1940s

James Curtis (M.D. 1946) and his wife, Vivian, who earned her degree in social work from the University of Michigan, made gifts to the U-M Museum of Art in 1996 and 2000 of sculptures and artifacts they collected from various West African areas over a period of 30 years, as well as a number of contemporary paintings. The entire collection is valued at more than $1.5 million. A display which opened April 5 in the Museum’s James L. and Vivian A. Curtis Gallery of African and African American Art, entitled “African Art of Dual Worlds, Material and Spiritual,” includes more than 30 pieces from the Curtis collection. Curtis is retired director of psychiatry of the Harlem Hospital Center, a Columbia University teaching hospital, and retired clinical professor of psychiatry in Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

1950s

Leopoldo F. Montes (Residency 1959) is the author of Vitiligo Nutritional Therapy (Westhoven Press, Buenos Aires, 1999). The book describes Montes’ experience with the management of vitiligo (the appearance of white patches on the skin due to simple loss of pigment) in the 15 years since he returned to his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina, using mainly common, inexpensive vitamins and non-toxic substances known for many years and readily available. Before his return to Argentina, Montes spent 25 years in academic dermatology in the U.S., most of that time as a member of the dermatology faculty at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

1960s

William J. Hall (M.D. 1965) is the new president of the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine. He assumed the office in March during the organization’s annual session in Atlanta, Georgia. Hall is chief of the general medicine/geriatrics unit and director of the division of geriatrics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Strong Memorial Hospital, in Rochester, New York. The membership of ACP-ASIM comprises more than 115,000 internal medicine physicians and medical students.

Eugene Rontal (M.D. 1967), an otolaryngologist in private practice in Farmington Hills, is the author of Sterile Justice, a medical thriller involving a doctor accused of malpractice who dies under mysterious circumstances. The book’s publisher is Sterling- House in Pittsburgh. It may be ordered by phone at (800) 898- 7886 or on-line at sterlinghousepublisher.com

1970s

Larry J. Goodman (M.D. 1976) has been appointed dean of Rush Medical College at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. He is the 15th head of Rush, which was chartered in 1837 as the first college of medicine in Illinois. Before joining Rush as senior vice president in 1998, Goodman was medical director of Cook County Hospital. His research has focused on infectious diseases, particularly gastrointestinal infections. He has also written extensively about medical student issues such as curricula and how students select a specialty for residency training.

1980s

Edward J. “Lev” Linkner (M.D. 1974), a practicing physician in Ann Arbor, played a leading role in the development of the American Board of Holistic Medicine’s first certification examination, which was created by the Board (of which Linkner was a founding member six years ago) and co-sponsored by the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Almost 300 physicians were founding diplomats of the new specialty. The next ABHM course and exam will be offered in November in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Medical School. Linkner can be reached at elinkner@pol.net.

Lives Lived

William Warner Coon, M.D. (Residency 1956), U-M professor emeritus of surgery, died in Ann Arbor October 5, 2000, of leukemia. He was 75.

After earning his M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1949, Coon served as chief of surgery at the U.S. Army Hospital in Augsburg, Germany, before completing his surgical residency and joining the U-M faculty in 1956. He was appointed professor in 1967 and became a professor emeritus in 1996 after 40 years on the faculty. Coon also served as assistant director of the Clinical Research Unit from 1962 to 1997 and as chair of the Medical School’s Institutional Review Board for 25 years. His commitment to education was recognized by the establishment of the annual William W. Coon Award for Excellence in Resident Teaching in the Department of Surgery. He received a Distinguished Service Award from the U-M Medical Center Alumni Society in 1997.

In the last 20 years of his career, Coon, who continued seeing patients until a few months before his death, was involved primarily in caring for patients with cancer, especially those with breast cancer and melanoma. Contributions in Coon’s memory may be made to the William W. Coon, M.D. Surgical Oncology Patient Care Fund, Office of Medical Development and Alumni Relations, 301 E. Liberty St., Suite 300, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2251.

Mark A. Hayes (M.D. 1940) died December 5, 1999, in North Haven, Connecticut, at age 85. Born in Bay City, he served during World War II as a Navy surgeon in the South Pacific and, after moving to New Haven in 1952, practiced surgery there for nearly 30 years. Hayes was a former professor of surgery at Yale Medical School, past president of the Connecticut Society of the American Board of Surgeons and past president of the Frederick A. Coller Surgical Society, as well as a member of numerous other medical organizations.

George Edward Wantz (M.D. 1946) died on December 15, 2000, at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 77. At his death, he was a clinical professor of surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and an attending surgeon at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he had worked for more than 50 years. He enjoyed an international reputation for his innovations in hernia surgery, and his technique was outlined in several textbooks including the Illustrated Atlas of Hernia Surgery. In 1994 he gave his remarkable collection of antiquarian books, many of them on the subject of hernia repair and anatomy, to the U-M Taubman Medical Library, and in 1997 he presented to the U-M Medical School’s Historical Center for the Health Sciences his outstanding collection of 70 antique surgical and medical instruments. As part of his estate plan, he established the George E. Wantz Professorship in the History of Medicine in the U-M Medical School, held by the director of the Historical Center for the Health Sciences. The professorship was inaugurated in June with Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., as its first holder.

Jerome Earl Webber (M.D. 1935) died in Grand Rapids on December 16, 2000. He was 91 years old. During his 44 years in practice, from 1939 to 1983, he served as chief of pediatrics at Blodgett Memorial Hospital and Mary Free Bed Hospital. He served on the board of the D.A. Blodgett Home for Children for many years and the family clinic there is named in his honor. He also served two terms on the East Grand Rapids Board of Education. He served in the U.S. Navy for four years during World War II and was the recipient of a Bronze Star.

Russell T. Woodburne (Ph.D. 1935), professor emeritus and former chair of anatomy in the University of Michigan Medical School, died April 11 in Ann Arbor. He was 96 years old.

Woodburne devoted his entire career to teaching, research and service in the U-M Medical School. He began teaching U-M medical students in 1936 as an instructor in anatomy and continued until his retirement in 1975. He was a gifted and enthusiastic teacher who introduced thousands of medical students to human anatomy during his long and productive career and was known internationally as the author of one of the first regional anatomy texts, which represented a new approach to teaching. He made many original contributions to the field, including many fundamental anatomical descriptions of areas that had previously been poorly described. He joined the Medical School’s anatomy faculty as an instructor in 1936 and was promoted to assistant professor in 1939, associate professor in 1944 and professor in 1947. Woodburne served as department chair from 1958 until 1973. He retired from active faculty status and was named professor emeritus in 1975. His influence on medical students continues today through his textbook, Essentials of Human Anatomy, now in its ninth edition, co-authored with William E. Burkel, Ph.D., professor of cell and developmental biology in the Medical School.