Working TogetherPaying it Forward: How One UTMB Alumnus is Giving

Back to the University for Offering Him ‘a Chance’two schools, one rejected Cortes’ application and the other placed him on a “call back” list.UTMB not only welcomed him as a medical student but also offered him a four-year scholarship. “That four-year scholarship was very helpful,” he said. “It really threw me a lifeline.”

Cortes enjoyed his time at the university from the beginning, noticing the student body mirrored the state’s diversity. After graduating in 1969, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served his country for eight years. He was later stationed in Corpus Christi near the end of his naval career and fell in love with the city.With a deep appreciation for music, Cortes enrolled in Corpus Christi’s Del Mar College to take piano lessons. There he met his

future wife Imelda, who was on the community college’s faculty and holds a doctorate in piano performance from Indiana University. The couple has been married for 36 years.Cortes enjoys a successful pediatric practice in the city and is medical director of the Driscoll Children’s Hospital emergency room. He also serves on UTMB’s Development Board and as co-chair of the Corpus Christi Regional Leadership Council for the university’s Working Wonders Campaign. Both volunteer organizations help open doors to potential benefactors. The love for UTMB has grown within the Cortes family—their son, Dr. Edgar Richard Cortes, is a 1994 School of Medicine graduate who received a scholarship as well and currently works with his father.Cortes said he hopes to give more to his alma mater in the future. “I’ll be eternally grateful to UTMB for giving a 17-year-old a chance.”

Dr. Edgar Cortes owes his successes in life to his family. Both his mother and father encouraged him to realize his dreams, whatever they were. “They gave me character and a strong work ethic,” he said.Furthermore, Cortes appreciated the structure his father, also named Edgar, gave to him and his brother. “He taught us right from wrong, set limits and boundaries,” Cortes said. “I was fortunate to have him in my life.”The love and admiration he has for his parents inspired Cortes and his wife Imelda to honor them by establishing the Edgar and Yolanda L. Cortes Scholarship in Medicine at UTMB, his alma mater. Each year the award recognizes an outstanding medical student who is committed to compassionate, patient-centered health care. The Corteses also have recently established The Drs. Edgar and Imelda Cortes Scholarship in Medicine at the university, an accolade that will reward three exceptional medical students annually.By all accounts, Cortes’ ambition and love for learning should have made his journey to medical school a smooth one. He skipped kindergarten and first grade since his parents had already taught him how to read and write in their Houston home. He went to summer school regularly during junior high and high school so that he completed both in just four years. Cortes applied for medical school in 1965 after an impressive collegiate career at the University of Houston. He finished his premedical courses with a 3.87 grade point average, essentially doubling his course load each semester to complete his core curriculum in just two years—at the age of 17.At that time, there were only three medical schools in Texas: Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Southwestern and UTMB. Of the first

Working TogetherCelebrating Philanthropy at UTMB • August 2014 • http://workingwonders.utmb.edu/

Edgar and Imelda Cortes stand in front of their Steinway concert grand piano. A mutual love of music brought the couple together and remains an important part of their lives.

The traditional gift theme for celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary is gold. One Houston couple decided to mark their memorable wedding anniversary as a golden opportunity to support the construction of UTMB’s new Jennie Sealy Hospital.Dr. William Kimball Jr. and his wife Linda are longtime benefactors of UTMB, but they wanted to make a meaningful gift that coincided with their 50th wedding anniversary. “We both like Galveston and feel loyalty to the school,” Kimball said.In recognition of the Kimballs’ generous contribution to the Jennie Sealy Hospital, UTMB officials have designated the Bill and Linda Kimball Patient Room as part of the facility’s orthopedic and trauma unit. The $438 million hospital is on schedule to open in early 2016.Kimball, a Philadelphia native, owes his time spent at Harvard University to meeting his wife—his college roommate had known Linda since childhood and soon introduced the two. They married in 1964 and, except for three years in Germany, have lived in Linda’s home state of Texas where Kimball applied for medical school. There were only three medical schools at the time, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Southwestern and UTMB, and Kimball was accepted by all of them.

