In Memoriam ALUMNI Allen S. Bursk, MD’57, died at age 81 on January 7, 2013. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. An orthopaedic surgeon for 50 years at Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital, he was described by colleagues as a “doctor’s doctor.” His humor, kindness and gentle spirit will be missed by colleagues, family and friends. He is survived by Susan, his loving wife of 37 years; two sons, Hayden and Michael; and a daughter, Teresa. Leon A. Carrow, SB’45, MD’47, passed away on April 10, 2013, in Evanston, Illinois. He was 89. An Air Force veteran, Carrow joined the obstetrics and gynecology faculty at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in 1953, where he practiced until his 1991 retirement. He was a life board member of Northwestern Memorial Corporation and a consultant to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago for more than three decades. Survivors include his wife, Joan; a daughter; two stepdaughters; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson. Elsa Leiter Gordon, PhB’47, SB’50, MD’52, of Los Gatos, California, died after a lengthy struggle with Alzheimer’s disease on June 28, 2013, at age 85. A retired psychiatrist, Gordon was born in Chicago. She was a product of the University of Chicago educational system, beginning with the Laboratory Schools. She met her husband, Leon Gordon, PhB’47, SB’48, MD’52, in medical school at the University of Chicago. Originally studying pediatrics, Gordon turned to child and adolescent psychiatry and continued her education at Stanford University. Eventually settling in San Jose, California, Gordon opened a multispecialty mental health clinic, one of the first private facilities offering psychological services for children in northern California. She was a founder of the Eulau Center (now the Acknowledge Alliance), a children’s nonprofit agency. After her retirement, she spent much of her time with her 11 grandchildren. She also served as president of Temple Emanu-El San Jose and became a bat mitzvah at 70. Gordon was known for her graciousness and her kindness, as well as for her unending interest in helping others. Even in her diminished capacity at the end of her life, she still was observed trying to comfort other residents in the memory care facility where she spent the last few months of her life. Gordon also is survived by her four children.
uchospitals.edu/midway
Steven Ernst Gradwohl, MD’87, died on May 18, 2013, at age 51. Intelligent, gregarious and gifted in the art of primary care, he had so many fellow physicians as patients that he was affectionately known throughout the University of Michigan community as “the doctors’ doctor.” Gradwohl demonstrated an aptitude for science at a young age. An avid tennis player and excellent all-around athlete in high school, he was temporarily sidelined at age 16 by Hodgkin’s disease. His experience as a patient and his determination to regain his health inspired his interest in medicine. He was a biology honors student at Carleton College before attending the Pritzker School of Medicine on an Army scholarship. During his military service, he served stateside in Operation Desert Storm and earned the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s Physician Recognition Award, two Meritorious Service medals and two Army Commendation medals. Acting on a dream to practice medicine with classmate and dear friend, Linda Bjork Terrell, MD’87, Gradwohl and his family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the past two decades, he kept a busy general internal medicine practice at Ann Arbor’s Briarwood Medical Group, while also serving as a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. He won the Medical School’s Outstanding Clinician Award in 2012 and was named several times as one of the Best Doctors in America. In addition to his wife and daughters, Gradwohl is survived by his parents, two sisters, beloved nieces and nephews and his dear yellow Labrador retriever, Ziggy. Joseph A. Parks, MD’43, passed away on February 6, 2013, in Santa Rosa, California. He was 94. A World War II Army veteran, Parks practiced radiology at hospitals across the country until he retired in 1988. He also volunteered as a member of Project HOPE, caring for needy patients and teaching medical professionals in Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Colombia and Nicaragua. He is survived by six daughters, two sons, 15 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
F A C U LT Y Samir N. Hajj, MD, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago for more than two decades, died from metastatic colon cancer on August 28, 2013, at his home in San Diego. Hajj was a respected gynecological surgeon and a beloved teacher who was liked
and admired by the residents. The annual Samir Hajj Honorary Lecture in Gynecology was created after his 2007 retirement, largely from funds donated by former residents and faculty. Hajj received his MD from the American University of Beirut. He completed a residency and fellowship in obstetrics and gynecology at the Boston Hospital for Women, now part of Harvard University-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, before returning to Lebanon. Hajj joined the American University of Beirut’s medicine faculty in 1963 and became the first non-American chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973. In 1985, Hajj joined the University of Chicago as professor and section chief of gynecologic surgery. He was the author or co-author of more than 40 papers and six book chapters, and co-editor of the textbook “Clinical Postreproductive Gynecology.” He enjoyed reading, politics, the arts and taking groups of residents out for
Lebanese food at the end of their month on the gynecology service. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Farnworth Hajj; sister, Afaf Najib Hajj; daughters Dana Farnworth Hajj-Weaver, Karin Maya Hajj and Randa Suzanne Hajj; son, Ramzi Samir Hajj and his wife, Jennifer Marie Hajj; and one granddaughter, Ainsley Helena Hajj. Ivan Anthony D’Cruz, MD, died February 7, 2013, in Memphis, at age 77. D’Cruz received his MD from Bombay University and trained in Britain, becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London. For 10 years beginning in 1974, he ran the ECHO Lab at Michael Reese Hospital and was on faculty at the University of Chicago. Later, he held professorships at the Medical College of Georgia and at the University of Tennessee. He wrote more than 200 publications and two books on echocardiography. Survivors include his wife, Maria, two children and three grandchildren.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS Peter Richard Huttenlocher, MD, a pioneering neuroscientist and highly respected pediatric neurologist, died in Chicago of pneumonia and complications of Parkinson’s disease on August 15, 2013. He was 82. Huttenlocher was professor emeritus and former section chief of pediatric neurology at the University of Chicago Medicine. He was known internationally for his clinical skills and research, most notably groundbreaking studies on neural plasticity in children. “It would be hard to think of another discovery that is so central to our understanding of pediatric neurology,” said his friend and colleague, 2000 Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, MD, of Columbia University. Huttenlocher was the first researcher to describe the rapid increase in the connections between neurons in a child’s developing brain, followed by gradual “pruning” of little-used connections. His discoveries made a significant impact on early childhood education, emphasizing the benefits of early introduction of certain subjects to take advantage of periods of high neural plasticity. Huttenlocher’s other major contributions include studying the cognitive effects of focal brain injuries and the role of synapse generation in a child’s recovery from brain damage. He was an early authority on the diagnosis and treatment of children with Reye’s syndrome and was instrumental in making a connection between this disease and aspirin use. In 1987, he launched the first clinic in the United States for children with tuberous sclerosis, a rare neurologic disorder. He also conducted important research on seizure disorders, one of which, Alpers-Huttenlocher syndrome, was named after him and
PHOTO BY JAMES BALLARD
Peter R. Huttenlocher, MD, 1931-2013 Bernard Alpers. He published extensively and received numerous honors for his discoveries. Born in Germany, Huttenlocher earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University at Buffalo in 1953. Huttenlocher met his wife, Janellen Burns, PhD, the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Chicago, when they were freshmen in college. They married in June 1954. After earning his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1957, Huttenlocher interned at Harvard’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, completed his residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and then undertook research fellowships at the National Institutes of Health and MGH. He was an assistant professor in pediatric neurology at Harvard from 1964 to 1966, followed by eight years at Yale University Medical School. In 1974, he moved to the University of Chicago as professor of pediatrics, adding neurology in 1976 and attaining emeritus status in 2003. Huttenlocher is survived by his wife; three children, Daniel, PhD, Anna, MD, and Carl; and four grandchildren, Eric, Jason, Annika and Kaia.
MEDICINE ON THE MIDWAY
FALL 2013
35