Pedano.
… When I decided I wanted to go to PCOM, Nick wrote a letter for me. Later, when I
had a little trouble with anatomy, Nick talked to his close friend Angus Cathie [then
chair of the department]. …Nick wanted me to be a surgeon, even though I said, ‘Nick,
I’m not good with my hands.’ … I remember one case, the second operation was 12 hours.
I’m short, so I had to stand on a stool, and I said, ‘Maybe it’s better if I pass
out.’ After it was over and we were taking the gloves off, I said, ‘Cuz, this is not
for me.’ He said, ‘All right. You’re going to go into internal medicine.’ … Nick could
order you to do something and you did it, and then— ‘Wait a minute, what am I doing?’
… The whole family had a commanding presence. Surgeons have to be commanding, and
they have to give orders, but they get away with more if the iron fist has a velvet
glove. … There were two parts of Nick’s personality. He was friendly, and he was bossy—but
he had a nice way about him. … He had a house down the shore in Margate, right by
the ocean, and he would have a party every year for the interns and for the residents,
a beautiful affair. He would wine and dine them because he appreciated what they did
for him. And he developed relationships all the way up the line. That was the social
Nick. In the operating room, he took no hostages, because he had to get things done
the way he wanted them done. … As chairman of surgery, Nick led the way to the growth
of PCOM by example. He had a massive service, with tons of patients. He went all over
the place to nurture family doctors. … The people who worked with him were indefatigable
and inextinguishable. The College is to a large degree where it is because of his
absolutely brilliant energy. … From Nick, I saw that leadership is not totally dictatorial
or totally social. It’s a good mixture of both. So I try to achieve that balance with
my house staff. Yes, we work hard. When it comes time for me to be the boss, they
look at me as the boss. But then I’ll say, ‘Okay, it’s five o’clock, let’s go over
to the Hilton.’ ”
”When I started teaching at PCOM, I listened to tapes that students had made of JoAnne’s
lectures. It was so easy to follow her. JoAnne was a very good teacher. … She always
had a smile. I remember giving one lecture when I had just started teaching. Those
lecture rooms are huge, holding about 270 people. And there she was in the audience,
near the front. At one point when I looked up, she had the best smile on her face.
It was such a wonderful thing to see. … JoAnne was probably about five foot four or
five, with short, straight hair and looked like she would be no-nonsense. And in some
cases she was; she was a strong woman. But really, she was just fun. She never got
frustrated with me, with students, with anybody. Students loved her! … When JoAnne
met Barbara [now Dr. Thornton’s spouse] and me, we were a couple. We remember going
to events and how welcoming she was of both of us. She was always interested in people.
… JoAnne’s field was lipids—so was her husband’s [Ronald Pieringer, PhD, was Dr. Thornton’s
professor when she was a doctoral student at Temple University]—and that’s not my
favorite subject. So she and I complemented each other intellectually. … JoAnne had
her own research. But when Dr. Mochan [Eugene Mochan, PhD, DO ’77, then department
chair] was there, he had a particular research project in molecular biology he wanted
the department to do. JoAnne was able to shift gears on this ongoing project. She
was a kind of gung-ho type of person: ‘I’m just going to jump in here, and I’m going
to do it. And I’m going to enjoy it.’… I became the chair of the department after
Dr. Mochan stepped down. I found that a lot of my ideas about how to approach students
and how to manage people had come from JoAnne. We only overlapped for perhaps two
years before she passed away, and I didn’t realize at the time how much I was getting
from her. There was no expectation of her being my mentor; it just happened. …When
she died, Dr. Mochan, Dr. Ruth Borghaei and I set up a scholarship fund in JoAnne’s
name, along with a brick laid in the Donor Garden outside Evans Hall.”
”John and I were together for a very long time. I first met John as a medical student
through his academic courses and lectures and on his pulmonary service. He also taught
me during my internship at Metropolitan Hospital. I went into practice with him in
1995, and we worked together until his retirement in 2018. … John was an exceptional
clinician and a tireless advocate for compassionate patient care. He was also a jokester.
He liked to laugh. He had an uncanny ability to connect with people—all people at all times. His patients loved him; they would travel great distances to be seen by him.
… He was a beloved teacher. Throughout his career he taught thousands of students,
interns and residents. They genuinely adored him—and he endearingly referred to them
as his “kids.” Year after year, he’d be honored with distinguished teaching awards. … John was a natural presenter. He had a strong stage presence when he lectured
in his field of pulmonary medicine and critical care. He often said that teaching and entertaining are the same thing.
