Class Notes

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1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000
Obituaries

1950s

ANDREW THALHEIM, (resident)’54, who retired from Ochsner Clinic in 1993, volunteers as an interviewer of prospective students at Tulane Medical School. He notes, “Incidentally, there are three Stanford graduates in the current freshman class.”

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1960s

ARTHUR KLEINMAN,’67, professor of social anthropology at Harvard and the Maud and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School, in December received the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Services. He has been described as “the world leader in psychiatric anthropology.” The award is the highest given by the American Anthropological Association.

ALBERT WILEY JR. (resident) ’65 writes that he much enjoys Stanford Medicine magazine. He moved back to North Carolina last year; he is now semi-retired and working part time at East Carolina University. And he is running as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

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1970s

JAMES G. BOWERMAN, ’71, CMO of HealthNet of Oakland, Calif., married Amber Lewis Nov. 4, 2001, in Maui.

MICHAEL C. GRAVES, ’70, on the UCLA neurology faculty, writes: “June and I would love to hear from any classmates when in the L.A. area.”

GORDON L. KLEIN, (resident)’74, a professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, began in the mid-1980s to alert the U.S. FDA to the existence of toxic levels of aluminum in feeding solutions. And now — “After 15 years of writing, lecturing, consulting, testifying and lobbying [by Klein and colleagues], the FDA finally published a final rule regulating the aluminum content of parenteral nutrition solutions; companies must comply by January 2003,” writes Klein.

RANDALL E. MORRIS, ’76, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford, took a leave from the school starting in May to lead the transplantation and immunology therapeutic area at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland. At Novartis he heads the world’s largest collection of researchers dedicated to the discovery and development of immunosuppressants for transplantation and autoimmune diseases. At Stanford Morris’ research group identified several novel immunosuppressive drugs that are approved and now widely used for transplantation and autoimmune diseases or are in clinical trials. His group also found that one of these drugs is especially effective for preventing restenosis after angioplasty.

WOODRING E. WRIGHT, ’75, became the Southland Financial Corporation Distinguished Chair in Geriatric Research, Department of Cell Biology, at Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, in September 2001.

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1980s

JANET MOHLE-BOETANI, ’87, a medical epidemiologist with the California State Health Department in Berkeley, and her husband, Mark Manasse, and 7-year-old son Julian welcomed Declan Hart to the family on June 29, 2001.

JOHN RUARK, ’81, a Stanford clinical assistant professor of psychiatry in private practice in Menlo Park, Calif., was named a fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists for his academic and volunteer outreach work in psycho-oncology and ethical issues surrounding life-threatening illnesses and for his teaching and mentorship of psychiatrists. The award was presented in February 2002.

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1990s

ARNOLD B. GELB, ’92, is a senior scientist in the department of pathology at Deltagen Inc., in Redwood City, Calif.

SARAH J. PORKKA, ’95, finished her residency at Harvard, returned to California and settled in the Napa Valley. In January she opened a solo dermatology practice in Napa, where she and her husband, Tom, enjoy living with their four dogs.

BETTINA STEFFEN, ’95, in February joined ProSanos Corp. in LaJolla, Calif., as vice president for market development. After completing her residency in surgery at Stanford, Steffen worked as a VP with InterMap Systems (YourDoctor Inc.) and Oceania. Her research at Stanford involved immune trafficking of lymphocytes.

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2000

RICHARD A. DAL CANTO, ’00, is a second-year resident in orthopedics at the Cleveland Clinic. He and his wife, Pamela, have two children, Nicholas, 3, and Isabelle, 1.

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Obituaries

A. Jess Shenson, MD
 

A. Jess Shenson, MD,
1921-2002

Alumnus, physician and philanthropist

A. Jess Shenson, MD, physician, patron of classical music and generous donor to Stanford School of Medicine, died of lung cancer Feb. 26, 2002, at his home in San Francisco, the city where he was born in March 1921.

Jess Shenson and his older brother Ben, who died in 1995, earned their undergraduate and medical degrees at Stanford. Jess was a member of the medical school class of 1950. Both Shenson brothers maintained throughout their lives a long and extraordinary association with Stanford, supporting numerous medical school endeavors.

To provide financial support to Stanford medical students, they established the Louis Shenson Memorial Loan Fund in memory of their father and renamed the fund to include their mother Rose when she died in 1983. They created a visiting professorship in 1985, annually bringing two distinguished guest faculty in medicine to present the Shenson Lecture at Stanford.

After the death of Ben, Jess continued the Shenson tradition of generosity toward Stanford. He established the Shenson Society in his brother’s memory, with the aim of encouraging Stanford physicians-in-training to enter internal medicine or primary care. In 1998 he created the Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Professorship in the School of Medicine in appreciation and gratitude and to express his and his brother’s "tremendous affection for Stanford."

Shenson also had a great interest in the arts and helped support countless musicians through the Shenson Young Artists Endowment Fund. He served on the boards of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Performances, Merola Opera Program and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Shenson is survived by a cousin, Irma Levin, and her two sons Fredrick and Lawrence.

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Deaths

• EDUARDO R. LUQUE, class of 1955B, died Jan. 6, 2002, in Mexico City, where he ran the Dr. German Diaz Lombardo Hospital, which provides free orthopedic and spinal surgery to poor children . Luque, a pediatric surgeon and physician scientist, adapted surgical techniques learned in the United States to the conditions he found in Mexico. He made significant advances to spinal surgery, including introducing the use of two rods and wire instead of a single rod to fix individual vertebrae. With colleagues he created Danek, now one of the largest implant companies in the world, which Medtronic bought in 1998.

• SYDNEY F. THOMAS, class of 1941, died Feb. 6 in Chico, Calif., at 89. His career in medicine spanned the world, including serving in the Navy in World War II, practicing radiology at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, serving on the University of Pennsylvania faculty, moving to Shiraz (Iran) and practicing at Nemazee Hospital and teaching at Pahlavi University School of Medicine, and in 1965 returning to California, where he joined Chico’s Enloe Hospital and developed the radiation oncology department. He retired from practice in 1985 and established a woodworking shop.

• GORDON F. WILLIAMS, class of 1942, emeritus clinical professor of pediatrics, died Dec. 31, 2001, in Portland, Ore. He completed his residency in pediatrics at Stanford in San Francisco. Williams practiced in Menlo Park, Calif., and co-founded the Menlo Medical Clinic. He served as medical director of the Stanford Children’s Convalescent Hospital, the precursor to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

• DAVID A. ZLOTNICK, class of 1962, died Feb. 5, 2002 in Palo Alto. Zlotnick, a local pediatrician and prominent member of Interplast, which provides reconstructive surgery in underdeveloped countries, was diagnosed in 1986 with a brain tumor. Complications following surgery to remove the tumor left him with total loss of speech, motor skills and short-term memory. After two years of rehabilitation, Zlotnick recovered and practiced medicine again, though he did not return to private practice.The medical school endowed the International Children’s Health Lectureship in his name, and friends and colleagues established the Interplast David Zlotnick Endowment Fund. — jbt

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