FEATURED ALUMNI Left to right: David Jablons, M.D. ’84, Tamara Hicks, Psy.D, Vincent Verdile, M.D. ’84 and Lou-Ann Verdile at the San Francisco Regional Brunch held at Toluma Farms in Tomales, California.
David M. Jablons, M.D. ’84: Alumnus, Surgeon, Leader, Farmer
Dean Vincent Verdile, M.D., ’84, had a strong hunch back in school that his Albany Medical College classmate David Jablons was going to be a successful physician. “He was very bright, hard-working and energetic,” Dean Verdile recalled. “What stood out was he had a very imaginative mind.” The ensuing career of David M. Jablons, M.D., FACS, confirmed Dr. Verdile’s initial assessment. Dr. Jablons is chief of general thoracic surgery, program leader of thoracic oncology and director of the Thoracic Oncology Lab at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. An Ada Distinguished Professor in thoracic oncology and Nan T. McEvoy Distinguished Professor of thoracic surgical oncology, Dr. Jablons is credited with building a world-class thoracic surgery and oncology program at the UCSF Medical Center after being recruited there in the late 1990s. He has written numerous research papers and frequently lectures about lung cancer at international and national meetings. Dr. Jablons returned to Albany this fall to speak at the 7th Annual Translational Oncology Research Symposium. “My Albany Med education was a fantastic and solid foundation for everything I’ve done subsequently,” he said. “It was very hands on, and the contact with faculty as a student and as an intern is exceptional. “Having been a professor for 20 years now, I’ve learned that mentorship is the most important thing we do in educating students. Other institutions have many layers, but at Albany Med you are right there in the mix of it,” Dr. Jablons continued. “I felt very fortunate that I was educated there, and it’s so exciting to see all the progress going on there.” Yes, the dean saw this success coming for Dr. Jablons years ago. As for the West Coast surgeon running a goat and sheep farm, well …
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“No, no, no, I did not see that on the horizon,” Dr. Verdile said. Dr. Jablons and his wife, Tamara Hicks, Psy.D., run Tomales Farmstead Creamery, which has been in the business producing artisanal goat and sheep cheese since April. And run it they do: they are proud to say they can identify every one of their 200 goats by name on their Marin County spread. Why not the stock market for diversification, or golf, or tennis for a diversion? Why goats? Dr. Jablons, who grew up on the east side of Manhattan, said he and his wife had roots in Maine and felt a need to steward the land in addition to his work in medicine. They found a beautiful-butrun-down dairy farm in Marin County near San Francisco, and they worked to bring it back. “It was a labor of love and still is. We wanted to do something helpful to the foodshed, so we became certified in all-organic,” he said. “The farm had the bones of dairy and we love cheese, we thought why not make a goat/cheese dairy?” They then fell in love with another kind of cheese. La Tur is made with three types of milk: cow, sheep and goat. Drs. Jablons and Hicks are two-thirds of the way there. Once they add dairy cows, Dr. Jablons said, they will be one of the only makers To learn more about of farmstead triple-milk, softTomales Farmstead Creamery: ripened cheeses in America http://www.tolumafarms.com since all the milk will come from their farm. Dr. Jablons compared the blossoming domestic cheese industry to Napa and its growth as a wine epicenter 100 years ago. “There is a big movement for artisan U.S. cheese business,” he said. “Cheeses in U.S. now rival cheese elsewhere.”