… If you met John, he was the kind of person that you would remember. One time I was
at a medical conference in Chicago when a fellow physician saw on my nametag that
I was from Philadelphia. ‘Do you know Dr. Simelaro?’ he asked excitedly. It turned
out the physician had attended a lecture by John at a previous conference, and had
come back to the current conference in the hope of reconnecting with John. … John
was one of the first pulmonologists to use biologic therapies for patients with asthma.
He worked with pharmaceutical companies as they were developing some of these drugs.
These monthly injections help people to better control their asthma. He was an expert
in using this form of therapy, enabling many of his patients to live better lives.
… John, Mike [Michael A. Venditto, DO ’77] and I had a three-person pulmonary practice
on City Avenue and in South Philadelphia. It was a small community-type practice.
I enjoyed working with John because he was such an outstanding, hardworking physician.
He would never ask you to do something he wouldn’t do himself; he was the kind of
partner you want to practice medicine with. He will always be my mentor and friend.”
On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, which upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws within the
“separate but equal” doctrine. That was the world Edna D. Kennedy had been born into
just five weeks prior. As an African American, she would face challenges in a society
that did not offer separate but equal opportunities into the medical profession. Not
only would her race limit her access to medical schools; so, too, would her gender.
Despite the odds, this native Philadelphian—known as Edna K. Williams, DO, throughout
her career—would follow in the footsteps of Meta L. Christy, DO 1921, as PCOM’s second African American alumna and a role model for the community and
other Black medical professionals.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Kennedy family resided at 625 Pine Street, then an African American and immigrant neighborhood. Edna, the daughter of a laborer, was the eldest of three. By 1910, the family, including one grandmother, moved into a two-story row house in South Philadelphia. Edna attended Philadelphia High School for Girls, followed by a practical education at the Derrick Shorthand School of Philadelphia. Stenography was a reasonable career expectation for a Black woman of her times—and, as it turned out, not a bad skill to have for taking notes as a medical student!
But before medical school came marriage, a baby, a divorce and another marriage, all between 1918 and 1920. Husband Dayton H. C. Wilson, a bellman and, in later years, a physician, spent part of their newlywed year on active duty for World War I. While he was deployed, daughter Phylomina was born. By 1920, the estranged couple was living a block apart—with their respective parents—and Edna Kennedy was employed as a stenographer for a fraternal society. In August 1920, she married Alphonzo L. Williams, a chauffer from the District of Columbia, and this time took her husband’s name.
As the 1920s roared, this wife and mother hunkered down for life as a medical student, matriculating at PCOM’s Spring Garden Street location in 1922. Classmates came to know her as “Turpy.” Comments published in the PCOM Synapsis yearbook hint at her drive and perseverance. In 1925: “We have naught but praises for this young lady as she pioneers in this great science. She exhibits great pluck in carrying on.” And, in 1926:
I see here none other than Edna Williams, hard at work over a new demonstrating machine which enables the beginner to locate lesions by a crier which says “that’s it” or “no, you’re wrong.” Edna has tried many models, as may be seen by looking around, but this machine is no doubt “the” one.
At age 30, Dr. Williams graduated from PCOM, one of 18 women and the only African American woman in her class.
Dr. Williams started a family practice in a rented three-story row house in Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood. She also opened an office in New Jersey. She kept fees very low, particularly to make health care affordable during the Great Depression. By 1935, husband Alphonzo had returned to Washington. Dr. Williams and Phylomina relocated to 219 East Upsal Street (East Mt. Airy), where she ran her family practice that included delivering babies, sometimes in the middle of the night. Patients referred to her as “the treatment guru.”
Although small in stature—barely five feet tall—Dr. Williams had a stool to stand on and strong therapeutic hands to perform osteopathic manipulative treatment. Valerie Griffin, who later worked with Dr. Williams at Gemedco Medical Center in Germantown, recalls how “She surprised a lot of the 200- to 250-pound men who came for treatment and manipulation with the strength of her hands.”
While Dr. Williams healed patients physically with her hands, by 1945, she was applying her religious convictions to minister in other ways. Dr. Williams was affiliated with the Third Christian Scientist denomination as a lecturer and teacher. She orated about pathways to spiritual, mental, financial and physical health by channeling God’s healing life currents; she also discussed reincarnation. One could say she exemplified a holistic approach to medicine. Dr. Williams established a chapel on the second floor of a brownstone at 2307 North Broad Street, where she conducted free weekly lectures, sometimes four times each Sunday.
By 1949, a growing following likely led Dr. Williams to relocate her chapel to 902 Walnut Street and expand her ministry to “Dr. Edna K. Williams Associates.” Her program spread beyond Philadelphia to bases in Baltimore, New York, and Washington, DC, and advertisements for her lectures appeared in Pittsburgh newspapers in the mid-1950s.