UTMB Alumnus and Wife Celebrate Wedding Anniversary with Gift to New Jennie Sealy Hospital

However, he was most impressed with the people and programs at UTMB, as well as the overall attitude on campus. “I received a really good education, and my residency in radiology was great,” said Kimball, a Class of 1969 graduate. “It was a student- and resident-friendly faculty.”

The Kimballs felt truly at home while in Galveston. Both their sons were born there, and they have maintained a beach house on the island.After his graduation and an internship, Kimball served as a U.S. Army physician from 1970 to 1973 in West Germany. They returned stateside, and he completed a radiology residency at UTMB in 1976. They then moved to Houston where he joined Houston Radiology Associated to practice radiology at Houston Methodist Hospital until his retirement in 2008.

Kimball now spends much of his time traveling and looking after the family pets—one of which is a therapy dog that greets patients at Houston Methodist and residents of retirement communities. Kimball and his wife also travel often to Dallas to see their two sons and their families.Of course, the Kimballs continue to revisit Galveston to make many more golden memories. “We spend as much time at the beach as we can,” Kimball said.

William and Linda Kimball

If luck indeed occurs in threes, Dr. John Alexander had his share of good fortune while he was a medical student at UTMB.He received a draft deferment that allowed him to pursue a medical education during the Korean War. Not a single hurricane hit Galveston during his four years on the island. And when he graduated in 1954, Dr. Alexander walked away debt-free. The retired Fort Worth radiologist knows well that many students following in his footsteps are not so lucky to graduate from medical school without steep financial obligations. The impulse to give back and lend a hand to future generations of physicians led Dr. Alexander to establish a scholarship for first-year medical students at UTMB. “My medical education at UTMB was a very good bargain,” Dr. Alexander said. “That’s why I want to help; you owe something for having received so much for so little. I felt a scholarship would be particularly helpful for freshmen so they can devote all of their time to their medical education.”UTMB President Dr. David Callender applauded Dr. Alexander’s generosity. “All of us at the University of Texas Medical Branch are grateful to Dr. Alexander for establishing this marvelous scholarship,” Dr. Callender said. “The medical students who will benefit from his scholarship will certainly be inspired by the example he’s set as a loyal alumnus.” Dr. Alexander took advantage of a charitable gift annuity to establish his scholarship. He transferred funds in three separate instances to the university, which allowed him to receive a tax deduction, and he’ll receive annuity payments for the rest of his life. His annuity payments—largely tax free—are fixed at a set amount that protects against swings in the financial markets, providing him with a source of income.

Retired Fort Worth Radiologist, UTMB Alumnus Establishes Scholarship for First-Year UTMB Medical Students

John Stone Alexander, 85, was born in Paris, Texas, where he grew up across the street from a hospital. The sight of physicians piqued his early interest in medicine. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and he chose to study medicine at UTMB because he considered it a “premier” medical school as the state’s oldest. After UTMB, Dr. Alexander served two years in the Army in France and earned the rank of captain. After his Army service, Dr. Alexander completed his residency at Scott & White

Memorial Hospital. Then he later went on to devote more than 30 years of his career at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. He retired in 1992.“If you’re in the hospital, just about every interesting case has to come through for an X-ray,” he said. “Most specialties only get to see one thing, but we were able to see most of the interesting cases come through.”Dr. Alexander spent the earlier years of his retirement traveling around the world. Lately, though, he has been unable to travel as much as he’d like. He last visited the UTMB campus four years ago for a class reunion. “That was lots of fun to see classmates I haven’t seen since graduation,” he said. “My class is slowly a dying breed I’m afraid. There aren’t many of us left.”His memories of a career well spent, his days at UTMB and his books keep him occupied in his west Fort Worth retirement home.

