Class Notes

Albert B. Shackman (M.D. 1948) is associate professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. After serving his residency at Hopkins, Shackman founded and was the first president of the Johns Hopkins Radiologic Alumni Association. After seven years of private practice on his own, he co-founded a three-person practice that has grown to include 75 board-certified radiologists who provide services at several offices and seven regional hospitals. Shackman served as president of the Maryland Radiological Society from 1963-64 and has been teaching at Johns Hopkins since 1954. After retiring from private practice in 1996, he has continued to teach part-time, plays clarinet in a big band, golfs and plays tennis weekly. He and his wife, Riva, are the proud parents of two daughters.

John E. Billi, M.D. (Residency 1981), associate dean for clinical affairs and associate vice president for medical affairs at the U-M Medical School, was awarded a Michigan State Medical Society Presidential Citation. The citation was given in recognition of his work on the “Future of Medicine” — a collaborative report that addresses ways to change health care delivery in order to improve the quality and efficiency of health care in Michigan. Billi also leads a task force related to the report that is working to design points that should be covered in a health plan for the uninsured to maximize resources for the gratest possible value.

James B. Fahner (M.D. 1983) has been appointed to the board of trustees for the Van Andel Research Institute, an independent research organization located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Fahner is clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the U-M, current and founding division chief of pediatric hematology and oncology and senior administrative physician for philanthropy and community relations at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development at Michigan State University.

James A. Slough (M.D. 1984) has been appointed to the Committee on Health Policy and Practice for the Arthroscopy Association of North America. In this role, he will monitor state and federal health issues related to arthroscopic surgery, as well as educate organizations and develop policy recommendations concerning the practice of arthroscopic surgery. An orthopaedic surgeon, Slough practices at Excelsior Orthopaedics, a musculoskeletal private practice with offices in Amherst, Orchard Park and Niagara Falls, New York.

Frederick K. Askari, M.D. (Residency 1989), associate professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School, received a Distinguished Faculty Governance Award from the University in recognition of his service on the Senate Assembly and the Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty. In these positions, he worked to increase the transparency of information in relation to the determination of faculty salaries, and was an advocate for funding future health care costs of University faculty and staff. He resides in Ann Arbor.

Eric B. Schoomaker

Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker (M.D. 1975, Residency 1979), Ph.D., has worn two very big hats since December: He’s both U.S. Army Surgeon General and commander of MEDCOM, the Army unit that provides medical care for active-duty service members, retirees and their family members, a total of five million beneficiaries.

In 2007, he was named commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center following revelations of sub-par patient care. When it’s suggested that being a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps while an undergraduate at Michigan in the 1960s prepared him well for such demanding assignments, Schoomaker chuckles.

“I talked to an ROTC class in Ann Arbor about five years ago,” he says, “and I had to admit to them that it was only the second or third time I wore my uniform on campus. In the ’60s, it was a pretty dangerous place to be associated with the military.” But it was also a “rich social and political environment,” he says. “The hallmark of my experience at Michigan was exposure to such a wide range of thoughts and ideas.”

Schoomaker tips his large hat to two faculty members in particular. “George Brewer kept my interest in medical school,” he says. “He got me interested in working in red blood cells [Schoomaker is certified in both hematology and internal medicine] and recruited me into the M.D./Ph.D. program. The other was Jim Sisson, a terrific critical thinker and patient-focused doctor. They solidified my interest in both internal medicine and academic medicine.”

Ironically, it was a professor of veterinary medicine at Michigan State who solidified his interest in the U-M. While Schoomaker’s dad, a career Army officer, was serving a tour of duty in Vietnam, his mom, a biology teacher, earned a master’s at MSU.

Schoomaker was a sophomore at East Lansing High School interested in drug development because he enjoyed chemistry. Since there was no medical school at MSU then, his mother took him to a teacher in the veterinary school. “He said if you’re really interested in that, go to the University of Michigan and get a medical degree,” Schoomaker recalls. “That will give you the tools to do a whole variety of things, including research.

“My plan to go into chemistry fell apart when I took my first chemistry class and it was really hard,” he says, so he earned a dual degree in anthropology and zoology. He finished writing his Ph.D. dissertation in human genetics while he was a hematology fellow at Duke.

Schoomaker’s older brother, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, also followed in their father’s footsteps, rising to become Army chief of staff in 2003 before retiring last April. Given such a gene pool, it’s hardly a surprise that, as he puts it, “I fell in love with military medicine. It’s a phenomenal group of very high quality professionals who place their patients and the nation first.”

What he says is always a surprise to him, though, is that “people are themselves surprised, when they get close to military medicine, to see the quality of the people that are here and the quality of the service they provide. That’s one of the reasons we were so disappointed at the stories that came out about Walter Reed.”

It’s not as if he’s never considered the civilian path, he says, “but the Army keeps hooking me up with more challenging and intellectually stimulating jobs. There’s no question that the work we do and the challenges we face as practitioners are different from many others in nursing, clinical practice, and pharmacy, but that’s a choice on our part, our way of serving our nation.”

Answering that call has been the one constant in a multi-faceted career. “One of the things I’m often asked by younger doctors and nurses in the military medical community is how should you plan your life,” he says. “I have to be candid and tell them that in fact what I’ve done my entire career is simply follow my interests, follow people that were inspirational to me – and that includes a lot of people I met and was privileged to work with at Michigan – and then do the best job I could at the time I was doing it.” —Jeff Mortimer