1950s

John McCann (M.D. 1957) received the 2001 award for outstanding services to maltreated children from the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Child Abuse and Neglect. McCann is a pediatrician at University of California Davis and medical director of the UC Davis Child and Adolescent Abuse Resource and Evaluation Center.

Prasanna K. Pati, M.D. (Residency 1958), has been writing short stories since he retired from Oregon State Hospital in 1986. The Statesman/ Journal in his hometown of Salem, Oregon, said of his book, Adventures and Misadventures of Dr. Sonjee: A Collection of Short Stories: “This fluid collection of short stories is designed…to stimulate both mind and spirit, to awaken the reader to possibilities and to the marvels of life.” The title was inspired by the role Pati played as Dr. Sonjee in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Copies can be ordered by contacting Pati at njrpati@aol.com.

1960s

Lawrence Brotman (M.D. 1964) is a radiologist at an outpatient imaging center in Fort Worth, Texas, specializing in musculoskeletal MRI and CT. He and his wife, Joan, an antique dealer, have three children.

1970s

Karl T. Pregitzer (M.D. 1972) served part of his residency at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, served in the Navy for two years, then completed his residency at Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Hospital in Los Angeles. He then joined Kaiser Permanente in Honolulu where he chaired the Department of Emergency Medicine for 12 years. He is now president of Hawaii Permanente Medical Group and fellow of the American College of Emergency Medicine. He resides in Kaneohe, Hawaii, with his wife of 28 years, Linda, and their two children. Pregitzer can be reached at ktpoahu@yahoo.com.

Robert E. Brolin (M.D. 1974) served as president of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery for 2000-01. During his tenure, the Society increased its membership by nearly one-third. Brolin also co-chaired a research workshop, Research Considerations in Obesity Surgery, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. He is director of the Bariatric Surgery Program at Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Rick Goodman (M.D. 1975, Residency 1978) has been working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for more than 23 years. He served as editor-in-chief of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for more than 10 of those years. In May 2001, Goodman graduated from Emory University’s School of Law and is working to create a new program on public health law within the CDC. He co-authored Precision Woods and Long Iron Shots (Human Kinetics, 1998), about one of his favorite pastimes, golf.

1980s

Christian Harker (Ph.D. 1985) worked jointly for the Division of Vascular Surgery and the Department of Physiology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland until 1998, when he founded and became president of Cayuse, Inc., a grant management software company. Cayuse has just released GrantSlam version 5.0, a software program that assists biomedical researchers in preparing grant proposals for the National Institutes of Health.

Harold Siden (M.D. 1988, Residency 1992) is director of Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver and founded and is the director of Telehealth at Children’s and Women’s Health Center of British Columbia. He resides in Van-couver with his wife, Anne Gorsuch, a Michigan alumna with a Ph.D. in history, and their twin daughters.

Lives Lived

Calvin J. Bergsma (M.D. 1971), 56, of Holland, died July 7, 2001. Bergsma practiced with West Shore Urology, P.C., in Muskegon since 1978. He received his bachelor’s degree from Calvin College, completed a surgery internship at Presbyterian Medical Center in Denver, Colorado, and served his urology residency at the Mayo Clinic.

Walter A. Freyburger (Ph.D. 1951), a pharmacologist, died in Florida on October 6, 1999, at 79. Freyburger retired as director of cardiovascular disease research at The Upjohn Co., now Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., in 1982, where he had received the WE Upjohn Award for Excellence. During his 32 years with the company, he played a key role in the development of several drugs on the market today, including Rogaine, Colestid and Cleocin. An outdoorsman who enjoyed bird watching, fly-fishing and raising orchids, Freyburger co-founded the Kalamazoo Nature Center in 1960.

Yeneneh Betru (M.D. 1995) was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. He was 35.

Betru was born in Ethiopia, raised in Saudi Arabia and immigrated to the United States in 1982, hoping to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. “Ever since he was a little kid, he always wanted to be a doctor,” remembers one of his brothers. “He always wanted to help people.”

He achieved his dream at the U-M and served as medical affairs director at IPC — The Hospitalist Company. Betru was a pioneer in hospitalist care, a new trend in hospital practice management focusing on patients in acute, sub-acute or long-term care settings, and had personally trained hundreds of physicians across the country in the field.

On September 11 he was returning from a trip to Ethiopia, and Flight 77, for him, was a connecting flight from Washington Dulles Airport to Los Angeles; Betru lived in Burbank, California. Other family members had accompanied him on the trip but took separate flights back to the U.S. and arrived safely.

While in Ethiopia, Betru met with government officials to discuss his plans to establish a kidney dialysis clinic in Addis Ababa. He took on the task of improving health care in Ethiopia after his grandmother died due to a lack of equipment and supplies while he was visiting her there in 1998.