Winter 04

Alumni News

1946
Long before he embarked on his medical career, Charles Smith, MD, dreamed of being a medical missionary overseas, but tuberculosis forced him to change plans and remain closer to home, practicing radiology in Kokomo, Ind. However, Dr. Smith spent much of his spare time on overseas medical missions, often accompanied by his first wife and their children. Today, he and his wife Penny, an elementary school teacher, reside in Carmel, Ind., where he devotes much of his time to mentor young men and reading ultrasounds for crisis pregnancy centers. “I could not have chosen a richer life if I had planned it myself,” Dr. Smith writes.

1957
Family practitioner Edward Davis, MD, heads south to Florida for winters and north to South Bend, Ind., for summers. Although he retired from private practice several years ago, he still “doctors” part time at Medpoint Ambulatory Care Centers in South Bend. He’s a fan of reading, hiking and bicycling, but reports his real passion in life is his family.
He describes his first year of medical school as being both “trying and rewarding” but the real reward came during his senior year when he met the woman who would become his wife.

1958
Stephen D. Smith, MD, says his best memory of medical school is realizing “I was going to make it after my first year and without taking classes over.” By the third year, he came to the conclusion just “how fun medicine was because you got to really help someone—getting paid to do it was a big extra.” The family practitioner resides in Escondido, Calif., and has presided over hospital staffs in that state, Indiana and Arizona. Retirement goes well with him: he often doesn’t wear a watch, doesn’t shave every day and enjoys helping his wife with her art business and Web site. He doesn’t miss the “HMO rat race.”

1961
Willis Henry Marshall, MD, closed his psychiatry practice, pulled up stakes from his old Kentucky home, and he and his wife moved farther south to Chattanooga, Tenn., to be near his physician son. Today, he takes care of chronic and subacute patients and says he loves his work. He had several favorite professors in medical school, including former Dean Glenn Irwin Jr., MD, ’44.

1962
David Gerkin, MD, serves on the AMA’s Council on Constitution and Bylaws. His career has included service as chief of staff of the University of Tennessee Medical Center where he earlier was chair of the Department of Ophthalmology. A brigadier general and state surgeon for the Tennessee State Guard, Dr. Gerkin also is editor of Tennessee Medicine, the journal of the Tennessee Medical Association.

1966
Kenneth J. Ahler, MD, has served his patients at the Rensselaer (Ind.) Care Center and his community well for many years. His service and commitment to self-improvement through professional education and other training earned him the honor of Medical Director of the Year (2003) by the Life Care Centers of America. “He’s very proud to be a family physician and a Hoosier doctor,” his wife Margaret writes. “Ken is on the move all the time doing good and serving others.”

1967
Say you were traveling across America’s highways a few summers ago and saw this guy on a motorcycle with a dog
riding behind him. If you did, it is possible that Bill Robertson, MD, was at the handlebars, making the cross-country round trip. Robertson of Eugene, Ore., is an orthopedic surgeon who names “going fast and making vehicles faster—bicycles, motorcycles and airplanes” as his favorite pursuits.

1971
Craig Miller, MD, of Pensacola, Fla., specializes in pulmonary and critical care and is senior vice president of medical affairs at Baptist Health Care. He went back to school to work on a master’s degree in medical management. Looking back at his IUSM experience, one memory stands out above all: “It was graduation day—the pride I saw in my
father’s eyes.”

1972
Want a good glass of chardonnay, zinfandel or perhaps a palatable pinot noir? If you visit Joseph Greene, MD, at his home in Carmel, Calif., he might just pour you a glass of wine made from the grapes of his thirty-acre vineyard. A child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Greene has served as president of many state and local medical societies. When asked about his recollection of faculty members, the one who most stands out is one whose name he cannot remember. The teacher was an “anatomy instructor who somehow managed to sever his facial nerve.” Anybody remember that hapless person?

1973
During his medical school days, John Hayes, MD, stayed up for 72 hours with physicians to work on a premature baby with immature lungs and respiratory distress. When the infant improved, the father of the child made it all worthwhile to Dr. Hayes, who now practices clinical psychiatry. “He thanked me and told me that he and his wife had lost two other babies and they saw this child as their last chance.” Dr. Hayes, who resides in Zionsville, Ind., has actively supported the IU-Moi project
and has visited the east African nation.

1982
If you’re tooling around Evanston, Ill., you just might see Mala Dinsmoor, MD, riding a bicycle, working in her garden or running around with her dogs. Dr. Dinsmoor, who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine, is director of research at Evanston. She has served as a board examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Jay Grosfeld, MD, former IUSM surgery chair, is among her favorite faculty members, but what really stands out in her memories is “dancing with Mike McDonald at the Moore brothers’ parties.”

1992
Life is full and busy for Ericka Cornett Criss, MD, of Indianapolis. She practices psychiatry and rounds out her schedule cooking, gardening, and volunteering at an international school and Junior League. Dr. Cornett Criss has achieved much, but her stellar accomplishments, she says, were her marriage to Charles Cornett, MD ’92, and the births of her two daughters. She has been honored as Physician of the Year at Howard Community Hospital.

1993
Gregory Risk, MD, certainly lives up to his last name. While on duty in Afghanistan as an Army Reserve emergency physician, he was among those on a helicopter crew who mounted a night rescue operation in Afghanistan’s mountains. The lieutenant colonel and other crew members were awarded the Army Aviation Association’s Air-Sea Rescue Award. Dr. Risk currently is assigned as an instructor at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C. In civilian life, he’s regional director of Emergency Medicine Physicians in New Bern, N.C.

We want to know what you’ve been up to—and your former classmates would like to know too. When submitting your material, include your full address and telephone number for verification. Send your material to: Alumni Notes Editor, 850 W. Michigan St., Suite 241, Indianapolis, IN 46202-5198.
Fax (317) 274-5064.
Email submissions should be
sent to: ssdavis@iupui.edu.