A Historic Convocation Becomes a Time for Heartfelt Thank Yous

Right: Antonia Novello with U-M officers Cynthia Wilbanks, vice president for government relations, Provost Nancy Cantor, Vice President for Development Susan Feagin, and Regent Emerita Veronica Smith of Grosse Ile.

An afternoon convocation at Hill Auditorium on October 1 marked the beginning of the official celebration of the Medical School’s 150th anniversary. Dean Allen S. Lichter welcomed guests who had come to “pay homage to the 150-year legacy entrusted to us,” and noted the “fabulous tradition” of which they were all a part.

Nine speakers, each chosen to represent a particular time and personal vantage point in the School’s contemporary history, talked about the influence of the School and medicine at Michigan on their lives.

Antonia Novello (Residency in Internal Medicine, 1974), former U.S. surgeon general and now health commissioner for the state of New York, expressed her gratitude for the School’s “taking a chance on a kid from Puerto Rico” and for imbuing her with a sense of service, for never allowing her to “forget the people behind the statistics.”

Representing all the patients served by the University of Michigan Health system, 29-year-old Erik Morganroth described the 34 days he spent on cardiac life support and the 1995 heart transplant that saved his life.

Renowned neurosurgeon Keith Black (M.D. 1981, Residency in Neurosurgery 1987), director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, representing the 18,000 physicians who have received their M.D. degrees from the Medical School since 1851, described his 12 years at Michigan as “unequivocally the best years of my life; as a student, you always felt your education was the center of the faculty’s attention.”

Above: A legacy of great leadership: Five deans whose tenures span the years 1959 to the present: from left, Allen S. Lichter (1998-present); A. Lorris Betz (1996-98, interim); Giles G. Bole (1990-96); Joseph E. Johnson III (1985-90); and William N. Hubbard, Jr. (1959-70), the Medical School’s first full-time dean. Not present: Peter A. Ward, interim dean from 1982-85 and now chair of the Department of Pathology, and the late John A. Gronvall, dean from 1970-82. Alumni deans: Lichter (M.D. 1972), Bole (M.D. 1953, Residency 1956), Ward (M.D. 1960, Residency 1963).

William N. Hubbard, M.D., who served as dean from 1959 to 1970, noted wryly the program’s description of his tenure as “the golden era,” and said he thought rather it was the new century “that truly holds the promise of being the golden era.” All he had done, he said, was to “remove impediments to the potential of the faculty and students,” which he deemed to be the major responsibility of those, like him, whose role in the School’s history had been an administrative one.

Former U-M President Harold T. Shapiro talked about his memories of the “courageous action on the part of many individuals” in the “high-stakes poker game” that was involved in raising $210 million to replace the 61-year-old “Old Main” Hospital with a new one in the 1980s, and the “forced march” of his own medical education that was part of the process. (Shapiro, now president of Princeton University, serves as head of the National Bio-ethics Advisory Commission.)

David Botstein (Ph.D. 1967), chair of the Department of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine, representing graduate students, expressed his thankfulness for the “blending of basic science and medicine” at Michigan, a blending, he said, that could have been accomplished only at Michigan where the “breadth of vision” far exceeded that found anywhere else at the time.

President Lee C. Bollinger and Gilbert S. Omenn, executive vice president for medical affairs, represented the current leadership of the University and the Health System. Both spoke of the revolution in the life sciences and its promise for the new century. Despite all we’ve learned over 150 years, Omenn said, “our ignorance is still a compelling challenge.”