Doctor’s Reputation in Fine Fettle
Now that the fax machine has augmented the telephone, the marvelous letter that comes like a surprise present is almost extinct. But, the other day, one was in my mailbox along with the brochures and flyers and the customary sweepstakes missive from Ed McMahon.
This letter was in a long creamy envelope bearing the return address of the USC School of Medicine.
Last year, I was invited to lunch at the USC Faculty Club with three gentlemen, Arthur J. Donovan, Leonard Rosoff and Bing Cherrie. We were in a small, masculine, private dining room and the ratio of men to women was just right--three to one.
Dr. Donovan, a professor and chairman of the surgery department of the USC School of Medicine, said that the close friends of Clarence J. Berne, who died in 1987, wanted to do something in his honor; not a dinner, not a plaque, but something that would enrich the teaching at the school.
Dr. Berne was chairman of the department of surgery at USC’s medical school and Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center for 28 years, from 1938 until his retirement in 1969. He was not overbearing, and I never heard him raise his voice. He was the focus of all of the respect possible from his students and colleagues.
Dr. Rosoff, a retired chairman of the department of surgery, said: “He never embarrassed a resident in front of his peers.” That is surely the mark of a good teacher. Berne made his students want to learn more, to do it better, to solve the problem. And his former students are all over the country, surgeons sharing the Berne legacy.
Donovan had hit upon the perfect idea to honor Berne: to set up a visiting professorship in his name. And that would take a good deal of money. During a lunch of warm remembrances, Donovan said he would write a letter to surgeons who had been Berne residents asking that they send checks to maintain the professorship, which would go to one of the titans in the surgical field.
Then, they decided that maybe a small biography of Berne and some pictures of him would be a good idea, on the remote chance that someone who got the letter had forgotten Berne.
Bing (short for Bingham) Cherrie is director of development for the medical school. He would pull the entire project together. Donovan would write his letter, and the list of people to whom it would be sent would come from Donovan’s office. Rosoff would contribute his warmth and wisdom to the project. I drew the assignment of preparing the copy for the brochure.
It was Rosoff, his successor as chairman of surgery, who said at Berne’s memorial service, “It was easy to sit in his chair and impossible to fill his shoes.” He and his wife now live in Livingston, Mont. I talked to him on the telephone several times after he went back to Montana to be sure I had some facts straight.
Knowing Berne and respecting him as I do, I felt as if I were struggling with the Holy Grail. I met Berne’s sister, a great source about the growing up years of the tall, gangly, athletic kid in Iowa who drove the local pharmacy delivery truck.
Cherrie has a bright and talented young man in his department named Scott Henderson who came to my house and we beat out the brochure. Scott has a degree in music and composes regularly in addition to working on department publications.
Scott did the layout and found the pictures and the package went in the mail in a surprisingly short time. It was proof of what you can do when the committee is no more than four and meets no more than once.
My fine recent letter was from Donovan, telling me that the Berne Professorship fund drive was very successful.
“Dr. Tom R. DeMeester, professor and chairman of surgery at Creighton University, has accepted appointment as the next professor and chairman of the department of surgery,” he wrote, adding that he had also invited DeMeester to be the first Clarence J. Berne Visiting Professor beginning in August.
“I know you share my pleasure that we have been able to establish this memorial for Tom Berne,” Donovan wrote.
Bing told me when I called to whoop in delight that Donovan had received the H. Leslie and Elaine Stevely Hoffman Dean’s Award at the recent USC commencement. It is given “in recognition of outstanding and dedicated service by a faculty member or administrator of the USC Medical School.” Hoffman was a long-time trustee of the medical school.
It was a privilege to know and work with these men and to be part of the tribute to Berne, a scholar, classicist, surgeon, Socratic teacher--and the man who once scooped me up in the hall of the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, where he was also on the staff. I was prowling the night corridors carrying a drain which was attached to me by the fabled hose up the nose. Dr. Berne picked me up, carried me to my bed, put me in it and said, “Once more, Zan, and I will be angry.”
So I didn’t and he wasn’t, and I tried my best to be the ideal patient. And now I’m glad Donovan’s idea succeeded. I was honored to be aboard.
