Alumni

Gilbert M. Bazil (M.D. 1953) died September 17, 2008, at age 80. Bazil received his bachelor’s degree at the U-M in 1950. He resided in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Frederick B. Berry, M.D. (Residency 1960), died July 20, 2009, at age 82. He was a family practitioner in Arkansas.

Jack L. Court (M.D. 1954, Residency 1959), of Newport Beach, California, died March 19, 2009. He was 83.

James R. Dehlin (M.D. 1944), of Gladstone, Michigan, died August 27, 2009, at age 91. He earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical studies at the U-M before receiving his medical degree. Dehlin completed a residency at Hurley Hospital in Flint, then served as a surgical officer with the U.S. Army during the American occupation of Germany. Upon discharge, he established a practice in Gladstone and remained there throughout his 60-year career, delivering more than 3,000 babies. In 2004, Dehlin received a Distinguished Humanitarian Award from the U-M Medical Center Alumni Society.

James Bartlett Fish (M.D. 1954, Residency 1961), 79, died July 6, 2009, after a long illness. Fish was a captain and general medical officer in the U.S. Army from 1956-58. He practiced orthopedic surgery in Watertown, New York, for 35 years, and was renowned for perfecting a surgical procedure used to correct a developmental hip deformity in children.

Lawrence Keith Gates, M.D. (Residency 1958), died July 29, 2009, at age 88. He earned his M.D. from the University of Utah and completed an internship at Rhode Island Hospital before serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He then went into general practice in Logan, Utah. Six years later, Gates developed an interest in ophthalmology and came to the U-M for residency training. He returned to Utah and practiced ophthalmology until retirment.

Margaret E. Grigsby (M.D. 1948) died June 24, 2009. She was 86. Among fewer than two dozen women to graduate in the Class of 1948, Grigsby was a professor emerita of internal medicine at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., having retired in 1993. In the late 1960s she worked for the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control, overseeing millions of smallpox vaccinations in northern Nigeria. Grigsby endowed a scholarship fund in the Medical School in 2005.

William K. Hass (M.D. 1954) of Tenafly, New Jersey, and Bolton Landing, New York, died July 6, 2009, at age 79. He was a professor of neurology at New York University Medical Center and co-author of the book Aspirin, Platelets and Stroke.

Matthew P. Houseal (M.D. 1981), a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, died in Iraq on May 11, 2009. He was 54. Houseal and four others were killed by a sergeant who was receiving treatment at a mental health clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. Houseal counseled soldiers at the clinic and had previously practiced psychiatry for 12 years at Texas Panhandle Mental Health Mental Retardation in Amarillo. A father of seven, he also was a pilot and certified flight instructor.

Sherman A. Kay (M.D. 1952) died January 19, 2009, at age 81.

Kenneth C. Lay, M.D. (Residency 1968), died September 6, 2008. He was 67. Lay was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy for two years, and practiced orthopedic surgery in California for 36 years. He resided in Lake Arrowhead, California.

Marvin Joe McKenney, M.D. (Residency 1963), of Petoskey, Michigan, and Lenacto, Florida, died June 5, 2009, at age 75. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and completed an ophthalmology residency at the U-M. McKenney was a founding partner of Lansing Ophthalmology in Lansing, Michigan, where he practiced until retirement. Gifts in his memory may be made to the U-M W.K. Kellogg Eye Center, 1000 Wall St., Ann Arbor, MI 48105.

John Nelson Sanders, M.D. (Residencies 1950 and 1951), died May 21, 2009. He was 89. Sanders served as a pilot and flight instructor in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1940-45, then attended the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and completed residencies there and at the U-M. He practiced urology in Austin, Texas, for 35 years.

E.H. Newel Smith, M.D. (Residency 1961), died August 9, 2009. He was 84 and resided in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. During his career as an ophthalmologist at Grace Hospital in Windsor, Smith encouraged many patients to donate their eyes to the eye bank and was an early supporter of corneal transplants in Ontario. He was one of four physicians honored for his service to the hospital when the facility closed in 2004.

Earl E. Weston (M.D. 1936), of Ypsilanti, Michigan, died June 23, 2009, at age 97. He was a general practitioner and surgeon specializing in industrial medicine in the Detroit area for 40 years, serving on the staffs of Highland Park General and Grace hospitals. Weston was an amateur ham radio operator, a skill he often used to help others by relaying distress calls and survival messages during natural disasters and nautical accidents.

Milton “Luke” Falkner White Jr., M.D. (Fellowship 1992), died May 20, 2009. He was 48. White received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and completed general surgery and ophthalmology training before coming to the U-M for a vitreoretinal disease fellowship in 1992. With partners, White established Retina Consultants of Alabama in Birmingham in 1992.

John Sheldon Wyman (M.D. 1936), 97, died February 16, 2009, in Tucson, Arizona. He interned at Hurley Hospital in Flint, Michigan, and practiced general medicine, internal medicine, and emergency medicine at various southeast Michigan locations from 1937-73. In 1973, he relocated to Hendersonville, North Carolina, and continued to practice until retiring in 1992 at age 81.

Faculty

John R. “Jack” Pfeifer, M.D., of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, died June 4, 2009. He was 74. Pfeifer came to the U-M in 2000, after a successful career at Providence Hospital and Medical Center in Southfield, Michigan, where he served for 21 years as chair of surgery and oversaw the establishment of a surgical residency program. At the U-M, he was a professor of surgery, founding director of the Division of Venous Disease, and founder of the Livonia Vein Center. Pfeifer had been mentoring Livonia Vein Center physicians since his retirement in 2007. Contributions in his memory may be sent to the John R. Pfeifer Surgical Professorship Fund, Surgery Development (Attn: Greg Witbeck), 1500 E. Medical Center Drive, 2110 Taubman Center, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

Elizabeth Young, M.D. (Fellowship 1984), professor of psychiatry, senior research professor in the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, and a member of the U-M Depression Center, died September 1, 2009, after a yearlong battle with leukemia. She was 59 and resided in Ann Arbor. Young was an internationally recognized biological psychiatrist and neuroendocrinologist who conducted seminal work on stress biology and its role in depression and other mood disorders.

Friends

Frances Ginsberg died June 19, 2009, at age 98, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. A graduate of Maxwell Teacher Training College in Brooklyn, New York, Ginsberg and her husband of 66 years, Victor (M.D. 1937), who died in 2006, were generous benefactors of the U-M Medical School. Together they established the Frances and Victor Ginsberg Professorship in Hematology/Oncology and the Victor and Frances Ginsberg Scholarship in the Medical School, and also supported the Dean’s Merit Scholarship in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Margaret Waid (M.D. 1948), of Vero Beach, Florida, died March 3, 2009, at age 90. She grew up in Parma, Michigan, and developed an interest in pathology during World War II, while assisting with autopsies at a U.S. Army hospital in Battle Creek. She completed her medical degree at the U-M, and went on to internship and residency in forensic pathology in New Jersey. Her career included blood bank inspection in Florida and Indiana, and heading a medical technology program at Florida International University. In gratitude for the neuropathology laboratory experience she received while a U-M medical student, Waid in 2000 established a charitable gift annuity (the first-ever at the U-M) to support education and research in neuropathology at the school.