Fall 2001

Alumni News

1940
C.W. Worth, MD, "putters" in his yard and mows the grass at his home in Laurel, Ind. His son John, an attorney in Rushville, Ind., recently ran for a position on the circuit court. His daughter Katie recently retired from teaching.

1945
B.L. Martz, MD, is retired and enjoys volunteer work, travel and church activities. He and his wife Geraldine reside in central Indiana and have been married for more than 15 years. She is a retired nurse. Dr. Martz has five children and ten grandchildren. During his career, he served as vice-chairman of the Indiana Governor's Commission on Aging.

Joseph S. Stratigos, MD, is retired and spends his time honing his golf skills and catching salmon and steelhead in the creek on his property in Michigan. He has four children and seven grandchildren.

1955
Morton Willcuts Jr., MD, FCCP, practices critical care medicine and non-invasive cardiology at Mid-Dakota Hospital in Chamberlain, S.D. He was divorced in 1971 and has eight children and eleven grandchildren. In 1969, Dr. Willcuts founded the first CCU/ICU in west central Illinois at Cottage Hospital in Gatesburg. He was also the first medical director of both units.

1960
Robert Irick, MD, is a full-time physician with Kendrick/St. Francis FP in Mooresville, Ind. His wife works with him, and the couple has three sons and five daughters. One son is a doctor, one is a CPA and the other is an engineer. Two of his daughters are married to physicians. Dr. Irick has more than a dozen grandchildren.

Michael T. Long, MD, practices neurology part time and serves as a medical staff executive at Grossmont Hospital-Sharp Healthcare in California. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Long's daughter Kris is an assistant district attorney in Santa Cruz County, Calif., and his son Mike is a professional golfer in Hong Kong.

Robert Sweeney, MD, and his staff at Centennial Pediatrics are serving as pediatric office models with Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Ind. His wife owns two retail outlets: Buttons and Bows is a children's clothing store and KCA on the Run is a collectibles shop.

Byron Lee Teegarden, MD, is a private contractor for the Navy at Miramar, San Diego. His wife is a retired school teacher.

Ronald Yamaoka, MD, is in solo neurology practice in Kailua, Hawaii. He retired as a colonel in the United States Army in 1994. His wife Carol Sewell, DDS, graduated from the IU School of Dentistry in 1960 and is now retired. Dr. Yamaoka has three daughters and a son. Two of his daughters and his son are Purdue alumni; his other daughter is a graduate of University of California - Davis.

1965
John W. Bennehoff, MD, is a staff anesthesiologist in San Pablo and Pinole, Calif.

Neil Chloupek, MD, performs laser resurfacing, microdermabrasion and segmental regional micro varicose vein removal at the Aesthetic Skin Center and Family Practice in Phoenix, Ariz. He also practices anti-aging medicine with HGH.

1967
Lloyd L. Rich, MD, has been practicing general internal medicine in Sacramento, Calif., for twenty-eight years. As an added bonus for his patients, the "physician magician" also performs close-up magic in the office and in the Sacramento area. He says he and his wife Sharyn are still on their honeymoon after thirty-nine years of wedded bliss. They have three sons and seven grandchildren.

1970
Leo M. Bonaventura, MD, is a reproductive endocrinologist in private practice in Carmel, Ind. His wife works with him as a nurse practitioner and they have six children, but no grandchildren ... yet!

Michael R. Konowitz, MD, recently retired from radiology. He and his wife Cheryl live in southern Indiana and have one son, Michael Jeffery, who is a computer consultant for Northwestern Hospital in Chicago.

David J. Krull, MD, practices family medicine in a group with six other physicians. He and his wife Sandy have been married for thirty-one years. They have three daughters; a fourth daughter is deceased.

Jay Noffsing, MD, is a professor of pediatrics, director of medical student education and chief of pediatric sports medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He is also the team physician for Mikendree College and O'Fallon Township High School. Dr. Noffsing has been married to his wife Sharon since 1997. He has three daughters: Jamie is an athletic trainer; Julie is a medical resident in pediatrics; and Jill is an elementary school teacher.

W. David Pepple, MD, is in private practice in family medicine/abdominal surgery. He is an assistant residency director for the Fort Wayne Medical Education Program. His wife Sharon is a nurse who works in his office and serves as his business manager. One of their three sons, Steve, is a medical student. Son Mike owns Sacred Dragon Enterprises and son Phil is a student at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Nina C. Smith, MD, is vice-president and associate medical director at American United Life in Indianapolis. She also serves as president of the American Academy of Insurance Medicine.

1980
Deep in the ridges of Tennessee, there's a doc sitting on his front porch pickin' bluegrass tunes on the mandolin, accompanied by a howling hound dog named Bonnie. Nearby, crickets are chirping and the lazy Tennessee River flows by.

