Longtime Houstonian Dr. Don W. Chapman died last Thursday at the age of 90 (a Chronicle article is here). With Don’s passing, Houston has lost one of the extraordinary group of doctors who catapulted Houston’s Texas Medical Center into one of the premier medical centers in the world. I had the privilege of getting to know Dr. Chapman and his loving wife of 60 years (!), Mary Lou, through my father and mother, who were lifelong friends of the Chapmans.
As with my father, Don was a member of the groundbreaking generation of post-World War II doctors who embraced the optimistic view of therapeutic intervention in the practice of medicine, which was a fundamental change from the sense of therapeutic powerlessness that was widely taught to doctors prior to the post-WWII medical professors such as Don Chapman and Walter Kirkendall. We all take therapeutic intervention in medicine so much for granted these days that it is easy to overlook just how revolutionary this change was in the way medicine had been dispensed for decades and even centuries before Don and Walter’s special generation of teachers and researchers.
Don and my father completed their medical residencies together at the University of Iowa Medical School just in time for WWII. Don served in the war with great distinction as a Major in the Medical Corps of the U. S. Army and as the primary Cardiac Consultant for the European Theater while stationed at the 5th General Hospital and later the 98th General Hospital. Upon returning from the war, Don went on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine and was one of the original ten Baylor faculty members who moved to Houston when Baylor moved to the Texas Medical Center location in 1944. Don and and the other Baylor faculty members at the time began operating in a fledging medical center that consisted of the new medical school and one 234-bed hospital.
Within two years of arriving in Houston, Don introduced cardiac catheterization to the Medical Center, which allowed Baylor faculty members and Methodist Hospital physicians to offer precise cardiovascular diagnosis and groundbreaking heart disease intervention for the first time. Under Don’s leadership, the Medical Center quickly became a pioneer in cardiovascular diagnostics and surgery as Don pioneered the use of a mechanical pump to circulate blood during open heart surgery, participated in one of the first coronary bypass operations in a Houston hospital and was a member of the team that researched and developed the initial mechanical heart implants. For good measure, Don in 1955 was one of the founding partners in Houston Cardiovascular Associates, which grew into one of the best cadiology private practices in Houston.
As director of Baylor’s Section of International Medicine, Don also became a leader in promoting cardiology education around the world by starting a program at Baylor that sends students to teaching centers around the world. Don served as a visiting professor and conducted seminars in numerous countries, including China, Columbia, Germany, South Africa, Guatemala, Switzerland, and Turkey. Not coincidentally, Texas Medical Center institutions now serve over 10,000 international patients annually.
Don was also a prolific researcher, authoring and contributing to more than 100 publications of medical literature. He received many professional honors, but the ones that he treasured the most were the ones he received for teaching, such as the Baylor Distinguished Faculty Award in 1978, 1981 and 1993 and the Outstanding Teacher Awards that he received from Baylor students in 1958 and 1962. In 1992, the Cain Foundation honored Don with the endowment of the Don W. Chapman, M.D. Chair of Cardiology at Baylor and, in 1993, the University of Iowa honored Don with that institution’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
Don’s contributions to Houston and the Medical Center were enormous. Today, 63 years after Don’s arrival in Houston, the Texas Medical Center is comprised of over 45 institutions (including 11 educational institutions and 15 hospitals and specialized patient care centers) that contain 6,500 patient beds and employ 75,000 people. Not only is the Medical Center now the largest employment center in Houston, Baylor College of Medicine is now widely acknowledged to be one of the best medical schools in the country.
How’s that for a professional legacy?
But Don’s remarkable professional accomplishments don’t provide the full measure of this man, who was a genuinely kind and warm human being. When my father at the age of 55 decided with my mother to move our large family (10 children!) to Houston from Iowa City at the beginning of 1972, Don and Mary Lou Chapman graciously welcomed us to Houston and took an active interest in the unwieldly Kirkendall clan. Don took a particular interest in me while I was a wayward undergraduate student in the early 1970’s and kept up with me as I worked my way through law school and became a part of the Houston legal community. I will never forget the wonderful impression that this successful man made on me in taking the time to express his genuine interest in what I was doing in my career. I was particularly touched by his phone call to me after my father’s sudden death in 1992 in which he told me how the eulogy that I delivered at the funeral had moved him to tears and how much he was going to miss his lifelong friend and colleague.
The memorial service for Don will be at 2:00 p.m. today in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church, 5300 Main Street, in Houston’s Museum District just north of the Texas Medical Center. Immediately following the service, the family will receive friends during a reception in the church’s Fellowship Hall. In lieu of usual remembrances, contributions in memory of Don may be directed to the Memorial Garden, First Presbyterian Church, 5300 Main St., Houston, TX, 77004 or to Methodist Hospital Foundation Cardiology Department Research, 6565 Fannin St., Houston, TX, 77030.