DukeMed Alumni News

'Say their names.' That’s the call made by many in reference to the numerous Black people who have been killed by police or civilian vigilantes in this country. It’s a call that some say represents the long-overdue need to address systemic racism in the U.S. And it’s a call that many students, faculty, and staff say must include Duke University School of Medicine.

In his nearly nine years working at Duke, Lowell Tyler says there have been countless times when he’s been the only Black person or Black man in the room. It can be a bit of a challenge, and even though it’s a situation he has gotten accustomed to, he says it’s one that can—and should—change.

A Long Struggle

Eric Dziuban, MD’07, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s country director for the southwest African nation of Namibia, was enjoying a weekend at the coast with his family when the call came. A Romanian couple who had recently arrived in the Namibian capital of Windhoek from Spain had fallen ill. Tests confirmed everyone’s fear: COVID-19 had finally come to Namibia.

A paper hat made by a five-year-old, especially one that doesn’t quite look like a hat at first glance, may not appear to have anything to do with racism. But for Kenyon Railey, MD, and those listening to his presentation during the Duke University School of Medicine’s “Turning a Moment into a Movement” event last June, the hat has to do with just that and more.

When reports early last winter indicated that a mysterious new infectious disease had broken out of its point of origin in Wuhan, China, Charles Lucore, MD’83, P’17, MBA, began to prepare for its possible arrival in New York. Lucore was one year into his new position as president of St. Francis Hospital, a highly rated hospital and cardiac care center on Long Island. Because New York is a hub of international travel, he anticipated the novel coronavirus would eventually show up.

Last spring, when Prince Boadi accepted an offer to attend Duke University School of Medicine starting in the fall of 2020, he knew the experience—leaving his family and friends in Chicago, learning his way around Durham, meeting new people, and taking on the rigors of medical school—would be different from anything else he’d ever done. He just didn’t expect it to be quite this different.

In 2015, Spencer and his wife, Ann Spencer, P’89, P’89, P’89,’93, made a bequest commitment to establish the Dr. and Mrs. William H. Spencer III Fellow in Cardiology Fund. When realized, the gift will support a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Cardiology at Duke University School of Medicine.

Biochemist Irwin Fridovich, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Medicine and a familiar figure on the Duke campus for more than 60 years, died on November 2, 2019, at the age of 90. Fridovich was internationally known for his work on the body’s responses to “free radicals,” dangerously corrosive oxygen molecules that would cause serious damage to tissues if left unchecked.

As an Air Force surgeon stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, during the height of the Vietnam War, Robert Green, AB’56, MD’60, saw a lot of badly injured servicemen cross his operating table. But one of them in particular stuck with him, a wounded young pilot whose journey from the skies over North Vietnam to Dayton was especially remarkable.

When Wilburt C. Davison, MD, the founding dean of Duke University School of Medicine, was looking for a candidate to serve as the school’s inaugural chair of the Department of Medicine, the first name that came to mind was that of Frederic M. Hanes, MD.