The love affair between Marty Redish, MD, and the Volunteer State's rolling hills and great outdoors began back in Indianapolis. After graduating from IUSM, he began an orthopedics residency at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga, influenced by the opportunity to study under Robert Coddington, MD '60, who headed UTC's orthopedic surgery program.

Dr. Redish began practicing in 1985 alongside Dr. Paul Thompson, a pioneer in joint replacement. After just three years, Dr. Redish founded the Chattanooga Bone and Joint Center, where today he and three partners perform general orthopedic procedures as well as new treatments he developed for fractures. The center is also participating in a nationwide study of minimally-invasive knee resurfacing.

Many of Redish's classmates will recall him as one of the five members of Dr. Felton's Bluegrass Band, a group of students who delivered a surprise performance during a lecture in Dr. Felton's neural anatomy class. "He didn't mind the interruption," Dr. Redish recalls, "since he just grabbed his bass and started picking in perfect time" with his students.

Today, Dr. Redish and his wife Edie are bringing up sons Cliff and Jake at their home in the misty mountains near Chattanooga. But he's not the lone Hoosier transplant; he says several IUSM-trained physicians practice in the area.

"They're the best guys around - good old Hoosiers," he says. "They're who I'd go see if I needed a doctor."

1984
Valerie Berry, MD, published her first full-length book of poetry in August. Samples of her work and more information about her book are available by going to her publisher's Web site at www.sixteenrivers.com and clicking on "Authors and Titles." Dr. Berry is hoping to arrange a reading tour of Indiana in October or November 2001.

1988
When Stephen Strup, MD, FACS, began his studies at IUSM he aspired to be a cardiologist, but as time went by he set his sights lower, so to speak, on surgical urology.

"At the IU School of Medicine, I wasn't just exposed to 'bread and butter' urology," Dr. Strup recalls. "I saw a wide variety of procedures, including cancer surgeries."

After graduation, Dr. Strup began a two-year surgical residency and four-year urology residency at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pa. He left Pennsylvania only briefly to conduct research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Md.

Dr. Strup currently is an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson and specializes in laparoscopic nephrectomy, a minimally invasive kidney surgery. He credits his interest in the procedure to his studies at NCI.

"I saw how minimally invasive procedures applied to cancer surgery are a win/win situation for everyone," he says.

Dr. Strup now performs virtually all his major cancer operations laparoscopically rather than using traditional open surgical procedures. "I really enjoy embracing technology for the benefit of the patient," he says. "From better laparoscopic equipment to robotic surgeries, I now do things every day that I couldn't have even imagined doing ten years ago."

Dr. Strup, who lives in West Chester, Pa., with his wife Sue and his young children, Spencer and Sydney, related that he found his training at IUSM to be excellent, and that he was well prepared for his fellowship. He appreciates the efforts of Professor Emeritus John Donohue, MD, who instructed him at IUSM.

1990
An undergraduate professor once gave Mark Bauman, MD, a set of simple instructions for building a career: "Always follow what interests you most and pursue what whets the appetite for more." Those words have guided Dr. Bauman in his pursuit of varied interests.

Calling himself a "late bloomer" to medicine, Dr. Bauman attended the University of Notre Dame as an undergraduate and earned a degree in theology. After graduating, he taught high school religious studies, but the echo of his professor's advice lured him to IU-Bloomington where he completed master's degrees in Greek and Latin. At thirty, he set his sights in a different direction at IU.

After graduating in 1990 and completing a residency in hemopathology in Indianapolis and fellowship in Salt Lake City, Dr. Bauman returned to Indiana to work at Bloomington Hospital in 1996.

Today he works mostly with diagnosing patient specimens, such as blood and tissue samples, and also does bone marrow biopsies and fine needle aspirations. Although his work gives him limited patient contact, he interacts with surgeons a great deal.
One of the aspects of being a physician Dr. Bauman enjoys most is teaching. He lectures to second-year pathology students at IUSM's Bloomington Center for Medical Education.

"Preparing and giving lectures is one of the things I enjoy most," he says. "One never wants to be in the position of having a second-year medical student ask you a question you can't answer, so lecturing forces me to keep current and prepare. If students do ask me questions I can't answer, their grades go up, so they keep me on my toes!"

In addition to practicing and teaching, Dr. Bauman volunteers as an assistant medical director for Hospice of Bloomington. He also manages to have interests outside of medicine. He and his wife Mary Clare, who have three young daughters, are both avid pianists and sing together in their church choir. Dr. Bauman is also a triathlete and often bikes nearly 50 miles per day.

1996
Evan Melrose, MD, is a director with Burrill and Company, a San Francisco-based life science venture capital fund. Before joining the company, Dr. Melrose was a managing director with Panterra Capital, a seed capital life science fund. In addition, Dr. Melrose has served as an advisor and consultant to numerous startups in healthcare and information technology. He recently left the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to join the University of California - San Francisco this fall. Dr. Melrose earned his MBA from the Wharton School of Business.