In her spare time, Dr. Williams enjoyed singing, which she combined with community service. She belonged to the Western Helpers’ Club, which sang Christmas carols to patients at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also performed for a Germantown flower club.
When Dr. Williams retired from private practice, she did not stay in retirement for long. William M. King, DO ’62, who established the Gemedco Medical Center in 1976, convinced Dr. Williams to come out of retirement to work at the community medical center. She started off working one day a week, seeing 20 to 25 patients a day. Eventually, she slowed down to one morning a week and five to six patients—still a remarkable effort given that she was approaching 90.
In 1989, Dr. Williams retired for good at age 92. That same year, PCOM established a scholarship in her name to assist minority and ethnic students. She suffered a stroke and the loss of her daughter before passing away on September 28, 1993. Ms. Griffin remembers Dr. Williams as
Back to Topquiet and soft spoken, but firm, and a very warm and kind-hearted spirit. She was always willing to share her knowledge of perseverance—going through medical school, how hard it was as a woman and a woman of color. She was very much a role model, encouraging others to keep striving and persevere.
”Daniel Wisely was a very special gentleman. He came into a profession that was often,
and still sometimes is, stigmatized as being rude or blunt. But he was so open, sincere,
caring. … Yes, you had to work hard. You had to always be at your best. You had to
bring a hundred percent, all the time. But he also recognized the sacrifices of the
profession to your personal life, to your family. … I can remember him walking around
the hospital, and something might be a bit ajar, and he’d take a moment to help out
housekeeping, or pause while a nurse was with a patient rather than come in with a
bluster. … When I was a resident in surgery, there weren’t that many of us, and you
might be unable to get any time off. He’d say, ‘I’ll cover for you. I got this. You
need to go home; you’ve been on for three weeks in a row.’… He was a consummate surgeon.
I don’t think I ever saw him falter or sweat. He called himself a little country doctor,
but his skills were just phenomenal. He had these big hands but such a subtle touch.
… He was proud of all his residents and graduates, and of their successes over time.
He had an ability to see not only people’s potential, but to take the next step of
saying, ‘What can I do to help?’ … He wouldn’t let you in real close to him personally;
he was a quiet and private man. But you knew he really cared. … He always made the
time when the time was necessary. He just seemed to know. He had a great skillset
of people understanding—listening, interpreting, getting to the bottom of something,
not just reacting in a moment in time. Today, you can read all the books on management,
but this was another era. How did he do it? … If I’m going into a difficult situation,
whether to talk to a family about a loved one who is maybe going to pass, or to have
a difficult conversation about something at work, I often think about the demeanor
that he drew upon. And so it’s more than ‘What would Dan do?’—of course, we never
would have called him Dan!—but ‘Without losing himself, how did he find the space
to give everyone their due, their necessary attention? What was the essence?’”
”Dr. Young was a large figure at the podium, and he took up most of the front of the
classroom with his personality. He obviously was teaching surgery, but at same time
he seamlessly wove together the different disciplines to make for one medical philosophy.
That impressed me quite a bit as a second-year DO student. … When I was on his service,
what struck me was that he knew his patients by their first names and had treated
them multiple times. That’s because he not only had a surgical practice, he had a
family medicine practice—he ran both together. So he wasn’t just someone a patient
encountered at the last moment of a critical phase of their disease. … I’ve been involved
in surgery now for almost 45 years, and I have never seen anybody have dual practices.
More importantly, I have never seen anybody have their surgical residents manage both.
I think the residents came to appreciate that skill later, as they went into their
own practices. … I was the chairman of the surgery department when Dr. Young had to give up his scalpel. That was one of the first acts I had to
perform, and I was very worried about doing it. I went into his room during his last
surgery of the day. He seemed to recognize why I was there, without my having to say
anything. He turned to me when the case was over; he handed me his scalpel, and he
said, ‘Here, you may want to put this on a plaque.’ … Dr. Young very much believed
in the people he was training, and for him it was a natural thing to hand off what
he was doing to someone he had trained. He never regretted it, and that was not typical.
… I operated on Dr. Young when he was close to 100 years old. He was in Florida and
had a very serious health issue, but he couldn’t contemplate a non-DO working on him.
And so he got on a plane, and I operated on him the next day. … To the very end, he
always wanted to know how the clinics were running, and if we were getting the right
people into the residency, and what cases we were doing. Even though he might not
set foot on campus, he was still pulling strings, still trying to get osteopathic surgery to where he wanted it to be: the best in the nation.”
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