The passing of giants
By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.
Baylor College of Medicine existed nearly 65 years without losing a current or past president. Now, within the span of less than two months, the school has lost two giants – Michael Ellis DeBakey, M.D., the school's first president, and Ralph David Feigin, M.D., its immediate past president and chair of the Department of Pediatrics.
Each led the College during a crucial period of its existence. From each, Baylor College of Medicine gained a new understanding of its role in education, research, patient care and community service and a renewed impetus to seek the excellence that has been its hallmark.
DeBakey era
DeBakey came to BCM in 1948, five years after it moved from Dallas. It was a crucial period. Baylor College of Medicine needed to increase its dedicated faculty and find places where its physicians could practice and train students and residents.
The force of DeBakey's personality along with the contacts he had made while serving with the Army Surgeon General in Washington, D.C., saved not only his surgery program but the school as well. The affiliation with the Veterans Administration Hospital he forged gave the College a place to practice good adult medicine. When he persuaded the legendary philanthropist Ben Taub to affiliate the public Jefferson Davis hospital with Baylor as well, it meant that the school would have the facilities it needed to train physicians.
In the waning years of the 1960s, the College needed to change, and it was DeBakey who took over as president, enabling it to separate from Baylor University, form an alliance with the Texas Legislature to train physicians to beef up the state's scant supply, raise millions of dollars to fund a College deficit and set the standard for research excellence at BCM.
Without research, DeBakey was wont to say, there would be no progress. If there were no progress, people would die. He followed his own pursuits, but more important, he encouraged and made possible those of others.
Feigin's presidency
William T. Butler, M.D., today BCM's chancellor emeritus, followed DeBakey's near-decade tenure as president with 17 years of his own during which he built and solidified the accomplishments of his predecessor while accomplishing his own efforts at improving the research faculty and ensuring that BCM would be able to foster research efforts in the future.
Buoyed by those who had gone before, Feigin came into his presidency with the assurance that he could take Baylor to the next level of research excellence. Under his leadership, the school achieved top 10 status, drawing to it some of the best in clinical and basic science. The College became a leader in genomics and gene sequencing, in discovering genes and the purpose of their proteins.
Continuing the legacy
They achieved their goals, but each did it with heart and with a stated purpose that went beyond their own egos and need. They did it with the future at heart. They devoted their efforts and professional lives to building an institution that would some day help to end human suffering.
Slowly, one small research triumph after another, scientists at Baylor College of Medicine seek to contribute to that goal. As the tributes and remembrances of these two former presidents show, they stand on the shoulders of giants.