About a day or two later, Appel would emerge to reveal a finished statue made from a hardened clay slurry her husband, Dr. Bernard Appel, had helped her mix. It was Dr. Appel who steered his wife’s keen interest in history toward medical history. The suggestion led to the discovery of a niche art form and close associations with famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Sir Alexander Fleming. She turned to Einstein for advice before she created her statue of Marie Curie, a Polish physicist and chemist whose pioneering research on radioactivity twice earned her the Nobel Prize. It was evident Einstein was taken by Appel’s finished

work of Curie when he wrote: “The statue characterizes this beautiful personality absolutely perfectly and helps me to retain fresh one of the most valuable memories in my life.” Curie and other leading figures of medicine depicted by Doris Appel can be found in the John P. McGovern Hall of Medical History in UTMB’s Ashbel Smith Building. Some of the others include Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who discovered X-rays, Joseph Lister, known for advancing sterile surgical techniques, and Louis Pasteur, known for discoveries of the

principles of vaccination and pasteurization.The McGovern Hall soon will undergo a significant upgrade that will elevate the existing presentation of the statues to more closely resemble a museum exhibit. Improved lighting, cleaning of the statues on a regular basis and a 22-inch TV that streams a video of Doris Appel at work in her studio are included in the plans. A plaque also will be added to honor Doris Appel’s daughter, Dr. Blossom Sanger, and her husband, Dr. George Sanger, for their contribution of more than $120,000. Their daughter Wendy McGuire and her husband, Dev Purkayaystha, also contributed to the project.

McGovern Hall of Medical History Receives Gift From Artist’s Family For Improvements

The upgrades should take about six months to complete. “She admired those people,” Dr. Blossom Sanger said of the medical figures in her mother’s art. “They had incredible vision, incredible compassion.”In a narration she recorded for the display, Doris Appel describes the statues as figures who

represent “great ones in the fascinating story of medicine.” She goes on to say in her distinctive Boston accent: “The purpose of this project was to bring together, in one place, the great peaks in the history of medicine so that you who are now here can feel and visualize the vastness and the grandeur and the spirit of the heritage of modern medicine.” The statues originally had been commissioned by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, but instead were displayed by the Smithsonian Institute. Later, Doris Appel agreed to Dr. John P. “Jack” McGovern’s offer of $15,000 to acquire her statues. In a 1980 letter, Dr. McGovern discussed the details of the agreement and in it he thanked her for their close, personal relationship through the years.“You may be certain that these treasures will be placed in the very choicest place,” Dr. McGovern wrote, “where they can be admired through the years and serve their great teaching and artistic functions.” Four years later, Dr. McGovern donated Doris Appel’s statues, which at that time, were worth an estimated $330,000, to UTMB. A second set of statues belongs to Boston University’s School of Medicine.Doris Appel, who died in 1995 at 91, created her statues to not only serve as teaching tools, but also to inspire, her daughter said. When she gave her speech about the stories behind the figures she created, Doris Appel, on more than one occasion, influenced some to pursue careers in medicine. One of them was her daughter, Dr. Sanger, who is now retired after a successful career as an anesthesiologist. “She really inspired people. She inspired them to do better things, to make more of themselves than they could,” Dr. Sanger said. “It wasn’t about her. It was what she wanted you to get from those statues. These were men and women of vision. She wanted you to go ahead and do what you believe.”

Before Artist Doris Appel locked herself away in her Boston barn she used as a studio, she intensely researched the medical luminaries she intended to sculpt. She consulted prominent medical historians and in one instance, she turned to a famous physicist who knew one of her subjects.

Development Office 301 University Boulevard Galveston, TX 77555-0148

Visit the Working Wonders Campaign website to make a gift online or see the latest on

the new Jennie Sealy Hospital’s construction!

Working Wonders Campaign Progress(as of Aug. 5, 2014)

Fundraising Goal Raised to Date Campaign Total $450,000,000 $291,242,778 (65%) New Jennie Sealy Hospital $270,000,000 $197,173,227 (73%)