Volume 16 Number 4, SUMMER 1999

SPIEGL HONORED FOR VOLUNTEER FUND RAISING

STANFORD'S

HIGHEST HONOR FOR

VOLUNTARY

SERVICE

GOES TO

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE ALUMNUS

RALPH SPIEGL, MD '48.

RALPH SPIEGL, MD, SAYS IT'S IMPORTANT TO HIM TO BE IDENTIFIED WITH "SOMETHING LARGER THAN SELF." Fortunately for Stanford University, Spiegl has selected Stanford -- and in particular, the School of Medicine -- as that special "something larger."

For his volunteer fund-raising service to Stanford University and the School of Medicine, the university's fund-raising group, Stanford Associates, awarded Spiegl the Gold Spike award this April. The award, the highest honor given by the fund-raising group, is an engraved replica of the spike driven in by Leland Stanford in Promontory, Utah, in 1869, to make the final link in the nation's first transcontinental railroad. This year the group also honored Stanford University alumni Rocky Barber, '73, and Charles Pigott, '51, with Gold Spikes.

Spiegl, '45; MD, '48, jokes that his award was made purely on the basis of his looks and personality -- but Bruce Bingham, an associate director in the medical school's fund-raising office, suggests some additional factors came into play.

"I've been here 11 years and in that time I've never seen a person who even comes close to giving the high quality of volunteer service given by Ralph Spiegl. It's as if he has a second extremely successful profession -- and he does it for no pay," Bingham says.

Yes, the fund raising is unpaid, but it's far from unrewarding, says Spiegl. "You get a sense of satisfaction when you set a goal for yourself -- one that you feel is really worthwhile -- and achieve it. It's like a sporting event. That's how I feel about fund raising."

Spiegl, an internist, spent 42 years in private practice, never straying more than a couple of miles from the Stanford campus. His decision to retire was brought on by recent changes in the health care market that made it difficult for private physicians to sustain meaningful, long-term relationships with their patients, he says.

Spiegl's arrival at Stanford as an undergraduate was triggered by a "series of wonderful and unlikely events" that proved pivotal in shaping the course of his life. At the end of his freshman year at University of California, Berkeley, he contracted polio. He recovered but could not cope with Berkeley's hills. At Stanford, the flat terrain speeded his physical recovery while the campus' vibrant academic climate began to change the direction of his life. He went on to complete an undergraduate degree, a medical degree and to serve on Stanford's clinical faculty.

Genuine affection for and loyalty to Stanford led Spiegl to become active in fund raising. His career as a volunteer began in 1966, when he served as the mid-peninsula chair of the medical school's Advanced Gift Program. His many fund-raising accomplishments include playing a key role in the solicitation of two important gifts: the endowing of the Frances and Charles Field Professorship in Cardiovascular Surgery in 1976, and the establishment of the Richard M. Lucas Center for Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Imaging at Stanford, which opened in 1992. Currently, Spiegl is leading a five-year campaign to raise $20 million for the Stanford Medical Student Scholars Program, a program that gives medical students the opportunity to work on a variety of independent research projects under the direction of faculty mentors.

Spiegl suggests his fellow alumni might find they enjoy fund raising as much as he does. "For me, giving to Stanford has turned out to be its own reward." SMD